Vehicle vulnerability.

[Heatseeker 0]

While im quite satisfied with the onfoot gameplay side of Arma the vehicles are something i find myself avoiding or dumping far away from combat all the time.

Most of them can be disabled by a single RPG hit, not only disabled but they blow up killing everything in a 15M radius. Old problem.. i know.

The M113/vulcan can be disabled with 14 7.62 rounds (M240) fired at its tracks. The shilka about 50 or so...

Other factors that reduce vehicle survivability are rpg/m136 sniping and dirty lenses. An a.i. (or player) can snipe any vehicle from hundreds of meters away, a more realistic rocket effective range would improve both realism and gameplay imo, perhaps even decreasing rpg/m136's strenght somewhat.

Cleaning the dirty optics is already discussed in another thread.

A.i. also has the incredible ability to snipe pilots out of their seats with MG's, i mean firing at a moving helicopter from the ground is possible but sniping the pilot with few rounds seems exagerated.

I understand the limitations of the damage model but with some configuration tweaks something better could be achieved.

Opinions and discussion welcome, whinning and Arma bashing not!

[xnodunitx 0]

Are you sure the AI is sniping you from the helicopter and not just getting a lucky shot? I remember playing OFP with a friend, I was on the ground with an M16A2, he was the pilot in an AH-1S. I managed to land a lucky shot and killed him and watched his helicopter plumet, the AI could be doing the same.

As for the damage model on armor..yeah..its kind of weak, most likely they did this for balance reasons,a lot of maintstreamers wanted balance, so we got stuck with it.

The community will most likely in the future change this and make their addons stronger, already have an AH-64 in testing in the game that, although not entirerly fully realistic, you cannot kill the pilots inside the helicopter. In truth it mostly deflects small arms and will throw rifle bullets off their main course, but we can't really simulate that so we have to go with the next best thing.

But yeah, I'd like to see vehicles a tad bit stronger too, I'm not so worried about tires, those are obviously the most vunerable and weakest part of a vehicle, but tank treads?

[Spokesperson 0]

Vehicles should be even more vulnerable. If I crash a tree in 100km/h I don't even get hurt.

[CorlanMcD 0]

Vehicles should be even more vulnerable. If I crash a tree in 100km/h I don't even get hurt.

That was a very lame thing to say, and doesn't even contribute; I wonder if you even read Heatseeker's argument.

Anyway, I have to agree, I find it mind blowing that an RPG can take out an M1A1 with about two hits, but I guess thats due to mainstream balancing. Helo's are guaranteed death traps, the life span of an average pilot is a few minutes in Berzerk.

Luckily though, we have the addon community and they'll hopefully fix things.

[Wolfrug 0]

I agree wholeheartedly with this, in particular the vehicular vulnerability inherited from OFP.

As I see it, the reason for this is fairly simple : OFP was primarily an infantry simulator, well over half the original campaign as well as the very largest part of Resistance were conducted on foot. For pure gameplay reasons it makes sense that an infantry soldier with a magically reloadable LAW should be able to take out a BMP charging in. The fact that it explodes is an unfortunate side effect of the much complained-about hitpoint system : once a tracked vehicle reaches a 'dammage' of 1, it will die. Explosively so. Note that cars don't necessarily need to explode, they can just merrily start burning.

The long-term solution is something to do with the hitpoint system that needs revision (for instance adding a penetration system, as they had tried in the Liberation 1939-1944 mod). The short term might be something to do with adding more hit areas, and considerably lessening the risk of all-immolating destruction on a direct hit. My suggestion would be to up the armor on all APCs to withstand one hit without dying (but becoming disabled, foh shure), and to considerably lessen the % chance of the whole vehicle exploding. Alternatively simply make the radius of the destruction smaller. I have no idea how much damage a falling chopper does, but man it's a lot.

I'd like to see something like experienced in Company of Heroes, where the tanks and vehicles are formidable opponents, capable of mowing down in a straight-on fight all the weak-skinned infantry resistance, but still able to be disabled with lucky or well-aimed flanking hits, mines and heavy explosives.

The 1.07+ chopper-pilot sniping is also noted. Owch.

Oh, and as a final disclaimer : an armored vehicle such as a Stryker or a BMP in the hands of an experienced Player crew, fighting vs. AI, will generally wipe them out fairly easily, especially if they have other support, and if they have a healthy respect for the 3-rounds-in-3-seconds capabilities of the AI AT soldiers. In an open ground environment, a better zoom capability for the Stryker for instance would be appreciated (and cleaner optics). But that's not to say these APCs aren't, in capable hands, still formidable killing machines. I do feel however they could be improved on.

Regards,

Wolfrug

[Heatseeker 0]

I was trying to focus on ground vehicles. I find them to be seriously underpowered/limited while portable rocket launchers are extremely overkill.

I think something more balanced/acurate could have been made, even with the limitations of the damage model.

I also believe that it could still be improved upon.

Its annoying to have cars and APC's being disabled and/or blowing up with few MG rounds and RPG's fired from 350/400 meters away.

In OPF MBT's (M1's/T80's) wouldnt always explode, sometimes they would be 99% damaged but without exploding, it felt random. All vehicles should be more like this.

[TinFoiledPhoenix 0]

I agree with the above posts so far.

Always strange to have a Stryker incapacitated because a tire was shot out.

Also, I hear you about the whole getting shot in a cockpit by random AI fire. Zootia was flying around in a harrier in Evo., and he got picked off by T-72 machine gun fire...

[cl10k 0]

i think another reason why vehicles always end up as deathtraps is because players are not used to work in teams. a single bmp or even a single tank is not that powerful - you need to combine 2 or more vehicles to be effective. i always lmao when i see players on berzerk maps trying to capture towns with single vehicles and get blown up. imagine a tank and a bmp attacking together, you have the bmp to take out soldiers and smaller enemys and the tank for the heavy stuff but unfortenatly most players don't realize that.

[mr reality 0]

After setting up a simple mission involving 2 M1s against 4 BMP2s the end results were always in the BMP2s favour.

I started to make a mission but had to change the BMP2s for the weaker BRDM because the M1s were being taken out far too easily. The fact that the crew bailed out when the main gun was destroyed, but the tank was still driveable also pissed me off (the AI have no retreat ability which doesn't help).

Another mission i aborted was having tank support for each infantry squad (adding an M1A1 to the squad). When the tank was destoyed, the whole squad would be killed in the blast.

Simple deductions of said tests.

Dont have an explosion when the tank is destoyed, or have a random timer between 1 and 3 minutes before cook-off.

Increase the tanks strength

No bailing out crews if the tank is drivable.

I wont even go into the Strykers or M113s. They are death traps. I've started making missions involving M113s and the fact that even the basic opfor squad is too much of a match for these vehicles is too frustrating. I don't know if the AI targets the AT soldier first, but in most cases the M113 is destoyed when an engagement ensues. The AT soldier should be the priority target for the M113 gunner. I don't know is this is even possible to do without seeming like the AI is cheating (similar to the targeting of the squad leaders by the opfor AI).

[-CS-SOBR-1st-I-R- 0]

While im quite satisfied with the onfoot gameplay side of Arma the vehicles are something i find myself avoiding or dumping far away from combat all the time.

Most of them can be disabled by a single RPG hit, not only disabled but they blow up killing everything in a 15M radius. Old problem.. i know.

The M113/vulcan can be disabled with 14 7.62 rounds (M240) fired at its tracks. The shilka about 50 or so...

Other factors that reduce vehicle survivability are rpg/m136 sniping and dirty lenses. An a.i. (or player) can snipe any vehicle from hundreds of meters away, a more realistic rocket effective range would improve both realism and gameplay imo, perhaps even decreasing rpg/m136's strenght somewhat.

Cleaning the dirty optics is already discussed in another thread.

A.i. also has the incredible ability to snipe pilots out of their seats with MG's, i mean firing at a moving helicopter from the ground is possible but sniping the pilot with few rounds seems exagerated.

I understand the limitations of the damage model but with some configuration tweaks something better could be achieved.

Opinions and discussion welcome, whinning and Arma bashing not!

I tried to spread this info just the days ArmA was released...

Have a look at this thread

On the last page(s) you find some google spreadsheet tables. As you can see many of the values are not correct just like the one Heatseeker pointed out (14x 7.62mm Nato at M163)

unfortunately i was too lazy to make the test for more vehicles. Btw. this test was made with 1.01 !!! (although I highly doubt that much has changed since them concerning armour/penetration values)

[maddogx 13]

I saw your article, it was very informative. BI have been changing a lot of config stuff lately, so you never know - maybe they'll correct some of those issues.

[-CS-SOBR-1st-I-R- 0]

I saw your article, it was very informative. BI have been changing a lot of config stuff lately, so you never know - maybe they'll correct some of those issues.

I very much hope so. I think I will give it another go with the latest (official) patch to test the vehicles.

Judging from the old thread, the feedback from people was 98+ positiv so its worth the labour.

[Second 0]

Most thing i hate in ArmA vehicles is that AI ALLWAYS empties their magazines to empty trucks, hummers and such. Just today i was test playing one of my missions and whole company's advance halted because two deserted damaged vehicles, company killed enemy personel in 5 minutes and after that they spent nice 15 minutes to take out one hummer and one truck!!!

They wasted all their ammos to those things and when they felt safe (and light) again they ran agains couple of stryker squads and that was end of story, no RPGs for vehicles and no ammos for infantry

Static vehicles and cars are great things, not because of their combat efficency but because of reason that AI tries to destory them from distance, even if they are damaged beyond use. Try to punch thru second line of defence or defeat counterattack, when guys are scavenging handgrenades from the dead (take the enemy rifle you dump! and they have magazine or two left and some squads are (still) putting holes to howitzers, MGs, cars or what-ever-not-demolished-yet.

I think too that vehicles blows up too easily. There should be better (random) change to bail out and run for life. This has bothered AI from OFP's times. Squad with IFV is killer but when vehicle gets hit half of disembarked squad gets wiped out by default.

[-CS-SOBR-1st-I-R- 0]

Hmm.. have a look at this lads.

I've installed ArmA and patched it to 1.05 in order to make some tests again.

I chose the good old Humvee for the test again to see if BIS has changed any of those (previously) ridiculous values.

#1:= 12.7x108 russian

#2:= 12.7x99 nato

80x #1 needed to damage Humvee.

130x #1 needed to destroy Humvee.

70x #2 needed to damage Humvee.

100x #2 needed to destroy Humvee.

Now #1 is way bigger and thus stronger than #2 and still more shots are needed to achieve the same. But thats not it.

It depends on which .50cal you use !

The penetration values of the static M2 are different from the M2 mounted on the Humvee itself and the M107. Same thing for the russian .50cal - and its still not done.

Values are different if you shoot the standard Humvee or the Humvee (M2) for example. Same thing goes for the GPMGs.

The M240 performs better against the Humvee (M2) while being pretty bad against the standard Humvee. And the PKM is good against the standard Humvee and bad against the Humvee (M2).

There seems to be absoloutly NO solid ground on these values. And it is not even a bit random. Im not whining because of 10 shots difference each time... but please, have a look into this yourself and you will realize how uneven this game is.

I will provide you with a video, a rather boring one cause you have see all the shots and test being made, but for those of you who are interested, this might prove a final evidence.

[dreday 1]

Most thing i hate in ArmA vehicles is that AI ALLWAYS empties their magazines to empty trucks, hummers and such. Just today i was test playing one of my missions and whole company's advance halted because two deserted damaged vehicles, company killed enemy personel in 5 minutes and after that they spent nice 15 minutes to take out one hummer and one truck!!!

I mostly agree. However, to play the devils advocate - that behavior is not that unrealistic. In real life soldiers would pretty much keep shooting at enemy vehicles until they light up, since its very hard to tell how damaged they are from a distance. That's what the wargamers refer to as a "death clock".

Still, I tend to think that this is a bug (since OFP did not have that issue); rather than a "feature".

Peace,

DreDay

[Heavy Metal 0]

Quote[/b] ]Now #1 is way bigger and thus stronger than #2 and still more shots are needed to achieve the same. But thats not it.

It depends on which .50cal you use !

Bigger, yes.  Stronger?  Not necesairly.  Depends on pressures.

Info I have indicates that the muzzle velocity with similar weight projectiles is nearly identicle in both cartridges.  Any difference in terminal effectiveness would depend on the projectile design.  Ball<AP<APIT<RAFOUSS.

[-CS-SOBR-1st-I-R- 0]

bullet type - caliber - bullet weight - V0 m/s - Joule

[Second 0]

I mostly agree. However, to play the devils advocate - that behavior is not that unrealistic. In real life soldiers would pretty much keep shooting at enemy vehicles until they light up, since its very hard to tell how damaged they are from a distance. That's what the wargamers refer to as a "death clock".

Still, I tend to think that this is a bug (since OFP did not have that issue); rather than a "feature".

Peace,

DreDay

Yes, it's truly nice spice and even realistic feature, but it overshoots badly sometimes when it shouldn't: It's not funny when crack-level airborne-units or mountain para-militia on some assault, which success bases on speed, starts to do that.

If vehicles would be kept under fire for some time (it's clearly doesn't shoot back, so it's determed to be eliminated) or to complete destruction (to make sure that it won't get repaired and used again) depending of unit's behaviour, skill-level, speedmode or combatmode.

My problem is also that i like to play with low shooting accuracy and high spotting values, so one HMMWW can easily require thusands of bullets from long distances.

[Heatseeker 0]

I found that 1 land mine will disable most armored vehicles but not totaly kill them.

If you drive a shilka or BMP towards a land mine the vehicle will be seriously damaged, tracks disabled, turret and armor will take heavy damage and the ocupants will be injured, but they will survive.

Unfortunetly (unlike other vehicles) the damage textures only show when the vehicles are 100% destroyed.

One simple tweak that would help alot would be to reduce the damage and effective range of AT weapons.

[-CS-SOBR-1st-I-R- 0]

I found that 1 land mine will disable most armored vehicles but not totaly kill them.

If you drive a shilka or BMP towards a land mine the vehicle will be seriously damaged, tracks disabled, turret and armor will take heavy damage and the ocupants will be injured, but they will survive.

Unfortunetly (unlike other vehicles) the damage textures only show when the vehicles are 100% destroyed.

What is wrong with that mate ?

When a vehicle runs over a mine it does have to explode really... have a look at this pic:

(no idea if this was a AP or AT mine though)

Humvee run on a mine

[wolfbite 8]

....... How many mines did you expect it to take? The whole point is that the first mine destroys the vehicle... So that they don't just stop the tank fix it and get a minesweeper crew down

[Heatseeker 0]

SOBR[1st-I-R] @ June 04 2007,15:42)]

I found that 1 land mine will disable most armored vehicles but not totaly kill them.

If you drive a shilka or BMP towards a land mine the vehicle will be seriously damaged, tracks disabled, turret and armor will take heavy damage and the ocupants will be injured, but they will survive.

Unfortunetly (unlike other vehicles) the damage textures only show when the vehicles are 100% destroyed.

What is wrong with that mate ?

When a vehicle runs over a mine it does have to explode really... have a look at this pic:

(no idea if this was a AP or AT mine though)

Humvee run on a mine

An example of survivability instead of the more usual instant kill.

Used T72's and BMP-2's, not light armored cars.

Its not hard to find footage of hmmwv's.

rpg hits hmmwv 1

rpg hits hmmwv 2

Ouch , but they dont blow up and i can imagine some of ocupants surviving. In case of a M113 or Stryker chances of survival should increase.

[Wolfrug 0]

I think the point he's making is that the damage a default ArmA landmine does should be about the same a M136 or RPG should to to an armored vehicle (or, well, an APC). That way the situation dslyecxi talks about in his Tactics guide can be avoided:

Quote[/b] ]Thanks to the way ArmA models armor (which is to say, not very elaborately), armored personnel carriers tend to be a bit too vulnerable to enemy fire. It is a good idea to avoid staying mounted as passengers in them, due to the risk of a single RPG wiping out the entire vehicle, its crew, and the immediate family and close friends of everyone who was embarked on it at the time.

Regards,

Wolfrug

[Second 0]

I said this in some other thread also, but here it goes again:

AT-mines in ArmA are trackmines (altough acting like "bottomhitting" mine). They clearly have place in middle of mine where fuze is set.

"Bottomhitting" mine would be capable of taking out MBTs and IFVs. Trackmines just immobilize. BRDM and such for sure turn out to be dead twisted metal, but generally speaking tracked vehicles would just get immobilized, with more or less severe damages to tracks and trackwheels.

When speaking about MBTs i've been told that damage caused by about 9.5 kg trackmine (about 9 kg of TNT) is repairable in 30 minutes, no need to transport MBT away and only crew is needed to fix damages. In ArmA i would say that both trackmine-types are about 7-8... So basically they deal about same amount of damage (if they use TNT as explosive). then again what if those mine had additional charges under them (engineers are such smart guys): 20 kg of additional TNT + trackmine's TNT...

[Average Joe 0]

Also note that Machinegunners in light vehicles are extremely vunerable when manned, after numerous attempts the machine gunners got nailed within less then a second of enemy fire, I guess we will just have to wait for uparmoured addons right?