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TripleZer0

Flares = Useless?

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Its too bad when you dont know where the AA is, huh ?

Yes, is the long and short of that answer. Much the same way as a tank driver who didnt see the enemy infantry with the launcher behind it will die, or the infantryman who is in a sniper's scope, you have the issue that if you don't know where your enemy is when they take the shot, it has a pretty damned good chance of killing you. That's a non-issue. Flares being a 100% success rate would also suck for the AA guy with only two missiles per game, as it would again render him useless. A *high* chance of evading the attack would be nice, and from my expereinces in multiplayer and against AI, this has been the case.

Before you get defensive, I'm pretty new as a pilot and not gonna get all 13375k1llz on you. It's just that so far I've yet to have any problem that you're apparently having.

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Uh, you know not everyone is in an arma clan and theres something called public matches where you will not be able to coordinate anything beyond "everyone go there"

I know that about 95% of this forum have a clan to play with and do not understand why arma's mechanics must work for chaotic public matches as well.

Perhaps you should read the rest of my post then:

"Also sometimes, the air option is simply not available. If the enemy has a high amount of AA capability, then no commander would send in air forces and expect them to execute their objectives properly. Lots of Arma players have this mentality that if an asset is available then they should be able to use it. Most missions are not designed to showcase those assets and you should use proper judgment and intel when deciding to use an asset. Domi/warfare/wasteland doesn't usually ask for any of this and thats why players have this idea that the "game is unbalanced" because suddenly conditions changed and their simple run and gun tactics are failing them now."

Arma's mechanics do not need to be adjusted for chaotic public matches. You are playing unrealistic missions like domi/warefare/wasteland and expecting the rest of the game to be tweaked to suit those missions. Arma does not need to be adjusted for those 3 game modes; the developers only need to try to reflect reality as closely as possible and allow mission makers to build the scenarios they want to build. If you only like to play those 3 types of game modes, take it up with those mission makers because you are complaining in the wrong forum.

Unless you can find some real life research/proof that flares are being depicted as unrealistically ineffective then you need to learn to adapt to the situation. Either find a coordinated group to play with or improve your flying skills so you don't get killed as much in pub servers.

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So i was very happy to discover that they finally added sounds when you get a missle lock-on.

I was not happy when i discovered that they apparently nerfed flares big time.

A few weeks before when there was no sound the flares did something atleast and if you used them early enough (if you saw the tiny dot on your radar) you had a very good chance of evading missiles.

Now ive been playing on Altis in the editor, spawned a few groups of AA squads over the map and lifted off... I dont even get past the first group...

No matter whether i spam flares immediately as soon as i have a lock-on (which is a horrible waste of flares and leaves you dry in no time) or wait until the rockets start flying, in 8 times out of 10 the rockets will hit me no matter what. If 5 rockets come for me and i spam flares 3-5 of them hit me every time. It also makes no difference whether i fly low or high, or whether i turn my rear to the shooter (which i usually do, i found it the best way to guarantee an evasion, atleast in ArmA 2)

Please restrain yourself on comments like "learn to fly" or similar things, i have no problems whatsoever to evade missiles in ArmA 2.

Compared to Arma 2 the flares a bad joke right now.

I seriously hope this gets balanced properly because it is absolutely 0 fun to fly an helicopter at the moment when all it takes is one douche with an AA launcher.

Well, from a few years experience in DCS:Shark and DCS:A-10C - if an IR is launched at you at low and close, your chances are slim. Flares do little to counter the new IIR seeker heads. I've read the SA-16 actually has two seeker elements now, one IIR and the other UV. Going in like Rambo just gets you killed. You need to stay high and bomb the shit out of the enemy before you go low. You only go low when the only thing left down there are trucks and APCs.

Another thing to do is beam the missiles. Keep the missiles perpendicular to your aircraft and your speed high. With small missiles, you might get them to blow far enough behind you that the damage is minimal.

Edited by Logan9773

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So I just tested this and basically dodged half a dozen AA Missiles without getting hit. I´d say the Flares are pretty good as they are.

When you get locked on immediately dive and get low, pick up speed and get out of there. Use your Gunner and his FLIR to detect the threat from a safe distance.

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Yes, is the long and short of that answer. Much the same way as a tank driver who didnt see the enemy infantry with the launcher behind it will die, or the infantryman who is in a sniper's scope, you have the issue that if you don't know where your enemy is when they take the shot, it has a pretty damned good chance of killing you. That's a non-issue. Flares being a 100% success rate would also suck for the AA guy with only two missiles per game, as it would again render him useless. A *high* chance of evading the attack would be nice, and from my expereinces in multiplayer and against AI, this has been the case.

Before you get defensive, I'm pretty new as a pilot and not gonna get all 13375k1llz on you. It's just that so far I've yet to have any problem that you're apparently having.

This seems to be the chronic issue with people thinking that AA is too powerful, they go balls in without planning and wonder why 12 units dedicated just to killing them are allowed to succeed. If ANY OTHER unit in the game did this they'd die nearly instantly, but somehow that doesn't apply to aircraft?

As a half-decent pilot in game, I find that flares are stupidly effective. Being able to fly over a group of 4 of the new tracked AA vehicles and survive them shooting their entire payload of missiles at you is completely crazy. If you get surprised by one of those things within about 2km of you, you should be dead. The inability for AA units to achieve their *only role* is one of the worst bits of balancing in the game at the moment.

Flares should be a "press countermeasures to not die" button, they should be used as a way for aircraft to disengage when on the edge of the SAM's engagement distance, stopping the aircraft from going too close

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The flares are actually better then in ArmA 2, because it realisticly pops them now. Bad thing is that you run out of flares after what 6 presses? Lot of new pilots don't time the flares and pop them the seconds they see a missile incoming, but you have to wait till it is close enough before you use the flare. Also, so far I have flown the buzzard it was relative easy to out-manouvre AA missiles.

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And that incoming missile warning is a huge luxury that many aircraft don't even have. A timely flare release is practically guaranteed to save you, with the proper maneuvering.

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It's not my pc, it's arma 3 multiplayer. In the editor I would have no problem doing that. Saying that, a couple of those big persistent missions (I won't mention their names as I don't want to insult the people who make them) generally seem to run quite badly, but I don't think that's the only reason for such big drops in gpu usage in multiplayer. Also as you probably know as nearly everybody here does, Arma 3 only uses up to about 65% (in my case with an i5 2500k) of your CPU which is funny since it is said to be such a "CPU intensive" game.

You're partially right, it's most likely un-optimized scripting for whatever mission you are playing. Try Wasteland to see what I mean about un-optimized scripting.

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Personally I like how ArmA tries to mimic reality as far as possible but still make the game playable, so my post will focus on what I believe to be realistic. All respect to those that care more for the "playability" but I am in this case not one of them, sorry.

As mentioned at least once earlier in this thread, AA missiles keep getting better at telling the difference between flares and engine exhausts (of course flare designers work on better mimicking as well). The newer (3rd to 4th generation) AA missiles, the latest Stinger for example, are apparently (at least according to the manufacturers themselves) able to ignore most modern flares to a large degree. Of course stinger missiles are not present in the game... but since the only man-portable AA system in the game is based on a AT weapon I guess one cannot look at specs of a specific weapon.

Furthermore the scenarios of ArmA 3 take place in 2035 and weapons and decoys might very well have evolved further. Today's "smart" AA missiles use multi-spectral detection, focal plane array detectors to "see" the shape of the detected object, on board computers to analyzes it all and can be deployed at ranges of up to 6km and reach a target at that distance in under 10s. My personal guess would be that in 20 years flares would be completely useless against the "state-of-the-art" AA and only useful against nations and para-military groups who cannot afford or get hold of an abundance of the $30000+ a piece AA-launchers... Of course other countermeasures might have been developed by then like directional EM pulse generators or whatnot but i do not see a way for a flare to mimic every property of an aircraft.

On a strategical note; Don't hover in enemy territory, you will not be able to move away from the missile's path, flairs or no flairs. A quick snipe from a distance or keep moving fast at low altitude instead, you will not get as many shots in but neither will they! Oh and don't dive down with your flares... it kind of goes against the purpose of them if you are right in the middle or hiding just behind them ;). If the enemy has a lot of AA in the area of operations, you will NOT be able to use reliable air support, it's as easy as that. Use ground troops or artillery to destroy any static or self propelled AA and suppress enemy infantry so they can't deploy man-portable AA. Use the element of surprise and hit hard on the first pass, don't squat around or go back for seconds if you are unsure of AA capabilities. If they have AA they will have had time to deploy them and you will walk right into a meat grinder. Hit hard and run away and rearm and let them feel safe again before the next run.

Sorry for the ramble but in my little world, air is vulnerable, especially rotor-winged air! Bad intel and poor planing kills pilots. If used right air will dominate, if used without caution you will probably get shot down before even seeing the enemy, crash right into one of your main battle tanks and roll burning through the rest of the armored platoon... not a good way to make friends i have heard.

Love ye'all

/C

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Dunno if somebody's already mentioned this, but in the real world there are two types of SAMs, namely IR homing and radar-guided.

Flares protect against the IR's, and chaff (and jammers) protect against the radar-guideds.

So popping flares won't stop a radar-guided, and popping chaff won't stop IR's.

Are there radar-guideds and chaff in Arma3?

(Sorry but I haven't tested out the whole AA missile thing yet.)

Edited by PoorOldSpike

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Are there radar-guideds and chaff in Arma3?

Sorry but I haven't tested out the whole AA missile thing yet.

No. It's all just "guided."

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I want to see AI coping with such realistic flare system...

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Dunno if somebody's already mentioned this, but in the real world there are two types of SAMs, namely IR homing and radar-guided.

Flares protect against the IR's, and chaff protects against the radar-guideds.

So popping flares won't stop a radar-guided, and popping chaff won't stop IR's.

Are there radar-guideds and chaff in Arma3?

Sorry but I haven't tested out the whole AA missile thing yet.

There is actually such possibility, but it is simplified into one countermeasure source in the basic game. You may even see aluminium strips (chaffs) effects around the flares. There are even advanced detection methods for vehicles to display warnings dependent on the type of lock.

The possibility is available for modders to make game more complex if they want to and I know about some mods that use this :icon_twisted:

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From testing with All in ArmA and NodUnit & Franz's AH-64 my community has found that there are two separate methods that can be used to track air targets, and therefore evaded.

First is the Radar Tracking, this is only found in the Shilka and the RF Hellfire as far as I am aware. To evade the AA launches, Chaff is used to confuse the signal, as are RF jammers.

Second is Infra-Red Tracking, The Cheetah and Tigris both rely upon IR Tracking as do almost every single AA launcher in A2/A3 that has been tested. This means that Flares are effective, but not 100% effective at evading the launcher.

The AH-64 in its basic A2 format features both IR and RF jammers, and a chaff launcher, meaning that it can evade most launches. Out community modified the AH-64's in a number of ways to be used in A3 during our missions. When doing so we changed the Chaff launcher to deploy Flares to be able to counteract AA threats more effectivly.

The BIG danger with Flares is that based on your power output, distance, speed, elevation, and direction of movement, they may not be effective at all. If you are in a +100m hover with auto-hover on, you have made yourself a MASSIVE stationary target throwing off a massive heat signature. Flares cannot negate the big old "HIT ME" sign that your engine is throwing off, and you will likely be shot down.

Remember that Flares are only there to give you a chance, not to be the defacto method of avoiding AA launches. Use of masking terrain, air strikes, artillery, paratroopers, or some fairly advanced gunship tactics (slashing attacks and standoff missile strikes outside 6km) should all be considered before approaching a known AA threat.

Feel free to PM me with any questions on the matter, I have been doing Gunship (AH-99/AH-64) piloting for about 6 months now and have placed quite a bit of time on developing sound AA evasion methods.

Hopefully this information is of some assistance.

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I've done a fair amount of flying, and honestly I think the flares are just about right. In the real world, countermeasures are combined with maneuvering and tactics. You don't just fly over an AA position and spam flares, or you'll be dead. Dumping flares should not be a 100% evasion. If it were, you may as well not even have AA in the game. Also, flying over TEN AA units should absolutely be certain death. Flying over one AA unit should have a fairly high probability of being hit. These weapons are designed to kill aircraft, they should be good at it.

Flying in contested airspace is dangerous. Flying in an area protected by AA is dangerous. Use terrain to mask your approach. Don't fly like the AI, and do attack runs directly over the AO. You really NEVER want to fly over the target anyway. Unload your ordnance from as far away as you can manage, and break. Relocate. Attack again from a new position.

In heli's my success in spoofing AA missiles is probably about 60-70%, depending on the situation. If I'm hovering, it's more like 25%. At speed it could be as high as 80-90% if I have enough warning. In jets, the evasion chance is actually pretty high because you're going much faster. You can usually break line of sight to the launcher, or get out of range before it can fire too many shots.

EDIT: I WOULD like to see the smoke signature on AA missiles made a little more pronounced to make it a little easier to visually ID where a shot came from. Maybe even just have the smoke trail linger for 10-20 seconds, then dissipate.

Edited by JestersDead

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Personally with over 300 hours of Arma 2 and over 1000 hours in Arma 3 (Lol, not over kill), i've had my fair shares of loses and wins against AA, simply due to chance vs. skill. Chances are if an AA is launched, it will than depend on not only how fast you can react, but what direction the threat is coming from, and how close. Depending on your reaction time, it than lies with the amount of time you have before you either die, or keep on flying. Will HELO's its alot more tedious to dodge flares, HOWEVER, there is a few techniques to countering that extra difficulty, which is Auto-Rotation. Not going to explain Auto-Rotation, but i've been shot down in an MH-9 8 times in a row all thanks to auto-rotation landings, and finally died when someone rammed into me with an Offroad while repairing, which blew us both sky high. With Fixed wing, things are more time based. Dodging missiles are easy when they are at a distance, counter measures and maneuvers help with this, but the closer they are, the more chance you have of being nailed, depending on what direction the threat is incoming.

EDIT: I believe they are working on fixing the countermeasure fire mode as well, where you will be able to deploy single chaff/flare at a time just like in Arma 2. Is currently broken in Arma 3, but should be fixed around the next update.

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In ArmA 3 you don't have to RTB because you haven't got enough ammo, but you've wasted all of your flares...

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I may do a tutorial on how i use flares when entering a hot zone ounce they fix it. Which also gave me an idea... What if they did countermeasures the same way BF2 (Battlefield 2) did it. Someone locks on to you, you pop counters, what happens is they loose the lock on you, but start locking the flares until they disappear, or they lead your aircraft... that would be more interesting, and would require alot more focus out of using AA.

---------- Post added at 15:50 ---------- Previous post was at 15:47 ----------

In ArmA 3 you don't have to RTB because you haven't got enough ammo, but you've wasted all of your flares...

Lol, in my case, this is sooo wrong.

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Flares in A2 were pretty much useless, esp. with ACE, afair.

In A3... are You kidding me? These are great. The dog(e)fights never been so great.

I've been able to dodge 3 incoming AA rockets at the same time. How "not useless" is this, hm?

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I'm pretty sure at one point before Altis was released, i was flying in an P-30 Orca, and my Radar Warning started bitching at me because a missile was flying through the air. Not at me, but generally through the air. I'm curious as to if this is still in the game, as I've never seen it happen again.

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No this is Arma, not any other computer game. Why should the devs intentionally mis-simulate something for a mod to fix? Unless you have proof that right now AA missiles are accurate beyond a realistic value then this is not a valid request.

Perhaps as a pilot you should be trying to avoid active AA zones rather than flying through them?

Really? Did you even tried to complete one of official presentation? Try to pass "Combat Helicopters" presentation and tell me how you did it. There is no marked AA zones (how i would know where they are?!) and every AA misle flying from nowhere or some random position hits me. EVERY SINGE ONE! It is not normal and less realistic. My uncle was pilot of combat transport planes and he knows a little about flares, of you shoot two of them, missle can hit you, if you shoot 4 of them there is 50/50 % chance of hit, but if you use them as the game offers (spam of flares) there is no possible chance of hit (in combat chopper), that why the big transport planes use them in so much ammount.

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I'm quiet curious if popping flares can disrupt locking? I've made a ticket(below), and what do you think about this.

http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=10297

it cannot disrupt the lock. Missle is getting "stupid" when when they appear - it fly to heat source, and flares in big amount are hotter than chopper (engines), so it hit flares or pass through them.

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As realistic as arma wants to be it also wants to be a game, not real life. It is simply not fun (and yes a game is about fun) when youre that helpless as a pilot.

You have ACE if you want more realism.

The System in Arma 2 was fun and completely fair. If you used flares immediately after a missile has been launched you were usually safe ( if you were a fair distance away), as it should be in a computer game.

That's funny, I've actually never felt more helpless in a video game, then when a decent pilot in a CAS jet starts destroying everything. 

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Can someone provide some sources or an explanation as to how counter measures work versus different AA systems (IR and Radar)? I'm deeply interested in learning this 

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