TinManNFO

On that last point, I think people may be talking about the "Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Precision_Kill_Weapon_System), which involves putting a small guidance and control system on the end of a Hydra 70 rocket body. One thing I would add to aiming the rockets is that when you are firing at fixed or slow-moving objects in forward flight in a helicopter and aiming downward from the flight path (this is most noticeable if you are in the AH-64D and on the IHADSS the velocity vector is above the waterline mark or aimpoint when you have the collective near maximum), you will have to aim a bit short of the target to have the rockets land where you want them to hit. This is the converse of leading a moving target when you're stationary; if you're moving and the target is stationary, you have to lag the target.

It might be a good idea to state the numbers explicitly, i.e. M2A2=300, M2A3=400. By the way, does anyone know of a list somewhere that states the vanilla armor config values as such of all or most of the armored vehicles? It may be useful to see if there are any similar errors for other vehicles and fix them at the same time.

See: http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/ULB Basically, find the ULB module, instead of UAV, in the modules menu; place an AH-6X as the aircraft and synchronize it to the ULB module; also synchronize the module with an object you want to be the terminal. You can synchronize the ULB module to almost anything you want to use as a terminal and to multiple terminal objects simultaneously; I mostly use the terminal backpack object, as I can carry it with me, but it doesn't work when I'm inside a vehicle that way, and I have to dismount to use it.

Though I was an S-3 guy and not a Hornet guy (we didn't have HUDs in the Viking) and went through Advanced NFO training before we got the T-45s and T-6s, I did once get a chance to look through the HUD of an F/A-18F powered up on the ground, and it looked pretty much as I expected and the same as the videos that Suma and themaster303 posted. (If anyone has more direct experience with this in real life, please pipe up.) The symbology is projected at infinity (there might be some way to adjust the focus on some types of HUDs, but I haven't really tried to research this), and the collimation means that the symbology stays the same angular size relative to the background and that the pitch ladder is "fixed" to the ground and sky. In other words, if you were looking at the night sky through the HUD (the FOV isn't very big, though), it would look like the pitch ladder was part of the sky like the stars were. Sort of like in the old collimator gunsights that seem to be represented in the "Wings of Prey" video clip that themaster303 linked to, the symbols would not get bigger or smaller if you moved your head closer to or farther from the HUD, respectively, and they would disappear from view if you moved your head too far left/right/up/down, since they appear to exist on the world outside as seen through the HUD combiner glass and not on the surface of the glass itself. I don't have TrackIR or anything (yet), so I haven't had a chance to check this out in ArmA2/OA in any meaningful way so far, so i might be able to give more feedback later.

Yes, I actually do this myself also, and (as I have mentioned elsewhere) I seem to also be one of those weird people who like to have the throttle forward for thrust in fixed-wing aircraft but have the "throttle" back for collective in rotary wing aircraft. So far as I have seen, the only way to switch directions is to go into the control assignments page and reassign it. When you are assigning the throttle axis, you've probably seen that it notes which direction +/- you are moving it, so I just pull it back when I'm assigning for collective and push it forward when I'm assigning for throttle; obviously, you want it positioned beforehand so that it isn't already all the way at the wrong end before you try this or you won't be able to move it the correct direction and will have to do it over. I haven't seen anything that allows you to just toggle it between normal or reverse like you can in Microsoft Flight Simulator, etc.

You might want to try borrowing a different model of joystick from someone else you know and seeing if you can reproduce the problem. It could be some sort of weird driver conflict with that particular device, but I'm not that familiar with how everything is tied in...

I was looking at the Bradley Gunnery Field Manual 3-22.1, NOV2003 revision (which is "approved for public release; distribution is unlimited", BTW, and you can search for it on the internet), and it indicates (as others have previously mentioned) that the Stinger is the primary antiaircraft weapon system, and that the M242 provides additional coverage in missile dead zones and for self defense against ground targets. The M6's Stinger system has a slew-to-cue capability if the vehicle is on the forward area air defense (FAAD) network via Enhanced Position-Location Reporting System (EPLRS); i.e. if someone is tracking a target via radar, the track can be entered on the network, the M6 crew can select a track on their system, and the weapons can be automatically slewed to and track the reported target position. It doesn't seem to incorporate any sort of electronic ranging and lead computation capability for the M242, however, so it doesn't appear to have any additional ability to engage air targets with 25mm over the other Bradley variants, which are pretty much limited to barrage fire on anything moving at more than a slow speed or with a significant lateral/angular tracking rate. (Note that, as others have stated elsewhere, in real life the M6 Linebacker was phased out of service around 2006, so any further upgrades in capability, etc., would be fictional, at least at this point.)

Yes, I know and agree; I should have been clearer and was more trying to say that the A2 and later variants have a muzzle device that incorporates a recoil effect reduction function, unlike the ones on the A1 and prior models, which had the slots evenly spaced around the circumference and are only flash suppressors.

I can attest that I've only ever had one single stoppage with an M16 or M4 using live ammunition, and it was because I had a round with a bad primer. (I ejected the round, and I could clearly see the firing pin mark on the primer; nothing else seemed wrong about it, and I decided to single-load it back in and see what would happen, and it did fire on the second try...) It did jam like crazy using the blanks, though; I either couldn't get a good seal on the blank firing adaptor/attachment (BFA), or those blanks just didn't have enough gas pressure, or both...

Well, the M16A2/3/4, the M4/M4A1, and also the M249 with the normal barrel have a combination flash suppressor and compensator. Note how the five slots are on the upper half to direct propellent gas upward to help reduce muzzle climb.

Hmmm, well if you were trying to do this in a mission in the editor you could try to see what happens if you remove the cannon ammo, but if this were in mulitplayer or something where that was out of your control, I'm not sure how you'd tell him to do that unless you were the vehicle commander or such.

Just as an FYI, note that the ANZINS weapon mod lets you move your head (camera viewpoint) to the same position as if you had a CQB sight, but most of the weapons don't actually have a back up iron sight (BUIS) or red dot sight there, so you have to guess the aim point a bit until you get used to where it is for that particular weapon.

Well, for me it's not so much a "problem" so far and more that it just "feels off" to me. Some people are more concerned about it, however, so I'm suggesting something that could make them satisfied while still preventing rapid fire from being too accurate for the people who like the current implementation. In this case, I was doing calm shooting at the range in the game as a starting point, so at least from my own point of view I would prefer that it fairly accurately represent my real life experience of calm shooting at the range if that's what I'm doing in the game, and any combat stress related effects be added on top of that when I'm in a combat situation in the game. I actually don't disagree with you on this, but note that I'm talking about the aim point, and not the impact point of the bullet, which as someone else mentioned is additionally affected by dispersion and other effects, which is a different topic. As far as I can remember, if I had a good prone supported position it settled back within maybe 4-5 MOA or so (near the edge of the circle on the zeroing target); of course I wanted to take the time to reaim it at the center of the target and get a clean trigger squeeze, because you're supposed to use the same point of aim for every shot when you're zeroing, and because all else being equal anyone would want to be as accurate as possible, and not reaiming would be potentially adding another ~4 MOA error on top of my current ~4 MOA error. Unfortunately, vanilla A2/OA doesn't take into account unsupported vs supported (whether it be with a bipod or on a sandbag or rock, etc.), but generally that should just make the amount of error bigger but not change the basic behavior. In any event, I feel that to be realistic the weapon should come back down eventually, it's just a matter of how far away from the original aimpoint it would end up and how long this would take. Again it's been a while, so I'll try to go to the range in the near future and try to see how much movement I get in various positions. Carl Gustaffa, I don't doubt that the difference in caliber may be relevant to our differences in experience with this; after you'd mentioned it, I remembered a conversation I'd had with a friend several years ago who was a fairly small woman, and she said that when she had trained with an M16 as a policewoman in a previous occupation she found the recoil to be very easy to handle. I imagine if she had been using something like most 7.62mm battle rifles she would have had a harder time.

I was looking at this a little bit, and I think I may have a compromise solution. Unfortunately, I haven't shot in real life for a few months (a little too busy with other things, and ammo has been a bit expensive), though this topic has made me somewhat inclined to try to go to the range to check this out if I have time in the next few weeks. However, I do think I have enough muscle memory from putting probably a few thousand 5.56/.223 rounds downrange over the last few years to remember the feeling pretty well, and I was holding my rifle (a CA-legal configured AR about as close as you can get to an M16A4 in semiauto) and trying to simulate it indoors. One thing I remember pretty clearly in my more formal rifle training in the Navy Individual Augmentee Combat Training course that I did with the Army in Fort Jackson, SC, before going to Iraq was about how once you get a good prone supported position (which is probably the same as what you’d be able to get with a bipod), you should be able to fire, and the weapon should kick but settle back onto essentially the same position and sight picture you had when first aiming. This is pretty evident when you are doing a 25m zero on the weapon for the first time, and it does work about as advertised! So, I was testing the new recoil on the known distance range I have set up (in the Zargabad map), and I think what would be something that can make most people happy is the following; note that this is for a 5.56 rifle firing semi-auto from prone as a baseline starting point: 1) When you fire, first the recoil as it is now occurs in v 1.54. 2) At the end of the current recoil, the aim point settles back down over about 1 to 1.5 seconds back to approximately the same point that you were originally aiming. In my indoor simulation holding my weapon, this was what I seemed to remember to be the approximate time it normally takes for my weapon and body to settle back to the original position. This way, you still get the realistic return to aim point but are forced to shoot more slowly if you want that to happen. 3) If you want to try to shoot faster, you can override the settling of the weapon by pulling the mouse down and reaiming yourself. (This would cancel the settling movement so that you don’t reaim the weapon and then after that it settles lower down than where you were trying to aim.) This may appease those people who like the current v1.54 recoil representation. 4) The position to which the weapon settles is randomly placed within ~1 milliradian (mil) or ~3.5 minutes of arc/minutes of angle (MOA) of the prior aim point. This is equivalent to ~10cm at 100m or ~3.5in at 100yds, and seems close to the error bar size I probably get when the weapon settles when I’m shooting in real life; 3.5 MOA also appears to be an approximate desired accuracy for trainees according to the US Army Field Manual 3-22.9 Rifle Marksmanship for M16/-M4-Series Weapons (see paragraphs 5-15 to 5-18 and 5-125 of the 2008 version). Also, this would be equivalent to ~0.5m at 500m, enough of a miss if you don’t correct to turn a potential lethal shot to the head or CG into a harmless dust cloud next to the target. The effect would probably need to have modified values for settling time and ending position error related to (ideally) the weapon caliber, weapon weight, barrel length, ammunition type, stance, etc. (e.g. the settling time would be longer and the ending position error greater if you were standing). Any thoughts?

Just to give people some situational awareness anchor points on the discussion, in real life the TOW has a maximum range of about 3750m (though the -2B (Aero) version can go out to about 4500m), and the time of flight out to max range is about ~20 seconds. (Any real Bradley guys, please chime in if this info needs correction or clarification.) I actually prefer to leave the game in Regular mode most of the time, especially when I'm using the more advanced armor, because it lets me do some things that approximate features that the real vehicles have. The M2A3 variant has a aided target tracker (ATT) mode in the improved Bradley acquisition system (IBAS) that allows you to lock two separate targets in the FLIR field of view and swap between them; which ever one you have selected at that point will have the crosshairs centered on it if it's moving (a centroid track, for those of you familiar with thermal targeting systems). While it can have issues from what I've read (like jumping onto an incorrect target if the intended target passes near another significant heat source), not surprisingly it's intended to help reduce crew workload and improve hit probability in heated combat situations, and I feel that the lock-on feature operates closely enough to real life to justify using it in the game if I'm an M2A3 commander or gunner. (The functional difference is that if portrayed realistically it would force the turret and optics to be pointed at the locked target rather than letting you continue to slew the turret around freely.) Most of this info comes from the field manual 3-22.1 and some other printed literature on the vehicle. On a side note, I also feel that the extended map information provides an adequate substitute for the Force XXI Battle Command Brigade and Below (FBCB2) system (displayed on a screen at the commander station in the M1A2 and M2A3, and also on that display screen you see in the game next to the right side of the turret if you're riding in the back of the M2A3) that I feel justified using that in most of the US vehicles (Stryker and HMMWVs generally have it these days also). (The system allows automatic encrypted position reporting of friendly units, as well as allowing you to mark observed enemy units on the map and transmit them to all other friendly units on the network, as well as various other useful functions.)

The throttle thing i think it was done like that to ease the flights. Mainly to be able to fly straight without having to worry about the throttle. It's really annoying for people who are used to play sim games, but it's easier for people who don't. Or when yo have to take a peek at the map.Well, the workaround that my brother and I use for this is that we map the "Thrust (Analog)" binding to the throttle axis' desired + direction, and we leave the "Brake (Analog)" binding mapped to a button. At least for the equipment we use (we have these old Thrustmaster Top Gun Fox 2 Pro USB joysticks that just have worked well enough for the less serious simulations that we haven't gotten anything newer yet), this seems to make the helicopters' collective control fly and feel basically the same as in any other helo sim I've messed with (Microsoft FS, Longbow 2, etc.). BTW, I seem to be one of those weird guys who likes to map the throttle forward direction to increase thrust with fixed-wing aircraft but likes to map the throttle back direction to increase collective pitch with rotary-wing aircraft; though I'm a fixed-wing guy in real life and haven't ever actually flown rotary-wing other than in simulation, it just feels more like pulling up on the collective to me to pull back (if you just go through the motion sitting in your chair, you'll notice that both involve pulling your left elbow rearward). On another side note, I've found the bane of flying helicopters in practically every program I've tried other than Longbow 2 (and IIRC Enemy Engaged: Comanche vs. Hokum) is the lack of a "Force Trim" button and a "Hover Hold" mode. Once I feel comfortable spending the money on it, I'd really like to try flying in ArmA 2/OA and other programs like FSX with a combination of Track IR and Nvidia 3D Vision (or similar technology). The main problems I find in flying helos in ArmA at the moment are the lack of depth perception and not-quite-adequate attitude/horizon indications, especially when I'm trying to land/drop off/pick up in a tight LZ in lots of trees or buildings. If I'm in the cockpit, without depth perception it's hard to get an intuitive sense of how far away those obstructions are; to try to compensate for this, I generally have to switch to 3rd person/external view to get SA, but then I lose my horizon reference and have to guess the position of my nose by from the apparent pitch of the aircraft (the camera tilt is based on the ground and not the aircraft) and seeing what's happening with the speed and altitude readouts. IIRC, in some of the aircraft with weapons, I can use the crosshair to see where the nose is pointing relative to the horizon, but I'm often flying the helos that don't have forward-firing weapons. With 3D depth perception and being able to quickly scan around by just using my head, I could probably do everything almost as well as I would in real life, minus the reduction in peripheral vision.

Another idea might be that, if the game automatically forces you to lower your weapon if you are poking the muzzle into the wall, a longer weapon would simply make that happen when your character's body is farther away from the wall; this would essentially enact the desired penalty for using a longer weapon for CQB. Though it would probably take more processing overhead, ideally I imagine this would work by actual boundary detection of contact between the weapon model and the structure model; that way, you could still have a realistic range of motion if you needed to engage a target in a non-optimal situation (e.g. if you are trying to clear a narrow hallway and come upon a tango unexpectedly inside a door on the wall closer to you when you are just short of the doorway, it can detect that the weapon can be pointed in the doorway even though you would not have been able to if there was a solid wall where the door was.).

Legislator, thanks for the clarification. I'll try to take a look into that a little...

Legislator, I apologize in advance for saddling you with another request, but is there any chance you could also add FLIR to the MV-22? (I first saw the page for the mod on Armaholic a few days ago and was actually surprised that you hadn't added it to the MV-22 when I read the release notes.) In any event, you can in fact see the MV-22 FLIR turret on the first image on the first post you had in this thread; it's the bulb sticking out of the bottom of the nose on the centerline, inboard of the base of the inflight refueling probe and in front of the nose gear door. (Though I haven't tried modding in ArmA yet, I guess I could try to figure it out myself, but then again it would be better if it were in a release that everyone else could get at as well...) Thanks again for going to the effort of making this mod!

Well, actually in real life the carrier (assuming you mean the Nimitz class CVN) has a few different instrument precision approach aids including the Carrier Instrument Landing System (CILS) and the so-called Automatic Carrier Landing System (ACLS); suffice it to say, I've had to use them on quite a few dark nights on Case III recoveries.The CILS works basically the same as a civilian ILS, but it's not channelized the same way, so you can't use a civilian ILS with that avionics box (i.e. the planes that can fly a civilian ILS approach also have a civilian ILS receiver tied in with their nav/radio avionics). The ACLS is more precise but requires some bi-directional communication to use properly and a radar that locks onto the particular aircraft. The displayed information to the aircrew is the same line-up/glideslope format, and they can choose to fly it manual in a "Mode II" approach, or, in some aircraft with the correct equipment (mainly the Hornets and Super Hornets), they can actually lock the autopilot to fly the plane all the way to the trap with a "Mode I" approach. In practice, I almost never saw the latter being used except a couple times when someone boltered a few times in bad weather and they really wanted him to get on deck; part of this is that the landing grade that a pilot gets when he or she goes Mode I doesn't count (towards or against him or her) for that grading period, and all the pilots are trying to get lots of OK-threes on the greenie board...

From my admittedly limited experience so far playing warfare online, I've seen some of these issues to some extent in some of the games I've played in, while other games seem to run really well. My gut feeling is that some of these things start happening when a server has been running for a long time and needs to have the mission reset or what not; I don't know if there's some memory leak somewhere or some other process that's taking up processor cycles, but AFAIK the AI can get really stupid or weird if the CPU is heavily loaded on the server side.

Yes, just for anyone who is curious, the OA booklet that comes with CO is the same as the one that you'd get if you bought stand-alone OA, but the ArmA2 booklet is an abbreviated version made specifically for CO that just has info on the campaign, main characters, and A2-specific credits and tells you to reference the OA booklet for more info on gameplay, etc. Getting to use the whole gamut of Army and Marine Corps units and equipment in missions I make in the editor is one thing I really like about it (also applies to OPFOR, independent, and civilian, of course); the Warfare Benny Edition - CO version is something definitely worth checking out if you are getting both/CO (you can basically play it single player by setting up a LAN game if you aren't into the MP that much).

Hmmm, this sounds a little messy. Though this may be a pretty nasty chore, my opinion is that I would recommend you sanitize your Addons folder of any modified files and move them to @ folders, and have all your guild members do the same. (Obviously, you should try to get everyone to use the same naming system, etc.) With the OA Expansions menu tool, you can essentially completely isolate any mods for troubleshooting, and it should help minimize (or at least significantly reduce) future mod conflicts after doing this; you basically just have to make sure everyone has the same boxes checked and unchecked before going into the mission. There might be a problem if you used a mod that overwrites one of the default .pbo files. You might have to do a clean install if you haven't backed them up and documented which files have been changed; another option could be, if you have another system available, to make a clean install on that system and copy the .pbo files over from that installation. [On a side note, the main problem with a clean install is that you lose all your profile and Armory info; does anyone know of a way of backing that up and restoring it when you want to install ArmA II/OA on a new computer, etc.? (My brother had to do something similar with his A2/OA install, and I'm pretty sure he tried copying the profile out of the My Documents\ArmA II but there was some problem; I'll have to ask him for specifics...)]

One note that may or may not be helpful (keys listed for any new people reading): from my experience the actual rate that things speed up when you use the time compression is affected by what/how much is being rendered and displayed, so you can make things go faster by looking or using free look (default is holding down L-Alt and using the mouse, or Keypad *) and looking at the sky or the ground. If I'm running on foot somewhere up and down the hills (generally when I don't think there are any threats nearby), I bring up the mini map (Ctrl-M when available) and start running the correct direction, turn on the time compression, and free-look up; things go much faster, and I can still navigate and avoid rocks and fences and stuff with the mini map.

Is there anything like an initialization parameter that can be set to make a person able to speak the local language in the editor? (Something that you could just put in like "this setCanSpeakLocalLanguage true" or such...)