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Abrams uses Chobham armor reinforced with a layer of uranium. Chobham armor is supposedly steel with ceramic plates in layers held together by resin, and it's highly resistant to even armor piercing rounds from the front and ceramics are virtually immune to high explosives since they don't melt. You can take out the engine or treads with an RPG and stop it, but the crew is almost invulnerable unless you get really lucky and really good, like multiple shots on the hatches or at close range and a good angle, or if you happen to have a bigass artillery gun to hit it with. Almost all M2 and M3 Bradleys are equipped with explosive reactive armor since it works pretty well against RPGs, and Bradleys are built to take hits, too. The ERA covers the firing ports but works well, and the vehicles are already very tough. Supposedly, Bradleys have taken tank rounds and stayed alive, according to one M2 commander's account I heard, and I know they've been whacked with RPGs all over Iraq, but they're all very solid. Even the humvees in Iraq are often up-armored with steel turret shielding and armor on the chassis, and it's not just for show. It takes a nice chunk of explosive or a good shot to do much damage to modern armored vehicles like those, but that sometimes happens. Although, you never hear when a tank is hit by a rocket and shrugs it off, or takes minor damage but survives: it is only reported when something bad happens, and then it is always reported by the nincompoop reporters that a tank was destroyed without giving any specifics, or defining "destroyed." That being said, I don't think any Abrams tanks have really been totaled by enemy fire. Stuff on the tank catches fire, the engine gets blown out, or the treads or whatever get knocked off, and then the media report it as destroyed since they know diddly-sqaut about the military stuff they're covering. Do you really want to be told by some goofy reporter what damage is, or a specialist who, regrettably, doesn't get to explain to the people how it is? For that matter, the media tend to sensationalize lots of stuff: they're usually a bunch of guys who haven't ever seen combat before and want to get some good stories in, so... Anyway, I think that damage should be handled in OFP to be a bit more detailed to more closely mimick real armor. In the current system, when an APC gets hit, it takes damage until it hits the maximum amount of damage it can have before it just gives in and pops, killing everyone aboard instantly. Much to my annoyance when I'm in charge of one, that is always when you get hit anywhere on the vehicle with a single anti-tank weapon, and the only way to get around it is to maneuver and do some unusual squad tactics so that you can make some use of it without getting everyone killed. Perhaps by dividing layers of armor over the chassis and making the APC chassis itself highly resistant to exploding unless the armor is completely penetrated, say by a 120mm sabot or TOW missile, the APC won't always go up in a puff of smoke; instead, the damage would be generally localized to the part that got hit and absorb some of the damage of the weapon. That way, you can take a hit on the front, for example, and the damage is absorbed by a plate of armor on the front of the vehicle, but some damage might still bleed through and injure certain occupants or cause damage to the vehicle. I don't know if this is even possible though, I don't recall seeing it on any vehicle I've used in OFP. I'm not a mod developer, but I think the best way to deal with the way the vehicle handles the armor-penetrating damage is to give the vehicles more complex ways of handling damage, like how some choppers have system failures. Make APCs tougher, but let the vehicle and the crew feel it when they get hammered with a rocket- stuff breaking, wounding damage, smoke and fire, engine failure, etc., just give the crew a chance- unless you're in something really volatile like a vehicle loaded with ammunition, or perhaps a BTR-80, which, I've heard, has gas tanks on the rear doors (which is a really crappy way for a soldier to die).

I was playing the single player level Ambush, which went uneventfully well until my squad reached the Houdan. Almost instantly when we were within 200 meters the squad's LAW soldier fell, and I saw others falling one by one to machinegun fire. I popped an officer who tried to run up to get a better shot at me and crawled up to the LAW soldier, ducking, running from cover to cover, and barely avoiding fire as the commies picked off the others first. When I got the man's last LAW, there were just two or three others left of our twelve man squad, and I didn't have a clear shot to the probably six or so enemy soldiers. I knelt down, and fired the LAW at the machinegunners and grenadiers that had decimated us. It flew down and blew apart some of the remaining enemies and I used the distraction to run toward my squad leader, who was within 30 meters of the town and had somehow miraculously avoided death face-to-face with the enemy. We moved in and took out a few commies with our rifles, but as we entered the town, our other rifleman was mowed down by a machinegunner who had cleverly remained hidden. It did little good for him, as we both turned and wasted him. My squad leader ran to stand in the middle of the north/south street in Houdan facing North. I heard what sounded like tank tracks, and grabbed an RPG launcher from a nearby soldier and ran into a North-facing house, RPG at the ready. I heard them slow and pause, unloading troops. I sighted the RPG out of my clever house window hiding place at the street. Suddenly, I saw at least one T-72 and a BMP drive over the rise and break formation. I launched an RPG out the window. It smashed into the tread of the T-72, leaving it limping in circles. I reloaded and fired again, stopping it completely. Another T-72 showed up, supporting the BMP, and I had one RPG and the ammunition crates were over fifty yards away. I aimed carefully- It was a very tricky shot; I had one small chance to stop that T-72 before it blew my house to kingdom come. My RPG sailed off, and arced right into the barrel of the T-72. Just before the vehicles entered town, my squad leader made a run for the beach to the chopper, but I was quickly being surrounded as I held my ground. I decided to waste no time and ran for the ammo crates. Surely enough, the BMP was waiting nearby and and fired at me almost the whole duration of my run. I heard that sickening sound of the machinegun bullets hitting my body. I ducked behind the crate, badly wounded but still capable. I picked up some RPGs. I stood up, reloaded, and sighted. The BMP drove behind a house, but a Soviet machinegunner stood up and aimed right at me. I fired reflexively, nailing him with the RPG. I reloaded just as the BMP came around a house, and finished it. I got my rifle out just to see squads of infantry charging straight for me. I got into a shootout, and was hit by a rifle round. I took out a couple of them, and when they fell back I sprinted behind a line of houses for the beach, with at least eight commies and a T-72 with a broken barrel trying to shoot me or run me down. I ran through the underbrush, zig-zagging until I lost them. I found my squad leader standing by the chopper still waiting. I ran the last few hundred yards without cover on the beach, and miraculously made it to the chopper where we boarded and were flown back home. If I'd had more time and squad members, I would have been able to finish off the T-72s and annihilate the surviving commies, but it was impossible due to the tragic ambush and killing of my entire squad except for myself and my squad leader.

Hmm, you drive a Stryker? Sounds interesting. Although, I think he meant cargo trucks to be used to carry troops, fuel, and supplies for a rapid force and not a frontline APC.

See, that's the stupidity of it. Cheaters force others not to play as they want. If I want to play without cheats, the cheater's coming on and dicking around screws me out of a what I want to play. You've hit the nail on the head there. But I want to show cheaters the kind of game I want to play with them- it would have ragdoll physics, realistic wounds, and a car battery; an excellent stress reliever that would be after playing pretty much anything online. Ah well... At least I know these are the kinds of people who usually wind up in a jail on the charge of shoplifting with a large, scary man as a cellmate. Too bad they rarely see the light before then. Back in the good ol' days of Half-Life, a mod called The Opera was released. It featured action-movie style stunts and weaponry, and it was good. Especially good when you got on a server and "roleplayed," forming teams of gangs, police, and vigilantes and letting a battle erupt. But the real greatest feature of it was that it scanned the user's hard drive for cheats before connecting. Any cheats for any mod of Half-Life would do- whether for The Opera or Counter-Strike. When someone came on to the server with a cheat detected message, I had no weapons but a knife as I had been disarmed, but I simply yelled "Get the cheater!" and tackled him to death. His rounds were ineffective and he could never damage us because of the cheats. After tackling and knifing all the cheaters I saw over several days, they got the message and there weren't very many for a while. I wish there were anti-cheat systems like that in every game. It worked, it prosecuted all cheaters, and it was thoroughly humiliating. I would have scripted it to make the cheater hold a giant, "Im stoopid!!1" sign over his head, though.

I played the original demo when it came on a gaming magazine CD, PC Gamer I think. My brother played it and got ruthlessly stomped despite valiant efforts to "kill the commies," but I mastered it and beat it. Unfortunately, it sank under my radar until later. Woe is I. Somehow, I got an insatiable need for a realistic shooter in 2003, something that could only be made survivable with nothing short of Operation Flashpoint, and I bought the Game of the Year Edition in August 2003. I wish I had done it earlier, because then I would have yet more experience at it. I haven't been able to put it down since. I'm still captivated by merely the single player and haven't touched an online game yet.

Very cool. They are wonderfully nice and squishy which is great fun when "liberating" Nogova or Skye with my BMP-3. I like the wide selection of different men and vehicles, too. It's nice when tread candy comes in so many different flavors. Is that the Gimbal's Tossers pack Dauragon has in his picture? That is fun, especially when playing the part of police forces. I can't figure out how to get police to be consistently hostile to another side, and I can't figure out how to get the tossers to stand up and attack instead of running of ducking all the time. If that can all be done, I sense some very fun missions coming up.

Well, I was thinking something that has you right in the middle of it rather than in the post-apocalyptic aftermath. Nogova Virus is hard and cool, but I always get wasted or get my squad wasted. When I finally made it, I couldn't find a way into the base at Petrovice, and no safety, so I ran around like a chicken with its head cut off until I died. And yes, I know how to use squad commands to keep them running. Maybe I'll figure it out with some more tries.. I'm just not very good at it, after all, I'm perpetually stuck on CWC After Montignac finding interesting new ways of getting shot in the woods. Don't mind me. Ok, I'll just shut up and play now. [Edit: I found out how to beat Nogova Virus now, just not quite done it yet. By the way, one thing that would really change missions would be random or dynamic objectives. It would make missions similar to Skye Virus very open-ended and playable. Something to think about. That's what my earlier post was about]

Perhaps a version that takes place in an urban island such as Nogova, where there are plenty of items and weapons but even more zombies. There could also be former resistance fighters or groups of lost soviets hiding from the zombies and trying to find a way out, and you can help them or kill them and take their stuff while trying to find a way to escape. An interesting addition would be random changes to the level (an eaten military patrol may sometimes appear near the start position, perhaps, and provide weapons and vehicles but also more enemies earlier on), and also multiple ways of escaping the island (boat, plane, military evacuation, but some will be randomly excluded or screw up before you can escape). This would be more complicated, but more replayable and unpredictable. Of course, Skye Virus is great right now. Gonna go play it again soon.

That was scary. I thought I was safe once I finally got on the road back to the safehouse, but I underestimated how quickly they move and how long they will run after you. Must have been five kilometers, and it got nasty and very nearly deadly when they caught up. Of course, the reason I took that long is because the game failed to end after I got all parts and went back to the tower. I tried shooting all the CPU players but it still wouldn't end until I used the Endmission cheat. My computer has been having weird problems, though, so it could be just me. Pretty cool. Neat scripting, tough enemies, and there is a ton of detail in the cities, bases, and roadblocks yet it still runs well on my old computer. I would suggest adding more handguns and ammo as well as increasing the number of zombies to add challenge, but that might make it a little too difficult for SP. Isn't there a squad-based mission called "Nogova Virus" someone made based on this? That could get nasty...

Sweet. Nothing saps your confidence and courage like trying to outrun zombies in a beat up car lost in the woods at dusk. Which brings me to another question: How do I tell the fuel left in a car or jeep? I found out the hard way I should have beelined for the nearest gas station. There's so much stuff to see and loot that balances it out, though. Really cool mission.

Fan-fricking-tastic. I like this one so much I've already memorised the username/password to get it. The blood mod isn't as obvious when playing, but is cool up close when a buddy gets shot or you shoot a rebel in the face. This makes helicopter gunships twice as fun, too. One thing I've just noticed: When I hit a UAZ with a Hellfire, the UAZ smokes, sizzles, and flips for a half second before it actually bursts into flames. Do they normally do that, is it because of my crappy processor, or is it a feature of the explosion mod? Of course, in real life a car hit with a Hellfire just turns into a greasy black spot on the ground and the occupants' extremeties are thrown over a half mile... That would be interesting, but a bit much. The burning is plenty of fun.

Hey. I have just a couple questions: Is this playable without other human players? How the heck do I install Skye Isand? Thanks in advance. I've seen and tried just about everything else and not being able to try this is killing me! [Edit: Got it. I think my original download was corrupted.]