Strike_NOR

Don't you mean the other way around? The maverick (Macer) is huge and I don't even think the real thing needs/has top attack due to that fact. Scalpel is really hard to find a real life counterpart to, but it is way smaller than the Macer - so it shouldn't be too OP.

Not 100% sure here, but I think that's the vehicle explosion of the Rhino, not the PCML causing ERA to detonate. You have your vehicles setup too close to eachother for good testing data, as the destruction of one will harm the nearby ones. For this kind of testing, you may want to use "hitpoints" diag_enable true, so you can see how much damage that piece of SLAT armor receives. It's a bit wonky to use, but you'll get the details. Also, I noticed that the RPG-7 for some reason only travels at 1000 ms initially, instead of 2000 like the tandem heat ammo. When the HEAT jet impacts the Rhino side, it is at approx 600 m/s, and has lost half it's penetration capability so to speak. Even though, your shot deals a whopping 22% damage for some reason. Seems pretty potent to me. It also seems that the SLAT is failing to cancel the HEAT effect of this shot. Again, not 100% sure, but I don't think the T-140 uses side ERA panels. They show as 100mm plates no? Seem like they stop the jet pretty well though, as it doesn't enter the crew compartment. EDIT: According to @Hvymtal's spreadsheets, they tweaked all HEAT penetrators to 1000m/s. Dunno why though. Maybe they were too capable? It's strange though, because now they are slower than AP ammo XD (APFSDS usually impacts at 1600-1700 m/s ingame.)

The beauty of it, is that it is engine hardcoded now, so it may be a lot faster to process. In other words, it's not scripting - it's config editing. I'll see if I can do something about it over the next couple of days, dunno how long its gonna take me because I haven't tweaked configs in 4 years when I made some ArmA addons and retextures from scratch. And regarding indirect hit, I am thinking about the internal damage, which is a form of damage applied around the shot as it travels through the target. This is the "flaw" that @x3kj refers to, where even if the bullet stops, it does this weird spread of damage to hitHull and other modules. It has to be reconfigured in order to have realistic beyond-armor effects, or else the vehicle HP (and ALL crew) will always receive damage, even upon deflecting, absorbing, stopping or penetrating armor plates. @Hvymtal I think @x3kj can give a better answer, but I'll try... When reading this: https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Arma_3_Tanks_Config_Guidelines#Hitpoints (Tank hitpoints) and considering this: https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Arma_3_Damage_Description I found this vital information: Under tank guidelines the following details: HitHull, handling internal penetration - when damaged over 0.9, vehicle will explode. (in other words, hithull acts as anything "explodey"). Internal damage is handled by HitHull class. When KE round penetrates the armor plates, it passes the damage to HitHull hitpoints array as seen in example model. The hitpoint vertices are set up in such way that the nearest distance between them equals RADIUS attribute in HitHull class, and they cannot be activated by rounds that fail to penetrate armor. Well. According to the guide, when designing a tank for ArmA 3, you should place hitpoints (vertices) around the vehicle. The vertices have a RADIUS attribute, that makes them spherical, and this is defined in the config. As the guide further states, this distance should be equal to the distance between other hitpoint vertices, so that they overlap. However, there has to be something weird going on here, because the Internal damage statement above CLEARLY says that "they cannot be activated by rounds that fail to penetrate armor", and yet that is exactly what I am seeing in the tests I have conducted with APFSDS versus Kuma. Which leads me to believe, that internal damage has a form of radius, and even if this shot fails to penetrate, it carries the damage over to HitHull inside the tank, because the damage radius overlaps the hitpoint radius, similar to example E here: It's like the shot touches firegeometry (FG) but stops, yet some hitRange thing detects a hitpoint within range, and FULL damage is applied. Now imagine how that works, when a shot registers 4-5 hits in the same ARMOR PLATE! You get the kind of results as I saw in my tests. Here's basically the rundown from the damage description: Go figure.... *confused*

Can you prove that? RHS mods simulate spall, and yes, sometimes I notice some FPS drop, but they are using scripts to do it. Please provide evidence if you are going to argue against it. And the current system is not ideal, and we don't have a cone. However, I know that engine-wise, indirect hit damage is not blocked by occlusion or ray-tracing inside vehicles, so if the spall cone extended through the gun breech and the gunner/commander would technically be shielded by it, they would still get the full damage. So it's not ideal. In terms of resources spent on this, I don't know if indirectHit is resource friendly, because it still has to check all nearby hitpoints and add damage to them simultaneously, where as a projectile/submunition type would spread this damage application over time, although barely noticable). It would be interesting to make a test case using the physical fragment method and see how it works. After all, it's not like there's gonna be more than 2 APFSDS impacts at the same time in a game scenario. The fire rate and amount of tanks would have to be pretty high. I may look into that when I get home from the night shift... Edit some configs... Make a mess...

Thanks for the update! Are you guys working holidays now to press the release or are you taking some days off? Yeah! You go guys! Fantastic :) Hmm... I take it the internal hit damage is going to get a buff from this, and increase hithull damage and crew damage, regardless of where the shot lands. Not sure how I feel about that. Can you elaborate? What was broken? Did the new components fail to add/remove projectile velocity? There have been reports of ERA not working well against single HEAT warhead munitions. Happy Easter guys :)

*Rolls up sleeves* I think what @x3kj means, is that shells should not cause splash damage that directly transfers to nearby hitpoints in an omnidirectional sphere. Also, it should not throw damage at the hull/vehicle global health "hitHull" so aggressively. The point here is that, you can't have an "ammo hitpoint" (custom hitpoint) close to a wall meant to stop penetrations, because even if the bullet does not penetrate, it deals splash damage to it and can cause it to "kill" that hitpoint. It taps into the same observations as I had with the Kuma vs APFSDS testing above. Even if I just hit a mirror, there is splash damage occuring. Even if the armor stops the shell half-way through, there is splash damage. How much velocity is lost inside a piece of dead armor, should not really matter that much to how much splash damage is generated, because unlike tissue, armor does not expand and contract as violently. For infantry wounds, there could be splash damage based upon this concept though, as AP rounds zip right through without much speedloss, and hollowpoint ammo stops, meaning all projectile energy is transferred to the tissue. It is somewhat true for armor, if you compare 2mm sheet metal to 800mm RHA, the sheet metal isn't going to react much because the projectile will go straight through. This wouldn't really generate any spall either. However, piercing 800mm RHA is different. If almost all speed is lost, and the shot barely makes it through - then what really should cause damage? Pretend the projectile comes out going 100km/h. How much spall would that create? What would the spall speed be? Is this considered a lethal shot? The way arma has it, is that yes, a projectile that is fully stopped deals FULL damage potential, and a projectile that barely makes it through, deals less. A projectile that just zips clean through with minimal speedloss, will do almost no damage, even if it is 800mm RHA. That is equally odd, no? This all comes back to the key element of having the actual penetration of protective armor plates cause direct damage, and indirect internal damage to nearby hitpoints. Problem B from X3KJ's ticket quoted here: And my comment to the asterisk: WARNING: TECHNICAL WALL OF TEXT INCOMING *If I am not mistaken, we now have new parameters for submunition handling (https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Arma_3_Weapon_Config_Guidelines#Ammo_changes_on_fly_and_on_hit) . For vanilla ArmA3, this may not be a good option due to performance cost. I am not sure how bad it is, but technically speaking I see a possibility here to create dynamic and accurate spalling mechanics in ArmA3, just like War Thunder. You create the following ammo: simulation shotSubmunitions for an APFSDS ammo type will activate submunition type if certain criteria are met (triggerOnImpact in this case). parameter submunitionAmmo tells what type of ammo will be spawned upon activation, and how many. Theoretically speaking you can create a new ammo type called "spall_fragment", or "apfsds_shard", or "small_fragment", "large_fragment" etc. and use any number and mix of these in the submunition. For this example let's imagine i created "spall" ammo, that does high damage, has high air resistance but low penetration capability. submunitionConeType[] defines how the "spall" will deploy. You can set something here to get a random pattern, a cone for instance with random spread. triggerOnImpact(bool) will cause the "spall" to be generated upon hitting something, with the ammo types, amount and spray pattern as defined above. deleteParentWhenTriggered (bool) can be de-activated, so that the "parent ammo" APFSDS Dart still continues on with its path through the target. submunitionParentSpeedCoef set how much faster or slower the generated "spall" will travel in comparison to the "parent ammo". So this could be set to inherit parent speed, but with a high air friction, they will slow down fast. Or they could be set at a lower speed initially by using this parameter. Wow. If I'm not mistaken, I just created a form of spall generating APFSDS projectile! Not only that, it will spall after hitting everything.... Dangit, that's unfortunate. If you hit a sheet of paper, it will still generate the same amount of lethal spall. So there's an issue here I can't see a workaround for at the moment..... Second issue: the spall generates OnImpact. this means, it will spall the surface of the armor, meaning it most likely won't get through the tank. And even worse, it will spall every single time it strikes something. And with the wonky armorpiercing stuff that is going on now (where you can register 5-6 hits in the same block of upper glacis armor), it is going to generate 5-6x the amount of spall. Dunno about you, but that sounds resource costly. So how does one go about that... Well, if none of the two issues can be tackled, there is one option: Generate very small amounts of spall (maybe 2 fragments per hit), and you won't really notice this when shooting at technicals, sheet metal or other lightly armored things, because generally there will only be 1 instance of spall created. On MBT's which register as many as 4-5 hits during penetration, this will generate 8-10 spall fragments, which drastically increases chances of wounding crew, without bogging down CPU resources. A different approach is to introduce the submunitionInitOffset parameter, to set the "spall" creation behind of the impact. For this to reliably work though, you would have to use the same physical thickness on all firegeometry (let's say 30mm) and override them using custom plates (to set other thicknesses for the penetration mechanic to use), and then set the "spall" InitOffset to +40cm. It should then start spalling 10cm from the wall inside the tank. However, a MUCH BETTER approach would be a new parameter, called "triggerOnExit", which would create an event when the projectile leaves the firegeometry. Then the spall wouldn't immediately collide with the outer surface, and would be generated from the backside of your armor and spread out. This way, shots that do not fully penetrate armor, also do not create spall - which saves resources. Additionally, the triggerOnImpact parameter, could be divided into an customizable setting that discriminates between object types. Like "TriggeronImpact (tanks), (vehicles), (structures), or (all) etc, so that submunitions would only be generated for armored vehicles. But that may be a long stretch. It would, however, make ArmA 3 act more like War Thunder so to speak :) TL;DR I do believe that at this time, in devbranch, you can do exactly what I said above. It can generate fragments, or spall if you like, when ammunition strikes something, however it may prove to be a very resource costly affair. Correct me if I am wrong oh knowledgable @x3kj, as I have very limited experience with configs.

Well that's more a problem with ArmA 3 not having built-in CCRP Continuously Calculated Release Point support. The previous "lockon" method was a workaround fix anyhow. There is a method you can "cheat" it, which is to lock the TGP view on your target, then fly towards the TGP HUD marker, once you are on course, look in the TGP view, and you will see a small CCIP hit indicator move across the screen from bottom to top. If you are flying on the correct course, you just release the bomb whenever the CCIP "pipper" aligns with it, then the bomb should have no problem finding the laser. Also, I believe AI follow different rules, and may use lock-on before launch, even though players can't.

I see what you are trying to say quiksilver - a significant piece of the playerbase may become butthurt. This only really applies if BI fail to make a proper PSA statement about the overhaul. If the community is well informed, then the community members will handle the "the new damage mechanics are broken plz fix" crowd. Besides, if the damage mechanics are improved, hitting a tank with dart ammunition is pretty much going to render it useless anyways, and only glancing hits or shots into flimsy exterior parts will be "disregarded" in terms of damage. Either way your comment is a quick stab at something that obviously bothers you from before, where KotH players seemingly get to dictate what an authentic military experience should be.

Awesomesauce mr pookers! Like the damage details :)

Disappointing results from testing 120mm APFSDS vs Kuma Sorry, I don't mean to be dramatic, but there are some really circus things going on with the way tanks are damaged in ArmA. At least from a military simulation standpoint. The reason I am so persistent about these things is because there are some games out there that do tanks really well - and the players that play those games typically play ArmA too because of the same reasons. Authentic experiences! When they get drawn towards ArmA Tanks DLC, they will be confused over the same issues that I am experiencing. If you are used to a world where armor actually prevents damage, like a shield, then you are in for a surprise with ArmA 3. Because right now, tanks are accepting damage from all kinds of weird things, that should not be the case. It's difficult to see improvement, when you don't really know what you are looking for (read: devbranch updates "Various vehicles armor balancing tweaks"). What vehicles? What balance? What tweaks? Where do I start looking? So I apologize in advance if the Kuma is one of the vehicles that has not yet been "updated" or tweaked properly, but at least it serves as a good example of how NOT to simulate armor! Enough ranting, and on to the pictures: UPPER FRONT GLACIS 500m range - Semi-penetration (does not enter crew compartment). RIGHT SIDE HULL 500m range - Full penetration (does not enter crew compartment, only engine compartment). COMMANDERS CUPOLA MIRROR 500m range - Overpenetration (goes through the mirror, exits the other side and misses the rest of the tank). So I naturally increase the shot range to 1 km and try my luck here :) UPPER FRONT GLACIS 1KM range - Ricochet into turret cheek, semi-penetrates. And now for the grand finale: What the actual......? FRONT/RIGHT APS LAUNCHER THINGY DEVICE WHIPPERSNAPPER GADGET 1500m range - Ricochet, no penetration. Well then. Having said all that, and seen all this. I need to put this firing range statistical data on hold. Something SHOULD be done. My main comments after these incidents are: Penetration or no penetration, if armor.bisurf or armor_x.bisurf is hit, then some damage is calculated and transferred to the hull and crew health. There should be a MAJOR tweak to these values, in terms of decreasing them by at least tenfold. If that isn't an option, then all tank crew compartment walls should be created in a new material, that transfers damage to crew upon hit - and the rest of the armor materials should not transfer damage to the crew. I'm just suggesting a change here. Since some materials take more damage than others (engine iron_cast.bisurf for instance), why not do like I stated in the above bullet point? Make exterior armor plating exceptionally resistant to damage, but have the inner layer (crew compartment walls/liners) susceptible to crew damage. This way, crew will only take damage IF the compartment is compromised, not external plating. Ricochets still deal way too much damage. Should be close to 0 if penetration is less than half the armor thickness. These points try to address that armored combat in ArmA 3 is still very Arcade-like with "guaranteed bang for your buck" type damage modeling, where any hit will get the job done, and some hits will get the job done immediately/faster. I hope something can be done to the way this works, and I think you will agree that it needs some love for Tanks DLC release. Come on guys, you can do it! :)

I think the best way to get this kind of behavior is to promote it. Also, the tank gameplay has to be interesting enough on its own to attract player that want a true "tank simulator" experience. The addition of tank interiors is a warm welcome, as you feel more connected to your crewmates with the Angara probably being the most social tank of them all! (A big couch and lots of screens make for a comfy Netflix experience). The improvement of damage mechanics, weapon mechanics etc also make for a much more immersive experience, where hopefully tanks don't explode as predictably as before, and receive some various types of damage in the field before being destroyed. Finally, the mission has to be made to encourage tank usage. You are not getting a bunch of people to work together in vehicle crews if the mission requires that things are done on-foot. New game-modes could be developed where teams are equipped with various armored fighting vehicles, and have to gain control of the map/sectors using these. Also, you have to utilize parts of the map that don't lean towards urban combat, but rather big open areas. If you ask me, there's no question that a fully crewed tank, will perform better than a single-crewed tank. And a platoon of these tanks will deal with enemy threats way better, than a single tank can. There was a thing called "Rolling Thunder" back in ArmA2 ACE days. Tank vs Tank missions, with scouting elements (MRAPs) to get around quickly and map enemy movement. Tank audio also has to be realistic, so you can hear tanks from afar if you are outside the vehicle.

May seem strange, but it's actually closer to real life this way. Laser Guided Bombs are dropped just like dumb bombs and follow a ballistic curve towards the ground. A little before impact, the laser switches on and the bomb corrects its course to hit the laser. (This auto-lase feature is not simulated in ArmA, but is used in real life to not alert the enemy too early in case they have laser warning receivers. It also prevents bomb oscillation when trying to correct course, which improves bomb range).

I have a question for the Devs. Maybe @oukej or @Asheara can comment? Before I ramble off into the abyss about stuff, the question at hand: "Can we get some documentation on the shots diag tool?" I see that it is listed as lacking description/documentation on the diag tool page. Specifically I am wondering what some of the things you can see here mean: Specifically I am curious to what the following means: Penetration: distInside: I am assuming this is how many meters the projectile travels through the fire geometry? (What is it used for? Calculating speed loss? If penetration is possible? How far it penetrates even if it doesn't go through?) Speed: The first number seems to be speed at impact, but what is the second number, and the two % numbers in parentheses? Impact: thickness: is this firegeometry component LOD thickness or material-applied thickness? distInside: I assume this is same from the penetration section. Why is it replicated? surface: I assume this is the applied material surface, which can override the generic "armour.rvmat" (RHA equivalent). For this example image it is 60mm, and as such, thickness is also 0.06m. speed: again, replicated? Damaged: It appears to list all config class types (individual entities) that were damaged from this hit, how much their health is initially, how much damage is applied, and new total. This is fair enough, but I wonder - why not add a tool that allows you to see which hitpoints are affected for each class as well? Yes, it will be crazy amounts of detail, but the hitpoints diag tool doesn't really overlap well with this one. First of all, the hitpoints diag tool demands the player to be hovering his cursor over the target, even when using splendid camera (unlike shots diag, where you can use mouse in splendid camera to get detailed hit info). It would be helpful to see penetration and damage to hitpoints simultaneously. The actual graphical cues that are drawn (lines, crosses, circles, colors etc). RED ARROW (see image): There is a red circle around this particular hitpoint when I hover the mouse over it. What does it mean? Is it the indirect hit range from a shot? GREEN ARROW (image): There is a green line behind the shot impact. Is this a visualization of distInside? To show how far the shot goes through fire geometry? So many questions.....

The 40mm HEDP, as rumors have it, can penetrate about 2'' or 5cm of steel. This is enough to threaten any APC/MRAP or other lightly armored vehicle. I read somewhere that they were developed for shaped charge (HEAT) effect, but gained HE as a happy side-effect since the metal casing makes shrapnel. The HEDP is also favored against targets in urban areas that try to use walls for concealment. It can easily punch through typical building brick/concrete walls. That would make the Hunter/Strider/Ifrit GMG a pretty dangerous thing! :)

Hmm.... I can see the 35mm AAA gun happening, to create proximity fuze airburst effect, but for 20 and 30mm there are no HEAT ammo variants as far as I know. However, 20-30mm can have high-density penetrators inside that are armor piercing, these could be spawned as a submunition that inherit the parent ammo speed, but a lower caliber. Then the 20 and 30mm would be Multi-purpose ammunition as in Real life. The parent ammo causes HE damage, while the submunition causes penetration. Just wondering how that would work in terms of performance?

It may be so. It may also be that the PCML uses an Explosively Formed Penetrator instead of a Shaped Charge Jet. An EFP acts more like a slug of metal and usually ends up being larger and travels slower than the SCJ. EFP velocities typically ~2km/s SCJ velocities ~6-10km/s The EFP can have longer standoff distance too because it does not "defocus" like the SCJ. That would fit well with the top attack of PCML. Either way, nice find and I agree there are a lot of copy pasta placeholder values. The biggest treasure you found here IMHO is 40mm penetrator, hinting towards finally getting true HEDP grenades for grenadiers! :D

I have completely overlooked the weight ingame, nice that you picked this up. AFAIK the Mini-Spike launcher/control unit weighs 4 kg and so does the missile tubes. This means 8 kg for the loaded system. So a mini-spike team would be: 1 gunner with launch unit and 3 missiles. 1 assistant with 4 missiles. That's 7 missiles for an AT team, and 11 if you add an extra assistant. The Metis-M is a lot heavier. And I believe the team consists of: 1 Gunner who carries the launch control unit and 1 missile. 2 assistants that carry two missiles each for a total of 4. This means that it effectively has half the ammo of the Mini-Spike. The PCML has one major advantage in game that it lacks in real life, which is that it can be reloaded. I believe the NLAW is a one-shot disposable weapon, like the AT-4 and M72. It can be used at closer ranges with high accuracy because it can perform top attack without arching like javelins and titans. The NLAW is designed to kill MBT's just cheaper than the javelin. If devs were to remove the ability to reload the PCML, then the damage could be buffed. Dunno about real life, but seems like carrying two of those can be quite cumbersome. Also, as a side note. Reloading AT launchers in game is just waaaaaay to fast. Most launchers reload in like 4 seconds. I'd like to see someone load an RPG-7 that fast IRL.

@Hvymtal You have probably read my posts in the Damage improvements thread, so I'll do the TL;DR variant. AFAIK, the Titan AT is a small AT missile. The name Titan is actually the most misleading thing about the whole weapon, as it is probably the smallest AT missile there is (Missile - meaning guidance unit, rocket motor, sensor, control surface actuators and warhead). The strengths of the Titan AT are: Small size/compact - meaning you can carry more ammunition with you. High tech - meaning direct attack OR Top attack, for various targets in Fire and Forget mode. (Gunner can relocate immediately after firing). Accurate and reliable. As a natural balance, its weaknesses are: Small warhead - meaning little HE and Frag effect, and less penetration power (which is why you MUST use top attack against tanks). Expensive (Not that it matters in ArmA). Can be spoofed by countermeasures. If we say the Titan AT missile weighs 4 kg then compare it to an RPG rocket at 4kg, the RPG would have better penetration because you don't need to waste weight on guidance, steering, seekers or other gadgets. You just need a stabilizing fins, a sustainer motor and the warhead itself. This means, the majority of the rocket's weight is warhead, while the majority of the Titans weight is electronic devices. At the end of the day though, the RPG needs to be fired within 100m to achieve reliable hits, and can't reach the thin armor on top unless you are on a building roof. The Titan AT does away with these issues and can guide for several KM and always hit the top, while you reload or move into cover. Also, your tests with the various missiles/rockets - you should know that only the Titan, PCML and RPG-42 have the new HEAT/projectile mechanic. The others still use "indirectHit" calculation (splash damage) to kill things.

SCALPEL HEAT VS SOFT/LIGHT ARMOR TESTING I have been testing the Scalpel with IR-lock from Blackfoot against the following targets in the editor: IFRIT GMG QILIN (minigun) TEMPEST Transport MARID Each vehicle was attacked by a single Scalpel missile from the side and front during medium speed, to simulate typical attacks one would witness while playing. Post-attack damage was assessed and recorded. Note: Individual vehicle modules were not looked upon, just the "result" of the attack. Each attack I recorded the following information in this format: ATTACK HE (% He damage dealt before the AP projectile hits) AP (%AP damage dealt after projectile life has ended) Total = (% total vehicle damage after single attack) Crew = (% average damage between all crew members after attack) Result: Notes in relation to the attack. Regarding screenshots: All screenshots are captured during realtime so sometimes the vehicle will have moved after the attack is finished, meaning that the projectile path does not longer match with the actual situation at the time of impact. (You will see projectile paths behind the vehicle in general - where the attack happened). The screenshots are more to visualize the end result of each attack. Where the projectile path is important, I have made a note in the "result". Open the spoilers to see each vehicle attack: IFRIT GMG: QILIN: TEMPEST: MARID: Conclusion: What I observed was: All vehicles were taken out (rendered useless or destroyed) with a single scalpel. HE damage (indirectHit) is very consistent in damage for every "Scalpel vs X" situation, where the damage varies based on vehicle type (X). (See results under "HE=" in every case). The more "internal walls/geometry" the AP projectile hits - the more damage is dealt to global health (and thus, crew). None of the projectiles directly hit/killed a crew member, even though it sometimes missed by less than 5cm! There seem to be modules that immediately kill the vehicle, regardless of global health. HEAT is now a lot more random and sensitive to where and how you hit, compared to before (with indirectHit) where you basically did a fixed damage value each time. (Which is a huge improvement). Wheels seem to suffer immensely from the initial HE damage dealt by the parent ammunition!!! This evening was dedicated to @Imperator[TFD]. Cheers mate!

@dragon01 Of course not, but right now the HEAT weapons will take AT LEAST 12 hits to kill an MBT according to my tests(where either crew dies or tank explodes), while war footage generally show 1-2 hits. In some instances it would take 30 hits to kill a tank (in game). This is largely due to the lack of an engine/fuel module that does not catch fire/explode and the absence of ammunition. What you are talking about is other "kills" or "soft kills". Mobility kill Crew kill Combat effectiveness kill Etc.. All of these leave the vehicle unfit for combat, and as such are counted as defeated or "killed". Right now, the HEAT projectile deals minimal damage to the hull (global health) of strongly armored tanks, but unlike before they now pierce tanks. The HEAT parent ammo (warhead) deals splash damage that really punishes soft targets, but does little towards armored stuff. As such, HEAT is now truly an MP weapon. HE damage against soft targets, AP damage against armor. The part you are talking about regarding where the missile impacts (hottest part) is kindof outdated. IR seekers have come a long ways since the AIM-9. Most seekers today don't use photocell sensors, but rather IR camera technology with algorithms to recognize the geometry/shape of a vehicle. It will then attempt to hit center mass in order to : -Increase hit probability -Hit crew compartment/ammo storage area. Most tanks, until recently, store ammo where it is accessible to the loader, which should be in the turret bustle or under the turret, protected in hull-down situations. The T-140 Angara is therefore exceptionally well protected from these kind of missiles because: -Crew are all in hull, well in front of vehicles center mass (i.e not where the seeker will aim) -Ammo is in turret, which is separated from crew, so even if ammo cooks off, the crew are safe. -Ammo is also in turret bustle/rear portion so most likely the HEAT jet will just strike the gun breech area and less frequently hit the actual ammo. I think we need to see what the devs have planned for HEAT and AP projectiles that interact with tank internals before making the final assessment of the DLC :)

I did test it a lot yesterday and from what I can tell the scalpel tandem HEAT can pierce through most anything with ease, and like you say, does not inflict serious damage to Tanks and APC's global health. It does reach into them and can technically serve as module/crew "sniper". With the lack of a hitpoint type that represents ammunition combined with the fact that HEAT does very little damage to global health, vehicles explode less. Technically speaking, HEAT jets can typically reach temperatures of about 400-600 deg C. This jet reaches speeds of about ~7000m/s and breaks into small particles along the way. These particles act as an incendiary shotgun inside the vehicle, igniting fuel or ammunition propellant with ease. This is what normally causes catastrophic failure. Like @Beagle says: being cremated alive is the primary fear. If the tank hatches are all sealed during ammo combustion, then the tank basically becomes a pressure cooker with too much pressure to contain, and whatever point is the weakest will break first (turret ring has been seen on many tank designs, can cause turret to pop off). So long story short: No, scalpels do no do much damage atm. Hopefully that offset will be countered with vital "explodey parts" inside the vehicles. (That the Scalpel penetrator can reach).

Well.. I also thought this first. But after looking at what inspired the Titan system (The Rafael Mini-Spike) I learned that it was actually intended as kind-of a smaller and cheaper Javelin for Anti-personell/entrenchment role. So BI basically thought up a fictional AT missile to fit that system, and as such it is actually really small (I believe the Mini-Spike missile was about 4 kg, while its bigger brother, the Spike (different system), weighed in at 14kg). As such, the Titan is actually a very small and light missile system, that relies on superior attack modes, fire-and-forget system and the ability to carry more ammo. The downside? Less penetration! I think this balances nicely with other missiles, that sacrifice advanced guidance for more explosive power. Well you are all onto realistic, factual things, I think darkChozo says it ok here: I have tested the heck out of the HEAT systems now and as far as I can tell, it works pretty well and accurately in terms of how it penetrates armor. As far as I can tell, vehicles now receive damage from HEAT in two ways: The initial "parent" ammunition detonation (causes HE/indirectHit damage) will damage any vehicle/infantry nearby that has low explosive shielding. The AP projectile deals damage the same way as other projectiles do. Meaning some damage to the hitpoint/module at hand, and then it deals some factor of that to the crew and hitHull (global health). Each time a projectile hits something, it measures how "deep" it goes, and how much speed is lost, and AFAIK damage is a result of HIT x Speed/Typical speed divided by vehicle armor value. (while it is kinda well documented, the actual global health math is still missing https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Arma_3_Damage_Description . A quote from the page says it pretty well: "How exactly global damage is applied specifically is still a mystery. In theory, a hitpoint location receives damage. This damage is applied to global damage as well, but reduced via passthrough value on the hitlocation and the global armorStructural value. However, test results indicate that this is not true in every case, not matching any formula that has been floating around on various other damage related pages." ). I don't know how updated this guide is, but theoretically an ArmA 3 vehicle has hitpoints that act as areas that detect a hit, and firegeometry that act as physical obstructions that "incoming damage" collides with. Here's the rundown: I don't know what changes have been made to this relationship between firegeometry (FG) and Hitpoints (HP), but this may explain why ricochets cause damage. Like @scavenjer said, it would be nice with a "cone of damage" to simulate spalling. Then we are kindof looking at the "indirect hit" approach, where a bullet deals "splash damage", except instead of being a spherical shape, he would want it in a cone that originates from the hit location. This could be a method, but would require a new type of "indirectHit" that operates with a conical shape. To sum it up: Each cone would basically be scaled in size and damage, related to how much energy is spent going through armor, and how much speed is left. For thin armor, not much energy is spent on penetration, but high speed is left = little spall (small cone), but high speed (high damage). For thick armor, much energy is spent on penetration, but low speed is left = much spall (large cone), but low speed (less damage). Finally, if too much speed is lost, the spall occurs in a wide area. but does little damage. The amount of damage average spalling does, would have to be dangerous/lethal to crewmen, but only damage modules. The implementation of this method, would increase crew kills vastly, and increase module damage some. The optional method would be to spawn multiple submunitions in a shotgun manner (like RHS mod does), but these are supposedly resource-heavy compared to "splash damage" mechanics, so I have not decided to go into detail on that. Another different, optional method that @x3kj suggested was to create a firegroup around the crewmen (that is larger than the crew themselves) and make this area give fractional damage to the crew, simulating that even if you don't score a direct hit with the penetrator on the crewman, "spall" will be registered from a near miss. What @Beagle says about internal combustibles such as Fuel and Ammunition (or rather, the propellant charge) is also a nice thought, because then it would not really matter if the heat jet itself does little damage to vehicle global health, because it certainly WILL damage ammo or fuel, which causes explosion/fire. To solve this one sounds easy enough: Create a new hitpoint called (ammunition storage). Make it sensitive to damage (low hitpoint health) Make it so that if it is "yellow" damage = lose x amount of ammo, "red" damage = instant or delayed detonation of vehicle. I can't see why this approach has not been chosen? After all, they introduced a buttload of new hitpoints with Jets DLC for jets? Why not redo the tanks? (After all, what the hell is "hull" and why does "hull" get to decide when things explode?) From dictionary: noun "the main body of a vessel, tank, flying boat, etc" Since when does steel explode? Okay - enough sarcasm :) My point is, to fully develop a new armor mechanic in ArmA 3, I am still missing at least one more major thing: Hull = structural integrity, but Ammo and Fuel = explosive and fiery death. Sure you can keep hull, to keep track of how many hundred shells pierce the tank. I don't care about Hull unless the tank literally looks like Swiss cheese, and collapses under its own weight. A powerful blow of a large caliber solid shell might crack steel, so that the tank literally breaks apart, but not cause it to detonate. Still standing (structurally): So Asheara said to me a while back, that they wanted Ammo Racks initially, but decided they couldn't make it for the DLC. If that means they abandoned it all together I don't know, but she also mentioned a possible way to work around it - which is to repurpose the HitHull function. With that in mind, I would try to propose the following solution to the problem. Reduce the amount of damage "hithull" receives from penetration, ricochet and hitting other, physically unrelated hitpoint groups. & Make firegeometry in the location(s) where you would store ammunition/fuel in vehicles, and place hitpoints there that directly influence "hithull" damage. That is a compromise between what we currently have, and what we really want :) If I am not missing something extremely important, then this should lead to the following improvements Lower damage dealt to vehicles from penetrations and ricochets alone. (Meaning using your thick armor defensively will give you an advantage). Tanks explode when the critical areas are hit directly and damaged enough. (Rewards you for knowing your enemy, and aiming at the right spot). Crew and modules are far more common to be knocked out prior to vehicle destruction. (Fixing, resupplying and crewing your vehicles become more necessary. Promotes logistics and teamwork). Lastly and, perhaps, most importantly - it should work for ALL vehicles. Hitting fuel or ammo in any vehicle is way more likely to cause explosion, rather than "other stuff". These "other stuff" things will cause the vehicle to break down/cease to work anyhow from module failures. And the cherry on top would probably be that the resulting explosion, and post-explosion burning from a vehicle destruction should be a mathematical combo of: A) How much fuel is left? B) How much ammo is left? This way, an ammo-less vehicle full of fuel mostly just burns, while a loaded tank with half-full fuel tanks would cause a spectacular explosion :). Anyways... Things ARE still WIP. I am going to hold off my book on the subject until after DLC release, but here's an excerpt from it. But after that, I will see what is left to be done and give feedback based on that. Hopefully, if not into ArmA 3, maybe it makes way into ArmA 4 :) Good night :)

Hi! I already asked for this and the devs said there wasn't time to implement it. Also, the chance of a cookoff isn't just random, the end result is random and the tank design makes it even more random on top of that. There's like 3 levels of randomness going on. So it's better to keep it as is for now, and let modders work something out. ACE 3.0 has ammo cookoff. Lastly, dunno how forums rules are... but, although your video isn't exactly graphic I'm pretty sure there are at least two people being killed in this video.

Having a lot of fun with the HEAT weapons now! Definitely seems like the penetration works as intended. Damage values against MBT global health are pretty low (which is good), but whatever gets hit inside suffers badly (also good). Because you created the HEAT mechanic like you did (submunition onhit event), it works against everything :) All shots below taken with RPG-42 Infantry hiding behind walls? No prob: Also, you know that Helicopter you thought protected you? How about a two-hit combo. HE with a punch of AT as aftertaste! Also getting very cool results against MBT's: Looks like there are some material issues with the projectiles. They throw a lot of dirt, while it should be like miniature orange/yellow sparks. Other than that, I am truly enjoying them. Excited to see how it will look when the rest of the HEAT weapons are updated :)

Currently, AFAIK all of the mentioned HEAT warheads from yesterdays update are, in fact, Tandem HEAT*. This means that ERA is generally useless or less effective against it. ERA should activate (if by activate you mean explode) from it when hit, but it may not stop the actual jet from penetrating. When the RPG-7 and other single-stage HEAT weapons make it into the game, they should be defeated by ERA. The PCML is single-stage HEAT, so maybe you will see different results when attacking with that? EDIT: @oukej I am seeing that the Titan AT still struggles a little bit with overshooting the targets. Even at long ranges (where the missile has reached max flight height) the missile tends to land on the far side of the vehicle, meaning the AP projectile usually fires out of the side of the target. Of all tests I did with Titan AT on moving Varsuk, the missile hits the far side of the turret (leaing to minimal damage - but in 2/3 attempts disabling the far side tracks), while it should be hitting on the top or the side facing the launch direction. EDIT_2* Turns out, tank cannon HEAT are usually single warhead, no precursor. The Scalpel and RPG-42 are confirmed tandem HEAT, though.