Mortars (expl. in general), too destructive?

[CarlGustaffa 4]

Hi

I've been playing around a little setting up some very basic mortar shellings using artillery and SOM modules. In movies you will have some fatalities and wounded, but still be able to push forward at reduced unit strenght. I realize that movies tends to be glorified, but still.

In Arma2, possibly due to no/less natural cover and too slow AI reactions, everything is killed - every time. If you're "in the blast zone", there is nothing you can do, even prone you will take a lot of damage. Irl we were subject to blocks of TNT going off just a few feet from us ("getting used to" exercise). We had to be in ditch protection, but not our officers during their schooling (awesome pics which I can't find). The blast was shaped like a cone going over their head, not doing any harm. For us in the ditch, the "ground pressure" could be quite intense, causing many a tough guy to bail out early :)

Also lightly armored vehicles are extremely vunerable to mortar shells, even at some distance from the impact. Also take into account how those in a vehicle takes damage if the vehicle does.

With this in mind, are mortars and artillery shells too powerful in Arma2, with too much splash damage and radius? I mean, I really don't want to "fake it" either using grenades or better suited ammunition, but using the real deal seems to me to be causing way too much havoc.

How do you feel about this? Should we request a change for in a future patch? Or am I utterly alone in this? :)

[phaeden 0]

Greetings,

It has been experience that damage done in video games is far less than what happens in real life. Usually the in-game visual effects are more pronounced but the actually physical damage is not as severe as real life. For example, a real 155mm HE, Quick shell deals out a tremendous amount of power, especially to infantry and lightly armored vehicles. The hard part with putting those explosive effects into games is trying to find the right balance between realism and gameplay.

So, for my two cents, I would say things are more or less fine in ARMA2 and until game designers can figure out a way to account for individual shrapnel, concussive and psychological effects on a vast amount of data (i.e. a veteran infantry prone in a ditch is less likely to take "damage" than a new recruit who is not using the terrain to his best advantage even though he is in the ditch as well).

[Daniel 0]

I also find the mortars a bit too overpowered to really use them. You can't order a pre-assault strike to soften a target up because there'll likely not be a target left to assault!

I think the simulated effect of a barrage should be how much of a target would realistically be left rather than the real world specs on lethal blast range, etc. If you get what I mean. I really want to use mortars as they look awesome, they just kinda take the biscuit after that enemy position you spent ages building is devastated after a map click.

Perhaps if someone could implement mortars around the 50mm range similar to the OFrP ones in ArmA1, it might not be as much of an issue...

Edited October 22, 2009 by Daniel

[noubernou 77]

Charon is working on a 60mm mortar as far as I know.

Also I agree the 81mm do seem a bit over powered. If anything their range should be lowered a bit (the blast range).

These are things I am considering for a future artillery addon.

[fincuan 0]

At least for mortars the explosion radiuses seem about right or just slightly too big, but a bigger problem is the tabletop world and lack of fortifications. There's nowhere to go for cover because apart from the odd dry riverbed or rock there aren't many "micro features". Irl "Infantry is always on the move. If not forwards then downwards".

[Daniel 0]

True, but at least when on the move there's a chance they might not be in the right (or wrong) place when the bombs fall. If you use the current arty against positions fortified by sandbags that should provide at least some protection against shrap, they still get shredded.

[Apocal 10]

Going with demonstrated battlefield effectiveness as a metric, the in-game artillery and mortars are quite a bit overpowered. Unfortunately, this is because they pretty much took the lethality radius out of books and FMs and punched them into game, so even if you are a prone, an 81mm hitting within 25 meters will kill you nearly every time. 105s are overpowered overall, IME the (observed, not endured) effects weren't terribly better than 81s. In-game 105s are more on par with 155s and that is a whole different beast entirely.

[CarlGustaffa 4]

Daniel;1470246']You can't order a pre-assault strike to soften a target up because there'll likely not be a target left to assault!

I think the simulated effect of a barrage should be how much of a target would realistically be left rather than the real world specs on lethal blast range' date=' etc.[/quote']

My point exactly. I feel I can't allow HE/WP as a valid option in a mission since it is far too effective and destroys everything. I can have a single mortar do the firing instead of a couple of sections, but you'll never get the sense of something big going down. If game doesn't have realistic microcover, it would make sense to me to rebalance things by not trying to use real world splash damage and splash radius values. One of the problems is that you're typically restricted on the number of enemies you're faced with in order to achieve good frame rates or being multiplayer friendly.

155mm is not even in the game, but yes it feels like the 105mm have got 155mm capabilities, including some of its munitions. 105mm take out MBTs easily. As for MLRS/Grads, they make no sense to me other than being moving objectives to hunt and take out in a mission.

I remember playing a realistic norespawn mission in Arma1 where we were under mortar shelling. It was a scripted solution, but I don't know what ammunition was used. We did have some casualties, and the sense of chaos was there. It was much more "fun" :) to be shelled like this than what is the case using the default Arma2 mortars.

[Lhowon 10]

I get the impression that the damage is quite realistic, however in a game environment with smaller more understandable environments and smaller numbers of units (often quite close to each other) those effects become overpowered.

In the real world you're obviously dealing with a infinitely larger and more complicated environment where it's often very difficult to know exactly where the enemy is, and the enemy is likely a lot more numerous, spread out, has better cover (plus knows to take cover which the AI basically doesn't, even if there were proper cover in ArmA), and has the sense to change position to throw the mortar's aim. It's also probably a lot harder to hit with accuracy in real life, but I don't know about that.

Some elements of mission design can alleviate this - have the enemy moving as much as possible and avoid static objectives, make it so the mortar team can only be given coordinates and can't see the enemy on the Target Artillery screen, increase the distance between mortar and enemy to make the rounds take longer to arrive - that sort of thing. But it's still going to be overpowered in its effects.

I also think smaller mortars (hopefully portable) would be more suited.