AKM

Yeah, I should probably get off my high HTML horse and try an editor, as unnecessary as they are.

Sorry guys, I know I said I'd have a demo mission complete soon. It's a conversion of a mission on Nick Bell's excellent Schmalfelden. Unfortunately, the briefing has this nasty habit of grabbing me by the face and punching me in the neck a couple times; I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong with the briefing. I've tried three different formats and it doesn't want to display correctly. I'm going to try a fourth.

I remember Sebastian Mueller's BTR-T from OFP so well because the 30mm on that would eject its shells as you fired. I can recall screening one's flank in an urban fight, and having brass tumble down next to me while I was bounding up along a wall. Awesome. Gave this a quick test in SP. Lovely, similar atmospherics. Combine it with a good soundmod - one where the .50 really slaps you about the head when it fires - and oh yeah, that's the good stuff. Thanks for your work man, much appreciated on this end.

The same basic idea appears in Home Guard manuals from the 1940s. It probably actually originated in WW1. Interesting. I will look into this more now that my curiosity is piqued. Check your PMs, bitte.

BAOR is in progress. Berlin BDE vehicles are not likely to be included; can you imagine the framerate hit of a company-on-company battle in downtown Berlin? Ouch. The Berlin BDE camouflage is particularly interesting because as I recall, all vehicles it was applied to had the same pattern applied to them. All Chieftains looked the same, all FV-432s looked the same. This complicated the "counting tracks" that the Soviets and East Germans tried to do. I am a particular fan of the Berlin BDE camouflage pattern because when you apply it (by hand, as this isn't available commercially) to smocks or winter oversuits (the thin over-whites) it makes a very good pattern for hiding oneself in a built up area. The urban environment is straight lines: even when you shell it, it's just a jumble of straight lines. Match the colours to your AO and apply a similar pattern of blocks and so on, and it becomes an outstandingly useful piece of equipment. Unfortunately, I can't claim credit for coming up with this: Sergeant Major Mark Spicer (British Army) did. The_Shadow: Cooperation between P85 and CSLA may have been some time in the past. I can't say if we're fully compatible with CSLA or not, some pretty extreme coding changes have been made. One thing is certain though; P85 will "do as it says on the tin". Please note that what the tin says is only valid when that tin happens to be the readme with the released version.

ACE is a total conversion mod, P85 is also a total conversion mod. I highly doubt the two will be interoperable.

You won't be dissapointed with sitting in the dismounts seat in Messiahs WMIKs then. You get a face full of gunner crotch when he engages targets to the front of the wagon, I personally sit back, set Fraps to take screens every 3 seconds and enjoy the show but, each to his own I suppose. I feel oddly violated just hearing about that, much less witnessing it. Who do I talk to about putting Messiah up on sexual harassment charges? Or you could release a Royal Marine addon and it would be considered normal to have crotch (note how gender isn't specified? RMC SOP.) in your face. On a more serious note: This may just be me, and I suspect it is because ArmA has been giving me some pretty severe trouble lately, but I noticed that at about 1.5km distance, half-right angle (vehicle is forty-five degrees angle-off, moving across my right side) the textures seem to flash white. I can't get a screenshot of this; every time I try it takes a screenshot of the textures "strobing" to the normal mapping. I'm going to re-update my drivers and see if I can replicate this bug, disregard if I don't come back with a screenshot in the next three days.

First off, excellent work. I particularly like how 45 ORP operators are wearing "Smersh" webbing. Second: Some of the 45 ORP guys are listed as "Especas." Go in game, set up a VDV Recce Squad on an island of your choice, go to command view, and pass the cursor over any of the VDV Recce units. Most of them say "Especas" as opposed to "VDV Recon Grenadier".

I'd like to point out that as homoerotic as having another ouk's ass in your lap is, as the driver, it's still infinitely better than what we got in OFP with the M151 + M2 combination: at least the vehicle commander's crotch isn't in your face, firing over the rear arc, as you try to make a daring escape.

I for one volunteer to sit on someone's monitor slapping them in the side of the head every time they take a shot at something. Especially if that someone is the guy who decided the hitpoints based armour system was acceptable for a game whose emphasis is on realism.

Both the HK GMG and American Mk.19 have muzzle brakes installed by default. This helps attenuate some of the recoil forces at the cost of making the weapon louder and increasing muzzle blast. The plus is that with a muzzle brake you can directionalize the muzzle blast. Major difference between firing, say, a SA Vz.58P (just to use an example I'm familiar with) and a GMG is that when you're blatting with an assault rifle you've generally got it shouldered. When you're on the GMG, you've got the weapon about an arm's length away from you and you're observing fall of shot, while firing from well behind the receiver. By comparison, when I've got the Vz. shouldered the receiver cover is a few centimeters away from my cheekbone. In addition, I've not fired the 58P from a vehicle, and I don't think we static-mount the GMG anywheres, all of ours seem to be fitted to vehicles. I could easily be wrong here, the media don't exactly go around photographing our defensive emplacements and fuck knows I'd be pissed off if they did. The point from that is: the engine noise and other ambient sounds (get two MWMIKs bouncing cross country while return fire snaps past you and the other MWMIK is lighting off its .50 calibre, sounds fucking nice) may very well be masking the 'thump-boom' of the GMG firing. The odd noise behind the mechanism 'clanking' is probably notable to the firer just because it isn't thump-boom in nature and thus sounds unusual, thus he notices it more. Again another explanation for why things may be the way they are. I would still recommend adjusting the dB value, as it would appear that doing so changes the distance at which the report can be heard, and if you're getting lit up by a GMG from the better part of a klick or more out you may hear a soft thudding a few seconds after the gunner fires at you, but you'd hardly hear the action.

There will be a release for ArmA. Progress is steady - there's a lot of content that needs to be checked in detail, we're updating some things to take into account new references and material, and we're always keeping our eyes open for addons that match our standards; GodHammer's excellent FABs and KABs are a great example of this. We also anticipate converting P85 to ArmA II and continuing work there. That said, there will be an ArmA release.

Miles Teg: I've run a couple of hit and run operations with the MWMIK now and the key thing is to start channelling 8th Army's 11th Hussars Regiment*: Drive in blatting everything, wheel away about 500m away from the enemy, and dart off into the distance cackling with glee while the sole enemy survivor stands there looking around completely bewildered wondering what the Hell just happened. * - Bonus points if you fully understand the reference. Bonus points to be awarded in the form of a virtual chocolate chip cookie. HMGs were originally devised as an anti-armour weapon. They perform acceptably in that role but they've been around for so long now that practically every combat vehicle of note has at least partial protection from 12.7mm fire. The big one is getting shot at by KPVs, the Russian KPV and KPV-T are quite effective weapons in 14.5mm. Had the BRG-15 been developed it would be The Stick to measure everything else against. Most combat NATO vehicles have 100% protection against 12.7x108mm and at least partial protection against 14.5mm. AQT has used DShK and NSV in antiaircraft applications. The 2,430m shot taken by a Canadian sniper was made to kill the gunner of a HMG. I am sure that they've been lit off against our troops and they've probably done some damage, but to my knowledge no Canadian vehicle has been knocked out by HMG fire. Machinegunnery is not "point and click" simple if you want to get good results, especially against people trained to the standards that Canadian and British soldiers are. HMGs are widely distributed amongst the qalas (walled compounds), as are ZU-23-2s and similar antiaircraft weapons. I met a CF recce trooper from the Lord Strathconas who was kind enough to explain to me the lineage of an AGS-17 that they had captured in Afghanistan, and the four years it took to get it from their headquarters ("Mascot Gun") to the Military Museum in Alberta. While not an HMG, the AGS-17 is a good example of the kind of thing that farmers often have sitting in their back rooms just for shits and giggles. Da12thMonkey: Certainly. Regarding antitank mine and underside blast protection, I would expect that the shaping and underside plating fitted is sufficient to deal with the most common AT mines and probably rigged 82mm mortar bombs as well, a common IED size. EDIT: I should point out that most AT mines until fairly recently (mid 1960s, I think) operated on blast/fragmentation principles, not shaped charge penetration of the underside protection. I recall there being at least two ATMs that use CE principles to destroy the target. My understanding of the MWMIK's purpose is to be a WMIK with better mobility, that's it. If I had an armour pattern for the vehicle I could explain in some detail what kind of threats the vehicle can deal with. The vehicle is clearly designed to provide some underside protection as has always been mentioned, but protection from ballistic threats is clearly second priority: crew is fully exposed, vehicle hull shields occupants from underside blasts but larger ones will cause overpressures and spalling regardless of this shaping, or if a blast happens adjacent - not underneath - to the vehicle. This would account for the number of fatalities mentioned, caused by IED. I recall a study done where diesel was stated to provide a measure of protection against CE penetration. There are merits to this, and the fact that it is less volatile than petrol certainly helps things. I am surprised that the BA doesn't mark jerrycans with a white stripe for example (DAK did this during WWII) to indicate "Water Only" and instead relies on left/right racking. Good detail though, I will have to remember that.

I agree. The Jackal carries four, by the way; crew of three and one sitting on the seat the topgunner would presumably use when it's time for "topcover down." Now, because BIS borked the coding for armour protection, there's not much UKF can do. If they increase it to the point where a simulated IED causes the crew to bail, they also make it so that the vehicle is far more durable than the real life equivalent when faced with ballistic threats in ArmA like the DShK. The coding is also borked in that wheeled vehicles (to my knowledge) can't trigger antitank landmines, typically with a fuze point of 150-200kg. My recommendation would be counter to yours; to leave it as is, but that's simply because if the vehicle can absorb more than 50 rounds of 12.7x108mm (DShK fire), it's less realistic than the vehicle not surviving an RPG hit* or a IED blast.** * - Or fuel, particularly petrol. Some studies have been done indicating that diesel fuel is safer than petrol, this comes as no surprise to anybody who's worked with both. The MWMIK is carrying jerrycans that are presumably laden with fuel, rather than water. ** - AQT and the fighters in Iraq have demonstrated a marked tendency to adapt IEDs to use more explosives and simply "brute force" the finessed mine protection/underside blast protection schemes in use with a large number of our vehicles today. The CF in Kandahar province (AFGH) has had incidents in which AQT decide to use upwards of 500kg of explosive to knock out RG-31 Nyalas. Given this, one could surmise that your insurgents in your missions are also using more powerful IEDs. It's one scenario workaround to a engine limitation that comes to mind.

From my (admittedly brief) research, in which I was unable to find an armour pattern description for the MWMIK, it would appear that the vehicle's emphasis is on underside blast protection and not ballistic protection: There are several articles expressing concerns about how exposed the crew are to fire (though these complaints are also valid with the Landrover WMIK, and nobody bitches about that, probably because with a Landie you're not under the misimpression that you're driving a BTR-esque machine). Because BIS screwed the pooch and decided to implement a hitpoints-based armour system, the MWMIK's protection cannot be adequately modelled. I have not found an armour pattern for the MWMIK, as stated, but I doubt that the vehicle incorporates sufficient armour as fitted in the UKF model to survive a PG-7 or PG-7L hit, let alone a -7V or -7VR. I doubt that the vehicle is protected against 12.7, let alone 14.5, HMG fire. At a weight of 6.6 tons and given its armaments, crew load, and dimensions, I suspect it is proof against most small arms fire but no more than that.

I'll see what I can do about that. GodHammer, check your PMs please.

Jonny_LI: Thanks. Didn't have time to go through the four (at the time) pages of the thread in detail. Good job beta testing this, very few issues. Messiah: Aye, that would do the job. I'm more prone to noticing it because the servers I typically play on have the crosshairs disabled. Moot point now though, I have developed "GPMGjutsu" through a few minutes of experience of firing at targets at various ranges, getting "first burst" hits now and so on. Thanks for your work with this, the time and effort you and the UKF team have put into it show. As to use in mission making: I'm currently working up a LRDG-inspired mission using these that focuses on hit and run tactics against a couple of large irregular convoys. I'm not expert by any means, but I seem to recall something about the Royal Marines operating hunt groups in the large desert tracts of Afghanistan, using vehicles that either are the MWMIK here or similar to the Jackal, for the sole purpose of interdicting AQT supply columns. That would be a good application for these vehicles. Or one could put the player in command of a FSG and support a platoon attack going in on a village, using the vehicles and the superb "adjust range" feature on the GMG to provide supporting fire from range. If I get the former mission done up in a reasonable amount of time I'll convert it back to use default addons and the MWMIKs and post a link in this thread.

Aushilfe: This is true. I've taken a few hours to try and source good images of any Russian/Soviet handheld LDs, and it certainly isn't easy to find good references. However, my logic was that there is no pressing need for a KAB-1500S-E either, so I thought I'd ask. This, of course, is by no means an attempt to denigrate the outstanding work that GodHammer's done on the KABs and FABs thus far. And, answering my own earlier question, that is a KAB-500L.

Messiah: Good to hear. Fortunately the stream of tracers does make it rather easy to observe fall of shot, so it's not a major flaw, just something for the player to be aware of. I'm surprised you've managed to put as much "bling" on it as you have with just the engine: the recoiling weapons are something I've wanted to see for a long time. Nicely done. Edit: Forgot to mention earlier; one can't define the player as the vehicle commander via the mission editor; is this a limitation of the engine or just an oversight? I suspect the former, but it isn't as if UKF are sitting on their hands. Uzi: I would direct you to the TankNet forums. You'd be able to elaborate in depth on the pros and contras of the Jackal versus the Snatch Landie there (and, if you argue the pro/cons of the Jackal versus snatch you'll be in the same league as Sparky, so do try to avoid that).

GodHammer, is the latest image a KAB-500L? The question that then comes to mind is, can you implement a Side East (Side OPFOR) laser designator of some sort?

Uziyahu: No. The "Snatch" Landrover is overloaded for its engine power and powertrain; its mobility is severely hampered. This comes up repeatedly in accounts from Afghanistan - dunno about Iraq, not my focus. The conventional Landrover/"Landie" is not small arms fire resistant. The Supacat MWMIK has superior engine power, ground clearance, powertrain efficiency, and was designed to accomodate the armour load it is carrying now. I am not certain, but given my knowledge of other "mineproofed" vehicles the Jackal probably has a monocoque hull and underside shaping to deflect blast force. The Landrover - any variant - does not have this. UKF: There is an appropriate Canadian expression. "Fucking A." This is some quality work, but I have noticed some bugs. I would hope that during MP testing the scripting proves to be robust; I suspect it will be just fine given that VOLCBAT tested it. I have been unable to replicate the Kangaroo MWMIK problem, but I have noticed that the rounds are not coming from the barrel of the GPMG equipped model. They are instead coming from below and left of the barrel. They match fine on the GMG and M2 variants. Is the viewpoint when in optics mode for the GPMG meant to be well above the sights so as to observe fall of shot more easily? Otherwise the PoV is too high and one cannot sight in on a target using the sights, instead use of Guesstarightabouttherefucktoolow is required.

Looking good Fab. Sorry: I was unable to locate any good sources regarding tracer usage and LMG/MMG use for the Commonwealth.

Those Chechen units aren't bad. They're not great, but they're about as good as you'll get for OFP. In terms of Chechen War mods, there was Kavkaz Crisis from waaaay back, you can see a lot of their kit carried forward by Laser and ORCS. DMA released some pretty good Middle Eastern irregulars which include some wearing woodland uniforms, I've been using them as Chechens in a few scenarios. They do the trick nicely, especially considering the history there in the 1993-2000 timeframe when the Islamist-Jihadists co-opted the Chechen nationalists and gimped the Chechens pretty badly.

I'll do some research for you mate. If I recall correctly the Wehrmacht used a lot of green/yellow -ish tracers while the Luftwaffe used a combination of red and blue at times. As to the BRENs, I'm not sure if any .303 tracer rounds were issued. I'm sure the Vickers guns had some, but the BRENs only used rifle ball that I've heard about. Again, I'll do some checking for you.

These look great and work even better in-game. The only thing I could think of, as an addition to this addon, would be a set of standard SLA troops along the same lines, complete with a replacement config for them. My compliments on a much needed job very nicely done.