Real Armor Mod

[Imperator[TFD] 444]

Trying this out at the moment and it does seem like MBT's are now the armour god's they should be compared to what else is on offer.

Having said that I just tested out driving over 15 AT mines and had almost zero damage.

[PVT Watt.J 14]

Yes! My plan is to thoroughly document the process so anyone can mod their own work--but I need to make it out of alpha, there's too much fixing to do before I feel comfortable with that. In the meanwhile, I recommend you tell your favorite modder to PM me and I will happily coordinate with them if I can. I don't really have the time (or knowledge) to track down the mods out there so I appreciate the help. Sound reasonable?

Thanks for the quick reply! I appreciate you attitude on mod support. I posted on a few of the mod threads asking them to contact you about including some optional configs to support your mod. I hope they will follow through as it would be a shame to have to choose between either vanilla AT weapons or Arma 3's lousy built in hitpoint system.

[olds 15]

Trying this out at the moment and it does seem like MBT's are now the armour god's they should be compared to what else is on offer.

Having said that I just tested out driving over 15 AT mines and had almost zero damage.

Yeah, this is known behavior. I have to go through each and every (explosive) weapon and calibrate it so it starts doing damage to the improved vehicles again. Right now only kinetic weapons and a few explosives work. So other than the the PCML & the RPG, most explosive weapons don't do much. But fear not, I will get to them all eventually. :)

Of course, vehicles I haven't tweaked (cars, helos, etc.) are still using the old damage system and will be hurt by all weapons in the old way.

[barakokula31 10]

Of course, vehicles I haven't tweaked (cars, helos, etc.) are still using the old damage system and will be hurt by all weapons in the old way.

And are you going to tweak them?

[olds 15]

And are you going to tweak them?

I will probably let others do that as the hitpoint system impacts armored vehicle realism the most. Time is limited and I'd like to move on to Arma2 ports/the NATO-Pact mod as soon as I feel like RAM is well tuned.

I will thoroughly document the procedure however so it is easy for others to add to this work. If you are anxious to get started prior to documentation (or know someone else who is), PM me.

I hope that's a reasonable answer.

[kuIoodporny 45]

I am not sure if your usage of explosionShielding is correct.

explosionShielding, multiplying damage inflicted by indirect damage. The smaller it is, the less damage hitpoint will receive.

The values like 0.001 make hitpoint practically invulnerable to explosions, for example missiles.

Yet in Your mod I see it being used in tank tracks, as if they were impossible to break with explosions - frankly they are one of more vulnerable parts of tanks AFAIK.

[olds 15]

I am not sure if your usage of explosionShielding is correct.

Good questions/points zGuba. Here is where I'm coming from on this issue:

A) My experience with explosionShielding is that it only affects indirectHit damage. (It doesn't seem to care about a projectile's "explosive" value in case anyone was wondering).

B) I reduced explosionShielding values across the board. This is the only way to prevent indirectHit weapons from ignoring armor thickness and doing locational damage.

C) RAM-tweaked missiles now do damage via an added "caliber" value--they no longer rely as much on their hit/indirectHit values. High hit values and any indirectHit values appear to ignore armor thickness and damage locational hitpoints. (Global armor/hitpoints are also affected of course, but you can see I negate that with high armorStructural).

D) I agree with you that tracks should be more sensitive to indirectHit damage. The track values should probably be higher. Although I don't know how sensitive tracks are to explosions (that are not direct hits). Anwyay, I haven't re-visited the track values yet.

E) I am also thinking about increasing (weakening) explosionShielding on APC's and other light-armored vehicles. This way indirectHit damage will hurt them even though their armor is not penetrated.

Edited January 30, 2014 by Olds

[olds 15]

I reduced explosionShielding values across the board.

(...BTW, I encountered an odd thing during further testing: explosionShielding does not seem to protect tracks regardless of the value. They take indirectHit damage regardless. Perhaps there is something hardcoded about the HitTrack locations?)

--update--

(It may just be that tracks--like tires--don't have armor geometry protecting them and thus can be more easily damaged than I thought. I'll try boosting the minimalHit to compensate. Yup that worked.)

Edited February 3, 2014 by Olds

[adanteh 58]

Thanks for all this hard work Olds. I was looking at the same thing, but kept getting stuck because some values seemed to work very weird together. Very curious on your documentation.

[UltimateBawb 1]

As far as I'm concerned this mod simply makes armor combat more realistic in one way and less in another. You can indefinitely pound an MBT's frontal armor with 120mm sabot rounds with no damage at all. ATGM's behave the same way and do nothing. This is ridiculous, honestly.

If a hit does no component damage, it should at least damage the hull and make it easier for other rounds to penetrate. Impacts are not independent of each other. Sorry to say that while BIS's system is flawed, this seems more so.

[hlfritz 1]

I don't know - what IS the chance of a subsequent round impacting the same spot as a previous round?

[maturin 12]

Almost nil. However, even if you take the position that current MBT armor can resist 120mm sabot, you have to admit that it's not by much. The crew would be in serious pain from the shock.

[olds 15]

If a hit does no component damage, it should at least damage the hull and make it easier for other rounds to penetrate. Impacts are not independent of each other.

Uhh, yeah... "NO". Look, I don't mind people spouting their opinions--we all have them. But let's try to do a little research before making sweeping pronouncements as if they were fact. (Yeah, even though 'it's the internet').

Almost nil. However, even if you take the position that current MBT armor can resist 120mm sabot, you have to admit that it's not by much. The crew would be in serious pain from the shock.

From what I've read, this rarely happens from non-penetrating hits. With reference to the links above: AFV's routinely take multiple such hits with little or no effect to vehicle or crew (other than gouges or damage to tracks/weakpoints).

...Now if anyone has a beef with penetration values, show me your reference and I will happily make the change*. That being said, we can only tweak weapon & hitpoint data--we have no idea what the armor values are for the Arma 3 vehicles and we have no control over that side of the equation. That's a pretty big caveat but I can't do anything about it.**

* We're still in alpha though, so don't assume any values have been refined yet.

** The Arma 2 ports are a wholly different matter; I'm collecting detailed weapon and armor information for those, so we will have a much easier time verifying results.

[maturin 12]

The AFVs take no damage. The crew can get seriously fucked up. That's what I've always heard, and that's what I've read on the main tank forum by a guy who either knows firsthand what he's talking about, or is an utter fraud that has fooled all the biggest enthusiasts.

But modelling crew causalities is that one thing that is impossible without ACE-style scripting, so whatever.

Off to read all those PDFs now.

[UltimateBawb 1]

A 120mm M829A1 can penetrate 670mm RHA at muzzle velocity (http://www.defense-update.com/products/digits/120ke.htm). Keep in mind this is an aged round used today; A3 rounds should be somewhat more powerful being used in 2035. However, using the A3 caliber calculation we get C = 670 / (15*1000) / 1500 = 29.778. Is this similar to what you are using? I don't have time to check the mod config right now.

(also sorry if I came off as an asshole with my previous post, I do appreciate your work to improve the game)

[Kirill 1]

Plastids (charge) has a very low power against the MBT. I'm talking about the charge laid under the bottom.

---------- Post added at 09:03 ---------- Previous post was at 09:00 ----------

A 120mm M829A1 can penetrate 670mm RHA at muzzle velocity (http://www.defense-update.com/products/digits/120ke.htm). Keep in mind this is an aged round used today; A3 rounds should be somewhat more powerful being used in 2035. However, using the A3 caliber calculation we get C = 670 / (15*1000) / 1500 = 29.778. Is this similar to what you are using? I don't have time to check the mod config right now.

(also sorry if I came off as an asshole with my previous post, I do appreciate your work to improve the game)

Disagree. Armor the same change by 2035. It makes no sense to complicate.

[hlfritz 1]

I hope this mod can bring a good level of realism to armor, that along with better handling ala Refined Vehicles or maybe something in this mod - maybe Olds can incorporate Refined Vehicles since Red Phoenix has gone on hiatus? so we have a more all in one mod? it could be a lot more fun with some large battles using Alive.

BUT, if you want realistic armored warfare get Steel Beasts Pro PE.

Olds, Iron Front supposedly has some kind of advanced armored features but that may be more of the same as bringing the Arma 2 vehicles in? Question - why is there more data for the Arma 2 stuff vs. the Arma 3 stuff? is it 'hidden' in Arma 3 while not in Arma 2?

[adanteh 58]

Question - why is there more data for the Arma 2 stuff vs. the Arma 3 stuff? is it 'hidden' in Arma 3 while not in Arma 2?

It isn't just more data (Well ofcourse there is more info known about the armor types used and so, because the A2 assets simply have been around for longer), but the main thing here is that the A2 assets have been made publicly. A2 things will have to be ported and their materials can be changed. You can not do this for the Vanilla A3 assets. Sure, you could have amazing armor simulation with advanced armor values and great hitpoints for custom vehicles, but when re-configuring the A3 stuff there is only so much you can do.

[Armored 10]

As far as I'm concerned this mod simply makes armor combat more realistic in one way and less in another. You can indefinitely pound an MBT's frontal armor with 120mm sabot rounds with no damage at all. ATGM's behave the same way and do nothing. This is ridiculous, honestly.

If a hit does no component damage, it should at least damage the hull and make it easier for other rounds to penetrate. Impacts are not independent of each other. Sorry to say that while BIS's system is flawed, this seems more so.

Destroy a tank in the frontal armor is quite possible.

Here i used Real Armor Mod 0.0.35.

[olds 15]

Good points all. (No worries UltimateBawb :)). Unless there's a hidden weapon I'm missing, all Arma 3 tanks use the same 120mm gun & ammo:rolleyes:. I calculate its sabot penetration as 756mm (RHA) at point blank (caliber=30 UB). Which puts it around the 1990's vintage M829A2 sabot round AFAIK. So make of that what you will regarding where you think things should be in 2035...don't get me started on the future stuff, there's a reason I'm moving to Arma 2 ports:p.

Without continuously plinking the Arma 3 tanks with various custom rounds for 12 hours, we can't guess what BIS decided on for armor. (And keep in mind they might not care as much since their hitpoint damage system can blow things up without penetration anyway!). For Arma 2 ports I expect to provide something approaching realism. But for Arma 3 it ultimately comes down to how you want it to feel.*

A final complicating factor for armor-guessing is that it can have all manner of weak points modeled into it. (Sneaky Armored! We saw you aiming for the turret ring!:o). This is a beautiful feature of putting armor data in the 3D model. And--if it works properly--we can look forward to correctly modelling cool stuff like driver hatch weakpoints into the Arma 2 vehicles:cool:.

*For the non-modders among us: as was alluded to earlier, we can't calibrate armor b/c that's set (quite sensibly) in the 3D model file--and unfortunately those particular files are locked from viewing or editing.

Edited February 8, 2014 by Olds

[olds 15]

For those curious about some of the 'theory' behind the mod, take a look at this thing I just posted in the original armor discussion thread.

[olds 15]

Actually I'm expanding that armor thread post into the official documentation for the Real Armor Mod.

Read early! Read often! Exciting new revelations every day!

Edited February 9, 2014 by Olds

[olds 15]

Sorry all about the delay in deploying alpha 0.0.4 - was catching up on some research and documentation before I finished the next round of revisions. The additional work should mean better tuning of vehicle values (e.g. resolving the over-strong APC's, better handling of track damage, stuff like that). :) Should be ready in a day or two.

---UPDATE----

AARGH! Discovered bug in missile penetration which I simply can't resolve as yet. I've had to remove missiles from the system (they will continue to behave in the normal vanilla-A3 fashion). No easy fix for this... :banghead: Looks like the only solution will involve scripting.

Edited February 12, 2014 by Olds

[foffy 58]

I hope this mod can bring a good level of realism to armor, that along with better handling ala Refined Vehicles or maybe something in this mod - maybe Olds can incorporate Refined Vehicles since Red Phoenix has gone on hiatus? so we have a more all in one mod? it could be a lot more fun with some large battles using Alive.

Isn't Refined Vehicles obsolete? I recall Red Phoenix said to no longer use it with recent updates, as the engine has changed. I assume this means the way the cars were reconfigured are all busted now.

[bakerman 247]

I can't speak for Pheonix, but I have have stopped working on vehicle physx because it's been improved in the latest patches. :)

Regarding this mod. I can say that you guys can relax a little. The current public version is just a tiny taste. The finished mod will be great. Olds is putting in a lot of effort trying to demystify the arcane arts of the arma damage system, with a spreadsheet in the one hand and a gif diagram in the other he will prevail!