Tanks - Missile flight profiles and weapon improvements

[lex__1 422]

In my opinion, with the trajectory and height all right

These are the characteristics of the trajectory FGM-148 Javelin.

The maximum altitude of the rocket's flight depends on the distance to the target.

- TOP

- DIR

[dragon01 902]

If you check the first gif, it appears that the "top" attack mode actually follows something more like the direct trajectory (no altitude hold period), and the direct mode launches straight ahead like an RPG. I guess there's room for improvement here.

[lex__1 422]

For the DIR mode. You likely want to see twisting maneuver of a rocket at the time of a shot of "Launch". When the rocket went out of the launcher, has included a forcing, has begun to gain height. Yes there is no it, for DIR trajectory. But, As you see on graphics, it up to five meters trajectory height. And for DIR, the trajectory isn't higher than 60 meters on the maximum flying range. The maximum Vershina of a trajectory is displaced in cent, in distance to the purpose. It seems to me, it not essentially.

[oukej 2910]

4 hours ago, Strike_NOR said:

Why is the submunition launched at a 45 degree angle downwards, as opposed to 90 degrees?

1

We won't be probably able to achieve reliable 90deg., the missiles are flying relatively fast - I'm afraid the detection when the missile is exactly above the target wouldn't be reliable. So some angle is a result of tolerance in range from the target when to trigger the explosion. There might be some room for improvement, but I believe the players will not even notice slight deviation without the diag.

 

4 hours ago, Strike_NOR said:

Will you incorporate submunition into Titan AT missile, as this too is a typical HEAT warhead weapon?

2

No info on that yet.

 

3 hours ago, mickeymen said:

I just want to add the following, in vertical mode (top attack), judging by the oukej images the flight trajectory of Titan AT, looks too horizontally. We have a very low angle of attack

As far as I know, it would be more correct to make the top attack is much more vertical (in relation to the target)

2

2 hours ago, dragon01 said:

If you check the first gif, it appears that the "top" attack mode actually follows something more like the direct trajectory (no altitude hold period), and the direct mode launches straight ahead like an RPG. I guess there's room for improvement here.

More likely a bad gif ;) Too short range and skewed by the perspective angle. With Titan we aimed at roughly ~30° climb and ~45° descend angles, with level flight at 150m. The climb and descend angles depend on the actual missile and also the distance to the target (the missile will always start descending at a given distance from the target, even if the 'high' level flight altitude hasn't been reached yet.) But in the end, the most important factor will be to reliably hit the target when it's expectable.

[Strike_NOR 898]

8 hours ago, oukej said:

We won't be probably able to achieve reliable 90deg., the missiles are flying relatively fast - I'm afraid the detection when the missile is exactly above the target wouldn't be reliable. So some angle is a result of tolerance in range from the target when to trigger the explosion. There might be some room for improvement, but I believe the players will not even notice slight deviation without the diag.

 

I see. So it has to do with simulation speed and "refresh rate" if you will. I guess conditions would worsen with bad FPS, causing the missile to sometimes "overshoot" the target without detecting it. 

I can live with that, seeing that I only really noticed it when viewing with splendid camera in slow-motion.

 

Yesterday I did some further testing on the missiles and here are my observations:

• PCML works very well and is highly reliable. It guides perfectly with a lead-pursuit flight path. Top-attack (overfly) mode works reliably, and does serious damage to even the Varsuk. (On average 2 hits are needed for vehicle destruction).
• Titan AT is not ideal at the moment. While the Top-Attack mode is cool, it consistently misses the target in my experience. It's not compensating for it's velocity vector, which leads to overshooting and 0 damage.
• The Titan AT is underpowered in terms of damage. I had to use 3-4 missiles on average to destroy a Varsuk.
• The Titan AT does not seem to use submunition warhead like the PCML does, and I suspect this is why it is underpowered.

Now I don't know exactly what missile system the Titan AT is based on, but let's assume its real-life counterpart is a mix of the Javelin and the Spike missile systems. Both of these sport a top-down attack mode, and a direct attack mode. In either case, the shaped charge warhead(s) (javelin is tandem) is facing forwards, this means that the missile has to impact armor with the nose in order to be most effective.

However, the motivation for you guys to implement top attack, must be that the player actually needs to have the option. Or else, everyone will just go with whatever always works, and the second firemode becomes obsolete.

This brings me back to a few concerns I have:

• If you are still going to operate with "Indirect Hit"/explosive damage calculation for missiles vs tanks, then it doesn't make a huge difference if the missile hits the sideskirts or the turret. It's still going to do some kind of "splash damage" to the tank.
• If the launcher seeker has to see the targets center mass in order to get a lock, then how will top-attack be effective against "hull-down" enemies? ( I can't seem to lock the tank if the center of the tanks geometry is hidden, even if I can see the entire turret).
• Why should one chose direct attack mode now? (Besides close-range engagements.) Realistically it is good against most targets, but in the case of the PCML, its HEAT charge faces downwards, so you lose the ability to penetrate heavy armor.

 

The way I see it here's how you would use the weapons in ArmA now:

• Titan AT: Top-attack/Dir attack only depends on range to target. Top attack for long range/Direct attack for close range. Damage results are still very indiscriminate between modes.
• PCML: Top attack for armored targets/Direct attack for anything else. (Technically PCML should be highly ineffective against armor in Direct-Attack mode)

However, if you implement penetration mechanics into these weapons (like I think we're seeing in the PCML overfly attack), which mode you use greatly depends on what kind of damage you want to do.

Shooting the engine area may cripple the tank, shooting crew compartment may kill crew, shooting tracks may disable mobility etc.

 

With internal damage modules in the tanks and with proper armor penetration, exactly where you hit the tank becomes MUCH more relevant. And therefore, which flight profile you chose also becomes much more relevant.

 

Keep on tuning the Titan AT flight profile :) I am sure it will be a real tank-cracker soon!

 

[granQ 293]

Great work! So much support can't wait to pay for another DLC to keep it the development up, who needs arma4 with all great mods and constant improvments, this always been why I think BIS is the best developer.

 

What i howccer wish for is proper SACLOS.

 

Why? Because it offwr more gameplay fun than fire and forget and sadly the function today means you can't point on the target but have to steer the missile by sometimes point a head of the target. Making it almost impossible to use in RBS 70 (anti air missile).

 

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-automatic_command_to_line_of_sight

[dragon01 902]

BIS SACLOS works OK against ground targets. I don't know what's the problem with aircraft, but IRL, manual SACLOS doesn't work well for fixed wing, anyway. It does OK against slow-flying helos, which is what IRL examples are good, too. For serious anti-air with command-guided missiles you need some kind of radar assist.

[mickeymen 324]

14 hours ago, oukej said:

We won't be probably able to achieve reliable 90deg., the missiles are flying relatively fast - I'm afraid the detection when the missile is exactly above the target wouldn't be reliable. So some angle is a result of tolerance in range from the target when to trigger the explosion. There might be some room for improvement, but I believe the players will not even notice slight deviation without the diag.

 

Vertical attack (about 90 degrees) - this is already perfectly implemented in the ACE mod. 

Maybe there is a reason to see how it works there?

I have been using it for many years and there are no problems with it.

But now, Speech does not go exactly about only 90 degrees, just trajectory should be close to the vertical.

It can even be a slightly smaller angle of attack, but as seems to me, at the top attack mode the attack must be exactly from top, but not on the diagonal

[da12thMonkey 1943]

1 hour ago, granQ said:

What i howccer wish for is proper SACLOS.

 

Glances at @oukej, sets #REDACTED# = 1;

 

 

[x3kj 1247]

13 hours ago, oukej said:

We won't be probably able to achieve reliable 90deg., the missiles are flying relatively fast - I'm afraid the detection when the missile is exactly above the target wouldn't be reliable. So some angle is a result of tolerance in range from the target when to trigger the explosion. There might be some room for improvement, but I believe the players will not even notice slight deviation without the diag.

True, 90° submun angle is dependant mostly on trigger time tolerance - other angles are less dependant on time tolerance, but more dependant on heigth tolerance between missile and aimpoint (due to missile performance and accuracy in hitting the imaginary aimpoint, and also due to the aimpoint shifting as result of target movement over non-flat terrain), and dependant on object overall heigth and shape. How is the heigth of the aimpoint in relation to target model position determined? Through bounding box heigth, aimpoint memorypoint, or bounding memorypoint ? If the object has a lot of heigth variation (Take a battleship for example - some very high tower, rest relatively flat), and the aiming point sits too high, the chances are good that the submun would reliably overshoot from certain angles.

[Mister GTX 2]

On 5.2.2018 at 11:30 PM, eriktrak said:

 

Feature is bugged but its there. Sometime it works for me but its unreliable.

 

 

 

 

Nice but how can you change the mode? Would be interesting if that works for me ^^

[Mister GTX 2]

On 5.2.2018 at 5:49 PM, oukej said:

Here comes another platform feature for Tanks DLC to have fun with :) Our passionate programmers have added an option to switch the fire modes when using missile launchers, bombs, etc. And more importantly, added few different ways in which the missile can reach its target. 

In short - you can now switch the missile's flight from a simple direct trajectory to one that better utilizes the tank's weaker armour - e.g. the notorious Top attack. We'll try to add more info as the time flies and as the features get utilized more by the game's assets. As well as we'll update the documentation so you can try out what's under the black box.

Titan AT

 

PCML

 

 

 

Bohemia Interactive said something about new vehicles, will there be new Anti Tank Weapons aswell? Because sometimes I wish I could fire a rocket when prone, that would definitely help in many situations!

[HaseDesTodes 62]

1 minute ago, Mister GTX said:

 

Nice but how can you change the mode? Would be interesting if that works for me ^^

 you can switch between firemodes by pressing the "change firemode" (standard f) key

and you have to be on dev branch for now

[SuicideKing 233]

oukej seemed to want to move the LGB/LOAL discussion here. I found a demonstration of how it's done in the flight sim BMS 4.33:

 

Of course Arma isn't a flight sim, and it'll have to have a very simplified version of what is depicted, but it's a good representation of the flow of process involved.

 

As for the hope of laser guided Macers...

 

Having the ability to lock on to any warm point, not just vehicles/burning wrecks, could be interesting (although i guess most other things in Arma are at background heat levels).

 

Finally
AVIONICS AND NONNUCLEAR WEAPONS DELIVERY FLIGHT MANUAL for BMS http://www.ravico.com/ST/BMS_433/Docs/TO-BMS1F-16CM-34-1-1.pdf

And in case BI wants a solid copy, i found http://www.lulu.com/shop/bms-manual/bms-433-dash-34-soft-cover-full-colours/paperback/product-22635381.html

[ski2060 167]

@SuicideKing

Firewill has Laser guided Mavericks already.  It's not hard to do with the new sensor components.  BIS just needs to make new weapon configs in game with the appropriate sensors on them.

 

[SuicideKing 233]

13 hours ago, ski2060 said:

@SuicideKing

Firewill has Laser guided Mavericks already.  It's not hard to do with the new sensor components.  BIS just needs to make new weapon configs in game with the appropriate sensors on them.

 

Yeah, I know - it's more about them having the time/willingness to do that.

 

I was thinking of a similar thing when I asked oukej the other day (in the A3 Discord) about the possibility of an additional SACLOS-only version of the Titan AT (i.e. copy the Titan AP config and modify the damage values). But he suggested that was out of scope for now, so I'm assuming there are more considerations for them than meets our eye.

[Imperator[TFD] 444]

I was testing the PCML tonight and came across this peculiar issue where the missile is heading directly for the target but at a close distance disappears and causes the explosion behind the target:

 

[Strike_NOR 898]

2 hours ago, Imperator[TFD] said:

I was testing the PCML tonight and came across this peculiar issue where the missile is heading directly for the target but at a close distance disappears and causes the explosion behind the target:

 

Hmm... I can see the vehicle glasses crushing at the exact time that the missile disappears (detonates and creates submunition).

 

I may be wrong, but I think what's happening here is that the missile detects the Strider, creates submunition, and sends it through the Strider (overpenetration), the explosion behind is the projectile impacting the ground after penetrating (and damaging) the strider.

 

Maybe @oukej can fill us in.

 

 

I have already reported that the moment the missile "disappears", there should be an explosion in the air, and the submunition, technically, doesnt explode, but should look like a tracer round (that burns out after about 3-4 meters) simulating the HEAT "projectile" (jet).

 

Shaped charge jet pressure penetrating a plate:

Spoiler

 

Shaped charge "Behind armor effects" (The huge flash being molten copper from the charge, mixed with steel from the penetrated plate and the jet itself):

Spoiler

 

A few small edits due to @Damian90's remarks, to avoid any misunderstanding.

[scavenjer 112]

It's great to see both the top attack and the airburst being added to the titan and PCML respectively, I have noticed many of the issues reported here already not fit the most part it's working great!

 

I do however have two major concerns:

1. Without some form of a missile warning system at the very least and (preferably) an APS, this will make tanks almost completely useless in PvP.
2. The titan can do top attack while "wireguiding" the projectile but even fairly minimal adjustment seems to make it behave like normal direct attack.

Good job on fixing the GBU issue though!

 

21 minutes ago, Strike_NOR said:

 

  Hide contents

 

Shaped charge "Behind armor effects" (The huge flash being molten copper from the charge, mixed with steel from the penetrated plate):

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Fairly minor nitpick here, but the "jet" from an EFP isn't molten, it's a superplastic solid metal that "punches" it's way through armour.

There's no melting involved.

[Damian90 697]

One thing, shaped charge jet is not molten copper, actually there is nothing molten there, it's a misconception repeated by media that do not understand the shaped charge jet phenomena.

 

Shaped charge jet is actually in solid state, as the copper or other material used as shaped charge insert, is deformed and propelled to extreme velocities by the explosion of explosive charge. The jet itself do not penetrate and perforate armor based on some melting or other fantasy, but is penetrating the armor through pressure and kinetic energy induced on a very small area.

 

Also the temperature of the shaped charge jet is way below melting temperature of copper, so it's immposible there is anything melted there.

 

As for behind armor effects, all these sparks are just heated up fragments of armor and jet itself.

 

And EFP is a different thing altough also a shaped charge, but it uses insert that is shaped differently. In general shaped charge jet have greater penetration but it looses it's penetration properties in air, fuel, water etc. And it's much easier for various types of special armor like passive composites, ERA, NERA and NxRA to defeat it, while EFP will not loose penetration capabilities in air etc. but have much smaller penetration levels in itself.

 

Just my two cents. ;)

[scavenjer 112]

Ah, found another issue, not sure if this has already been reported but the strider laser doesn't work

https://streamable.com/cgypb

Tried to lock onto laser with titan AT, but the laser wasn't there anymore.

 

Edited February 8, 2018 by scavenjer
Works fine with darter laser though

[SuicideKing 233]

1 hour ago, scavenjer said:

Tried to lock onto laser with titan AT, but the laser wasn't there anymore.

Are you sure the Titan AT can lock on to a laser target? I thought it only uses an IR sensor...

[oukej 2910]

18 minutes ago, SuicideKing said:

Are you sure the Titan AT can lock on to a laser target? I thought it only uses an IR sensor...

It can...although we've been thinking about some simplifications because the Titan and also Scalpel and DAGR have been too much of all-in-one missiles. (e.g. manual mode removal or/and retaining just one type of seeker)

Many players may be used and enjoy exactly that specific use which we'd remove. It would be quite a risky, unpopular move to make. On the other hand, we're introducing new features (top-down) so now is probably the last option to think about "more drastic changes" (if ever)

[teabagginpeople 398]

10 minutes ago, oukej said:

It can...although we've been thinking about some simplifications because the Titan and also Scalpel and DAGR have been too much of all-in-one missiles. (e.g. manual mode removal or/and retaining just one type of seeker)

Many players may be used and enjoy exactly that specific use which we'd remove. It would be quite a risky, unpopular move to make. On the other hand, we're introducing new features (top-down) so now is probably the last option to think about "more drastic changes" (if ever)

Oooohhh sheet. I loves to take unpopular risks. But even I wouldn't touch that. Naw awhhh.

[dragon01 902]

Quite the contrary, this is a very good idea. Titan should be IR-only (makes sense for a missile that has both AA and AT variants), while Scalpel and DAGR make sense to be laser-guided. I've suggested that before. It makes absolutely no sense to have "all in one" missiles. As for manual guidance, give Jian some love. As of now, it's not even on dynamic loadout lists (and the CSAT drone from Apex still doesn't have dynamic loadouts, either).

 

Of course, that would make using DAGR and Scalpel out of helos somewhat difficult. That said, if you could eke out some modeling time, an air-launched Titan variant (or two, for AA and AT) could be added. Or, you could add multiple variants or each missile, with different seekers (both Hellfire and Maverick are good RL examples). That would allow people to keep using their favorite tactic while forcing them to consider what they're bringing on the mission. Another alternative, which might be difficult to implement, would be to fix AI gunner targeting with a laser designator.