Some of those less than awsome ArmA2 features

[-)rStrangelove 0]

:rolleyes:The game is not perfect *SHOCK* - in fact, nothing on Earth is. Get over it & enjoy playing the game until the mod tools & tutorials are out.

[Lauxman 10]

"North American political propaganda" makes the best war games out there, cause we kick some major ass! America, **** yeah!

I demand a mission where I get to land on a battleship and kill 3 terrorists on a boat simultaneously as a lone SEAL Team Six sniper in the dark with a blindfold on to save a sexy female hostage.

[MehMan 0]

Unfortunately there is no blackblast displayed behind the AT-Weapons and you won't be injured standing behind a M136, RPG...

That's probably very much intentional. Imagine the ammount of AI on AI deaths because the AI wouldn't know they shouldn't be behind somebody firing an m136 or the like. There's enough AI on AI fragticide as it is.

[froggyluv 2136]

I never understood why all vehicles blow/burn? Wouldn't it be easy enough to at least make it random?

Also, it doesn't seem like there's much if any collateral damage from the explosion. I watched a javelin take out a UAZ, and the occupants simply jumped out, looked totally normal, stood next to the burning wreck and returned fire.

[LockDOwn 0]

First off, is the hitpoint system. I don't mind hitpoints, there's no other way to portray damage or calculate damage other than hitpoints.

You must have never played www.battlegroundeurope.com

It is THE biggest war sim that takes place during the early years of WWII. Made by a very small company but has been going strong for over 8 years!

They are the ONLY developers I know that actually use a true ballistic system. They calculate different rounds from their size, velocity penetration, fragmentation as well as EACH unit have armor thickness in all its areas as they were in WWII. Which means only certain rounds will penetrate certain armor. Even after that, CRS still modeled crews and fuel lines, oil, tracks, ammo etc.. within each vehicle that can be individually knocked out.

So it can be done. And once you play a game that has a system like this, you will get bored of games that use a 'hit point' system very quickly.

---------- Post added at 06:07 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:06 PM ----------

I'm not sure if this is an impression post or suggestion or just a general rant, but I think it might be worth a topic of it's own.

What I mind is the one-size-fits-all solutions that have been present in this engine since OFP. They're not huge gamebreakers, but enough to make me go ugh, because I've seen far simpler games with better solutions. I'm aware that ArmA2 is all about infantry but most of what I'm about to say does touch the infantry aspect.

First off, is the hitpoint system. I don't mind hitpoints, there's no other way to portray damage or calculate damage other than hitpoints. What I mind is the implementation. There are simply not enough variables in play. I can blow up tanks with an M249. to be precise I tried to blow up the T72, it took 1000 M249 rounds. No huge deal you might say. You'll never have a chance to take 1000 shots at a T72(took nearly twice that much for the BRDM2). True, that'll almost never happen. But the problem lies with a tank that takes a hit, or gets some splash damage from a bomb. It's a bit damaged but still running. Lets say you have somebody with an M249 and he fires a few shots at a tank. He hits a track that's borderline damaged and it gets to the red/yellow state where the AI crew bails out. That's possible. So you get an abandoned tank from an M249 shot.

next up is the generic blow up/on fire thing. It's a small niggly bit. But still, everything blows up. Full of fuel they blow up, empty they catch fire. Why I don't know. I like the HMMW, how it gets the shot up texture when you fire upon it. Very nice, but if you continue firing it either blows up or turns black and catches fire. Not really awsome. I know it's a way of conveying the message that the vehicle is knocked out for sure, but there are better ways. The game should distinguish between small arms destruction and if a rocket or bomb was the cause of destruction. Also, tanks always blow up or start burning. I wish it wasn't always so. The crew abandoning it is great, but they do that too soon and expose themselves. Destroyed tanks shouldn't always blow up or burn. A good example is the Liberation 41 mod for OFP. The tank combat there was amazing. When tanks got destroyed they didn't always blow up or start burning. They went through some stages and slowly after some minutes perhaps blew up. Or it was a bit random. But in any case, it was brilliant because you had knocked out tanks on the battlefield, but not a million burning shells. It was really impressive.

Now lets look at a much simpler game called C&C Generals. I used to mod this game and it had very handy things for armour. You could define different armour values for each weapon type. Granted the game only had a few different weapon types(smallarms, gattling gun, rocket, shell, and I think bomb) but you could define armour values for each of these. You could make tanks like tanks, small arms couldn't touch them. Along with that you could define a destroyed FX for each of these weapon types. By default the armour values for tanks against small arms was around 50%. So infantry could destroy a tank if you crowded them and they fired on it and the tank didn't run over all your men. But when it got destroyed it didn't blow up. You could define what kind of FX happens when small arms destroy it. Brilliant!

So you could define what happens to vehicles when you destroy them with different weapons and if those weapons can actually do any damage to it. And that's from a 2003 RTS with a rather shitty engine.

One other small issue is the wheeled vehicles and optics zoom. You cannot have a fixed zoom like in a tank or any other vehicle, but you need to hold the zoom key in order to have the optics zoomed. And that means you only have two zoom levels compared to the tracked vehicles zoom where you can set it at the depth you like. Pretty annoying.

I've mentioned this before, but I don't think I can do any harm if I say it again.

All very valid points that are well said.

Edited June 17, 2009 by LockDOwn

[Scrub 0]

That's probably very much intentional. Imagine the ammount of AI on AI deaths because the AI wouldn't know they shouldn't be behind somebody firing an m136 or the like. There's enough AI on AI fragticide as it is.

Could mod in a sequence: shout 'Clear!' or whatever, and at the same time change the geo/fire, whatever, lod of the AT to an invisible area covering the effect, so the AI know to clear the area. Fire when cleared. AAaaa, yeah, I'll keep that in mind for the A:M-D thread. ;)

Edit: Missed the point of the post. What little thing gets me, is the coastline when looking with binocs, gets all jaggey on the textures. Didn't clear up for the 10 min I was directing fire in pustilla during the campaign. Most likely be adjusted in time. But got my goat then.

Edited June 16, 2009 by Scrub

[S!fkaIaC 10]

ArmA is foremost an infantry sim, everything else is very simplified. We can forget a complex armor/penetration engine, with proper warhead simulation and interaction with armor. If you go this way, you need first implement a similar system for the infantry part (as it is an infantry sim), internal organ dmg, limbs dysfunction… I think that is really unlikely to happen.

Well, body model could be improved too, but still, infantry is using in their AT weapons also very specialized warheads for different targets with very different aiming and tracking systems which can´t be simulated in a proper way with the current engine.

You don’t need complex simulation. Penetration + dmg allows you to tell ‘this armor is vulnerable to this type of ammunition’, ‘this ammunition is useless against type of armor’. Which is a simplification I think is acceptable

Errm -wrong, and I am fed up to explain 1000 times why.

Unfortunately there is no blackblast displayed behind the AT-Weapons and you won't be injured standing behind a M136, RPG...

WGL ACE had/has such a modul, dealing with blast in general, was possible to apply that to all weapons where necessary. AT weapons, MBTs were among if I remeber correctly. Edited June 16, 2009 by S!fkaIaC

[frederf 0]

But just damage + penetration is not sufficient to simulate modern ammo + armour.

You can not simulate:

- tandem warheads and related countermeasures

- layered + active armour and their effect to different ammo types

- difference when hitting from different angle (less diff to HE, more difference for kinetic rounds)

I respectfully disagree. If a single warhead has dmg=50 and the tandem warehead has dmg=90, then perhaps the counter measure-covered piece of armor has armor=75. Throw a cosine function in to the dmg applied to handle angle with a kinetic class of ammo.

You speak of "simulate" as if it were true or false which is a poor manner of thinking. Simulate is a measure of to what degree. To be so staunchly against any improvement just because simulation will not reach perfect shows a lack of understanding or forward thinking.

I think that the 3 issues discussed by the OP could enjoy minimal-effort improvements that would reap large benefits.

1. Simple dmg threshold-based armor
   
2. Ability for vehicles to reach damage=1 without catastrophic destruction based on situation
   
3. Weapon optics that can be limited to discrete FOV levels
   

[Lauxman 10]

Its less than awsome that they wont release a demo.

Someone call the whaaaambulance.

I'd love realistic armor damage in Arma, but even in games with realistic armor modeled, very few boil down to anything but a few basic tactics. I'd much rather have them focus on the infantry aspect of the game, which is the dominant focus.

[usmc123 1]

I am waiting for the demo and europe release so i dont have enough info to analize the strong or weak features of the game, but i have read so far the setting and the "lore" of the game...an american "razor team" comes to save the world...ok.

Well, i know bohemia interactive sells software (VBS etc) for US army and other NATO forces.. and that means they will never make a realistic game (i dont mean about game mechanics),the history will be all about north american political propaganda.

Yes i care about the history and campaign lore and for me the argument of games is one of their strongest points , and i find very unrealistic most of the war games because they can´t bite the hand that give them food.

I will have to play throgh the campaign to see how develops but i am not expecting real content there, sci-fi games are more realistic these days, in that sense.

So that is for me the less than awesome arma 2 feature.

They supply VBS to a multitude of other countries. While I think the Razor Team idea was a little off base from what I've played you don't kill millions of people in the campaign. I probably killed about 20 people in the first mission. If I went through a level of Call of Duty I probably would have killed a couple hundred in the first mission.

Did you even play Arma I? Did you ever play VBS? Both games are totally different. ArmA is geared toward a gamer audience, while VBS is a training tool for the U.S. Military, the Australian Military, and the UK military, among others.

Your claims of U.S. propaganda are ridiculous, Bohemia Interactive is based in the Czech Republic, they are a ways away from the United States. I don't see how they can be pressured into American Propaganda if they are not even signed on to an American Publisher yet (Besides Steam which is worldwide and strictly Downloadable). I don't know of any games that are propaganda for the United States. The U.S. government does not develop games. Turning Point is a game where the U.S. is in Ruins, Fallout as well, both made by American producers. The Call of Duty franchise features different nations in every game, in each game all of the nations you play as are glorified. In Call of Duty 4 the Marines are nuked, U.S. propaganda eh?

Not to stir things up but really, what is your beef with the United States? Why are we the nation people love to hate?

Edited June 17, 2009 by usmc123

[An Fiach 10]

You must have never played www.battlegroundeurope.com

It is a war sim that takes place during the early years of WWII. Made by a very small company but has been going strong for over 8 years!

They are the ONLY developers I know that actually use a true ballistic system. They calculate different rounds from their size, velocity penetration, fragmentation as well as EACH unit have armor thickness in all its areas as they were in WWII. Which means only certain rounds will penetrate certain armor. Even after that, CRS still modeled crews and fuel lines, oil, tracks, ammo etc.. within each vehicle that can be individually knocked out.

So it can be done. And once you play a game that has a system like this, you will get bored of games that use a 'hit point' system very quickly.

---------- Post added at 06:07 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:06 PM ----------

All very valid points that are well said.

:butbut: are you stalking me?

[76 0]

Another issues I have is the jump key. it's rather inconvinent because it immobilises you and you can only go over small walls. A context sensitive double tap would be nice. Lets say you come up to a wall and you want to go over it. Instead of pressing a seperate key for an action that only happens at certain moments you double tap the forward key and voila you're climbing over that wall. some games have that for getting over obstacles, so you don't jump, but when you get up to an obstacle, you double tap the forward key. I think it's a bit smoother than having a single key for exactly one single action.

I have binded my 'jump' key to '2xC' (stand up key) so I just double tap 'C'....

[frederf 0]

I like the way you think 76! I just might use that keybind myself. Good tip.

[LockDOwn 0]

:butbut: are you stalking me?

I can't quit you!

[MehMan 0]

I have binded my 'jump' key to '2xC' (stand up key) so I just double tap 'C'....

I never even thought of that. I forgot that you can change all the keys DOH! Thanks for the tip. Now I'm the biggest ass around.

You must have never played www.battlegroundeurope.com

It is THE biggest war sim that takes place during the early years of WWII. Made by a very small company but has been going strong for over 8 years!

They are the ONLY developers I know that actually use a true ballistic system. They calculate different rounds from their size, velocity penetration, fragmentation as well as EACH unit have armor thickness in all its areas as they were in WWII. Which means only certain rounds will penetrate certain armor. Even after that, CRS still modeled crews and fuel lines, oil, tracks, ammo etc.. within each vehicle that can be individually knocked out.

So it can be done. And once you play a game that has a system like this, you will get bored of games that use a 'hit point' system very quickly.

The only problem with WWIIO is that it's very complex and not only that, it limits you to one thing at a time. So you can only drive a tank or fly a plane or be a soldier. You don't get the same variety as you get in ArmA2. ArmA2 is more of a pickup and play type of game, compared to WWIIO where you have to read a manual before you start figuring out what all the knobs do. The reward is great but I don't like it. I like to see ArmA2 as between the hardcore BGE style and a pickup and play BF2-esque shooter.

That system is great, but too complex. A simplification of it would be great. We already have directional armour and we have key tank components marked and can be disabled. Now we just need a few more variables so we can mix things up.

[An Fiach 10]

BGE isn't all that complex, just different, much like ArmA is, they both take time to get used to. Also they are both different as not to compete with each other but the same in that they are unique in the gaming world.

I personally would prefer that BI work on making what they have work properly before they begin exploring additional features.

[richardg 10]

Is VBS anygood? I might buy that.

---------- Post added at 01:48 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:42 PM ----------

Wow just looked at VBS, it has all the munition types I'd like to see in ARMA2, check it out.

Munitions include: HE, WP, Smoke (multiple colours), SADARM, DPICM, RAAMS, ADAM, ILLUM (multiple colours), and Copperhead. Fuses include: Quick, VT, Time, Delay, Seek and Destroy, and Laser guided.

•Wide selection of fire distributions

Including: Converging, Circular, Linear, Range and Lateral Spread, Parallel Lines of Fire, and user defined custom distributions.

•High fidelity terminal ballistics models

Terminal Ballistics are modelled both visually and functionally to accurately reflect real-world effects. Functional damage models reflect side lobe patterns of explosive rounds defined by round velocity and explosive velocity.

[MehMan 0]

And VBS costs 1500$ so yeah, go ahead.

[dmarkwick 261]

In VBS, everything is locked, you cannot change or tweak configs for example. You cannot decrypt any file to look at it, or examine any model.

[Rak 0]

These issues were already brought up numerious times before the release. Typical responses were going from few "I agree"s to many "OMG stop whining IT'S AWESOME". BIS didn't do anything. Hopefully they will after the release.

I'm happy you brought it up once more in a civil manner.

Btw, to those who think ArmA 2 can't handle some mathematics calculations and we would have terrible peformance with realistic armor/FCS's . . . we don't need a 1:1 real world model. Just something more complex than what we have now. Besides ArmA 2 does support multicores(actually a dual core is a minimum requirement) so there are plenty of room to do that.

Better armored Warfare (ballistics + FCS) and then you can call it ArmA 3, because that would be huge leap even with minimal effort.

[usmc123 1]

Is VBS anygood? I might buy that.

---------- Post added at 01:48 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:42 PM ----------

Wow just looked at VBS, it has all the munition types I'd like to see in ARMA2, check it out.

I think we would all like to buy VBS, but we don't all have 1500 bucks in our wallet. :p

[LockDOwn 0]

I never even thought of that. I forgot that you can change all the keys DOH! Thanks for the tip. Now I'm the biggest ass around.

The only problem with WWIIO is that it's very complex and not only that, it limits you to one thing at a time. So you can only drive a tank or fly a plane or be a soldier. You don't get the same variety as you get in ArmA2. ArmA2 is more of a pickup and play type of game, compared to WWIIO where you have to read a manual before you start figuring out what all the knobs do. The reward is great but I don't like it. I like to see ArmA2 as between the hardcore BGE style and a pickup and play BF2-esque shooter.

That system is great, but too complex. A simplification of it would be great. We already have directional armour and we have key tank components marked and can be disabled. Now we just need a few more variables so we can mix things up.

WWIIOL's ballistic system has nothing to do with actual game play as you compare it to. It is done behind the scenes and does not depend on how quickly you can get in a vehicle.

It is a programming issue in which CRS rules the roost on.

[S!fkaIaC 10]

I respectfully disagree. If a single warhead has dmg=50 and the tandem warehead has dmg=90, then perhaps the counter measure-covered piece of armor has armor=75. Throw a cosine function in to the dmg applied to handle angle with a kinetic class of ammo.

You speak of "simulate" as if it were true or false which is a poor manner of thinking. Simulate is a measure of to what degree. To be so staunchly against any improvement just because simulation will not reach perfect shows a lack of understanding or forward thinking.

I think that the 3 issues discussed by the OP could enjoy minimal-effort improvements that would reap large benefits.

1. Simple dmg threshold-based armor
   
2. Ability for vehicles to reach damage=1 without catastrophic destruction based on situation
   
3. Weapon optics that can be limited to discrete FOV levels
   

Sir, I did for WGL lill testing and I tried to get this sorted, no chance.

I am aware that an "almost real" simulation is better then none because it will not be perfect. I just say it is far from acceptable for my taste. That is not poor thinking, you just can not cheat me with glass pearls when I would like to have diamonds. Looking the same for most - not for me.

If a single warhead has dmg=50 and the tandem warehead has dmg=90

Well, that is by all means wrong. If you approach an MBT like Abrams TUSK kit, and you hit it in reality with 3 single warheads on 3 different points then it is very likely that it survives. In ArmA not if you hit at least the same (large) damage section.

[wipman 1]

Hi, how about the TOW-II missiles mounted on vehicles?, in the ArmA, they behave in a bad

chaotic way flying up and down making HOT with the TOW-II a matter of luck and useless

at mid/long distances, you can't have a desired zoom level, you just zoom In to the max or

you just don't zoom. Is that simple. And what about the TOW-II smoke trail?, it don't have

it in the real life, but here... it have's so much that obscures the target making the TOW-II

useless (again). Compare the accuracy/handling from a static TOW-II launcher and a

vehicle mounted one (all this in the ArmA) and you'll notice a huge huge difference. The

way that the TOW-II like many other things is presented at least in the ArmA, will dissapoint

anyone, and there were many many things that really remove the will of play from me. Let's C ya

[frederf 0]

That is exactly what my idea allows. You shoot it with as many damage 74 projectiles as you like. If the armor=75 then none of them are going through. Armor degradation and location specific armor degradation are several steps ahead of what I'm talking about.

All I'm trying to say is a simple armor-damage threshold mechanic ArmA2 doesn't even do now. Once we get that baby step in maybe we can talk about degradation, localized degradation, and even interaction coefficients.