Navy/Naval Content in the next Arma?

[Weisssbrot 8]

I really miss naval/navy content in Arma, do you think the next Arma will have corvetts, frigates, landing crafts/ships (of course pilotable)?

[beno_83au 1362]

It would be great to sea 😁 and with map sizes increasing from series to series they'd have more space to work with. But I think the AI would perhaps be the biggest hurdle. 

[drebin052 323]

Movable landing crafts deploying from static ships? Perhaps. But anything larger than a patrol boat or armed speedboats? I doubt that'll happen.

 

To accommodate proper naval warfare, BI would need to make a gargantuan map that'd have to be three or perhaps even four times the size of Altis. You'd need to fit a minimum of almost a hundred nautical miles plus land unless you want a map that's solely open water. Keep in mind that even in World War 2, 13-14 kilometres was considered close range. This quadrupled by the late Cold War and jumped to six/seven times the distance by 2000s-2010s. Nowadays it's all about missiles and potentially railguns launching projectiles from beyond visual ranges.

 

Jets DLC is a prime example of how assets that require large terrains don't really fit within Arma's combined arms gameplay, and look silly when you try to adapt them into the sandbox. You've got fifth generation stealth fighters duking it Top Gun-style against one another in...the late 2030s? Having 2020s-2030s warships slugging it out against one another in 16th century fashion man-of-war battles would be even more silly. This also doesn't factor in submarines, which further widen the spectrum and would complicate the gameplay even more.

 

So unless Bohemia decide to make really giant terrains in the future, I'd suggest lowering your expectations to just patrol boats, submersibles and static ships that provide naval artillery (as with Arma 3).

[beno_83au 1362]

2 hours ago, drebin052 said:

BI would need to make a gargantuan map

 

BIS are doing it with Blue. Perhaps BI can evolve their tech in that direction. Although I have absolutely no idea if that's the direction they are looking at going, or are even capable of doing, with Enfusion.

[drebin052 323]

1 hour ago, beno_83au said:

 

BIS are doing it with Blue. Perhaps BI can evolve their tech in that direction. Although I have absolutely no idea if that's the direction they are looking at going, or are even capable of doing, with Enfusion.

 

BIS is not BI (and vice versa), so whatever they come up with is irrelevant to a potential Arma 4. Not to mention that I doubt your average PC would be able to run a map of that scale + procedurally-generated terrain without performance problems arising.

[beno_83au 1362]

@drebin052 I know they are not the same company..... I was merely using BIS as an example of what's possible. And the PCs that most defence establishments would be running it on are far from anything fancy. 

[Beagle 684]

I played a lot of Naval sims back before OPF and ArmA, mainly "Dangerous Waters" and "Destroyer Command". ALl I rember isa that Naval sims are rather not appealing for First person shooter players. It's all slow paced and involves klicking a lot throught 2D screens. Manual use of weapon systems is rare. Beginnign with late WW2 basically everything that is launched or fired at you is guided, auto controlled or Radar assisted. Modern Naval warfare is happeningn on computer screens. The biggest problem is, you have to emulate a crew of at least 32+ crewmebers per watch.

[Ex3B 265]

While fleet to fleet combat won't fit, I think landing craft, LCACs, and shore patrol vessels would fit.

With all the bays and peninsulas of altis, landing craft to ferry tanks would be useful, allowing one to bypass land chokepoints.

Something like that Fast sea frame addon would be nice too

[Lowinternettroll 0]

The problem is that the game does not support moving platforms. You cant just jump on the roof of vehicle and take a ride. Ships and vehicles are moving platforms. If you want to ride on moving ship now, you will cant walking and jumping on ship. To do this, game must support different coordinate systems or our PC's must have enough power to calculate advanced physics of almost all objects on all moving ships. Second is more preferable but much harder to calculate. First is more practicable on current PC's. IMHO both variants is too hard for BI.