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Uranium-235

The USMC needs a physical fitness program...

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I find the "to prone" stamina loss to be a compromise of different situations. While making range cards with the m107, a simple drop to prone would cause significant loss in stamina. Of course, it is a heavy weapon. Yet, considering the guy hasn't actually moved it is unrealistic. However, the massive loss of stamina from going down and getting up is much more realistic after I have been running for a while. I can imagine that after a long day of fighting, getting up from prone would be one of the most tiring single actions you could do. As the game doesn't keep track of total running time, I find that the stamina loss is acceptable as most of the time I would have moved quite a distance before reaching combat. In short, I find the analogous representation of fatigue from standing and dropping down to work when it counts. As for the jerking. After quite a bit of fatigue it is not uncommon for your muscles to have micro spasms. This can mean shaking hands, twitching muscles, and a number of other "jerky" like movements. So again, it is unrealistic for it to jerk about when you have not moved anywhere, but considering that it does represent a realistic "sway" once your in true combat that it works.

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Currently your weapon doesn't resemble anywhere near the kind of movement you see IRL when you're tired/breathing heavily/whatever. It's practically "warping" around to throw your aim off because BIS couldn't/wouldn't do any better. Better than nothing, though, I'll give you that.

Getting up/down from/to prone takes a fixed amount of energy... I still think it's pretty damn silly and needs to be tuned (as well as the rest of the stamina system...).

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While Arma does try to be a "sim", I think it's important to evaluate things in terms of the gameplay. Obviously the stamina system is intended to discourage/prevent "unrealistic" tactics, such as sprinting to the corner of a building, whipping around and immediately shooting half a dozen enemies. A smooth weapon sway would somewhat ruin that, because a player can easily anticipate that and make accurate shots even when fatigued. So the jerky movement that makes it impossible to accurately fire is needed for players to prevent "sprint and shoot" tactics.

Having a smooth, predictable sway when you're only slightly fatigued might be a nice bit of candy to have, but I don't think it's 'needed' and it wouldn't add much to the gameplay. The current system isn't too bad, as when you're slightly fatigued the jerky movement only lasts a few seconds anyway - about as long as it'd take you to adjust to the smooth sway rhythm and take an accurate shot.

I do 100% agree that the movement speeds aren't quite right. I'd like to see a slower, less exhausting jog. But I don't know what real infantry do in the kind of movement scenarios typical in Arma.

For example, if you've hopped out of a chopper or a truck a kilometer or two from your objective, do you walk the rest of the way or move at a slow jog? Is it reasonable for a fully loaded marine to jog a km or two and not be exhausted by the end?

To me, the walking pace is for when you don't care when you get there. Idling around the base, or out on a boring patrol. The current speed seems about right for that. "Safe" mode with "Limited" speed is what the walk is for.

The jog would be for when you want to get somewhere fairly quickly, but don't want to be exhaused when you do arrive. The current speed seems too high for this, and the stamina hit too strong. I'd like to have a jog that can be comfortably maintained for at least a few hundred metres while still being able to fight somewhat effectively immediately after, without needing a bit of a lie down.

The sprint is purely for combat, when you find you really want to be somewhere else right now: you give it everything you have and you don't care how exhausted you are at the end because the alternative is likely to be death. The current speed would probably be okay if the jog was slower. Possibly an improvement would be to have a two-speed sprint, where the initial speed is a bit faster than now but after maybe 20 metres or so you can't keep it up anymore and drop to the current sprint speed or slightly slower - but not to the jog speed. And if you sprint 100 metres, you should be completely exhausted, covered in sweat, legs turned to jelly, and basically unable to function usefully for at least a minute. It might be reasonable to be able to maintain the "low speed sprint" for quite a distance (since you're running on pure adrenaline/fear) but with an exponentially increasing recovering time afterwards, so long sprints might require several minutes of cool-down time.

But again, I'm just a fat computer nerd who's never lugged 30 kilo loads across a battlefield, so the above could be completely unrealistic and absurd. Comments? :)

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Smooth sway does not mean predictable sway, so that point is moot. You can have smooth sway that will hurt your aim. Sure it will be less impossible to shoot, but that's part of the point. It'll still be very hard to shoot accurately if done excessively.

Currently walk is the fastest speed you can move at while keeping your weapon up, and for that purpose it is a way too slow speed. I wouldn't mind if there was a slower jog that allows keeping weapon up but doesn't allow aiming down sights (and on mediocre difficulties also vanishes the crosshair) and causes just enough sway so that hitting something at 15m is not easy but not hard either. Since there isn't one, though, the walk has to be faster. Currently the walk is "hey, we have an hour to walk those 6km, let's go" kind of speed (it is 6km/h after all), and not useful in any way. For long distances there's no reason not to jog all the way and then rest right before combat, since your stamina will quickly hit the minimum value anyway and you'll keep jogging at the same speed after a short duration. There's no reason to walk in combat because it's simply way too slow and will get you killed. I'd rather not waste a movement speed mode for "walk around the base for fun" purposes.

IRL, usually (when the mission is properly planned) you will walk. 6km/h is pretty standard for that though if you're in a hurry more can be done effectively, at least by SF (in IDF infantry train for 6km/h long walks (up to 80km) while SF train for both 6km/h as well as 8km/h and possibly higher speeds). If you're not going to make it to the destination in time by walking, though, walking is just plain out stupid. Of course in most of those situations you wouldn't get sent on foot anyway, if command needs you somewhere fast they will make sure you get there fast, preferably not exhausted.

Firing when exhausted shouldn't be as bad as it is in the game. I don't care how much you just ran, if you're going crouch you're going to be able to score headshots at 50m without much challenge. Currently it's pretty much impossible, however only a few seconds after stopping you can. Overall while stamina drains way too fast, it also recovers way too fast.

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I do believe that the current teleportation style sway is not great. If it were to be truly perfected it would be a random sway that also sped up and slowed down at random intervals and swayed to varying degrees at random intervals. This would create the realistic jerky effect without the disorientating effect that currently happens.

On a separate note. "I don't care how much you just ran, if you're going crouch you're going to be able to score headshots at 50m without much challenge." That statement is so horribly wrong in terms of how the game should work and how real life works that it physically hurts to read. Headshots are something that doesn't happen on purpose in a battlefield. They do happen, but only because the soldier missed the target called center of mass. Also, running a long distance then posturing up on a corner crouched is not an easy situation to do precise shooting in. Sure, a number of people could do it, but the average soldier would miss quite a bit. Guns sway, hearts beat, wind blows, equipment shifts, and guns are not weighted perfectly. Run a mile, turn a corner and have to do some reaction shooting and score a headshot. If you can do that then your a star shooter.

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No, not in the battlefield, I just brought this example because standard "shooting after running" exercise in the IDF is a 190m run + 10m crawl (don't remember how much time you have for it but the faster you run the more time you have to shoot) and then shooting 50m head target from crouch. Even when done after a long night of walking/running around, it's not that hard to get a decent hit percentage.

Of course in a real battle you'd shoot center mass to give yourself an even higher chance to hit. The headshot at 50m was just to illustrate how accurate you should be, not saying you should actually be trying to score headshots in the battlefield.

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/5char

Edited by Vandrel

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Who said running a mile? Read my post again. I said 190n run + 10m crawl (note that in the game a lot less than that will already get you to the minimum stamina / maximum sway value). And that's for an IDF soldier which gets a lot less range timer than marines. And yes I've done it myself too, and right after a long night drill.

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Be aware that the animation speeds(speed of walking/jogging/sprinting) is higher than in real life. Roughly, a BI walk is a RL speed of a light jog, a BI jog is RL speed of sprint etc.

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Weight-based stamina/speed adjustment

If modifying movement speed is impossible, mod makers may want to consider the following alternative solution. It's not exactly simple but is most likely nothing that is beyond the ability of modding. The main problem with sticking to a slot system is that it makes you always take as much as the system allows, while in reality most soldiers will prefer carrying less to improve their mobility, and this simply must be simulated as realistically as possible.

There are currently 4 running speeds in the game: slow walk, fast walk, jog and sprint, each having their own stamina regen/drain rates.

What can be done with current speeds (if you, like me, find blacking out players as an unacceptable solution), is that if someone's loadout is "heavy", then each movement mode drops 1 speed down - sprint reduced to jog, jog reduced to fast walk, and fast walk reduced to slow walk - all while keeping the original controls and stamina regen/drain rates (except slow walk, of course, which is now removed).

There will need to be a clasification for "heavy" and "light" items, to help work around the silly slot system. Heavy items will be stuff like MG ammo and AT rockets, while light items will be stuff like m16/ak magazines and hand/smoke grenades. M136/RPG18 should take 4 slots and only be allowed to be taken by "light" loadouts, and should only be allowed in the yellow slots. This will keep it as a 1-shot weapon while allowing light loadouts to carry it with a reasonable cost.

Here's a concept of the slot system:

slotconcept.jpg

The area in green can only hold regular items, while the area in yellow can hold any items but will turn the loadout into "heavy" if it's used for heavy items, and placing any item in the red area will turn the loadout into "heavy".

For each yellow slot used for an M203 round, you should be allowed to use one of the M203 slots as well. That helps make up for the fact that M203 grenades weight about 1/2 as much as magazines and frag grenades. Sure a real M203 loadout can carry 20 HE grenades, we can't really do a "medium" loadout so it will have to be a heavy one that uses the red slots. Perhaps add 6 more "M203 red slots" that become available if you use the normal "red slots" for M203 grenades. An alternative to the dynamically opening slots is simply doubling the number of slots and the space all items take while keeping m203 nades with taking only 1 slot, getting the same end result.

Handgun ammo should be treated similar to the m203 ammo, as again it's lighter than normal magazines but should still take space, but then again the pistol also should take 1-2 slots rather than have its own special slot.

The "blue slot" will turn a loadout into "heavy" if it carries anything other than an M136/RPG18.

The space taken up by rockets should be increased: SMAW/RPG7 take up 5 slots (possibly 6 slots for PG7-VR), and Javelin/Metis take up 11-12 slots. Possibly turn the SMAW/RPG into 4 slots but turn 1 of the yellow slots into green so that only 2 rockets can be carried. Would be even nicer if one could carry an additional missile or 2 rockets in the launcher slot, instead of a launcher, so that RPG/SMAW/Javelin/metis teams are possible and useful.

Of course this is just a concept and could use improvements and fine-tuning, but I think this can be a very good way to use the movement speeds and inventory system we currently have in the game to make a practical and relatively realistic difference between "heavy loadouts" and "light loadouts".

How viable is actually making this into a mod?

Overall stamina fixes, unrelated to weight

Currently the stamina drains very fast when you run, and then once empty allows you to keep running while it's empty, and once you stop it recovers pretty quickly. This is obviously very unrealistic, and can be much improved by simply tweaking the rates (which I assume is not that hard?).

What needs to be is that stamina drains a lot slower AND regenerates a lot slower, as well as not allowing the soldier to keep running while stamina is completely drained (but rather drop him to fast walk). This is probably the best you can do without continuously changing movement speed, which again I assume is impossible as it was in Arma 1. Of course the stamina drain will have to be slow enough so that you can run at least 500-1000m, but also take at least a minute to recover. Again the system will never be perfect without continuously changing speeds, but it should be a great improvement over the current system, and is hopefully doable with a mod.

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I aint in the military but during our Outdoor training when I am carrying my Kevlar/BDU/Assault Vest/Rifle/Ammunition/Combat Pack/Sniper Veil... it aint no marathon

And the thick underbrush in this area makes it even harder to manuever

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