High artillery round flight times

[Preacher1974 0]

Does anyone else think that the artillery round flight times are very high? I've been doing some testing and to shoot a round halfway across the map it can take 4-5 minutes for the round to come down. I thought in real life that artillery operators can use different charge strengths, whereas ArmA 2 seems to have only one which puts the shells in orbit before coming down.

[frederf 0]

I don't know about the MLRS but the D30/M109 howitzers as well as all the mortars use various charges for "range windows. I don't know where the muzzle velocity is coded, round? magazine? weapon? vehicle? You'd need several weapons or magazines and a script to make sure the AI used the right one. It's possible for sure to code but it took BIS 11 years to get some reasonable indirect fires going... I don't know how keen they'll be on making it more complex for fear of alienating the dumb people with money crowd.

The old goof with ArmA1 high fired projectiles is that it didn't "weathervane" into the path so it would always come down sideways and it didn't handle the ballistics of the instantaneous path direction significantly different from the muzzle direction. You'd get D30 shots that got very "floaty" once the path and the original muzzle direction got far apart, which would make for some very long hang times.

I wonder how ArmA2 handles it.

[myshaak 0]

I am of course no expert programmer, but wouldn't it be possible to create a system for mortars that is simmilar (don't laugh now ;)) to Worms or Scorched Earth?

It could be pretty much the same as it is now, but there would need to be a sevaral kinds of shells for differet "power" settings. Before firing the game would just use the shell with the lowest possible "power" settings and calculate the balistic flight path for reaching the target. If it hits the terrain before it reaches the target it would chose the shell with higher "power" settings, until the flight path is OK.

If the angles of impact are too sharp, there could be some range limitations implemented for each shell, for example: if the target is 1km away, the game wouldn't allow AI to shoot with "20% power" rounds because it would hit the target with an angle of 15°, but force it to use a round with "40% power" round with a greater elevation and thus hitting the target with an angle of 60°, which is acceptable.

I hope what I wrote is understandable (I am not a native english speaker) and not just plain stupid as well (no excuse for that :o)

[frederf 0]

The more sophisticated artillery calculator does just that. You don't even need to pre-calculate the trajectory fully (CPU intensive) to get which charges are in an appropriate. A table of (charge# | min range | max range) would be fine to helping to decide which charge# to select.

On mortars, the charges are little solid propellant doughnuts on the back half of the mortar round. You simply remove or break off extra charges until you have the correct charge. The drill is you remove them from the ammo storage box, arm the fuses, set the charges, and array them nicely by the tube for firing.

It would be simple for there to be several ammo or magazine types with various muzzle speeds and a script to replace the mortarMagazineCharge6's in the unit's ammo reserve with mortarMagazineCharge3 (example) and then the fire mission can commence.

[CarlGustaffa 4]

4-5 minutes sounds like a lot though, even if they currently only use high angle trajectories. Does Arma2 use different charges at all?

[headspace 0]

I'd be *extremely* surprised if it took that long. Generally, it's going to take closer to 2 minutes at the longest ranges. Please time it from between when you hear "Shot", which is when the first round is shot, and "Splash" which is notification from the FDC that your rounds are a few seconds out.

[max power 21]

I am of course no expert programmer, but wouldn't it be possible to create a system for mortars that is simmilar (don't laugh now ;)) to Worms or Scorched Earth?

Unfortunately diggers aren't supported and I think napalm would be a trick but i think you could do an alright funky bomb- just without the craters.

[CarlGustaffa 4]

It does take a while though. Don't expect 10-20 second flight times all the time, especially if they use only one (the greatest) charge. Here is a regimental DPICM mission using RAPs, to illustrate flight time.

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Oh, don't ever expect this to happen in a 'request immediate fire support on this grid' missions :) This is fire support (planned missions) on a whole different level.

[frederf 0]

Jesus that is a a large number of rounds. That was 155mm howitzer shoot? My experience with mortar ballistics is a flight time of about 25 to 35seconds. I'm sure the 120mm mortars get closer to 50sec flight time.

[Preacher1974 0]

I'd be *extremely* surprised if it took that long. Generally, it's going to take closer to 2 minutes at the longest ranges. Please time it from between when you hear "Shot", which is when the first round is shot, and "Splash" which is notification from the FDC that your rounds are a few seconds out.

I've used a stopwatch to time it, and confirmed that the artillery battery fires pretty much immediately after I trigger them. I have been increasing the game time to 4x whilst I've been waiting (and waiting over a minute in 4x equates to over 4 minutes flight time). Unless there is a bug where the artillery round is not subject to the accelerated game time - I'll do another test in real-time.

Has anyone else actually done some testing and experienced the same result?

[Scrub 0]

Unfortunately diggers aren't supported and I think napalm would be a trick but i think you could do an alright funky bomb- just without the craters.

When I first heard of the arty being ingame, I thought of this mod. Shields, rollers, and of course MIRVs. FO's would have to find the enemy and call in direction, angle, and power. Could be incredibly fun. :)

[frederf 0]

Hmm, might be best to test without time acceleration.

[myshaak 0]

Unfortunately diggers aren't supported and I think napalm would be a trick but i think you could do an alright funky bomb- just without the craters.

Oh yeah, those were the days...

Still, I'd prefer an ability to launch a "ton of dirt" bomb :cool:

[Preacher1974 0]

I figured it out - I was doing my testing on my laptop. when I tested from my gaming rig timing was around 50 seconds, not 4-5 minutes. The flight time must be dependent on a minimum CPU speed. Argh!

[dslyecxi 23]

Preacher;1308116']I figured it out - I was doing my testing on my laptop. when I tested from my gaming rig timing was around 50 seconds' date=' not 4-5 minutes. The flight time must be dependent on a minimum CPU speed. Argh![/quote']

You mentioned time acceleration. If you use time acceleration and your system cannot handle running the game at 4x, it will actually end up running at less than that speed.

In short - time accel is completely unreliable insofar as timing goes (when time accel > 1).

[doom_sharpe 10]

Guys please help me, where the hell can i find the muzzle velocities of rounds with different charges? I have looked everywhere!