Dangus

I am willing to pay 10 dollars for an add-on that does the following: 1) Join in progress 2) Sane bandwidth use 3) Player character selection(rather then having the mapper decide what type of units are involved) 4) AI that uses resupply 5) AI that can't see through hills and shoot like an expert marksman even on Cadet mode 6) Anti-Armor weapons that are harder to use for those who are not AT soldiers 7) Adequate netcode 8) More non-dedicated server options 9) An address book 10) More gameplay modes 11) Co-op save games 12) Fix problems with getting into boats 13) Fix problems with getting into vehicles. Sometimes you just suddenly cannot get into or out of vehicles with the current code. 14) Make the supply ship driveable 15) Support more guns from one vehicle, so the BMP can meet it's true potential, and people inside helicopters can defend themselves better. 16) No parachuting out of helicopters or tanks(yes, you can parachute out of a tank, or even a SCUD launcher if you get it high enough into the air)

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">MP, how are the gun laws in Ireland? I would imagine that they would be quite restrictive over in your area.<span id='postcolor'> Same as any of the Euro-socialisms, only really rich snobs can even own the simplest of weapons. Some farmers can have shotguns for work purposes, but if you ever try to defend your life with one you might as well just shoot yourself afterward.

This is a thread for discussion of AI, and how OFP fails, and succeeds. Let me start. OFP fails: 1) AI infantry soldiers have too high of situational awareness at long range, and fire too accurately at those ranges. If you are 500 yards away, the only reason they ever miss you is because their guns are not accurate enough. Their aim is always dead on. 2) AI soldiers sometimes have no situational awareness, like when mounted in the gunner position of the M113(you practically have to be within 20 feet to get them to see the enemy) 3) AI awareness of you mounting a vehicle is absurd. In some missions I jumped in a vehicle with no enemies within LOS and instantly all of Kolgujev get beserk and attacked me. Helicopters, tanks, BMPs, infantry, all converged on my position. Another time, the enemy patrol was going up a hill, I mounted one of those 50cal standing death traps and just aimed at them. None of them were looking my way before I mounted, but the instant I got in it they all turned toward me and killed me. 4) AI soldiers only fire when they know where you are. This is unrealistic. In one rather absurd mission, Sniper Team, I was on a hill in a bush and killed 75% of the personel in the enemy base. None of them could see me since I was in a bush, so none fired. IRL, all hell woulda rained down upon me and the rest of the hillside for that matter. Soldiers in real life will often start firing, just to spam an area in hopes of catching the enemy. They should just fire around in the general area where you are at. Things OFP does right: 1) AI hits the dirt. This is still fairly buggy, but it's a step in the right direction. AI should take cover more when they can though. In general though, AI squads react moderately well to being attacked. 2) AI tries to flank you. I have been killed a suprising number of times by some AI bastard who ran 500 yards to the right of my target area, and crawled all the way up the hill behind me and then snuck right up to my bush and popped me. This is very cool. 3) AI commanders seem to assign targets well based on what your troop type happens to be. Tells AT soldiers to attack tanks, tells snipers to snipe, etc. 4) AI uses grenades. Granted they are way more accurate than they should be with them, but they use them at appropriate times, few games have AI that can use grenades well. 5) AI can be ordered to scavenge. Very cool, very realistic.

I have started this thread to continue the discussion started in that Mi-24 thread in General. The discussion revolved around military readiness and gun control. Obviously that is not a topic for the General forum, so I have started this one. You said that you had the port arthur massacre and then you implemented gun control and you have not had another massacre since. This is true. It does not, however, prove that gun control actually improved this situation. In fact, of the anual murders in Australia, a greatly increasing number of them are being commited with firearms, despite the laws against this. Also, there were no such massacres there before Port Arthur that I am aware of, so clearly there's no evidence either way from that standpoint about the effectiveness of gun control. My point on military readiness is that the WORST time to prepare for war is after it has started. Preparation typically involves being ready ahead of time for an event. The mentality that military power is not needed during times of peace is pure idiocy, especially for Australia, which is a mineral rich country surrounded by potential enemies, all of which would easily defeat Australia should they chose to try. Australia has no navy worth mentioning, Australia has no airforce worth mentioning. Australia has a vulnerable infrastructure, no serious air defense systems, and no serious anti-armor capabilities. On top of this, Australia has a general population with almost no experience with arms of any kind. Even semi auto paintball guns are illegal in many places there. There is a movement in general there to strike down any sense of militancy. No warriors allowed. China has no such compunctions, nor does Indonesia, Singapore or even India for that matter(granted that the likelyhood India would ever invade Australia is just about non-existant, the point is, they are even more hippy-ish than you'd assume Australians are, but they have a monsterous military). Civilian weapons encourage familiarity with ballistics, marksmanship, warrior mentality, understanding of logistics, understanding of limitations, etc. For hunters it teaches wound characteristics, ideal loadouts, stalking, stealth, recon, communications. The reality of those things cannot be replaced even by a great game of rec ball(paintball in the woods), which in most of Australia can only be played with pumps and single shots. The opinion of two Australians http://www.senet.com.au/~brucehan/index36.htm Of the first you can definitely say he has a bias based on his involvement in the firearms industry, and of course he's a bit pissed about the blow to his economic lifeblood, but the other guy is a WW2 vet and he knows full well what the cost of unpreparedness is. Anyway, read it over, it's worth reading, even if you don't wanna hear it.

Nope, I don't live in Switzerland. It is a very interesting place though. Probably the only country in Europe that has the roads leading into their country ready to be destroyed at a moment's notice. I forget what they are using now for that purpose, but they used to have electronically detonated mines for that purpose, but I imagine they've changed that since then. Probably C4 now since it's so stable.

In some user maps(not sure if it sometimes does this on BIS maps..), I get in tanks and cannot see what sort of ammo I have selected, or how much of it I have. Why is this?

A cockpit that can take that large a round is not the same as a window that can.... The cockpit of the A-10 can take incredible hits but the canopy cannot. As for 7.62x51... yeah, it could do that, but it depends on how many bones it hits probably. Most people don't appreciate how much penetration these rounds are capable of.

Can DEFLECT 22mm rounds maybe, stop them? Not a chance. It would have to be made of 1 foot thick Lexan to even have a chance of doing that. I think you fail to appreciate how powerful a 22mm round is. .50 BMG SLAP rounds can penetrate over 10 inches of solid mild steel, and around 4-5 inches of armor grade steel. 22MM is a LOT bigger than .50 BMG (12.7mm)

One of the big weaknesses of this game is the very fact that a soldier can fly a plane, drive a tank, fly a helicopter, pilot a boat, run an AA gun, fight as infantry, and use anti-tank weaponry like an expert(all with zoom that should not be there!!). Spec Ops guys could probably do all of the above, they are very select troops who are capable of a huge range of things. Regular grunts are a MUCH different matter entirely. I would like to see, most likely in the next OFP game, or at least an add-on, where there are more character types, and their level of proficiency with various implements is based on what their skills should be. Tank and other vehicle operators should be capable of driving vehicles more capably, use fuel more effectively, and should have better situational awareness whilst in vehicles. Special view modes when not turned out are not realistic and should be able to be disabled by a server as well. Pilots of helicopters should be good with helicopters, pilots of A-10s should be good with planes, grunts should be good with rifles, machinegunners with machineguns, and probably the single most important of all, AT soldiers should be the only grunts who are able to use AT rockets with any sort of accuracy and have any sort of familiarity with where to hit the armor at. Others could use them, but you could implement unsteadiness to them just like sniper rifles have in Deus Ex.... Specialization in general would improve this game. Also, seperate campaign sections for the different types of gameplay. An air campaign, an infantry campaign, a tank campaign, a spec ops campaign, etc. As far as multiplayer missions go, the single most important element to me is respawn. Flying around as a seagull is not fun, and with no join in progress options, it can take a long time before you get to play again.

He probably has a Radeon...

The Hind cockpit in real life will not reliably stop .308, or 7.62x54R. It will definitely stop 5.56x45 and 5.45x39, as well as 7.62x39. To suggest it has any chance of stopping .50 BMG is absurd. Even a manhole cover won't stop that stuff. The M2 is way underpowered in the game. Most people don't realize that a full .50 BMG round is over 5 inches long with a base that is about an inch in diameter. It's as big as a dinner candlestick, whereas the 5.56x45 is about as big as one of those birthday candles you stick on a cupcake.

Switzerland is an interesting case. On one hand they are the oldest democracy in Europe in all effective senses of the word "democracy", but they've also had their dark spots too. Switzerland has a very effective militia system that has always contributed to their disproportionate strength relative to their size. Their citizens have been a perfect model of militia advantages, and the benefits militia give democracy. On the other hand, they have no ability to field troops on foreign conflicts, but then again they don't intend to anyway. Right or wrong, they consider most outside matters to be none of their business. Throughout the time Switzerland has existed, just about every one of their neighbors has tried to invade them, and always at a heavy cost. In WW1, a visiting German officer asked a Swiss general what they would do it the German army, twice the size of the Swiss forces, decided to invade. The officer thought about it and said, "Your troops train at 100 yards, and ours train at 200, and more often. If you were to invade we would shoot twice and go home". Smartass answer yes, but it has some degree of truth to it... In WW2 however, they basically armed and otherwise supplied the Nazi regime to a very large extent. So did Norway, but Norway got invaded cause it didn't have the sort of nasty defenses that Switzerland has....

That is rediculous. You admit you don't even know, or care about the reasons, but then you say that the reasons are pathetic? You can state all you want about the situation, but you clearly don't know a lot about it, or care to. It's well within your rights to post totally senseless and pointless words but why do it?

Yes, and it doesn't work..... Is this just a bug I am experiencing?

What you fail to understand that it is in Europe's interests to have peace in Europe and they are not pulling their own weight. We've defended Europe for almost 90 years now. It's getting a bit old. In the Balkans, our European allies were very disturbed to realize how few troops they could quickly field, whereas we could quickly field large numbers quite easily. That's saying something especially since our numbers are way down from what they used to be.... If we are gonna do this peacekeeping bullshit around the world then the other countries demanding we do it better be ready to match troops with us. Otherwise they should have to do it themselves. We are not the world's parents, and people need to stop treating us like it. Especially since they bash us so often.

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Why is it ironic? i didnt say that no civilian had good knowledge of weapons, i just said that not many do.<span id='postcolor'> It is ironic because if we were in Australia, the guns we used to model the weapons in the game would have been chopsawed. Especially his MP-44. I would not have been able to give advice on what the various guns sound like if I weren't able to go to various machinegun shoots we have around here. I would not have been able to advise on what grenades sound like if I had not been able to go mess around with local reservists(the local rat population has been reduced lemme tell ya). Advice on penetration would have not been accurate if I had not taken various building materials out to the range and blown the hell outta them. Most people don't expect .30-06 or 8mm Mauser to go through 12 inches of concrete, but it can do it with some loadouts, though not reliably. Many aspects of that game depended heavily upon civilian gun ownership to become what they are. </span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Btw, you bring up the fact that in Iowa you have the lowest crime rates? how many of the crimes in Iowa are commited with guns? and how good would you say the knowledge of the state of Iowa's population would be on gun operation?<span id='postcolor'> I cannot cite the specific rates of crime involving a gun in Iowa at the moment, but I can look into it again. I have seen it but it's been a while. The 1999 stats are probably out by now, maybe even preliminary 2000 stats. We have a slightly lower percentage of homicides that involve firearms than the national average last I checked, though only very slightly. Of our murders I think 55-60% of them involve a firearm. The national average last I checked is about 65% Of felony crime in general nationwide, about 36% of it involves a firearm, again, last I checked, Iowa was a bit lower on this, around 33%. Nationwide most states have seen a decrease in crime in general though, so I would expect both sets of values to be lower for last year. It will be a couple years before all the data is figured out and posted though. In general Iowans, like most other heavily rural states, has a very high familiarity level with firearms, and the per captia ownership level is quite high. We have a higher population density than Australia, though we have no cities as large as it's largest few. If suddenly random Iowans were thrown into a large battle zone with a rifle and pitted against similarly armed random people from a state like California, we would definitely have quite an edge, as just statisitically speaking our people are more likely to be hunters, farmers, soldiers, and firearms enthusiasts. Not to say CA doesn't have some good people for this sorta thing, just that random sampling of them is less likely to turn them up. There will be no debate that Australia certainly the edge climate-wise though!

Generally, even though I'm not fond of the Catholic Church, I side with the catholics on this issue. I do not, however, condone attacking a school with crowbars and hammers and then acting indignant when someone tries to stop you. Anyone who gets shot because they are endangering school children, and attacking what by all means should amount to holy ground, gets little sympathy from me. The English really have no business being in Northern Ireland, but then again, neither do the seperatists who attacked the school. We should send both groups to Afghanistan and force them to deal with people even more insane than themselves.

The Saudis are NOT our friends. They used us in the Gulf War, we used them. That's all there is to it. There is no great bond between us. They harbor terrorists, they pay for terrorists, and generally we overlook this because they have oil. If our politicians weren't so damn corrupt we'd already have broken our dependancy on foreign oil. There is NO reason we should still be needing these people. Let them turn back into the desert wasteland that God intended them to be living in. Then they can ride around on their camels and curse the US all they want. Without the money to buy boats or even plane tickets, we're not gonna have much to fear.

First off, the whole matter is absurdly exaggerated in the press. The fact of the matter is, Northern Ireland has a lower murder rate than England. Whereas England has something like 4.2 per 100,000(and rising), NI has a rate around 3 per 100,000. In fact murder is so rare there in general that is pretty much is only related to the political fighting. The BBC and other news outlets like to show pictures of the most slummy, crappiest neighbhorhood in all of Belfast and try to make the world think that justifies the police state that these people live under. For all the talk of the IRA, lets not forget that the UDA(Protestant terrorists) has killed almost 3 times as many people over the years. Of course you never hear about them in the news because they don't want you to. There are a lot of Irish people who are rightfully pissed off that Cromwell came into Ireland in the 1500s, murdered 1 million people, and then imported Scots and Welsh to replace the people he wiped out in the Northern counties. Lets not forget that England has it's own holocaust, not to mention the slaves that the English made out of some of the Irish and sent to the Carribean. That said, much of what the more extreme and out of control elements of the IRA do is inexcusable.

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Spell my name right! its bad enough most people dont know how to say it right! grrrr.<span id='postcolor'> Looks like a moderator fixed it lol </span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">anyway, i must go play day of defeat 2.0, bbl with other stuff.<span id='postcolor'> I find it ironic that you are going to play a mod that was designed by civilian gun owners. Precisely the reason the models are so good is because Thunder_Weenie(the history guy), myself, and others offered our advice based on our experience. If we had not known so much firsthand knowledge about weapons, we would not have produced a mod anything like that.

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">As for the training civilians with guns, do you really think that even america would do that? How many people in most of america even have proper knowledge of how to handle a gun?<span id='postcolor'> The whole purpose of the second ammendment was to promote military readiness/awareness. It has nothing to do with protecting the right to hunt, or the right to shoot holes in paper targets. Hell, it even has nothing to do with defending your house against criminals, though it happens to benefit the populous in that area. You know that massacre in Virginia? It was stopped by a student with a gun. The only problem is, he had to go to his car to get it because he was not allowed to carry on campus. So the second does have other advantages. Of course the press is not eager to print that an armed student stopped the rampage, but that's no suprise. As for how many Americans know much about guns that varies wildly from place to place. You must bear in mind that realistically it's not correct to refer to the entire US as one group. If you come to my state, Iowa, the level of crime and violence in general is the lowest in the world, lower than England, lower than even Sweden. Go to Illinois, one state over(with the full registration of gun owners and tons of bans btw), and the crime levels are the worst in the country. The US is a more complicated place than Australia in a lot of ways, just because of the sheer number of people and cultures involved, and the role we play in the global theater. In some places in the US, like Washington DC(all private guns are illegal), crime is so bad that it rivals that of South Africa. Only criminals and cops know how to use guns in DC, everyone else is just a target. Get out West into states like Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Colorado, etc, and the level of experience with firearms increases tenfold. So when you ask questions about firearms in America, and crime in America, you really need to specify where you mean...

Ok so I read his question wrong. Still, how do you heal others when you are the medic? Can you heal yourself?

Sniper, very few assault rifles can penetrate APC armor, even at close range. 5.56x45 and 5.45x39 are very weak rounds against any sort of vehicles. Even the heavier 7.62x39 will not phase most lightly armored vehicles.... Now if you want to talk about battle rifles, that's a different matter. 7.62x54R, 7.62x51, .30-06, 7.92x57, etc. will all go through an M113 like it's not even there.

I picked up the off topic portion of our discussion here: http://www.flashpoint1985.com/cgi-bin....;t=4942 Please continue the Mi-24 discussion...

Yet another reason why zoom mode needs to be take away from the LAW and the RPG