General Discussion (dev branch)

[Lbbde 28]

As far as the skills of the rockets are concerned, it has to be said that Arma 3 takes place in 2034, and that technological advances in the game have much more to offer than we know today.
What bothers me personally is the very low firing rate of the VLS. It takes a long time to switch to a goal, which would not be so bad if you could fire at least immediately if the target is locked.
As far as I know, a big advantage of the real life VLS is that it has a high rate of firing (at least faster than the Cold War systems).

And it would be really cool if we could also fire anti-aircraft missiles from the VLS, like the RIM-162, or just the new SAMs, which is probably easier to implement than creating a new rocket for the game.

Just forget the last sentence, I've just noticed that the RIM-162 is just adapted for VLS and the Centurion fires such missiles.

Edited July 25, 2018 by Lbbde
Wrong info about VLS

[dragon01 902]

There's currently limited utility for a direct fire cannon. Naval combat does not exist in ArmA, which is where you'd encounter this sort of thing IRL. You would generally use smaller guns to shoot at speedboats, Liberty doesn't really have too many places for that, but realistically it'd have .50cal MGs and even 20mm autocannons mounted on the upper and front deck railings (tried emulating that with tripod-mounted MGs, but they had barrel collision problems). The only other use is shelling harbors up close, which AI is incapable of using direct fire for anyway, and as far as players go it can be managed quite well with the current setup.

 

The VLS should be capable of rapid fire, although the current setting might be caused by AI firing multiple missiles per target otherwise. This is already a problem with AA launchers, they have a tendency to overkill things.

[stburr91 1002]

I'm finding that when using the M45 Hammer as a support unit, half the times the rounds never come. 

 

Is anyone else having that issue? 

[lexx 1363]

Is it just me or is the config viewer borked now? Always when I double click a sub class, the list jumps to the bottom and I have to search for the class I was in before (e.g. any vehicle class). It's highly annoying.

 

Oh, and while I'm at it... a basic filter or search function for that list would be awesome.

[SuicideKing 233]

These changes to the naval assets are missing from both changelogs... is that because they aren't final yet?

 

1 hour ago, stburr91 said:

If so, they broke my mission before it could even be published. 

Then they didn't break it... you are making a mission with beta/in-development assets, you should expect things to change.

 

58 minutes ago, Lbbde said:

As far as the skills of the rockets are concerned, it has to be said that Arma 3 takes place in 2034, and that technological advances in the game have much more to offer than we know today.

2034 is only 16 years in the future, that's not a lot. And most of the stuff in Arma 3 is either in current development, or already deployed. I'm a bit wary of unicorn weapons and vehicles, they tend to make things a bit shallow. But hey, at least how the VLS is configured right now, it gives mission makers some flexibility.

 

According to reyhard, the cruise missiles can now even hit hovering helicopters. I am curious what kinds of target it can receive. Honestly i think it's too noisy for it to receive air targets, since its job is to hit ground locations. And how can I control what kind of targets it receives? e.g. if I want it to receive only laser targets, but there are planes/helos operating in the area that need to share data from their radars and I wouldn't want the VLS receiving this data. How would this be achieved?

 

58 minutes ago, Lbbde said:

What bothers me personally is the very low firing rate of the VLS. It takes a long time to switch to a goal, which would not be so bad if you could fire at least immediately if the target is locked.

I don't think that's much of a problem really. If it's going to be one of the biggest booms in the game, then there needs to be some trade-off for using it.

 

51 minutes ago, dragon01 said:

The only other use is shelling harbors up close, which AI is incapable of using direct fire for anyway, and as far as players go it can be managed quite well with the current setup.

Yeah with the earlier set up (before it received an artillery computer) my main use case was going to be for shore bombardment, and to use the cannon as a standalone shore defence of some sort. Would be nice to have a regular cannon variant, along with the artillery computer variant, though.

 

6 hours ago, dragon01 said:

while some missions would benefit from having heavy SAM missiles in there

But the Centurion already exists for that purpose... apart from that, an additional artillery variant would be nice, but given how close we are to release, I can live without it.

[Grumpy Old Man 3545]

47 minutes ago, SuicideKing said:

2034 is only 16 years in the future, that's not a lot.

 

16 years can be enough to go from launching satellites into low earth orbit to sending astronauts to the moon.

16 years can be enough to go from inventing the WWW (1989) to having robot vacuum cleaners (2002).

 

Don't underestimate time.

 

Cheers

[dragon01 902]

3 hours ago, SuicideKing said:

But the Centurion already exists for that purpose... apart from that, an additional artillery variant would be nice, but given how close we are to release, I can live without it.

Except the Centurion is a medium SAM, comparable to, for example, the Sea Sparrow. I'm talking something like the SM-2 Standard, which would have, at least, similar capabilities to the new ground-based SAMs. In fact, modern US VLS launchers have a much wider selection of SAMs than anti-ship or land attack missiles (which are limited to TSMs or TLAMs, respectively).

[Beagle 684]

9 hours ago, Grumpy Old Man said:

 

16 years can be enough to go from launching satellites into low earth orbit to sending astronauts to the moon.

16 years can be enough to go from inventing the WWW (1989) to having robot vacuum cleaners (2002).

 

Don't underestimate time.

 

Cheers

but is is also a fact that innovation leaps get longer and longer since WW2m,  since all the "easy" innovations are already done. Machanical enginneering ist close to the end of what can be invented, the rest left ist just refinement of known principles.

[Grumpy Old Man 3545]

2 minutes ago, Beagle said:

but is is also a fact that innovation leaps get longer and longer since WW2m,  since all the "easy" innovations are already done. Machanical enginneering ist close to the end of what can be invented, the rest left ist just refinement of known principles.

You can't claim that mechanical engineering is done, if you don't know what's yet to be discovered and how it will affect all of those fields that are intertwined in mechanical engineering.

Has been the case ever since.

Folks in the 1600s would never have thought that we'd land on the moon someday, be able to clone our pets, or have fridges that can order food for us via voice control, it was way out of their scope.

But enough derailing here, heh.

Spoiler

Maybe even the battery of our smartphones will last more than one day, some day in the future.

 

Cheers

[Beagle 684]

10 minutes ago, Grumpy Old Man said:

You can't claim that mechanical engineering is done, if you don't know what's yet to be discovered and how it will affect all of those fields that are intertwined in mechanical engineering.

Has been the case ever since.

Folks in the 1600s would never have thought that we'd land on the moon someday, be able to clone our pets, or have fridges that can order food for us via voice control, it was way out of their scope.

But enough derailing here, heh.

  Reveal hidden contents

Maybe even the battery of our smartphones will last more than one day, some day in the future.

 

Cheers

Remember Moores law? Moore himself declared it obsolete in 2016. There are no more processors with vouble the transistor count all two years, The practical limit is reached. There where always times when things changed radical in decades, followed by centuries witchout much of change in human history.

[Lbbde 28]

I do not want to say that we have flying cars in 16 years, or perhaps within the next 100 years, that would be a bit too optimistic, but you have to remember that we live in a time when we humans know that we have more potential, as the first look at nature suggests.
We know that there is more and we know that with future progress we will be able to harness all this potential.
Examples of what people will probably bring most forward in the future are quantum computers and fusion reactors.
Both are already in laboratories and have not yet been optimized for commercial use, but once we have quantum computers, the usable computing power will increase exponentially and with fusion reactors, one could solve energy problems permanently.
The forecasts assume that we will have something like this within the next century and not in 16 years, but over the next 16 years, there COULD be a breakthrough that made this possible sooner.
Besides, ArmA is a game and we can afford to dream a little bit about what should be possible in the future and play it in the game as well. :)

[-ben- 499]

17 hours ago, dragon01 said:

 

@oukej, would that be possible to make artillery missiles that follow terrain? Ideally, the Venator would be that, with (optional, for moving targets/extra precision) terminal laser guidance.

 

I preface this with i could be wrong, but i believe i read on the A3 discord, that this isn't possible due to the base classes that these types of ordnance inherit from. The new flight profiles apply to the classes that missiles inherit from, not the base class that artillery magazines inherit from.  AFAIK the mechanisms that guide target acquisition and guidance for missiles and artillery are different. Slapping a missile into something that uses the artillery computer would produce strange undesirable results, as currently the calculations for how Shell A gets to the target, is different for how Missile B acquires and tracks target. 

 

The original iteration of the VLS used artillery computer and it was basically just a ship borne MLRS and people complained, that didn't fit the nature of how cruise missiles work. So they changed it, which i imagine actually took a reasonable amount of work to be more accurate and to effectively give a new type of ordnance. But the tradeoff might be a certain lack of control in some situations. I don't think that we can have a combination of the two in a single unit due to effectively being two different systems that were not made to be mashed together, perhaps two variants one with the missile behavior and one with the artillery?

 

Again, i stress that i could be wrong but that was my understanding of what i read. Anyone feel free to butt in and correct where necessary. 

 

Thanks.

[bumgie 49]

Can the Venator Cruise missile fired from the MK41 VLS be fired upon by AA? Will AI fire upon it?

It would seem logical that such a large and slow moving missile would be fired upon by any AA assets.

Atleast it would create great counterplay between the assets.

 

Video of the missile in action(By Bulk):

https://plays.tv/s/LpaOPpJbL2d6

[dragon01 902]

1 hour ago, -ben- said:

Again, i stress that i could be wrong but that was my understanding of what i read. Anyone feel free to butt in and correct where necessary. 

That's why I pinged @oukej. I'm well aware that ArmA is full of limitations like that, and it'd be unfortunate if artillery-based systems couldn't be use terrain following missiles, but perhaps there is a way to do this. 

[jone_kone 158]

VLS "tomahawk" looks sweet. Again something that is very Arma specific. Also arty comp for deck gun makes it easy to use in multiple ways.

[SuicideKing 233]

20 hours ago, Grumpy Old Man said:

16 years can be enough to go from launching satellites into low earth orbit to sending astronauts to the moon.

16 years can be enough to go from inventing the WWW (1989) to having robot vacuum cleaners (2002).

That's all dandy, but the V2 rocket was developed in the 40s, and the F35 has been in development since 1992. Russia's apparently giving up on their stealth fighter. The AK-47 and AR15 have been service for 30-50 years, with revisions and tweaks. Point being, things are usually incremental, especially when it comes to military hardware, and budgets aren't infinite.

 

Not to mention, too much futuristic stuff tends to simplify gameplay a bit too much, which actively turns a lot of us off. For example, the main reason it's boring to have mortar or arty teams in vanilla arma is because the artillery computer makes it too boring, and there's no way to do it manually (not to mention the angle/elevation stuff is incorrectly displayed).

 

18 hours ago, dragon01 said:

Except the Centurion is a medium SAM, comparable to, for example, the Sea Sparrow. I'm talking something like the SM-2 Standard, which would have, at least, similar capabilities to the new ground-based SAMs. In fact, modern US VLS launchers have a much wider selection of SAMs than anti-ship or land attack missiles (which are limited to TSMs or TLAMs, respectively).

I'm aware that the IRL Mk 41 can equip those, but I question the utility in Arma given the existence of the centurion and these new SAMs. Centurion is already adequate in terms of range and payload. I'm not exactly opposed to it, but I don't know whether it's a great time investment a week before launch (and one could likely add SAMs by  script, anyway). Ditto on the artillery computer. Both are definitely "good to have", as opposed to "need to have", imo. The cruise missile on the other hand makes the VLS unique in the game.

 

8 hours ago, -ben- said:

Again, i stress that i could be wrong but that was my understanding of what i read. Anyone feel free to butt in and correct where necessary. 

That is my understanding of the situation as well.

[dragon01 902]

5 minutes ago, SuicideKing said:

and these new SAMs.

The exact point I'm making is that it'd be good to be able to place the new SAMs on ships, not just on land (and a SAM trailer on the helideck is a rather silly idea). Configs could probably be derived from those, as well.

[jone_kone 158]

 

Small findings/suggestions:

 

- MK45 reload speed could be a little bit faster (being an automated deck gun). Like 30-50%. 

- MK45 "gunner" aiming could also use Y axis for direct firing at LOS targets? (As in Mk6 mortar).

- All the new SAMs could have a similar persistent smoke plume when launching as the VLS (maybe a bit smaller)? also maybe while flying? (make the approaching missile more visible and also give away launch location).

[SuicideKing 233]

39 minutes ago, jone_kone said:

All the new SAMs could have a similar persistent smoke plume when launching as the VLS (maybe a bit smaller)? also maybe while flying? (make the approaching missile more visible and also give away launch location).

Yeah, I would really like this too! Maybe even for Air-to-Air missiles, like they are in DCS. And for the MRL's rockets, if possible :P

(basically missile trails are sexy, pls gib more)

 

3 hours ago, dragon01 said:

The exact point I'm making is that it'd be good to be able to place the new SAMs on ships, not just on land (and a SAM trailer on the helideck is a rather silly idea). Configs could probably be derived from those, as well.

Yeah, I can agree with that :) 

(funny you mention the SAM trailer on the flight deck though, i was going to suggest putting the Sandstorm or Zamak MRL there as well :P )

[Lbbde 28]

Ok, after a bit of testing with the VLS, I came to the following conclusions:
You can attack any enlightened ground target received via Datalink.
The maximum range is about 32 km.
You can also attack moving targets.
The missile needs about 3:05 minutes for 32 km (about 1:35 for 16 km).
The rocket camera is wonderful to confirm the elimination of the target.

As for the Mk45 hammer, I think the rate of fire is good as it is, assuming that guided ammunition is used.
(By comparison, the firing rate of the real 127/64 Lightweigt drops from 40 Rpm to 17 Rpm when using Guided Vulcano ammunition, which increases the range from 30 km to 100 km)
What is irritating me is that the range has a gap:
Close ranges from 705 to 2167 m
Medium from 1361 to 4181 m
Far from 5445 to 16725 Km
Further from 12252 to 37633 m
and extreme from 21781 to 66903 m

Between medium and Far is a gap of 1264 m where you can not hit anything.

Now that the Mk45 can be used as artillery, the Liberty also no longer has effective surface close-range defense. It would be pretty cool to have an automatic cannon for this. You could put the cannon of the Nyx (possibly without the MG) on the base of the Praetorian, or one of the other defense systems, even if you might have to resize it a bit, but it would be perfect :O

[dragon01 902]

Naval autocannons tend to look like this:

It looks more like an oversized MG than anything like Praetorian. Also, against speedboats and the like (the only naval combat assets present in ArmA), .50cal MGs can do just fine. Aside from a shortage of places to put them (the railings are too high and barrels clip into them), you could use the tall .50cal tripod for that. If boarding is a concern you can put them on the flight deck (that's where all the ladders are), but this might cause trouble for helo pilots operating from it.

[jone_kone 158]

7 hours ago, Lbbde said:

As for the Mk45 hammer, I think the rate of fire is good as it is, assuming that guided ammunition is used.

(By comparison, the firing rate of the real 127/64 Lightweigt drops from 40 Rpm to 17 Rpm when using Guided Vulcano ammunition, which increases the range from 30 km to 100 km)

 

Maybe different reload times for Mk45 HE and guided ammo? Using as AI support low rate of fire isnt an issue, but in manual mode its a lot of waiting and less firing. Especially if engaging LOS moving target. It would also diffirentiate it from ordinary artillery units?

 

Regarding the SAMs and Centurion and the AI spamming all missiles on one target. Would it be possible that the missiles would be 1 missile magazines? Then you could adjust the AI missile spamming by adding script commands for AI reload speed?

 

Edit: Or have different size mags of 2 and 4 missiles available for each missile. With reload time within the mag being small and then between mags being a little bit longer, this would give a salvo effect for AI used SAMs.

 

[Lbbde 28]

9 hours ago, dragon01 said:

It looks more like an oversized MG than anything like Praetorian. Also, against speedboats and the like (the only naval combat assets present in ArmA), .50cal MGs can do just fine. Aside from a shortage of places to put them (the railings are too high and barrels clip into them), you could use the tall .50cal tripod for that. If boarding is a concern you can put them on the flight deck (that's where all the ladders are), but this might cause trouble for helo pilots operating from it.

I am well aware of that. I just wanted to suggest a simple way to implement such a weapon in the game, because I thought that it would be easier for the developers to combine existing models and possibly adapt slightly, rather than designing a whole new weapon system. :D :O

Besides, I think of something like a remote-controlled weapon rather than a manually operated one.

Here in Germany almost all ships have installed the MLG27 and, as far as I know, the M242 is used on the Arleigh-Burke (at least on some).
Of course there is no explicit space on the Liberty, but if you had the base of the Praetorian (if only) you could put it on the back upper deck on the railing and it could cover the ship all around.
Since I still hope that the middle section gets a little update, so that we also can enter the upper deck (a ladder and a simple gang would already be enough), I also hope that maybe on port and on starboard room for such a Weapon is created (a simple platform on the railing on each side maybe would do the job). That would just make the Liberty PERFECT. :O

To the developers: Despite all my wishes for improvement, I still think that the Encore update is a really, really good piece of work and enriches the game immensely in many aspects. Congratulations for your performance and hard work. :)

[Imperator[TFD] 444]

Those cruise missiles.....awww yeah!

Thanks for adding that BI.

[arkos 10]

I have tried setting up the CSAT air defenses and firing the VLS at targets near them and directly at them. From what I can tell the air defenses do not attempt to fire on the cruise missles. I think it would be really neat if they did, and would sort of balance the power of having cruise missles a bit. Has anyone noticed anything different or know if this is an intended function?