Viable stealth options?

[JestersDead 2]

Are there any plans to implement or allow stealth kills with silenced weapons in A3? What I mean is in Arma 2 I made several attempts to make a HVT takedown mission where a small group of soldiers (spec ops) sneak into a town and eliminate the HVT quietly. If they are detected, the enemy gets reinforcements, and things go south fast. Unfortunately I was never able to make it work the way I intended, because even with silenced weapons, every enemy within 100m was alerted as soon as you dropped one lone sentry at the edge of the town. I tried a lot of different methods, but eventually accepted that the only real way to do it was to sneak in, and haul ass after killing the HVT, or to set up an ambush and go toe to toe with the reinforcements.

What I'd love to see in A3 would be the ability for small groups (3-6 players) to be able to take enemies down quietly. I don't belong to any large gaming groups, and I usually just play with a few friends. My missions are usually geared towards small skirmishes and stealth. I know that silencers in real life are not magical like in the movies, but if you fire one round into a sentry's head and there are no other enemies close, the whole base should not instantly go on alert. I actually haven't tested it in A3A yet, because it seems that the AI is able to detect you from insane distances anyway.

[f2k sel 164]

As it stands right now in the few tests I've run AI seem to hear suppressed weapons at greater distances making Stealth missions even harder.

AI grouped to a unit out of sight and sound will still go into aware mode instantly when the lone unit is killed.

[JestersDead 2]

That's disappointing. Friendlies can fire suppressed weapons right next to you and you can barely hear it, but the AI goes on alert if they're within visual range. I think I'm going to submit a ticket on this when I get home, if one has not already been put in.

[b00tsy 28]

I made a stealth mission on A2 that sort of works (Silent Justice). The AI still will move all over the place after a few silent kills, but they don't seem to pinpoint your position right away, just the general direction where the shots were coming from. Would love to see it improved though as it is unrealistic that they can even know the direction if you fire a silenced weapon from 200 meters away. I am making a stealthy mission now on Stratis so we will see how that turns out.

[chrisb 196]

In A2 I used GL4 in the ai pbo mix I used, had some really nice Stealth missions. Much easier to set the ai ability this included hearing sounds of surppressed weapons (distances) etc, in the 'global configs'..

Arma 3 will probably get a mod to do this eventually, won't unfortunately be a GL5 though.. :(

[Spanky 1]

I tried getting off a few silent kills in the vehicle showcase mission but the enemy was almost instantly aware no matter how I killed the enemy

Edited March 16, 2013 by Spanky

[f2k sel 164]

I did notice in Arma2 that the weapon has an effect but they also seem to become magically aware 10 seconds later of the dead body, even if I deleted that body instantly they still became aware 10 seconds later.

I also noticed that when I placed a damage event handler on the targetobject and let that kill the unit the delay increased to 30-40 seconds.

What I ended up doing was removing autotarget from enemy AI I but turning it back on if an unsuppressed weapon was fired in the are or their knowledge of an enemy exceeded 1.2 I think it was. But it's a real pain.

I often though the if the reveal could accept negative numbers it would really help as you'd have some control over what they know.

[JestersDead 2]

yeah, it just seems like we shouldn't have to do a bunch of scripting to make use of something that is already in the game (suppressed weapons). Otherwise the only real reason to use a suppressor would be to reduce muzzle flash, or make it harder for the enemy to pinpoint you (which is currently irrelevant with the magic AI detection).

[lolipoyi 10]

Deleted

Edited March 15, 2013 by lolipoyi

[bad benson 1733]

yea that was one of the first things i tested and the results were disappointing. let's make a good and detailed ticket and all vote on it. i'm working on a summary of AI related issues and will make some tickets myself soon. this one i would vote on for sure though.

[Gorbachev 1]

Agreed. This seems like something that should be in the game from the start. I don't recall having this issue in OPF but I could be wrong, it's been a while.

I'm sure BI has a general time table when they want to release the game but I feel like so many things should be gutted and started over instead of compounding new code on top of old code to get things right.

[JestersDead 2]

I didn't get a chance to submit a ticket on this yesterday but I'm planning on setting up a quick mission tonight to test it out, and if able I'll get a video of my results and post a link with the ticket.

Basically I'll try to do two tests in one shot. I'll make two ungrouped sentries about 75-100m apart with a trigger that displays a "gotcha" message when opfor detects blufor. Then I'll make another pair of sentries in the same area, but group them and see if having them grouped or ungrouped makes any difference. I'll run the test once doing only headshots, and another run with center mass shots.

Anyone have any suggestions for anything else I should try?

[down8 30]

Good work. Post here the link to the ticket,and I will vote it.

It's a thing must be tweaked.

[Blaaarg 10]

Are there any plans to implement or allow stealth kills with silenced weapons in A3? What I mean is in Arma 2 I made several attempts to make a HVT takedown mission where a small group of soldiers (spec ops) sneak into a town and eliminate the HVT quietly. If they are detected, the enemy gets reinforcements, and things go south fast. Unfortunately I was never able to make it work the way I intended, because even with silenced weapons, every enemy within 100m was alerted as soon as you dropped one lone sentry at the edge of the town. I tried a lot of different methods, but eventually accepted that the only real way to do it was to sneak in, and haul ass after killing the HVT, or to set up an ambush and go toe to toe with the reinforcements.

Atm we are shooting supersonic ammunition with sound suppressor. Sound suppressor make the shot less audible (harder to pinpoint the shooter and less ear damage when shooting indoor w/o protection), but we can still hear the bullet travelling sound. Also, i don't expect supressed 6.5 or 7.62 to be a silent weapon, it just make less noise.

ArmA2 had a less than optimal configuration for Sd weapon : most of them were just regular weapon made to shoot supersonic ammo... with a sound suppressor and subsonic ammo. If you look at a 5.56x45 assault rifle (an M16 for ex.) with subsonic ammo, the muzzle velocity is reduced from ~800m/s to ~320m/s with a minimal bullet grain gain, and the weapon loose a *lot* of power in the process. (a subsonic 5.56x45 is 4-5gram bullet @ 320m/s. It's still a bullet but it's far from being the best in the world.)

ArmA3 currently get a "realistic" utilisation of sound suppressor with modern assault rifle using supersonic ammo, since 5.56x46, 6.5 grendel or 7.62x51 loose a huge amount of power in subsonic version... but one can still hear the supersonic bullet sound, it just make the shooter harder to pinpoint.

As a simulation, ArmA3 need the following possibilities to cover all the ground :

-suppressed weapon with supersonic ammunition (less audible than a non-suppressed, minimal to no bullet performance modification ) => current ArmA3 configuration

-suppressed weapon with subsonic ammunition (good / exellent global sound reduction but can cause a poor / terrible bullet performance) => ArmA2 configuration

-suppressed weapon made to shoot subsonic ammo in the first place (the Vss vintorez is a great exemple : 18 gram subsonic bullet)

That said, ArmA2 had an issue / bug with some subsonic caliber dealing *more* damage than their regular, supersonic counterpart (5.56x45 & 5.45x39 had almost the same base damage in sub & supersonic version, but the subsonic ammo had 10 time less airfriction.)

tl;dr : You need subsonic ammo with a suppressed weapon in order to achive "stealth kill" but it's currently not available at this stage of the game, i hope the dev will get the things done right :D

Sorry for my bad english, thx for reading ^^

Edited March 16, 2013 by Blaaarg

[JestersDead 2]

I swear that I read one of the dev interviews months ago talking about suppressors and subsonic ammo. Basically what I got from it was that they were going to base it all on the attachment to make it simple, because if you're putting a suppressor on your rifle it will be assumed that you are also using subsonic ammo. I can't remember where I saw this stated, but it stuck with me because I remember thinking how much easier it would make stealth kills.

All that aside, having a supersonic bullet still doesn't account for a soldier 100m away from the target being alerted.

It would be nice if BI had some kind of tiered alert levels for the AI. Like, AI hears something and goes into investigation mode. Maybe searches around for a bit, and if he doesn't see or hear anything else out of the ordinary, he goes back to lowered awareness. If he hears another abnormal sound maybe he goes into an enhanced search, and starts to zero in on the source. Maybe he goes prone and takes cover, maybe he radios nearby units to start searching too. Again, if nothing is found they go back to lowered awareness. But once they find a body, or spot you it's game on. Lots of games have AI behavior like this, but I have no idea how difficult it would be to implement. It would definitely be cool though.

[bad benson 1733]

Atm we are shooting supersonic ammunition with sound suppressor. Sound suppressor make the shot less audible (harder to pinpoint the shooter and less ear damage when shooting indoor w/o protection), but we can still hear the bullet travelling sound. Also, i don't expect supressed 6.5 or 7.62 to be a silent weapon, it just make less noise.

ArmA2 had a less than optimal configuration for Sd weapon : most of them were just regular weapon made to shoot supersonic ammo... with a sound suppressor and subsonic ammo. If you look at a 5.56x45 assault rifle (an M16 for ex.) with subsonic ammo, the muzzle velocity is reduced from ~800m/s to ~320m/s with a minimal bullet grain gain, and the weapon loose a *lot* of power in the process. (a subsonic 5.56x45 is 4-5gram bullet @ 320m/s. It's still a bullet but it's far from being the best in the world.)

...etc

we all know how it works dude. it's not something that was set up like that as a feature. it has to do with the AI detection system. i made the same tests i made in arma 2. put an AI in the editor in a distance from you where he still reacts to normal gun sounds. now shoot in the opposite direction the AI is standing from you. you will see that in arma 2 and 3 it makes no difference if you shoot with a silencer or not even if the bullet is flying a totally different direction. the AI isn't set up in such a detailed way. that's why there was a mod taking care of that in arma 2. in arma 3 it's unfortunately the same so far. people here have a lot of experience with arma AI and making missions with it. we need no lesson in sound suppression.:rolleyes:

[JestersDead 2]

To add to what has been said, I've seen videos comparing real SD weapons with and without the suppressor attached. The suppressor doesn't make a weapon silent, but it does make the shot quieter than the cycling of the action on the rifle. So once you're outside the range where the AI should be able to hear your bolt slam forward, he really shouldn't hear the shot.

[krycek 349]

The funny thing is that I even tried other stealthier methods than killing them with suppressed weapons.

I killed a patrol,stole their Ifrit,driving to the enemy base(me laughing with my buddy thinking we're a bunch of Sam Fishers) and a mg spot us from a mile starting to fire at us alerting the whole base.....yeah didn't worked so well.

I noticed sometimes that enemy uniforms appears on their bodies but I could never change them.

[f2k sel 164]

I'm all for it being as realistic as possible but it's not even close, no game is going to be for a very long time.

Do other noises trucks,cars radio effect how much a unit can hear shots? I haven't tested but I'd be very impressed if it did.

Then we could use other sounds as cover.

Without it I think adjustments need to be made, After all we have no knife or crossbow as yet.

And no I don't want it to be COD or BF2, I just get a bit fed up with everything ending in a mass shoot out.

[metalcraze 290]

There's no such thing as silenced weapons.

There are only suppressed ones and that means what it says on the tin... Fire them from longer distances if you don't want them to be heard. Make sure it's a small caliber weapon too because some still produce flash (that also depends on a suppressor of course). You can't just silence an explosion inside the chamber.

In OFP-ArmA1-ArmA2 MP5 is your best friend. I don't think ArmA3 has an equally awesome gun though.

In ArmA2 in a similar mission I've played I also managed to do 1 shot 1 kill of HVT with a suppressed M4 without being spotted though. Need to try this in ArmA3.

Edited March 16, 2013 by metalcraze

[JestersDead 2]

There's no such thing as silenced weapons.

There are only suppressed ones and that means what it says on the tin... Fire them from longer distances if you don't want them to be heard. Make sure it's a small caliber weapon too because some still produce flash (that also depends on a suppressor of course). You can't just silence an explosion inside the chamber.

In OFP-ArmA1-ArmA2 MP5 is your best friend. I don't think ArmA3 has an equally awesome gun though.

In ArmA2 in a similar mission I've played I also managed to do 1 shot 1 kill of HVT with a suppressed M4 without being spotted though. Need to try this in ArmA3.

The thing is, I can run the mission as OPFOR and have the AI engage me with suppressed weapons and I can see my friendly troops falling, but I never hear anything. The other thing is that I can shoot out a street light directly over his head, and he doesn't react. He's not alerting to the sound of the bullet so much as he alerts to the fact that one of his buddies just got dropped well outside of his line of sight. You have to send a bullet whizzing pretty close to an enemy for them to react to a near miss. The detection range should be the same whether you're hitting an enemy or shooting out a street light, but it is not.

[krycek 349]

The thing is, I can run the mission as OPFOR and have the AI engage me with suppressed weapons and I can see my friendly troops falling, but I never hear anything. The other thing is that I can shoot out a street light directly over his head, and he doesn't react. He's not alerting to the sound of the bullet so much as he alerts to the fact that one of his buddies just got dropped well outside of his line of sight. You have to send a bullet whizzing pretty close to an enemy for them to react to a near miss. The detection range should be the same whether you're hitting an enemy or shooting out a street light, but it is not.

Yeah saw this myself,fire around and they barely notice,but kill one of them and with his dying breath he just communicated to his friends "the guy is over that left bush,5 meters from that rock,200m total distance,avenge me".:biggrin_o:

I think they'll tweak it though,I remember it was the same in earlier versions of A2.

[white 1]

i believe this is relevant to this thread:

Silencers - Why do they exist in ArmA 3?

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?150368-Silencers-Why-do-they-exist-in-ArmA-3

-

if bohemia fix the performance issues for launch, me and a ocuple of friends that work with 3d archviz are considering making an alcatraz prison island 1:1

would be pretty cool for quick/silent "takedown" missions, but since i dont believe silencers exist, it would need for melee to be implemented for the takedowns to be silent. reminds me of the "The Rock" movie.

Edited March 16, 2013 by white

[johncage 30]

of course they exist, what you meant was you don't think they are as quiet as they are portrayed in the game.

[white 1]

of course they exist, what you meant was you don't think they are as quiet as they are portrayed in the game.

i phrased like that because most of us grew up with silencers in movies, and in movies they are indeed almost completely silent. sometimes they are shown with just the trigger sound, sometimes with a muffled air pressure sound and sometimes with a "ptew" laser gunlike noise

and those dont exist

but the supressor name is way more accurate given what they do, changing the sound from 160db to 130db is very far from silencing anything.