Tank Fire Control Systems

[USSRsniper 0]

ok I did more testing and it seems that AI suck as tank crews.... they always miss, especially T-72 it always hits above you.... no fun for AI combat... it seems AI M1A1 is better then AI controlled T-72.... No wonder why some say they can kill large number of T-72's because with this mod T-72 has very hard time hitting you, its seems impossible for them to kill you, since they can't even hit you.

[mr_centipede 31]

ok I did mroe testing and it seems that AI suck as tank crews.... they always miss, especially T-72 it always hits above you.... no fun for AI combat... it seems AI M1A1 is better then AI controlled T-72.... No wonder why some say they can kill large number of T-72's because with this mod T-72 has very hard time hitting you, its seems impossible for them to kill you, since they can't even hit you.

I guess thats why all iraqi tanks got blown up in the first gulf war... they cant hit anything with their FCS.

or maybe NWD 'sabotaged' their FCS...

okey.. enuff jokes.

still at work.. will try this when got home

[USSRsniper 0]

ok I did mroe testing and it seems that AI suck as tank crews.... they always miss, especially T-72 it always hits above you.... no fun for AI combat... it seems AI M1A1 is better then AI controlled T-72.... No wonder why some say they can kill large number of T-72's because with this mod T-72 has very hard time hitting you, its seems impossible for them to kill you, since they can't even hit you.

I guess thats why all iraqi tanks got blown up in the first gulf war... they cant hit anything with their FCS.  

or maybe NWD 'sabotaged' their FCS...  

okey.. enuff jokes.

still at work.. will try this when got home

Iraqi T-72 is downgraded piece of junk....

[Canalien 0]

Gave it a bash, absolutely love it. This is going to be supremely good by the time it gets a 1.0 release.

Made a little youtube demo video of the M1A1 smashing a few moving targets... including the money shot of an MI-17 getting knocked out of the air.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=QuQOI5P8Rfw

[Panda-PL- 0]

@Mecha Stalin

From old CAVS project (which I belive you knew very well, so treat this as just supporting your oppinion. I still remember Pzez hard working on it, would be a waste not to use these):

It was true in OFP that screening front of turret with a custom-named (not predefined like for tracks etc) selection of appropriate thickness will make low velocity round's dammage go to the total dammage as they fail to "penetrate" and high velocity rounds would pass trougth this protective layer and hitpoints would go to specific selection like tracks or turret.

It was also reported to produce some randomity.

That is because of simmultation step and kind - there are stepps between positions of projectile, which appear to be longer distance for faster projectiles giving them a chance of travelling a bit inside the tank before engine "spotts" the hit and checks the distance from nearest hitpoints.

What we've came up with was screening front of turret and hull/tracks with new selections and using the remaining, hardcoded ones on the rest of the tank to simmulate different types of kills.

Tracks would for example both be in the same left track selection and right track would be used for turret sides (middle part, to force crew to bail out), while hull would be used for rear of hull only and engine for top and rear of turret only (to simmulate ammunition exploading) ... and so on and on.

Selections not necesserly need to be where BIS wanted them and you can also define new ones, without any special "abillities" like forcing crew to bail or tank to explode and use them to screen the front.

The demo is no longer available but it was perfectly possible to have tank withstand large number of ifantry AT from front, less from sides and be immobilised by just one to the rear of hull. So it is possible.

I would just advise not using large indirect dammage - it breaks everything. Indirect dammage should only be enougth to make HEAT effective against infantry, rest of dammage should be direct.

[mechastalin 0]

I'm not familiar with CAVS much. Was it an OFP or ArmA demo?

And I agree about indirect damage.

Once Kenjis T-64 is out and I have a nice tank addon to do this work on top of I'll do a bit more looking into it and try a few different things.

[Panda-PL- 0]

I'm not familiar with CAVS much.

You repeated some of conclusions in your post, that's why I asked. Maybe make a search in OFP forums and read the last 2 or 3 pages of the discussion, it covered various ideas for modelling the lods and config.

Quote[/b] ] Was it an OFP or ArmA demo?

OFP demo models, a modiffied BIS Arbams to be precise - had the lods reworked and config changed. Not on ftp anymore but the changes were described by Przezedzieblo (sp?) in the pages I've mentioned.

I am looking forward to this T-64.

[.kju 3244]

Quote[/b] ]The demo is no longer available ...

No promises, however the file is still on my hdd AFAIK.

Would it be helpful to have. If so, please pm me.

You find more about CAVS here:

Quote[/b] ]Have you heard about the OFP CAVS project

(Common Armour Value System). Their documentation and

research is very good!

WGL 5.1 has an almost complete implementation of the system.

I can send you the configs (which are commented for the CAVS

values), if you are interested.

Przezdzieblo made us a list of MBTs designations and ammo loadouts.

Could be interesting to you as well. Check out the thread and

more could be found in the WGL 5.1 configs again.

Hope that helps.

[NonWonderDog 0]

@ Oct. 18 2007,04:55)]I would just advise not using large indirect dammage - it breaks everything. Indirect dammage should only be enougth to make HEAT effective against infantry, rest of dammage should be direct.

Yeah, but that's the rub. MPAT shells need to be able to destroy a helicopter with a proximity detonation. (It took a bit of work, but my proximity shells will actually detonate whenever they are less than five meters from the edge of a vehicle or building's bounding box, not the vehicle center. Just in case anyone was wondering. They currently trigger even if the target is directly in front of the shell, but I have a plan to fix that.)

Because of this, I've boosted indirect damage up to ~80-150 for high explosive shells, and reduced the indirect damage radii to compensate. I did a lot of testing when I did this, and my values work pretty well with default armor settings. I've done exactly what you suggest for HEAT shells, but I probably went too far. I don't know how effective they should be against infantry, but they perform very poorly now.

The invisible spaced armor is a great idea, and might let me boost HEF and OR damage high enough to rubble buildings. Thanks to Synide, we're very close to being able to edit the default BIS tanks. First order of business once it works right is to fix the gunnerview positions, but I'll try the invisible appliqué armor as well.

This mod shouldn't so adversely impact AI accuracy. In fact, it shouldn't do anything to the AI at all. AI tanks will need a huge accuracy increase so they can compete with the player, and I need to check that AI T-72s are properly firing APFSDS rounds at tanks, but they should be no worse than they were before.

Actually, if AI T-72s are firing high... It's possible that they expect the turret to move faster than it does. The default turrets all moved at the same speed, which was about the speed of an M3 Bradley turret. I've reduced the M1A1 and T-72 turret traverse and elevation rates--in the case of the T-72, I've reduced the elevation rate by 95%. These are the real speeds, so I really hope they don't cause problems I can't fix.

[clownbassie 0]

I have the following error line when I start ArmA : No entry 'bin\config.cpp/cfgmodels.default'.

http://img81.imageshack.us/img81/7119/vbld1me9.jpg

Than, when I enter my tank as a gunner I don't have that 'scope vieuw'

http://img218.imageshack.us/img218/1395/vbld2ag7.jpg

http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/9227/vbld3ld7.jpg

My steps:

1: I downloaded the file

2: unpacked it

3: wrote the target line; @NWD_TankFCS

What did i do wrong

[343rdBadger 0]

I have the following error line when I start ArmA : No entry 'bin\config.cpp/cfgmodels.default'.

http://img81.imageshack.us/img81/7119/vbld1me9.jpg

Than, when I enter my tank as a gunner I don't have that 'scope vieuw'

http://img218.imageshack.us/img218/1395/vbld2ag7.jpg

http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/9227/vbld3ld7.jpg

My steps:

1: I downloaded the file

2: unpacked it

3: wrote the target line; @NWD_TankFCS

What did i do wrong

Are you using arma extreme?..if you are the optics won't show,this mod release version is only set up for default BIS tanks.

[Panda-PL- 0]

MPAT shells need to be able to destroy a helicopter with a proximity detonation.  (It took a bit of work, but my proximity shells will actually detonate whenever they are less than five meters from the edge of a vehicle or building's bounding box, not the vehicle center.  Just in case anyone was wondering.    They currently trigger even if the target is directly in front of the shell, but I have a plan to fix that.)

My guess is that BIS made the armour of helicopters and tanks too close in values then...

No way to fix it unless you were to edit every unit in the game.

If your proximity detonation was done by a script there wouldn't be a problem (you'd just use a different shell for detonation on altitudes), but I expect you've changed projectile model's lods to keep this "scriptless".

The possible result is - against a tank "screened" like described - that these MPAT rounds will take less hits for a kill because they will be able to deal dammage to the rear/top hitpoints of the tank while hitting front.

Well, you can also make a script to record position of projectile and the moment it dissapears check around the place and if there is any Air type object spawn a second explosion. That would however need to bew ran on server.

[343rdBadger 0]

I also noticed that in the editor while doing a test run,when engageing 3 M1A1's with T-72,All the abrams had their barrels pointing in the air and wouldn't engage me...I drove right up to them and blasted them at point blank range,they never fired a shot.It was like they couldn't lower their barrels???I then disabled the mod, re-ran the test and all was normal.What would cause them to be looking into the sky like that?The really strange thing though is that when using the mod with a pre built mission,the abrams were acting as they should.I wonder if it has to do with having a friendly AI on the map??hmmm..I think I'll re-do the test,only this time have a "wingman" to see if the outcome changes.

Nope...same thing with a wingman.

[NonWonderDog 0]

@ Oct. 18 2007,14:06)]

MPAT shells need to be able to destroy a helicopter with a proximity detonation. (It took a bit of work, but my proximity shells will actually detonate whenever they are less than five meters from the edge of a vehicle or building's bounding box, not the vehicle center. Just in case anyone was wondering. They currently trigger even if the target is directly in front of the shell, but I have a plan to fix that.)

My guess is that BIS made the armour of helicopters and tanks too close in values then...

No way to fix it unless you were to edit every unit in the game.

If your proximity detonation was done by a script there wouldn't be a problem (you'd just use a different shell for detonation on altitudes), but I expect you've changed projectile model's lods to keep this "scriptless".

The possible result is - against a tank "screened" like described - that these MPAT rounds will take less hits for a kill because they will be able to deal dammage to the rear/top hitpoints of the tank while hitting front.

Well, you can also make a script to record position of projectile and the moment it dissapears check around the place and if there is any Air type object spawn a second explosion. That would however need to bew ran on server.

Nope, the collision models of shells are completely ignored by the game. I have to use a script for proximity detonation.

What I do is call nearObjects for everything with 10x the shell's proximity range (defined in the config). Then I call boundingBox on each found object, and I compare the shell position to the extremes of the bounding box. It's not perfect, and shells can explode a bit too far from helicopters sometimes, but it's pretty good. I think I'll halve the x and forward y boundaries for helicopters in the next version so it's not triggered by the rotor blades.

When I detect an object in proximity range, I spawn an invisible bird right on top of the shell. The shell hits the bird, and it explodes. (This always works in SP. I have no idea about MP.) I don't delete the shell or anything, because then the player who fired it wouldn't get credit for the kill.

I really want to keep it this way. I don't want to fake it with special high damage shells for proximity detonation, when the shell should be able to do all the damage it needs to on its own.

It still takes a lot of 150 damage hits to kill a tank, so it might not be too bad. You should be able to mission kill a tank with enough HE anyway.

I'll take a look at the AI. All of that shouldn't be happening.

Allright, AI tanks have some problems with the new ammo. In particular, T-72s aim high whenever they fire HE. They don't switch to APFSDS to fire at tanks, either. Sometimes they fire shells at themselves . Still looking into it...but I think I've found a bug in ArmA. I think it's silently throwing a divide by zero error if the required turret traverse or elevation rates are faster than is possible. As a result, the gun elevation is being set to [NULL], the gun graphically moves to max elevation, and any round fired will land on the ground under the tank. This happens a lot, because the T-72 turret is painfully slow.

I just found that it takes less than 600 rounds of 7.62x51 ball to kill a T-72, and I shudder to think how well 7.62x54R API does. I guess I'll have to fix the tank hitpoints.

I might be able to script the commander's position to allow you to call out ammo types to be automatically loaded, since the commander is responsible for loading each round in the gun . There is a function that loads a specific ammo type, but it's very undocumented and I don't think anyone has successfully gotten it to work....and I can't get it to work either. Just use space+R to reload, space+F to change weapons, and the orders menu to change ammo types.

[kevb0 0]

I've been messing around with this addon for a few hours now, and it's really fantastic! Keep up the great work, NWD. You're continually raising the bar.

Do you have any plans for adding this system to helicopters? With some of the large islands with huge Viewdistances, it'd be really helpful I bet.

[NonWonderDog 0]

Stupid question, but what color is the smoke from red phosphorus grenades? Red? White? It's gotta be white, right?

If I knew more about the helicopters, I'd try to add this to the helicopters. I don't have any clue what the displays look like, so I can't.

[Canalien 0]

Yep it's white.

Now for my own stupid question... what's the purpose of the non-proximity fuzed MPAT shell?

[NonWonderDog 0]

MPAT is the new US Army HEAT shell. In fact, it's official designation is M830A1 HEAT-MP-T. These are intended to replace M830 HEAT-MP-T shells (which aren't really multi-purpose, despite the "MP").

Really, though... MPAT is not a very sane round. It's a high-velocity, subcaliber, high explosive round that uses it's small explosive capacity for both a shaped charge and a radial fragmentation blast. You tell me what it's for.

I think US tanks in Iraq right now are loaded with something like 6 MPAT, 5 HEAT, and 6 HE-OR. That's obviously a special case, though, and the standard loadout for a tank battle would be 12+12+3 APFSDS and 5+5+3 MPAT (that's "Ready"+"Semi-Ready"+"Stowed"). This is the default loadout in this mod, except that every round is ready. I might simulate the time it takes to move rounds up from the hull, but I don't think it's worth it.

M830 HEAT-MP-T and M908 HE-OR-T are present in the data files, if you want them. M830 HEAT is much more effective than M830A1 against tanks (but neither is spectacular), but much less effective against infantry. M908 is weird, in that it's just an MPAT round with the proximity sensor replaced with a steel cap. It's made to rubble buildings. (HE-OR doesn't actually work yet, because I forgot to add it to the magazine list...)

The magazine names are:

120mmSABOT_M1A2

120mmMPAT_M1A2

120mmHEAT_M1A2

120mmOR_M1A2

125mmHE_T72

125mmHEAT_T72

125mmSABOT_T72

125mmATGM_T72

Each is a single round. If you want to, you can customize your ammo loadout with lots of "removeMagazine" and "addMagazine" callouts.

[DarthRazorback 0]

This is an awesome mod... one of my favorite of all the ArmA mods. I can't wait for the updates. As a longtime Steel Beasts player, I want to snuggle this mod and give it baby bunny kisses.

[Edge 2]

This mod is truly one of the most impressive Arma additions I've seen so far, although there are still some issues.

Just a question - NonWonderDog, may you please name what other addons are needed and specify how to set them up? The function is there (I suppose), but I didn't see a complete optics view yet.

[clownbassie 0]

I have the following error line when I start ArmA : No entry 'bin\config.cpp/cfgmodels.default'.

http://img81.imageshack.us/img81/7119/vbld1me9.jpg

Than, when I enter my tank as a gunner I don't have that 'scope vieuw'

http://img218.imageshack.us/img218/1395/vbld2ag7.jpg

http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/9227/vbld3ld7.jpg

My steps:

1: I downloaded the file

2: unpacked it

3: wrote the target line; @NWD_TankFCS

What did i do wrong

Are you using arma extreme?..if you are the optics won't show,this mod release version is only set up for default BIS tanks.

I don't know what you mean with Arma extreme?

I don't have any tank addons. Just the Arma version 1.08

[ricnunes 0]

I also noticed that in the editor while doing a test run,when engageing 3 M1A1's with T-72,All the abrams had their barrels pointing in the air and wouldn't engage me...I drove right up to them and blasted them at point blank range,they never fired a shot.It was like they couldn't lower their barrels???I then disabled the mod, re-ran the test and all was normal.What would cause them to be looking into the sky like that?The really strange thing though is that when using the mod with a pre built mission,the abrams were acting as they should.I wonder if it has to do with having a friendly AI on the map??hmmm..I think I'll re-do the test,only this time have a "wingman" to see if the outcome changes.

Nope...same thing with a wingman.

I have the exact same problems.

But and by the way and apart from the problems (afterall this addon is still in development) this is perhaps the most awesome addon that I've seen so far in ArmA!

[Canalien 0]

Still unclear as to what all the different FCS modes actually do... aside from the MPAT Proximity fuze, which is obvious...

What exactly is the difference between the APFSDS, HEAT and regualr MPAT FCS modes? I seem to be able to use any of the four modes (excluding the coax obviously) with either type of shell... nothing seems to be mutually exclusive. I can load APFSDS rounds for example, select the MPAT (Proximity) FCS mode and still hit choppers. The other three modes seem to pretty much do exactly the same thing no matter what shell type you load. I can get the same results hitting targets using the appropriate shell without having to switch between FCS modes.

Also, I find that I don't have to select or reload the shells manually every time I fire as indicated in the original post... It just does it automatically as per vanilla.

early beta bugs or am i doing something wrong here?

Also, might we see an M1028 Canister round in the future?

[343rdBadger 0]

This is an awesome mod... one of my favorite of all the ArmA mods.  I can't wait for the updates.  As a longtime Steel Beasts player, I want to snuggle this mod and give it baby bunny kisses.

I laughed and coffee came out my nose

[Flat!!! 0]

This is an awesome mod... one of my favorite of all the ArmA mods. I can't wait for the updates. As a longtime Steel Beasts player, I want to snuggle this mod and give it baby bunny kisses.

I laughed and coffee came out my nose

Seriously I don't really see the funny part. I must say I love it. Yeah I know the T72's are F'ed but using this against BMP's seriously Rocks hard

@NonWonderDog

Is there any way you can disable the mod for the AI. I don't think they will ever do it properly unless you tell them with a script exactly what to do.