hellfire serverly underpowed

[max power 21]

I did a spread sheet study, trying to find some rough equations that are able to predict certain parameters for explosives to fill in missing chunks of data that you can find on the internet.

For instance, you could find the approximate weight of explosive filler in a certain kind of warhead, given the projectile diameter- or the RHA penetration of a warhead given its type (tandom or not) and explosive filler weight, etc etc. One of the equations I was able to very roughly sketch in was casualty radius given the type of warhead and the explosive filler weight. At the weight of the hellfire's massive warhead, I'd expect the (dimensionless) equation to be a little out of touch, but it predicts a 25m blast radius. That would be the radius in which 50% of all people would be killed.

To give you a rough idea of how well this spread sheet seems to work, I'll show you some values from it compared to the internets data:

The data displayed here is simply the largest cluster of casualty radius data I found on the internet. It also predicts the reported casualty radius of things like the LAW rocket fairly well.

The stand out of all of the data I collected is the blast radius of the Vikhr. Almost all of the other explosives seem to conform fairly well except the FFARs, whose casualty radius is much larger, leading me to believe the warhead is shaped differently. On the Vikhr, though, which has a similar warhead to the hellfire in terms of weight and type, reports a 3m casualty radius. At this point it is unclear what that means. I think ,at a distance equal to the height of two men, a 20lbs explosive warhead would be more than enough to kill someone. Especially, given that the mythbusters tested 3 lbs of C-4 without any casing and found that the blast wave alone was lethal at 3m, and injury causing at 6m.

[maturin 12]

The Vikhr has a fragmentation casing, but the game treats it as straight-up HEAT.

[BasileyOne 10]

reason is simple - no physics ingame and game basically rely on "simulate that in you brain/imagination" shortcuts on [bIS-considered-redundant]uncritical for gameplay, but extremely resource-hungry pieces of gameplay.

with its prefectly resulted on [well-working/accepted]"duct-tape gameplay with challenge/complexity fun, thwarting focus on second-grade details for later work" approach, quite successful, presently.

The Vikhr has a fragmentation casing, but the game treats it as straight-up HEAT.

both AT-16 and AT-15 had also HEF, Termobaric rounds.

also designed, but never produced, incendiary, practical and smoke rounds for most ATGM's, FFAR and [R]PG's.

Edited September 18, 2012 by BasileyOne

[galzohar 31]

This isn't just a hellfire problem, all AT HEAT rounds seem to have a very very low kill radius when they don't get a direct hit. Not having the same kill radius as charges meant to kill people is fine, but a kill radius in the order of 1-2 meters for everything all the way from PG-7V to hellfire doesn't make sense to me.

More realistic kill radius would be lovely. Of course I have no idea how large it really should be. Just that 1-2 meters just doesn't seem right. Hopefully the data available is enough to get something better done.

[Jastreb 69]

Maybe find a balance between gameplay and realism as we always do. Make it all on 10-15m 100% death of the fragments and we all happy.

My concern are not HEAT rounds, but armored vehicles which are overpowered and underpowered. This needs tweaking first. For quick example take M1 TUSK and T90. Get PG7VL missiles and PG7V launcher. Shoot the T90 and note how many missiles took you to kill it and which type. Now do the same for TUSK M1. ??? Damn bro...

[maturin 12]

reason is simple - no physics ingame and game basically rely on "simulate that in you brain/imagination" shortcuts on [bIS-considered-redundant]uncritical for gameplay, but extremely resource-hungry pieces of gameplay.

This has nothing to do with physics.

Now everyone witness the near-perfection that modders can manage, and ask why BIS doesn't do it with the engine:

[max power 21]

This has nothing to do with physics.

Now everyone witness the near-perfection that modders can manage, and ask why BIS doesn't do it with the engine:

Yeah! Why don't they simulate all the things with the engine?

[[frl]myke 14]

This has nothing to do with physics.

Now everyone witness the near-perfection that modders can manage, and ask why BIS doesn't do it with the engine:

People tend to forget that Developers have something that Modders don't: a deadline.

While Modder can take all the time they need, a Developer must have finished his work in X amount of time. Of course he has to focus on the more important aspects and can't spend much time on such "nice to have" features.

Also i think there are way much more modders than employees working on the game, leading to a huge amount of improvements of the core game. Which, in return, looks odd as in "why didn't BI included it in the core game?".

[maturin 12]

Moving hands on a steering wheel is one of dozens of 'nice to have' features that seems to be winning out over even the most basic elements of modelling reality. But CoD and other shooters don't have shrapnel, so they decide to work on eye candy instead.

The series just had a 10 year anniversary. Quite a rough deadline, that.

[On_Sabbatical 11]

Guys,it's too late to talk about this now ... few months before A3 release ... BIS can barely find time to fix UI on A2.

This should have been discussed a long time ago :s.Any missile, of any type of ammo, exploding near human (5 m away) will kill him,it's just not the case in the game.

The only weapon that is good at this level is the GAU on the A10 the rest is just unreal,going from SABOT to Vikhr.

[[frl]myke 14]

Moving hands on a steering wheel is one of dozens of 'nice to have' features that seems to be winning out over even the most basic elements of modelling reality. But CoD and other shooters don't have shrapnel, so they decide to work on eye candy instead.

The series just had a 10 year anniversary. Quite a rough deadline, that.

Ah, i love it when people pick up one detail and ride it to death without seeing the whole story. I don't know if you know but BI developed and released a game named "Take on Helicopters". In this, inverse kinematic (ya know, moving hands on a steering wheel and such) was somewhat adding to the immersion as the game was completely tailored around handling a helicopter. There, the hands not moving with the stick would have been a serious immersion breaker. Now it might be a big surprise but this game also uses the RV engine like A2 did and ArmA 3 will do, although in different iterations. But i'm absolutely sure that BI better removed inverse kinematic and developed and introduced another "nice to have" feature to ArmA 3.

[maturin 12]

One little detail?

So we're getting an actual armor penetration system in ArmA 3 so frag grenades can't destroy MBTs?

So we're getting grass that blocks AI vision?

So we're getting round-in-chamber accounting?

So we're getting ATGMs that are actually guided by lasers or beams instead of being fire-and-forget arcade systems?

So we're getting windage?

So we're getting a host of other features (that have enormous consequences for the core gameplay of this war game) that people have been clamoring for over half a generation of games, which modders have exhaustively created and mass-tested working prototypes for?

Oh wait, we're getting better lighting and ragdolls.

[Jastreb 69]

Wow, cool down guys, we are all right here no need to argue about the obvious. We are not talking about TOH here, and certainly not about A3.

Fact that A3 is behind corner does not mean A2 reached EOL and that there will be no more updates - I hope.

Cheers.

[[frl]myke 14]

@_MaSSive_

you're right, apologies for going OT. Stopping right now

@Maturin

i expect you to follow my example.

[enforcer4100 10]

One little detail?

So we're getting grass that blocks AI vision?

QUOTE]

We had a discussion about this (and some tests) and it turns out that grass (and trees) block AI vision.

Grass used in some addons doesn't block vision which is an addon problem, not a BI problem.

[.kju 3241]

Made an overview here and pointed out some potential issues:

Bug #50929: Review hit/indirectHit/indirectHitRange values - community input needed

[mr burns 131]

This should have been discussed a long time ago :s.Any missile, of any type of ammo, exploding near human (5 m away) will kill him,it's just not the case in the game.

Not going to give a link, but there was this video on Liveleak where (supposedly) hellfire missed two (supposed) insurgents only by a few inches of their heads (!), detonating right behind them in muddy ground. The footage stops soon after, so i cannot tell how well they felt after that blow. But at least both were´nt killed instantly, and looked unharmed from the outside.

[eggbeast 3673]

after reading this i tweaked our hellfires and javelin (which we already tweaked to laser lock) in out little clientside mod here

http://www.gitsarma.gamingdeluxe.net/mods/@blazes_weapons.rar

trying it out yesterday was awesome fun - you can now kill 3 squad spaced guys with splash from a hit placed between them

feel free to try it

the pbo in the folder is the laser_javelin_cfg for the jav and gdt_helicopterweapons for the hellfires - we adapted this for our own use a while ago with a few additions to the gdt mod (OA update and flir strobing on friendlies for cockpit users).

it gives a feel for how this could work anyway

TIP: don't use it on MP servers checking for sined files (as you'll get kicked) - it would definitely count as a hack because it modifies weapon damage