pooroldspike

Thanks guys, yes future DLC's and developments, mod and addons might or might not make some of these tests obsolete, that's why I point out at strategic intervals that my tests are conducted with vanilla AA3 straight out of the box with no addons of any kind, and updated whenever updates come out (currently v 1.18). And as I've also said, I always go back to edit old posts if new information come to light. For example Greenfist has just pointed out that a frogman standing on the shore can fire his underwater rifle into the water. That's very useful to know, as it now means there are 3 ways to kill frogmen- 1- Grenades tossed into the water 2- Underwater gunfights with UW rifles 3- Frogman firing his UW rifle into the water from the shore ----------------------------------------------------------------- MORE GENERAL DABBLING WITH FROGMEN I took out this kool 'Speedboat-minigun' to patrol the harbour... ..in the hope that its IR and NV would spot the frogmen, but no, I couldn't see them. I ran the test at day and night but it made no difference, the frogmen were invisible and the only way I knew they were there was by enabling their floating icons. Needless to say, I hosed down the icon area with the boats minigun and GMG but the frogmen weren't hurt. I also hoped I might be able to drop grenades on them from the boat like depth charges but there's no menu option to do that (sniffle) As we saw earlier in my post at the top of page 12, an ordinary rifle firing from land into water can't hurt frogmen, but an underwater rifle can as Greenfist pointed out. Here I stand on the quay and fire at a frogman with my UW rifle and his icon fades out (circled) as he begins to sink, hurt or dead (arrowed).. I tossed in a few grenades to kill some more, and the survivors shot at me from underwater, and down I go.. Next test: I dive in and shoot at somebody on the quay.. and down he goes (circled). I'm arrowed.. Next test: I hold my fire to see what a bot frogman on the quay will do. He spots me and starts shooting with his UW rifle, and his bullets zip past.. He keeps shooting.. Ouch I'm dead.. Summary: submerged frogmen bots will fire at enemies on land. Bot frogmen on land will fire at submerged enemy frogmen. PS- although frogmen carry an explosive satchel it can't be placed underwater (I tried but no 'Place' menu option came up) Likewise, they carry HE grenades but can't use them underwater.

CHANGING THE DEFAULT FIELD OF VIEW Default FOV is '70' (a 70 degrees frontal arc) and if you're comfortable with that, fine, but if you want to widen or narrow it, these are the two lines you need to tweak near the bottom of your Docs>Arma3 Other Profiles file. These are the default '70' figures, Top 0.75 and Left 1.34 ..and this is how 70 looks.. But if you want to widen your FOV to 100 (more fisheye), change the lines to 1.17 and 2.06 and you'll be able to see more out of the corner of your eyes like this, but things in front of you will look very small.. ..and if you want a narrow 50 FOV like this to enlarge things in front of you, change the lines to 0.47 and 0.86 NOTE: tweaking the figures is not vitally important as most of us are happy with 70 default. And we can always overide the default by zooming in and out during the game anyway. Just for the record, these are the FOV figures if anybody wants to experiment, each 10 degrees differs by increments of 14 and 24 respectively- FOV 100: 1.17 and 2.06 FOV 90:1.03 and 1.82 FOV 80: 0.89 and 1.58 FOV 70: 0.75 and 1.34 FOV 60: 0.61 and 1.10 FOV 50: 0.47 and 0.86

ASSORTED WEAPONS AGAINST FROGMEN Okay, as we saw with the tests on page 12, grenades thrown into the water will hurt/kill frogmen, so will firing an underwater rifle at them. And the page 13 tests showed that ordinary rifle fire from land won't hurt frogmen. For this new test series I placed these 10 frogmen at depth -10.. Then threw everything at them except the kitchen sink but nothing hurt them, so presumably the 10 metres of water above their heads acts as a cushion. (Incidentally I fired the Slammers HE-T and AP with no effect. Note the Panthers 40mm grenades don't explode when they hit water, and don't explode after sinking, so they're pretty much useless) And for good measure I ran this new grenade test, lobbing 6 Frag grenades into the water from the jetty. Notice the frogmen are almost invisible so I had to enable the markers to see where they are.. Aha, the 10 original markers are now only 5, so somebody must have copped it.. I dive in to check and yup, there are bodies lying on the seabed. Their mates are none too pleased and start shooting at me.. PS- in a Scorcher 155mm test I couldn't resist swimming out to see what a 155mm barrage looks like from underwater, here a shell detonates on the surface above the frogmen.. ..and when I get there I see its left a crater on the seabed but nobody is hurt..

MINES vs SUBS This SDV (Submersible Diving Vehicle) moves in towards a hostile coast to listen to the enemies rock n' roll, but it hasn't spotted that Moored mine.. ..boom, it has now.. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The next sub doesn't spot that Bottom mine.. ..boom.. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Along comes sub number three who doesn't see that PDM-7 mine.. ..boom.. (as mentioned earlier, the PDM-7 is primarily a shallow water mine because its sensors are only short-range, so this sub probably wouldn't have triggered it if it'd stayed at periscope depth)

Thanks guys and if anybody's got any suggestions what they'd like me to test, let me know and i'll put them on my test list..:) Incidentally all the tests are done with vanilla Arma3 straight out of the box and updated to to v.1.18, without any mods or addons of any kind. (I also go back to edit, amend or correct earlier test posts if new information comes in) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Here's a selection of assorted screenshot eye candy taken during the Mine testing.. Rubber boats must be too lightweight to trigger Moored mines, here I drive smack over one several times without triggering it.. ..but the heavier Motorboat will trigger a Moored mine, sometimes when it bumps it, or if it gets too close.. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Like the Moored job,the Bottom mine can't detect Rubber boats either, here a Rubber sails over one but it doesn't detonate.. ..but when this Motorboat drives over a Bottom mine.. It blows.. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Only the PDM-7 mine can detect Rubber boats, and only if they're placed no deeper than about -5. Here a Rubber gets too close to a PDM-7 in shallow water.. ..Boom, it blows and I get the "you were killed" message soon after..

If you mean unbutton and stick your head out you'll soon lose it. If you mean get out of the tank that's even worse because you'll lose your goolies as well..:) Another thing:- in 3rd person games your opponent is far more deadlier because he can peek over walls and get good overall situational awareness, so you can't afford to give him an inch, and you must be on the very top of your game every second to stay alive, real exciting bloodcurdling gaming! By comparison a 1st person player is half blind and therefore far less dangerous. In 10 years of playing the Combat Mission series, opponents used to say to me before the start- "What rules and restrictions do you want to use?", to which I'd always reply:- "None, there are no rules in a knife fight, so play exactly how you like and do your damndest to kill me, and I'll do my damndest to kill you, it'll be fun!" "There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter" -Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) "I have a high art, I hurt with cruelty those who would damage me" -Archilocus (Greek mercenary 650 BC) "It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it" -Gen Douglas MacArthur "At my signal, unleash hell" -Maximus in 'Gladiator' "We need to destroy, not attack, not damage, not surround. I want to destroy the Republican Guard" -General H. Norman Schwarzkopf "Kill anything with more than two legs" -Lt Rasczak, Starship Troopers "Take arrows in your forehead not your back" -Samurai maxim "Morality ends where a gun begins." - Ayn Rand (1905-1982) "War is cruelty. There's no use trying to reform it, the crueler it is the sooner it will be over" -William Tecumseh Sherman "Inflict the maximum amount of wound, death and destruction on the enemy in the minimum amount of time." -Gen George Patton Oops sorry, was i ranting?

Hmm i've heard that conspiracy theory before but don't subscribe to it myself. People say stuff to me like- "you play too much wargaming, get a life!" to which I answer- "But wargaming IS life, what on earth else is there??" Returning to topic, here are another few profound observations to throw into the playpen- This is a tank drivers typical 1st person view (Slammer), and if 3rd person is not allowed, you have to spend the whole game looking through this boring slit.. Yet the Slammer (like many tanks) has 3 separate drivers vision blocks which should allow you to see in a near 180 degree arc! But if 3rd person is allowed, you can hop to views like this to look around instead of being permanently cooped up in the drivers seat. This allows you as driver to simulate the near-180 degree frontal view through your vision blocks. (Incidentally even in 3rd person you as driver can't look backwards, which is realistic) Regarding infantry, here's your 1st person view as a sniper; all you can see is your rifle.. But if 3rd person is allowed you can go to this view to see how good you look to local village girls.. ..and even zoom in to check out your snazzy gun..

Hey to get an interesting idea of who plays what, how do we put up a poll asking which we prefer?- a:- mostly 1st person b:- mix of both c:- mostly 3rd person

Some of you guys have said I should use the ALT key to see my character when in 1st person view. If you mean the 'freelook' key, this is what it gives me in 1st person and I can't see much of my character, or am I doing it wrong?- 1st person front- 1st person right- 1st person left- 1st person down-

I'm going to test SDV's in due course, but meanwhile I'm still tying up some loose ends with the earlier mine tests and am editing amendments into the posts. I've also been checking out the amphibious Marshall..:) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MARSHALL versus NAVAL MINES All mine types can detect a Marshall when it gets too close and will detonate. For example here a Marshall gets too close to a PDM-7 mine in shallow water.. ..and triggers it.. Incidentally, here's further evidence that the PDM-7 is a shallow water mine; I placed this one deeper than Elevation -5 and it couldn't detect the Marshall above it..

Thanks, I've edited one into my previous post..:)

1st person is unrealistic because you can't see your character. 3rd person is unrealistic because you can see over walls. So it looks like a tie..:)

NAVAL MINES There are currently these 3 types in the game- The Moored mine is anchored to the seabed, it has sensors that will detonate it when a vessel gets around 10 metres, or bumps into it. It can either sit on the surface to scare enemy ships away- ..or can be moored deeper like this to stay out of sight. (use the Elevation option in the editor and set a minus number) This one is at -5 metres.. The Bottom mine sits on the seabed and explodes when it's sensors detect nearby vessels at around 10 metres. Place it with a minus number, this one is at -10.. The PDM-7 mine sits on the seabed. Its sensors only have a range of about 5 metres so if it's placed in deeper water it won't detect vessels on the surface. It's therefore primarily a shallow water mine and shouldn't be placed deeper than around -5. NOTE: remember rubber boats can't be detected by the Moored mine and the Bottom mine, but can be detected by the PDM-7. Also don't place the Moored and the Bottom more than -10 deep or their sensors won't reach the surface. For the same reason don't place the PDM-7 deeper than -5. Below: this pic shows a Moored mine at -10 and is just to give an idea of what -10 metres looks like.

AT MINE There are currently two kinds of AT mines in AA3, one is the M6 SLAM AT mine which blasts a molten jet of explosive at a passing tank (see page 5 of this thread), and the other is the AT Mine (below). The AT mine is the flat 'dinner plate' kind and detonates in two ways- 1- when a tank rolls over it without touching it 2- when a tank track crushes it (Infantry won't detonate it, I ran a guy over it several times but nothing happened.) Scale comparison against a rifle- I placed one in the middle of the road and drove a tank over it without touching it.. ..and it detonated under the tank; presumably it has sensors that detect tanks. Note the severe damage readout at top left.. In this test I drove close by it but it didn't detonate; maybe the sensor can only detect tanks directly above it.. ..and in this next test I drove at it to crush it under the track.. ..and it blows. It dishes out the same treatment to this Hunter, namely it detonates if the Hunter drives over it without touching it, and also detonates if the Hunters tyre crushes it. It won't detonate if the Hunter passes it to one side by a few inches. But the Offroader and Quadbike WON'T detonate it at all, not even if they drive over it or crush it under a tyre.. SUMMARY: AT mines pack quite a wallop; one is enough to trash a main battle tank, and they also make mincemeat of light AFV's like the Hunter. But lightweight softskins such as the Offroader and Quadbike are IMMUNE and will never detonate a mine. Tactically, we wouldn't usually put them in full view in the middle of the road or the tank driver would see them and go around, but at least we'd have made him stop, and slowed the enemy advance. We could of course deliberately place a few across a road to force him to divert when he sees them, so that he'd drive over others we'd cunningly hidden in grass nearby. M6 SLAM AT mines (page 5) are tactically more flexible because they can be placed unseen on the grass verge to blast tanks that are using the road.

There's no random generation option in AA3, but you can build a small simple mission yourself in 10 minutes, it's as easy as that..:) And you can include random elements into it such as the chances that a unit will or won't appear, and slap a placement radius on units so you don't know where exactly they'll appear on the map. Weather and time too can be random if you want to be surprised by not knowing whether you'll be fighting in a rainstorm at night etc. Building missions is FUN, or you can download existing community pre-made missions, or ask somebody to build some for you.

Bearing in mind this threads title 'First impressions after playing the game', I think the first thing we all did when we bought AA3 was to think "how does it compare to AA2?". So just for the record what do people think?

Haha yes I only tried that height as an experiment and I think my Init script was wrong..:) In fact guys have suggested I use a different Init script which I'll get onto in due course.

I tried it but he can still see over walls, unless I've misunderstood you. Incidentally, so far we've hardly mentioned tanks, that's where 1st person really sucks because no driver wants to spend the whole game confined to looking through the tiny letterbox slit in front of him. Even worse, if the tank is hit, it could be on fire and how would he know if he can't go to 3rd person to look the tank over? In the real world he'd at least be able to smell burning! PS- and as people have said, nobody's trying to convert the whole community to play with or without 1st or 3rd, it's just a matter of personal preference..:)

Well I stood on the jetty and sprayed the submerged frogmen with ordinary rifle fire but didn't seem to hit anybody, I'll wheel up a cannon and mortars etc to have a go at them in future tests. Smoke grenades- we can chuck them into the water, they sink to the bottom and the smoke comes to the surface like this.. That's it on the seabed with its smoke bubbling up..

I've watched youtube vids of trackir but don't think I'd like it because it's unnatural and I'd probably get motion sickness. For example if you turn your head left with TlR, you still have to keep your eyes swivelled right to see the monitor and vice versa, so your head would be twisting like a ventriloquists dummy but your eyes would have to stay locked on the screen. And from what I can see of it, there's still no way to get a good look at your own character. PS- maybe AA2/3 neds a new view option called something like "character view" which would place you a few feet behind your character at the touch of a key and then use the mouse to pan around him strictly horizontally to look him over.

Thanks guys i'll experiment with the fly in height thing later..:) Meanwhile- ENTER THE FROGMEN There are 3 ways to hurt/kill submerged frogmen- 1- by throwing grenades into the water.. like I'm doing here. (note how hard it is to see frogmen).. I jump in to see what happened. One guy has let go his rifle and is sinking, either dead or out cold.. His mate shoots me, what cheek! I've heard real-world frogmen are issued with rifles that fire underwater! I WANT ONE! 2- Underwater gunfights. I become a frogman myself and jump in to try out my super-duper new underwater rifle.. yup it works fine..:) It's effective even at this extreme visibility range.... 3- shooting an underwater rifle from land There are 10 frogmen in the water and I target one of them with my UW rifle. His icon (yellow circle) begins to pale out as he sinks (arrowed) either wounded or dead.. ..I also chuck a few grenades among the survivors which injures or kills more, and they begin shooting back at me from underwater, and down I go.. SUMMARY: remember the above 3 ways are the only way to kill/hurt frogmen. See pages 13/14/15 for more frogmen tests to confirm it

Sometimes in 1st person I hear enemy shots cracking by, followed by painful grunting and think "uh-oh, some poor bot slob in my squad has got his ass busted". But later as the grunting continues, I realse it's ME who was hit and is grunting like a stuck pig! (the "wounded" icon doesn't always come up to let you know you're hit,depending on wound severity) But if it'd been 3rd person view I'd have seen my bloodied uniform long ago, that's another reason I don't like 1st, because you can't see yourself, how unreal is that?..;) PS- In Iron Front (Arma's WW2 stablemate) people sometimes get their helmets shot off, I don't know if that happens in Arma2/3 but if it does and it's a 1st-person-only game, you won't know you're going around bare headed and that you need to grab a new helmet quick. Same goes for weapons and equipment in AA2/3 if we accidentally drop something, or fail to pick it up properly, we might play on thinking we've got a Titan launcher slung on our back, only to find out later that it's not there because there's no way of knowing in 1st person view.

My only beef with 1st person is that you can't see your own character and drool over your snazzy uniform and your beautiful weapons, equipment and dramatic Rambo stances. You can see yourself with 3rd person, but I agree it's slightly unrealistic because the view is centred behind and above him, letting you see over walls and stuff. If it was centred lower at about waist height it'd be much better as you couldn't peek over walls. Dunno if centring can be adjusted in some config file in the bowels of the game? (Flight Sim X does that with its 'Adjust Eyepoint' option)

I agree with many Arma2 and Arma3 players who say bots are far too good because they've got x-ray vision through trees, shrubs and long grass, and their marksmanship and spotting abilities are too good. So having 3rd-person view gives us humans better situational awareness which balances things out for us when playing agaist bot mofos..:)

Hey guys I just ran a new test here- http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?175240-Weapon-tests/page12 in which a bot Tigris shot down a Greyhawk drone at 25000 metres altitude but I don't believe it, I think I must have got the drones 'this flyInHeight 25000' script wrong or something?