change of position Tanks and Heavy Armor : change of positions

[mickeymen 322]

Hello devs!

 

Unfortunately, after the release of DLC Tanks, the change of positions (driver/gunner/commander) in Arma was not affected at all. 

It was always a needle in my ass, but after the release of the interiors, this problem even aggravated. Why?

After the release of Tanks DLC, I see how in half of second a player can find himself in any chair (driver/gunner/commander), without considering the inner walls of the vehicle and other units! Unfortunately, this looks not good.

Please note, in most tanks or APC driver position has a separate location. This is a completely separate cabin, which is closed on all sides by bulkheads.

Those. being inside such a vehicle, a person physically can not change his position - "from gunner to driver" or "from commander to driver" or "from driver to commander" or "from driver to gunner". This is physically impossible! Why do we see this in Arma?

 

When a player changes all positions passing through the walls, then it looks absurd. I propose to take this moment into account and make a change of positions from the position of the driver (or to driver position) accessible only from the outside of the vehicle. In this case, the place where the player wants to sit should be free. So it should be in real life. For example. If you are in the gunner position, then in order to sit in the driver's chair you need to first get out, go to the driver's hatch and only after that sit on the driver's seat. Or vice versa. In this case devs, you can use the action menu (choice of place) or personal icons (when a player approaches a certain place of the vehicle)

 

It seems to me that every interior, before changing positions should take into account the current position of the player. 

Most vehicles physically even do not allow (!not leaving vehicle) changing the position "from gunner to commander"and vice versa. 

For example, see Varsuk T-100 or Rhino. It is impossible physically to change position from the gunner to commander's position and vice versa. 
The main weapon prevents this!

In this case, also it would also be good to change positions from only the outside vehicle. Such a feature could add a bit of realism (time spending for changing positions). 

In general, I want to say - in most cases, for change positions (driver/gunner/commander) the player must leave the vehicle and the position where he wants to sit should be free.

Devs please try give the player a bit of realism on the backgrounds of vehicles interiors.

 

[joostsidy 682]

I agree It's not realistic, but IMO it is a good game mechanic. It is a useful tool to quickly take over the controls of AI controlled stations. The AI is not dependable enough to perform well in all situations.

[oukej 2910]

Restricting it only on some vehicles may not be obvious enough for the players (unlike switchin seat e.g. from Offroad flat bed to driver). Even though, now, with interiors, probably less so. Anyway I believe there's already enough obscure rules :)

[mickeymen 322]

5 hours ago, joostsidy said:

I agree It's not realistic, but IMO it is a good game mechanic. It is a useful tool to quickly take over the controls of AI controlled stations. The AI is not dependable enough to perform well in all situations.

 

It seems to me that if we change positions only from outside vehicle, then this will not change the Arma3 mechanics radically. Before change positions this will just add an additional item (exit from the vehicle) and after this subordinate AI will also occupy the specified position. The "get out" feature can be even is automatic

 

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Restricting it only on some vehicles may not be obvious enough for the players (unlike switchin seat e.g. from Offroad flat bed to driver). Even though, now, with interiors, probably less so. Anyway I believe there's already enough obscure rules :)

 

@oukej Unfortunately I did not understand you clearly. My english is not perfect)

Do you think this idea is impossible or meaningless?

 

The fact is that I suggested it is already working now in the Arma3 

You mentioned Offroad. Here is an example.

If the player is on the position of the driver of Offroad Armed, then he can not change position from driver to gunner until it comes out.

In order to do this, he must go out and approach the rear Offroad. This is exactly what I propose to do for tanks and APC. And it already works without problems!

 

This feature can save the player from passing through the inner walls of vehicle and will make the gameplay more realistic 

What do you think about this?

 

 

[Grumpy Old Man 3540]

11 hours ago, mickeymen said:

If the player is on the position of the driver of Offroad Armed, then he can not change position from driver to gunner until it comes out.

In order to do this, he must go out and approach the rear Offroad. This is exactly what I propose to do for tanks and APC. And it already works without problems!

 

Good point.

There's already plenty of vehicles in game that do this.

MH-9: Can't switch from bench to pilot seat.

HEMTT: Can't switch from passenger to driver seat.

Caesar BTT: Can't switch from passenger to pilot seat.

 

Tanks already are the biggest force multiplier on ground there is in this game, having to leave the tank to change positions would add a significant weakness to the tank and could enhance gameplay in terms of tactics, authenticity and could probably prevent most of those "one man tank" rambo shows one can observe on most MP servers with tanks freely available.

 

It looks more like an oversight that tanks still allow this, rather than avoiding "obscure" rules when most other vehicles only allow changing positions when it's physically possible to do so.

At this point of the games life cycle I'm not gonna complain about inconsistencies like this one, that train has left the station.

 

Cheers

[mickeymen 322]

3 hours ago, Grumpy Old Man said:

At this point of the games life cycle I'm not gonna complain about inconsistencies like this one, that train has left the station.

 

Lol!

We need to complain, right now, because - only the day before yesterday we received interiors for armored vehicles, that do not physically allow us to change positions inside. A player with an adequate psyche should have blood from his eyes, when he sees soldiers walking through the inner walls of their vehicle.

 

 

3 hours ago, Grumpy Old Man said:

 

Good point.

There's already plenty of vehicles in game that do this.

MH-9: Can't switch from bench to pilot seat.

HEMTT: Can't switch from passenger to driver seat.

Caesar BTT: Can't switch from passenger to pilot seat.

 

Excellent. Now we need to expand this list

All that is needed is for the players to support me and then the developers will pay attention to this

[Electricleash 133]

I can understand this might be a consideration for multiplayer but I absolutely don't want to see it in single player scenarios! In this case, with regards to the realism <-> gameplay balance i don't want to have to jump out of the tank everytime i wish to move from say commander to gunner position. Just an unnecessary frustration.

 

Honestly I'm not overly worried about any change happening here as I can't see them putting development time into changing the process now.

[x3kj 1247]

A delay (time to wait) for transitioning vehicle positions would be really what's needed most here - not only for switching seats internally, but also for entering and exiting. It's entirely ok for tank commander to switch to gunner and driver at his discretion - but it shouldn't be at warpspeed.

 

Warpspeed entering/exiting/position changing, as well as the stealth aspect of it (no sound or animation happening to warn people around that something is happening) is what leads to the typical and ridiculous game situations near vehicles, that are so common in arcade shooters like Battlefield, Planetside, etc.  AT guy sneaks around tank to place mine or whatever, Driver stealthily warps out of the vehicle, shoots AT guy with SMG, warps into tank commander position, shoots some other dude with MG, warps to maingunner and blasts a vehicle...  Over a period of 10 seconds. This is completely unbefitting to arma. Plus it's very frustrating for people who go up against vehicles - in all those games that are affected, not just arma.

 

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In this case, with regards to the realism <-> gameplay balance i don't want to have to jump out of the tank everytime i wish to move from say commander to gunner position. Just an unnecessary frustration.

Some positions just cant interchange without exiting the vehicle. E.g. jeeps and also helicopter gunship pilot/copilot. For tanks this is often not the case, but where it is the case it should be implemented. It's a design limitation of that tank and plays to it's weaknesses.

[mickeymen 322]

11 hours ago, Electricleash said:

i don't want to have to jump out of the tank everytime i wish to move from say commander to gunner position. Just an unnecessary frustration.

 

If you had such an interior as the BIS showed us, then in life you did it that way. 

All I want is for - Arma to be as close to reality as possible, however, every year I see that it goes away from reality ever further. 

 

2 hours ago, x3kj said:

A delay (time to wait) for transitioning vehicle positions would be really what's needed most here - not only for switching seats internally, but also for entering and exiting. It's entirely ok for tank commander to switch to gunner and driver at his discretion - but it shouldn't be at warpspeed.

 

Warpspeed entering/exiting/position changing, as well as the stealth aspect of it (no sound or animation happening to warn people around that something is happening) is what leads to the typical and ridiculous game situations near vehicles, that are so common in arcade shooters like Battlefield, Planetside, etc.  AT guy sneaks around tank to place mine or whatever, Driver stealthily warps out of the vehicle, shoots AT guy with SMG, warps into tank commander position, shoots some other dude with MG, warps to maingunner and blasts a vehicle...  Over a period of 10 seconds. This is completely unbefitting to arma. Plus it's very frustrating for people who go up against vehicles - in all those games that are affected, not just arma.

 

 

@x3kj You have created a not small message but I still do not understand you are against my proposal or not.  I do not know what this - "Warpspeed"? 

[Strike_NOR 898]

Warpspeed = faster than light crew position change

[oukej 2910]

TBH we've never liked it either. At the same time restricting the switching isn't the best solution simply because the action menu is difficult to relate to what's actually present in 3D. If there wasn't an action menu, if the actions were...you know ;) If the actions are given by what's clearly visible and available it becomes a completely different story. And ofc we'd like animated crew switching or at least some hold actions to it. But you know that already...development is mainly about simply not being able to do all the things you would like to do. Scientists still haven't been able to stretch the time on a human scale ;) And we gotta move on.

Simply put, I'm sorry about it, there's no plan to change this. There are only wishes.

[mickeymen 322]

18 hours ago, oukej said:

Simply put, I'm sorry about it, there's no plan to change this. There are only wishes.

 

Today there are no plans...but maybe tomorrow. Still, you promised that you will still support the game for a while.

 

I would not want to wait a some year, before for the announcement of Arma 4, and then again wait 4 years for the next DLC where the interiors will arrived and only after that get an adequate change positions mechanics. It seems to me that the visualy current vehicle interiors look too great, to not polish the interaction mechanics with them now. In this current life cycle of the Arma, the change of positions from the outside, would be quite a feasible task for you as developers.
This does not require any new mechanic, this system already exists in the some above-mentioned vehicles.

Probably the problem is not the creation of this feature, but the fact that not every Arma 3 user wants to see the Arma as a hard-core super realistic sim. I admit it.

However I always did not like the fact that the game difficulty levels in Arma does not share the gameplay in a significantly different way and can not satisfy players with different needs simultaneously. 

If in the near future the game settings will share the position change system in accordance with the needs of different players, then it would be great.

[martin_lee 33]

 A question: I haven't played MP for a long long time... Could human commander switch into another human players' seat in a tank?

 

Personally I am okay with instant seat switching between AI crews. IRL tank commanders have a function that could bring the gunner's view to his own, or the other way around. (I THINK commander could also fire the gun as well?) Since Arma do not have that function (yet ;P ) so I am willing to think of seat-switching as an abstraction.

 

Now that AI tank driving has improved quite a bit, and the PIP driver view available, I am happy enough to be not able to switch between commander amd the driver.

 

If I am playing with human player I'd probably like it if we can't switch seat without getting out.

 

[mickeymen 322]

@martin_lee you are talking only about the switch on between of the commander/gunner. 

 

1 hour ago, martin_lee said:

Personally I am okay with instant seat switching between AI crews.

What about the switching to a driver position and vice versa?

The driver cabin in a most vehicles is located in a separate (not connected with the commander/gunner cabin) compartment

Since I see a detailed and beautiful interior,  I am extremely annoyed by this fact at which the game ignores itself

[Strike_NOR 898]

I guess seat switching mechanic in arma, would be in it's utmost simplest form, a time delay between pressing the action "switch to x's seat", and actually moving there, coupled with a fade to black/fade in effect that matches this time delay. You could even add some sound to it of "cramped tankmen fidgeting around" to emphasize the fact that they are switching seats.

 

A more advanced and complete function would be the restriction of certain switches, such as hull to turret (where these are physically separated) , or for heli's, gunner to pilot etc. 

 

Then you would have "everything" needed for gameplay reasons.

 

Animations would be extremely resource demanding and all the "what if's" are virtually impossible to get. It's simply a time drain to do the animations, that give very little in return.

[.kju 3239]

there is already compartment tech (used by some ground vehicles and choppers).

it needs some model setup too though from what i know

 

one could script the thing also (especially the delay stuff) - however for MP reliability may be a little tricky

[mickeymen 322]

6 hours ago, Strike_NOR said:

I guess seat switching mechanic in arma, would be in it's utmost simplest form, a time delay between pressing the action "switch to x's seat", and actually moving there, coupled with a fade to black/fade in effect that matches this time delay. You could even add some sound to it of "cramped tankmen fidgeting around" to emphasize the fact that they are switching seats.

 

As far as I know your remarks Strike_NOR at this forum, you are attracted to realistic arguments in Arma. 

In accordance with the new interiors that we received from BIS such a decision, it would not look realistic. I think, now if we have a separate cab for the driver, then if we take realism into account, for entering on the this position  first the player must get out from gunner or commander positions. You like no one else need to understand this. 

Namely - soldier must risking his life during dangerous situation and it's must spent time for changing positions, only then it will look realistic. 

 

6 hours ago, Strike_NOR said:

Animations would be extremely resource demanding and all the "what if's" are virtually impossible to get. It's simply a time drain to do the animations, that give very little in return.

 

My suggestion does not require any new animations. Entering from outside (at any place - driver, gunner, commander) can have only single basic animation.