Modified Tank Warfare

[SeXyWombat 0]

ArmA vehicle combat is pretty arcade'ish due to HP system and whatnot.

Ok, here's the idea:

Let's change armored vehicle configs setting their HP values really high (so that no hit will damage the vehicle using the BIS system). Let's change ammo configs so that they have very different damage values to identify the ammo type when the vehicle is hit using the "dammaged" eventHandler.

When the vehicle is hit, we use a script to "roll a dice" in a table corresponding to the ammo used, vehicle selection and type of vehicle we get from the EH to determine the effects. That way we could get all the realistic sorts of results, ranging from ricochet/no effect through killed/wounded crew members and/or mobility kill to ammo explosion.

Since my ArmA editing knowledge is somewhat limited in some of the required fields I need your help.

1)

Is there a way to damage a specific section of the vehicle through a script? Like setdammage directly to engine/main gun etc.

2)

How exactly does the BIS vehicle damage model work? Is the damage inflicted by a given type of ammo a constant, randomly generated or something else?

3)

Are there any good tutorials on editing armor/HP/ammo values? Links would be very much appreciated.

And finally

4)

Is there any reason why this idea would not work?

Thanks in advance.

[SeXyWombat 0]

Ok, I did manage to get some (well, even more than "some") progress going, but there's a problem. Every time I fire a round (even like NWD M289A2 SABOT) into an NWD M1A1 tank, multiple selections are hit (as registered by "dammaged" eventHandler), and sometimes a single selection is hit multiple times (by a single round !. One of these selections is almost always left track or right track (or both). While I can live with almost every strong HE round causing a mobility kill and sometimes weapon damage (which is somewhat realistic and exactly what happens right now), I'd rather get SABOT rounds to work like they should - ie. inflicting a lot of damage on a single selection.

The question is: how do I change weapon/ammo config to make it happen (yes, I do know about indirectHit and indirectHitRange and no, it's not working)? If it can't be done like this, is there a possible scripting workaround?

It'd be nice to get some help, because the way this system works right now, there's no more tanks blowing up, and somewhat realistic damage, but way too many mobility and/or weapon kills.

Thanks in advance.

[The_Captain 0]

NWD's tank FCS thread has a lot of information on how the vehicle damage system works.

In short, even weapons without an indirectHit do damage to multiple selections on a target. This has to do with the proximity of the memorypoints on the model and how BIS coded the hit system. (So, your sabot will pretty much always hurt engine, hull, and tracks. Bleh.). NWD 'fixed' this by putting the critical ones under the tank so they wouldn't be hit by stray shots, but this had the unfortunate effect of making tanks quite vulnerable to mines. I think damage is calculated by the weapon's damage value and speed at time of impact.

As an aside, with how powerful most rounds are in arma, I think armor will probably get one shot killed by most dedicated anti tank weapons regardless of a 'proper' armor/damage system. A full angle simulation would probably not be much use as sabots and heats will probably punch nicely through vehicle armor at most (but not all) angles anyway.

(Most annoying to me about Arma armored combat is not the HP simulation (I can live with that), but how crew bail out of vehicles when only mobility killed. There have been a few fixes floating around for that, including one I wrote myself for personal use. That one fix alone greatly improves arma's armored warfare, as vehicles need to be actually killed to be disabled.)

the CAVS (common armor value system) project was a nice way of standardizing vehicle armor/at Weapons in OFP and it has carried over to some Arma projects. It had config values and a way of computing HP from a number of different factors for people to use when creating new vehicles/modding old ones. You can search for CAVS in google and get information about it.

As to your original suggestion, you could probably detect which selection was hit by which took the "most" damage and then apply some random effects: set tank on fire, kill crew, disable engine, disable gun, cook off ammo, etc. However you can't manually damage arma selections.

[SeXyWombat 0]

I managed to so to speak say goodbye to default BIS system to a large extent. No more one shot kills. I modified armor value to a very high number, while setting armor value to specific selections at values like 0.02/0.01. That way parts that make the tank go boom, like engine and hull require 5 M289A2 SABOT hits and 10+ T-72 SABOT (whatever was its name ;p) to go. I run a script, that has "thickness" values for parts like front/side/rear/turret (only one value for a turret possible until I find a better way) and checks them against the penetration of any attacking round capable of hurting the tank. It it doesn't penetrate - well, tough luck, no effect. If it does penetrate, there's a critical hit (call to a tank specific script, which chooses between crew kills, engine destruction, weapon system failures etc. based on selection that was penetrated, ammunition used and a "dice roll"). The problem is that due to multiple selections being affected by each round, and the less critical selections relying on BIS system (cause it's not so bad when it works with the turret, gun and tracks alone) we get a "track destroyed" mobility kill when a turret is hit by a powerful SABOT round. I'd love to root out this imperfection, but even if there's no way to do this, this system is already producing some very nice results. Nevertheless, the multiple selections problem messes a little with the critical hit system, so please elaborate on how can I get the "most dammaged selection" out of the game in a script - that would really help. Anyway, if there are no huge bumps hiding on the road ahead, we might very well finally be getting a more realistic tank warfare system.

[MehMan 0]

how are you taking care of compatibility with addons? How's does it preform in MPP?

[SeXyWombat 0]

Addons will have to be modified to work with the system, but the process is not going to be very complicated (nevertheless, a little time consuming). The initial pack will include some quality addons modified to work with the system if I get permissions from authors.

MP compatibility will not be tested before the first release. If it works, it works - if not, I may try to do something about it later. No guarantees here.

[MehMan 0]

Addons will have to be modified to work with the system

This is the inherent problem with creating something somewhat simple in idea but not so effective in practice. If it were a pure ArmA side change, as in, changing the ArmA tanks purely. Having to change addons just limits the use and makes things over complicated.

[canukausiuka 1]

Regardless, if he gets it to work, people could implement it. I've tried to do something similar w/ I44's tanks, but w/ only mixed success. Still better than the native engine, but not as robust as I'd like.

[SeXyWombat 0]

It's not like there are tons of tank addons and tank types taking part in combat irl anyway. And I hope that each release is going to include the best tank addons the community has produced - but that just depends on getting the permissions.

[MehMan 0]

Not just tank types, but AT weapons . There are a ton of those. Every nation nearly has it's own.

[SeXyWombat 0]

Yeah, but since incorporating it is going to be like adding 2 lines to the script I don't believe it's an issue really. If it's important and released it's probably going to be there.

[MehMan 0]

Hmm, maybe it can be an extended eventhandler init code addition? XEH has become a wide used standard.