Second

Depends. Western armies often have good powders. I think US currently is introducing ammo which is pretty much smokeless, but they have lagged behind with that for decades. Germans had practically smokeless powder already back in ww2. Which was problem from US point of view (not sure about soviets) as their powder wasn't nearly as smokeless. Flash is alot about rifle's parameters, which is often issue with carbines and such as they have considerable shorter barrel compared to rifles to which ammo was originally introduced, so fumes for ignition don't all burn up in barrel. I've had Russian Barnaul for my modernized Mosin-Nagant which had tons of smoke. Could be flash too, i havent' much paid attention to it and it often isn't as clear to shooter as smoke. I use mostly Lapua and Sako which burns very cleanly and there is no smoke or flash. But i guess Barnaul just would have needed longer barrel or silencer for all powder to burn inside barrel instead of open air, it has heavier bullet (11gr) with seemingly same muzzlespeeds as with Lapua and Sako (850-900m/s). My Army experiences are similar, but muzzle flash is pretty complicated matter (when put into practice) and in exercises there's blankadapter attached to rifle/LMG which affects to things quite a lot by increasing flash as burning pieces of wood are scattering into sides of rifle's muzzle. On firing range with live ammo there is no smoke of flash at daylight. I don't remember how it behaved in dark at livefire exercises or in firing range. We have similar 7.62x39 but Lapua produces ammo we use and it's pretty high grade.

Yeah. I teleported one enemy unit around my unit. First had him attack my squad from south, hid behind hill (target marker stayed there) then teleported him to east side of my squad in hidden location. If target was on east side they would go east side. If i teleported him to west side my squad members started (slowly) to change their direction to west position. Even when their target marker was still on last seen position in south. System's kinda overlap there, as they seem to focus on position where enemy was last seen (forexample SL kept staring at last seen location, target marker's location, south)... But they move (=engage/attack) to actual enemy position. However they don't go directly to location but may try to use terrain formations (seems to favor high ground) and at best i had one of my squad member trying to spot enemy from ridge 400 meters away (from enemy) and reluctant to get closer (instead he zig-zagged on ridge, which is pretty dumb, but idea is cool)... Or at least it seemed that way. Sometimes i took role of enemy soldier and kept running for about 1-2 kilometers... AI's kept following me until SL told them to get back into formation... Based on my testes only way to get AI from following you is to get enough long away from them to make AI SL to order them back into formation, the time it takes for AI's to not be able to fix on your location is so long that one can't hide from it, because they will find you... At least not in wilderness, urban setting and use of building is another matter. Nemesis: That seems cool way to check it. Now i have to use cadet mode to make target markers to appear and have to have about 3-4 playable charaters (one SL, one enemy, one squad member) to check out how targeting system works. That would reduce hassle.

I'm not saying that weight doesn't add to fatigue, it reduces speed. So same power output with heavier weight generates less speed. Thus to maintain same speed more power is needed to generate -> more fatigue. Weight it self doesn't add up fatigue, light guy can be just as spent if he fails in maintain optimal pace. But i take stance of looking at this from perspective of time. If heavier guy travels same time (but shorter distance) than lighter guy then amount of energy used is equal. Ofcourse if they have to travel same distance then heavier guy uses longer time, or increases his pace. So in that perspective he uses more energy. But again every human being, advanced athletes who have worked hard for years excluded, has pretty solid border lines how long he can move on Vo2max, aerobic or anaerobic threshold. So in this sense distance is irrelevant, as one chooses appropriate pace relative to estimated time he needs to cross distance. 5km runner has to know how long it takes him to run it to determe how close to Vo2max he can go, same goes for 10km and so on. In marathons this is quite obvilious as top runners run close to their anaerobic threshold, while common joggers jogs it closer to their aerobic threshold. That because top runners runs it in less than 2:30 hours, while joggers spent easily over 4 hours. Joggers aren't more exhausted, (generally even less exhausted) because they use different energy path ways. Top runners can rely much more on glycogen, while joggers has to utilize much more their fat reserves because they don't (=can't) run with as high heart rates as top runners does. Thus energy pathways and optimal pace are chosen relative to time. Typically from physical and even mental aspect soldiers (with poorish physical fitness) like more about combat exercises than forced marches, because in combat exercises they can keep on comfort zone (dash slightly slower to maintain low lactic acid levels, rest longer to reduce lactic acids). Poorish physical fitness doesn't easily show up in here. But in marches one can't do such thing, as one has to keep formation. So he has to move faster than his own personal (optimal) pace would be which forces him to use more glycogen and less fats, which eventually can lead into depleting glycogen stores and that's when the trouble starts. Ultrarunners can take lots of time to improve their body's capacity to use fats effectively as fuel because they have to be able to run for days in a row (well they might take couple hour long naps during nights!), but regular joes have got used to take energy form glycogen during exercise. Thing with carbs is that any (intelligent&experienced) soldier should know to carry additional energy with them. But yes, possibility to run out of glycogen is possible and then one has to rely solely on fat reserves and then movement gets slow. It's matter of how deeply one wants to simulate this. I know, i could be looking this thing from solely wrong perspective. It surely seems that way. EDIT: Oh and one more thing. I advocate that speed (not fatigue) should be affected by weight carried, jog is on aerobic threshold all times and can be kept up seemingly forever (well multiple hours atleast in row), sprint is done at Vo2max or little above it. That can be one thing which makes me seem sort of ignorant to other people's posts and point of view. If speed should be same to all, then things change and fatigue should base on weight. Which i my mind doesn't produce as good results, but as i said i'm ignorant.

Could be, i'm not natural english speaker myself either. I don't disagree with any of your points, it's matter of point of view and opinion.

But i take approach that fatigue == lactic acids. Old endurance saying fits well here: Speed kills, not distance. Always. Lighter person will be more exhausted if he fails to control his tempo. I think stamina (as if glycogen stores in body) is out of game's scope, on comfort zone they would last from aprox. 1:30-2:00 hours. And they can easily be filled with sports drinks and energy bars. Also body's wear and tear from carrying lots of weight is more question of days, weeks, months. It's is very common for people not to understand what amounts of effort they can endure if they need. Yes relative to distance heavier person has to apply more strength than lighter one. But i'm not sure if distance is proper measurement unit in ArmA for this thing, because when it comes to energy reserves and how body utilizes them it's more about time. Those in the end are pretty similar to all people. Distance can vary greatly from person to person, but time is pretty constant thing. 2 minutes in Vo2max means that any person will shut down, distance can be anything from 300-800 meters. Lactic acids and Vo2max are solidly interlinked, they practically are the same. It doesn't matter what the weight is, it's matter of how much power one generates. And i mean this in context of time, in context of distance it's different, but as i explained i think ArmA should be looked from context of time. So: With more weight and equal power speed is reduced. If heavier person ends up trying to keep up with lighter person he will end up using more power, so then he will have increasing lactic acids which eventually will shut him down. Then again for example dedicated AT-specialists usually have better power output as they generally train with more weight on their shoulders... So basically AT-specialist can maintain slightly higher power output than rifleman on average. But that gets too complicated in my mind. Or something, i'm not saying that i don't agree with you, because on context of distance you are right, heavier person has to utilize more strength/energy to cross that same distance as light person. Does he then take them from fat reserves or from glycogen aerobically or anaerobically is another thing. How he's muscle/strength endurance lasts with extreme weights? (well it should with anything under 50-60% of bodyweight)... To be honest i don't care, just thought to bring up some facts in my previous post.

And this works wonders in RO2. I refuse to pick up semiautomatic rifle, or SMG, as a antitank soldier (carrying AT-rifle, pistol, couple AT-grenades) because of the fact that it will make me slower, even if it means that against infantry i'm underdog. If i need to assault tank from close distance i will rid myself from everything but pistol and AT-grenades/mines, because it makes me move much faster. Heck in MP i rarely see blokes carrying more than what they class gives them: primary firearm, possibly pistol, grenades.

Soldiers are got used to carrying heavy loads, so weight doesn't matter on it self. I have "run" (=jog) with 40 kg of gear, but i had hauled it already for months so it didn't feel that bad. Lactic acids does. Running with out gear sucks as much, only speed in greater but lactic acids does come in in same way and cause same amount of burn in body and lack of oxygen, eventually shutting body down. Jogging in comfort zone isn't nearly as unpleasant and that is why people like to stick in there, and they can stick in there for hours if need be. This is why people generally don't tire them selves up in combat exercises (or in combat) to max like they would do in in sports, and even there these kind of exercises demands lots of dedication and willpower. In Military there can be things like dashes from cover to cover, but there are usually good amount of time to recover from each dash. Then there are panic situations, where one tries to flee from pursuing enemies or escape from MG's beaten zone or something like that, in here soldiers will push against their comfort zone simply because their existence relies to it. I know maybe 0.1% of our valiant internetz warriors are aware of what lactic acids are and what they cause, how they occury etc etc etc. But this is why i think jogging should be easy effort with little to none fatigue effect because lactic acids doesn't rise up but remains steady state, while hitting sprint button starts to strongly increase fatigue (=lactic acids) eventually slowing soldier down and making him combat ineffective for tens of seconds or even minute(s). In RO2 for instance it's advisable to not to sprint into maximal fatigue as it demands lots of time to recover and ability to hit with fire is severely reduced for long time, so advanced players commonly tries to keep fatigue from maxing. I think in real life terms it worked well. Maximal amount of time one should be able to sprint? I'd say around 30-60 seconds. More logical and realistic would be 2 minutes as that is amount of time human can spent on Vo2max, but for gameplay reasons balancing can be problem as then recovery paces should be long (up to 5-10 minutes) and such time is utter hell (if freaks me out how everyone markets HIIT in fitness indusrty, as if people would actually be able to do it effectively!). And one can't repeat that often, usually not more than once. I think with 30 seconds of sprint one should spent recovering from it for about 2 minutes. But he should be able to sprint as often as he likes. In real life even those sprints should be limited to about 10-15 (and that for well fit athlete) after which ability to sprint should be taken away and fatigue levels simply doesn't rise up as body is bathing in lactic acids, but it sucks balls how that would slow game down. So what i'm saying is that fatigue should not be affected by weight... Movement speed should affected by weight. person weighting 100 kg will run marathon (or 1500 meters) just as 50 kg person would. But he would be much slower. Even if their aerobic and anaerobic fitness levels are similar -> weight reduces speed, not amount of time one can move.

It's those tactical goggles which gets fogged. Quite frankly i like this feature as a formed paintballer and airsofter, last time i spent good 10 minutes lying in pool of water with-in enemy positions as a result of failed assault into opponents positions, all i saw was strudy layer of fog in my mask and all i heard was volumes of paintball fire directed at my general location... In this light i never really understood use of tactical goggles in combat conditions when changes are that during heavy physical efforts, lots of sweating and breathing goggles will get fogged and person is pretty fundamentally combat ineffective (i know i have been!). Same goes for eyeglasses in freezing temperatures, i fecking loved livefire-exercises in offensive exercises because of fogging. Even instructor took me as an idiot because i didn't dare to shoot all targets as i wasn't sure is it my combat buddy or pop up target. So blur should stay, even get increased effect (and add sound of laughing clown aswell), but only with goggles. Maybe with shades aswell. That should teach those tacticool-idjiits some lesson, yeah baby yeah. I say this with slight sarcasm and humor. Because quite frankly goggles does seem dangerous military hardware anywhere but in photo shoots, in my eyes (which have been covered by fog thousands of times).

Combat Mission Shock Force do place itself in Modern Syria. And basically their new engine works in 1:1 scale which means that in the end it isn't different from ArmA when it comes to details and how to model them. Basically one could play FPS in it. They have even ERA-blocks modeled (you blow one up and you have cap there), Slat-armors, modern countermeasures (Sthora, dunno is there other's). Armor and ammo are naturally classified so they have to try to guess what can penetrate what, but it's there (not actual metric values are displayed). Very realistic, very well modeled. So it's doable alright. And Battlefront had only one coder at time who coded it in there (the whole engine). But i don't give rat's arse how BIS does it. Current level is fine by me.

It does fade away after longish time. My guess would be, based on my experiments, something like 5-10 minutes, after that it drops back to 0. But in my test i teleported enemy to over 500 meters away, i don't knoe can distance have effect on target. However again i must underline the fact that targeting system kept track of enemy only for few seconds after loosing LOS to it. I teleported him first in first location (immediatly after opening fire at my squad and killing one of us), then after about 10 seconds i teleported him into another location. Targeting system still thought him to be in location one (even with knowsabout at 4!). I even revealed him to my SL, but still target system thought him to be in location one... Which is odd, but i think it's been like this from start, reveal only works if AI knows nothing about target of reveal. In my example they already knew he was in location one, so that info was deemed more important that information from reveal. However engage system tracked him into location two where he actually was. I dunno why it uses two different methods, it would be logical to think that they engage enemies based on target-information on them, but instead there is some other (bugged?) system. Feck, this brings back memories from ArmA... Makes me sick, i started to hate that game by overanalyzing it's AI and it's flaws.

umm. No. And i general i think your comparing apples to oranges. That seems to be more about somesort of tracking system, and how engage order works. They do follow your movement path, heck they even track you if you teleport. But that is not same thing as targeting and seeing. Just tested. I revealed enemy AI to SL and SL told me to target him (with cadet mode i get target marker), then teleported enemy to another place. Target marker remained on the spot where he was, while he quite clearly wasn't. Even another reveal command didn't give enemy's new location, not until old marker had faded. Dunno why, i think it updated marker location before. Also SL kept his azimut related to target marker, not actual position where i teleported him into. I also played as enemy, shot one from from their squad to ensure their enduring interest on me and then teleported away. They couldn't trace me. Checked that as having playable character in said squad. Target marker and enemy sign in map remained in where they had last contact to me (from where i teleported away)... Even when another squad members started to move to location into where i teleported him into. And here's interesting part, when they found their target it got reported as new threat! They were not aware of any particular enemy (=me), but they were aware that something is there. So main problem i see at the moment is that they can track enemies over long distances. Until SL commands them back, and that can be hundreds of meters, even kilometers. On matter of AI targeting enemies i think my case still stands. Infact i just did test thing where i teleported my character all over enemy AI squad and they shot me when they had LOS, when they didn't have LOS they didn't. But when i opened fire they replied to it with immediate wrath of god. I could crawl 50-100 meters from them in long crass and they didnt' spot me. But i i shot at them from 400-500 meters they shot me thru bushes and all. It seems ArmA3 still operates under same ruleset as previous titles: they don't need to see enemy to shoot at it, enemy has to just give them clue about his location, generally by firing his firearm.

It's pretty clear that AI doesn't see thru bushes of anything, has been since OFP. Problem is their targeting system which is capable to pick your exact position (not you) and kind of overcoming cover and concelament. Just the way you can shoot target marks on you HUD, AI knows it can shoot thru bushes so it fires thru bushes. This is OFP-old stuff and i've not paid attention to it since ArmA. But this is the way i understand it works/worked: 1. You shoot. Creating both audio and visual clue for enemy to pick up, to player this is visble by target marks given by SL. This might last from anything from milliseconds to seconds, depending of configs. Forexample in OFP burst fire was notorius because it created strong clue for enemy to pick up which lasted for about 5 seconds. So enemy was aware of you the whole time, no matter what you do. In ArmA AT-soldier had seriously hard time to evade getting shot on without proper cover. If i recall enemy was aware of exact location for 10 seconds or so picking you up form behind bush, so anykind of concealment was useless as AI knew it can shoot past it and it did. Bushes still had properties to hide you from their eyes, but their targetting system kinda overwrote that... Just the way target mark on you HUD does. 2. Once that 5 (or something) seconds expires your location isn't known anymore. Enemy will presume you still linger in same spot. So if they get orders to engage you they go to that location. If you fire again and they detect it -> return to #1. That made OFP and ArmA to be solely about dead-on accurate singleshots shot at long intervals, main thing was to remain "silent" and "unseen" by regulating singleshots to over 5 second intervals and to know that you can't hide the target mark from them and try to counter that. Or that was how i thought of it. And it seems same system is still installed in ArmA3.

Mixed bag, AI could ruin it or save it. I can't tell am i already satisfied with current AI or not. Should test a lot more. I doubt it will improve much from this, because that i my experience with BIS. So far i like it, but aiming and shooting is big problem. Stances needs some amount of tweak. Firstly i'd like to see at which stance i am. Sitting is the worst because it makes player stationary, maybe replace it with high prone position or something which leaves player mobile. Maybe even eraze whole stance if there is no suitable alternative. Driving seems horrible, but i don't care much about that stuff. Fatigue meter would be nice. Editor is seems nice and fresh.

In maranthon one doesn't work at his Vo2max, 800 meters is much more better at that. Mainly i dislike swallowing and stops in his breathing cycle, as if he would be suffocating into his own spit. It makes me feel physically bad and almost hyperventilate myself. Like he's having flu and slime all over his throat, nose and mouth and at the same time he didn't warm up properly. Strenght of breathing sound is okay. If they would make goggles to fog aswell... :bounce3:

Rifle doesn't come down from recoil, that is my main problem with it. Even in prone position when i shoot rifle it doesn't come down. Movement of gun is slowish in recoil, but i dont' exprience that as big problem, i hate it if i have to fight the game in this matter when i'm supposed to fight against opponent. I've double tapped targets upto 250 meters, with LMG i've shot double-bursts (2x2 shots) upto 400 meters. And i've shot fast flying birds down in dublees from standing position with shotgun, which requires quite fast ability to shoot fast successive shots at different targets with gun which's recoil is similar to 7.62x54 bolt lock. Recoil has never been this kind of problem as it is in ArmA3. Infact i've never had any sort of recoil management teached to me and if i'm not using automatic fire with lightish rifle i don't think it's necessary. When i trained mostly with BB-gun i told to one experienced shooter that it doesn't teach me to manage recoil he said that "What goes up comes down", and he was right in my opinion.