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oukej

Tanks - Missile flight profiles and weapon improvements

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43 minutes ago, oukej said:

I'm not sure if we aren't still limited by different model of the munition on the weapon.
 

They have some relatively high min. distance below which they fly just straight.

 

Couldn't you just use "modelSpecial" for the different ammo types? I believe this is how the Arma 2 ones worked.

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1 hour ago, Strike_NOR said:

 

Aha. So if you are really far away, it basically goes into kindof a "cruise mode" and once it reaches that high min distance, it dives down, but still at a comparatively shallow angle compared to say a Titan?

Much like with the real missiles of this type, this is less about top attack and more about obstacle avoidance.

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Ahhh, @oukej thanks for the clarification!.

I tried 2km, guess that was too close xD.

 

Also, @Strike_NOR the Brimstone seems a very good analog to the Scalpel, that or the "Kokon" ( 9К114 «Штурм»- "shturm").

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This is not specific to the new launchers but goes for all. I feel its quite distracting that the reload notification pops up right after launch while you are still looking down the sight or even tracking to actually hit the target in the case of the new Vorona launcher for instance. I think i'd be better and sufficient to have that notification to pop up only after the missle has impacted. Especially the manual tracking of the Vorona launcher would benefit from that small change in timing. Can you change the code so that the pop up is called only after missle impact?

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7 hours ago, xon2 said:

This is not specific to the new launchers but goes for all. I feel its quite distracting that the reload notification pops up right after launch while you are still looking down the sight or even tracking to actually hit the target in the case of the new Vorona launcher for instance. I think i'd be better and sufficient to have that notification to pop up only after the missle has impacted. Especially the manual tracking of the Vorona launcher would benefit from that small change in timing. Can you change the code so that the pop up is called only after missle impact?

 

maybe disable the action icons while ADS (aim down sight) in general?! i also find it really annoying when you're aiming with any other weapon and have an icon in the middle of your screen for whatever reason.

the action menu would of course still work, so you could still trigger actions while ADS.

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Hey there,

I figured out, that when an misslelauncher is not the main turret weapon, a wire guided missle will no longer follow the sights in dev branch. It follows the main turret. E.g. at Redd'n'Tank Marder 1A5 or the Fuchs 1A4 where the commander has the Milan mounted it is no longer posible to shot the Milan because of this problem. It works fine in stable branche but not in dev branch. Would be nice if there will come a fix for that because i could not find any solution for this problem by my selfe.

 

greetings

 

Redd

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I'am currently a bit alienated by the fact the the Vorona in current Dev Build has more detructive power than a HEAT round of a tank. Vorona to the rear is an instant total kill that is not achivable with a tank main gun.

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Tank gun HEAT warheads have less penetration in real world due to hard projectile shell that slightly disrupts jet, also they have smaller calliber that also reduces penetration.

 

RPG and ATGM HEAT warheads do not have such limitations.

 

For example in real world 120mm M830/DM12 HEAT round have penetration of 600-700mm RHA, Metis-M ATGM have around 900-950mm RHA penetration.

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Sounds correct. Metis is a big missile, 130mm with a tandem HEAT warhead. That's much better than you can get from a tank HEAT shell. Penetration is around 950mm RHA for the Metis-M version. Can't recall the exact values for 120mm tank gun shells, but they tend to be quite a bit lower, due to a combination of smaller diameter, hard shell and only having a single warhead. In fact, from my tests, Vorona is not effective enough when hitting ERA, since the current HEAT simulation doesn't seem to account for a tandem warhead.

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35 minutes ago, dragon01 said:

Sounds correct. Metis is a big missile, 130mm with a tandem HEAT warhead. That's much better than you can get from a tank HEAT shell. Penetration is around 950mm RHA for the Metis-M version. Can't recall the exact values for 120mm tank gun shells, but they tend to be quite a bit lower, due to a combination of smaller diameter, hard shell and only having a single warhead.

I used the 125mm of the T-140, and Russian HEAT is also a tandem warhead.

Currently the Vorona missile is instant explosion, not even any chance to abandon vehicle which is a bit over the top now considering the weak performacne of all other (top attack) missiles in game ( 1.83.144597) right now. RL the tandem 125mm HEAT is around since the late 80's and was improved in the late 90's to 3BK-29M. Currently there also seems to be tripple warhead HEAT on the horizon.  http://fofanov.armor.kiev.ua/Tanks/ARM/heat/ammo.html

 

But the main point is...armour penetration does not matter that much in a rear hit situation and pure armour penetration is no sign or guaranty of a high destructive power. The destructive power of the Vorona on all impact aspects is more of a mystery compared to APDFS and HEAT-AT.

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I thought you were comparing to NATO tanks. As far as exploding goes, this is an issue with the damage model, not the weapon itself. Also note, this site lists penetration of the triple-charge shell as 800mm, and the tandem HEAT at 650mm. Vorona is based on Metis-M, which beats them both at 950mm of RHA penetration. The hard shell appears to be an important factor here, as 125mm Invar-M missiles (tandem HEAT) can manage about 900mm. Tank shells will be hard pressed to even approach the performance of an ATGM.

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12 hours ago, dragon01 said:

In fact, from my tests, Vorona is not effective enough when hitting ERA, since the current HEAT simulation doesn't seem to account for a tandem warhead.

 

I just checked, and for some reason all of the HEAT warheads have be configured to be HEAT and not TandemHEAT. The new damage modelling does simulate tandem HEAT, and a lot of the penetrators were configured as such, but for some reason they changed it in Wednesday's patch. Hopefully it's just an oversight.

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4 hours ago, darkChozo said:

 

I just checked, and for some reason all of the HEAT warheads have be configured to be HEAT and not TandemHEAT. The new damage modelling does simulate tandem HEAT, and a lot of the penetrators were configured as such, but for some reason they changed it in Wednesday's patch. Hopefully it's just an oversight.

 

Hopefully but if i’m being honest I think the devs are running out of time and are just trying to get everything into a “good enough” state for release, which probably means back tracking on a lot of the new features they’ve been experimenting with on dev branch.

 

I really hope they’ll revisit these features and spend some more time revamping the armour system and HEAT post release, it all looks really promising, but I think it may be asking too much considering Arma 3 development seems to be winding down.

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On the RC build there seems to be an issue with the tank's missile approach warnings. In my tests it did not detect any RPG and Vorona missiles.

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By design?

Why would the system not warn about these rockets? How is it even supposed to distinguish them from others?

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This is an inherited design limitation of the countermeasure system. It's based on "lock" - if the munition doesn't lock you you can't receive a warning. Even though we use the system to imitate something like a MWR it doesn't rely on detecting plumes, UV shade or fast moving projectiles like the IRL ones would do. It's a simple abstracted mechanic that checks corresponding flags on weapon, munition and target vehicle only when the attacker or attacking munition locks onto the target.

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2 minutes ago, oukej said:

This is an inherited design limitation of the countermeasure system. It's based on "lock" - if the munition doesn't lock you you can't receive a warning. Even though we use the system to imitate something like a MWR it doesn't rely on detecting plumes, UV shade or fast moving projectiles like the IRL ones would do. It's a simple abstracted mechanic that checks corresponding flags on weapon, munition and target vehicle only when the attacker or attacking munition locks onto the target.

So, a scalpel/DAGR that isn't locked won't give the warning?

Is there an intention to remove the SACLOS mode on these weapon systems?

 

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I see. Dang. I take you are currently not considering to change that system? :dontgetit:

One could just emit a warning to everybody who is roughly in the missiles direction and has LOS. I figure that would already work pretty neatly.

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50 minutes ago, wallside2 said:

I see. Dang. I take you are currently not considering to change that system? :dontgetit:

One could just emit a warning to everybody who is roughly in the missiles direction and has LOS. I figure that would already work pretty neatly.

Hmmm, this might be harder to code and get working properly than you think.

 

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On 4/7/2018 at 1:20 PM, scavenjer said:

Is there an intention to remove the SACLOS mode on these weapon systems?

Hopefully not, unless there is an intention to add separate variants.

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37 minutes ago, SuicideKing said:

Hopefully not, unless there is an intention to add separate variants.

Most definitely would prefer separate variants on top of having the base version.

 

IMO having SACLOS and lock with top attack gives options and could definitely add a skillceiling (or keep it there).

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Considering that APS is not implemented in game, none of the missiles or rockets should trigger any type of warning, unless spotted visually by the player or AI in which case pop smoke and try to hide. 

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Considering that most missile/rocket motors burn for only a few seconds, and the majority of flight is either unpowered (glide) or by a weak sustainer.

 

I was hoping for a warning system in ArmA 3 that worked in the following manner:

 

All projectiles/missiles with active seekers (radar) would trigger radar-warning receivers (for any unit equipped with one, that is within the seekers beam cone).

All passive seekers (IR, CCD, DataLink, beamrider), saclos and dumb-fire weapons can only be identified by either radar or optical detection.

 

This considered, one would be left with two sensors for detection:

  • Radar
  • Optical

And a few detection methods:

  • Radar Warning Receiver (incoming Radar threats)
  • Radar detection of incoming threats (rockets, missiles, mortars, bombs and anything deemed "big enough" by radar cross section to be discovered).
  • Optical detection, mainly towards IR/UV spectrum, where the backblast, or burning rocket motor would give away the threat position.

 

By using this approach, you could diversify vehicle capabilities and balance even further, making one option more preferable over the other etc.

 

Advanced tanks could have optical detection for incoming RPG's, rockets or missiles by detection of the backblast/rocket motor, at least giving you the chance to move or counter-attack the threat.

Aircraft would have radar warning receivers or/and optical missile warning systems to alert from incoming fire.

Special purpose radars could detect incoming cruise-missiles, bombs or artillery, allowing for early warning.

 

Like Oukej said, a limitation right now makes the AI and warning systems check if there is a "locked" missile being fired. This is why when firing a passive IR missile at AI, they pop smoke immediately, as if they had a 6th sense. Ideally, there should be some random wait time from the conditions are met, to the actual CM deployment, to simulate human reaction times and such. Technically though, an advanced missile warning system could automatically deploy CM faster, but you get the gist. 

 

IRL, the missile warning system cares little if the missile is locked or not, it just detects the launch plume/UV signature. This also means, that in real life, it can be triggered by things that are not threats at all. For instance, a friendly missile being fired at an enemy, or a missile being fired between two locations next to you. It will not discriminate, and simply report what it sees. I believe some early Missile Warning Systems for aircraft were triggered by the wingman's afterburner. Meaning that if the wingman engaged afterburner, the system called out "missile launch" with directional information towards the wingmans jet.

 

What would be nice, would be a kind of eventhandler. "Fired" gets weapon type (is this a type of weapon that triggers MWSystems?), then checks if any MWS systems are active and in range of detection, performs a line-of-sight check between sensor and weapon launch area, and then triggers the alert in all MWSystems that meet the requirements. It would not care if the "firer" is friendly or enemy. 

 

While this may add to some confusion, it actually works more like this in real life. You would have to know where your allies are, and ignore MWS detections from there, but be on alert from launches from other directions. It would also give you a general direction to start looking for the enemy threat, meaning that combating a vehicle equipped with this system, becomes much more risky. The enemy would know where you are, just after firing a shot, which means you need to have your escape plan ready!

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3 hours ago, snoops_213 said:

Considering that APS is not implemented in game, none of the missiles or rockets should trigger any type of warning, unless spotted visually by the player or AI in which case pop smoke and try to hide. 

Actually, APS is just a catch-all name for systems mounted on tanks that do certain things armour can't.
 

Active Protection System can mean a variety of things, from fairly passive (ironic yeah I know) countermeasures like fitted to the AMX-30B2 Brennus, M1A2, Leclerc, etc.. that detect the laser which beamriding ATGMs use, to a system that will detect and intercept missiles/KE shells with explosively formed fragments.

It's simply a catch-all name like Chobham is for NATO composite armour.

 

You don't actually have to use radar or visually spot the incoming projectile to know you're being fired upon, like I said earlier, a lot of missiles are beamriders: this is a IR beam that is turned on and off in a certain frequency so only friendly units can use it, this gets detected by an APS, and then the APS warns the crew or in some cases even automatically discharges smoke (AMX Brennus) or even points the gun at the threat (Shtora).

 

This is where the difference between "soft-kill" and "hard-kill" become apparent, one can only redirect or disturb the incoming projectile while the other can intercept.

 

We have the former, which is fairly old tech and pretty much all modern MBTs have a system like it.

 

So in fact, tanks get a little "shafted" in this regard, most of the MBTs present in the game have a "hard-kill" system, IRL and modelled in-game.

 

 

IMO this is absolutely needed for MBTs, it ups their situational awareness which currently is incredibly poor, especially in 1pp only servers.

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