Sabot or High Explosive?

[Kamamura 0]

Hello,

Excuse my potentially trivial question, but what are the exact differences between these two ammo types in the game?

AFAIK, Sabot is a solid, armor - piercing round that relies on high kinetic energy to penetrate the enemy armored vehicles (tanks).

High explosive rounds, on the other hand, might mean ordinary HE round that is useful for killing soft targets, but harmles against armor. Or, it can be that modern type of amunition that is fired with relatively low velocity, and has multiple charges that first burn through the armor plate on contact, and then explode inside the vehicle killing the crew.

Can anyone explain how is it implemented here? The manual is very sketchy on the subject.

[BlackScorpion 0]

The HEAT is high-explosive anti-tank, an older AT round but nowadays plain HE, as you said, meant for soft targets and infantry. It has some effect against tanks in OFP but I strongly advice you to use Sabot...

The Sabot round is APFSDS (armor piercing, fin stabilized discarding sabot) is a dart-like solid sub-caliber projectile (flechette) fired at very high velocity (about 4000 fps, or 1.2 km/s, IIRC). It relies on kinetic energy and the pressure created upon impact.

So it's Sabot for all the tanks and HEAT for soft targets.

[tankieboy 0]

Also use HE for man and building (bunker) targets.

[Kamamura 0]

Thank you, guys, for you explanation. Flashpoint is now quite old, but it still shines!

[franze 196]

If you feel like living dangerously, you can use HEAT on enemy tanks which can usually kill the crew and let you capture the tank.

[Trapper 0]

Can anyone explain how is it implemented here?

Additional game engine info:

I'm no addon maker, but afaik OFP calculatates SABOT/kinetic rounds with a high direct hit damage value and an almost not existing surrounding explosion radius damage. The other way around for HEAT rounds.

[chris330 0]

If you feel like living dangerously, you can use HEAT on enemy tanks which can usually kill the crew and let you capture the tank.  

Improvisation is the heart of all fieldwork

[Katar 0]

If you feel like living dangerously, you can use HEAT on enemy tanks which can usually kill the crew and let you capture the tank.

Hehe I love doing that. Although personally I like iloting a gunship and using HELLFIRE missiles

[eestikas88 0]

HEAT sure does a good job with the tanks......

at least in OFP

I prefer using HEAT-it kills everthing near it.

[-HUNTER- 1]

[noob] I would like to change some stuff on addons I have regarding the damage a round will do. Which part in the config do you need to change? I would like increase the power of the blast on the HE rounds...[/noob]

?

It will also answer my question regarding the difference in power between a 120shell and a LGB. The difference is huuuge but the actual explosion remains as large as the 120.

[CameronMcDonald 146]

The explosion size is often defined in the class. Although I'm an experienced config editor, it's a bit annoying to explain, so I won't.

Now, the easy stuff. To edit damage, you are looking for the ammo subclass of the weapon, eg, CAM_bigshell500mm, etc. Look for the following lines.

hit=x;

indirecthit=x;

indirecthitrange (or something like that) =x;

hit is the amount of damage a direct hit does. Indirect hit shows how much damage a unit will take if it was right next to the impact spot, but not hit by the weapon. Indirect hit range shows the range of the indirect hit damage. For example, you'd expect the APSDS (sabot) shell to have a lower range than a HEAT shell, and you'd expect a HE-Frag shell to have the largest range of all. Damage declines as you move further away from the impact point - this is also what the indirect hit range is defining.

[macguba 0]

Don't bother firing sabot at infantry, it does no good. HEAT, on the other hand, is very effective at taking out groups of loons.

I did some detailed research on armoured targets. In practice it makes very little difference whether you hit an enemy tank with a HEAT or sabot round. Insofar as their is a difference, it occurs when the target is close to destruction. With a HEAT round there is often a substantial delay before the final, internal explosion that destroys an armoured target. With sabot the delay is much shorter.

In other words, in the early rounds of shooting at an enemy tank it makes no difference. In that late rounds, just before the tank is destroyed, it doesn't really make a lot of difference either except that, because HEAT invokes a delay, you often find yourself finding an extra, unneccessary round.

All of this is overwhelmed by the extra reloading time required to switch from one type of ammo to the other. In other words, if you have HEAT up, and you meet armour, just hit it with repeated HEAT and try to avoid firing that extra unneccesary round. If you have sabot loaded, and you meet lots of infantry, reload with HEAT while you use the machine gun.

I suspect the point above about it being easier to capture enemy tanks if you use HEAT is probably true, but only at the margin.

Never run totally out of a type of ammo because then you can't rearm with that ammo at an ammo truck - its an OFP bug.

[llauma 0]

I did a small test using the T55 and M60 against a M1A1. Depending on where you hit you need 7-8 sabots to take it out but only 6 HEAT's. It's not quite what I had expected. That also means that the BIS LAW/RPG's are more powerful against tanks than the T55/M60 sabots.

[-HUNTER- 1]

ok thanks guys, I know ofp and im not noob in general but still the configs are tricky, most of the time I get bugs...

Also Ive tried changing the config on the M1A2SEP but after I repacked it a script doesnt work. But I didnt touch anything except the config and didnt change anything besides the ammo count of the idiv weapons. I allways thought there was more to changing the config. And it does work, but that script now doesnt work. Ive had that more often actually...

[sanctuary 19]

I did a small test using the T55 and M60 against a M1A1. Depending on where you hit you need 7-8 sabots to take it out but only 6 HEAT's. It's not quite what I had expected. That also means that the BIS LAW/RPG's are more powerful against tanks than the T55/M60 sabots.

In the BIS main config.bin , any ammo that begin by Shell... (like Shell105, Shell120) is a HEAT round , while any ammo that begin by Heat... (like Heat105 , Heat120...) is in fact a SABOT round.

That may explain why in several occurances, Heat can kill a tank quicker than Sabot ingame, as i imagine not only the classes names are a mistake, but certainly some values are wrongly mixed between those Shell... and Heat... in the BIS config.

I noticed this while adapting a BIS config to use the CAVS values for testing a bit.

[Messiah 2]

hopefully Arma will sort out sabot and heat/hesh issues - its possible to simulate SABOT in ofp, but not the damage they do... i.e. they will still kill infantry in a radius, and wont penetrate an armoured target.

[king homer 1]

ok thanks guys, I know ofp and im not noob in general but still the configs are tricky, most of the time I get bugs...

Also Ive tried changing the config on the M1A2SEP but after I repacked it a script doesnt work. But I didnt touch anything except the config and didnt change anything besides the ammo count of the idiv weapons. I allways thought there was more to changing the config. And it does work, but that script now doesnt work. Ive had that more often actually...

And which script did you change?

[-HUNTER- 1]

Ive only touched the config file, thats why Im so curious why it doesnt work. The "init" script that does the recoil and tracers and other effects doesnt work anymore.

But Ive only unpacked it, opened the config, changed something, and repacked it.

And Ive triple checked I didnt change anything except the loadout of the ammo. More MPAT rounds for blowing up enemy soldiers. And less of the other rounds.

The tank now is excellent for the MOUT purposes I use it for with this loadout only too bad the cool scripts like the recoil dont work anymore...

[j w 0]

As the most of you probably posted b4; Sabots at tanks and HEAT at infantry.

Survived two Sabot-blasts (without any injury) by my feets yesterday.

If it were heat I wouldn't been standing anymore...

[king homer 1]

Ive only touched the config file, thats why Im so curious why it doesnt work. The "init" script that does the recoil and tracers and other effects doesnt work anymore.

But Ive only unpacked it, opened the config, changed something, and repacked it.

And Ive triple checked I didnt change anything except the loadout of the ammo. More MPAT rounds for blowing up enemy soldiers. And less of the other rounds.

The tank now is excellent for the MOUT purposes I use it for with this loadout only too bad the cool scripts like the recoil dont work anymore...

I guess you deleted a ; or something like this by mistake. Better check it again, or re-download the tank again and then replace the config again and change the ammovalues again.

To inform you: I added a unique loadout script for the M1, with that you can wether choose an AT or AP loadout and if you don't like it you can stay with the normal MP loadout.

[-HUNTER- 1]

My guess would be the packing program, because I made sure I didnt touch anything just to avoid such problems I have now!

I didnt know about that script though!

[Ares1978 0]

If you feel like living dangerously, you can use HEAT on enemy tanks which can usually kill the crew and let you capture the tank.  

Hehe I love doing that. Although personally I like iloting a gunship and using HELLFIRE missiles  

Personally, I love killing helicopters with the tank's gun. Have killed more than a few A-10's as well using that weapon.

[CameronMcDonald 146]

Seconded. Loving that avatar too!

[M4XSs 0]

I enjoy taking them down with sabots.

true fun!

[franze 196]

It's a true art form that takes a big dose of luck to pull it off. But then again, AI makes the very serious mistake of overflying hostile positions.