-Coulum-

I am happy to see this. Was worried it would be left "inertialess". good job devs.

I am unsure of what to think about the DLC content/price. I already bought the bundle a while back without hesitation. Though I was hoping for more heli's, I am not at all dissapointed or unahappy. The heli's are good quality and the new features are awesome, along with the continued support of the game. I am happy to give them my 25 bucks, they deserve it imo. But I am a fanboi. I am unsure how more casual/less die hard fans will take it. I imagine most would see they really don't miss much if they don't buy the dlc. And so I imagine they wouldn't buy it. Maybe I am wrong though. Maybe people want those two heli's more than I think. Maybe people are so used to being ripped off by other games, they don't mind doing the same for arma and BI is taking advantage of that... To me personally, the DLC only seems to be worth it for BI fans, or helicopter fans. And I don't think that is a huge portion of the people playing arma these days. Overall, I aint complaining about anything. Lots of good things happening in arma and the devs deserve my money. I am just unsure whether they will get it, because they are giving so much major stuff away for free, while charging a considerable sum for relatively minor stuff. Not sure how they are expecting it to turn out.

Why do you think that? Personally, they seem equally "inauthentic". In reality your sights shouldn't misalign like in A3. But In reality your weapon doesn't lag like that Dayz vid either. However too me the misalignment method seems alot "slicker". It looks and feels pretty smooth and fluent. Dayz method comes across as more clunky and frustrating. To me the A3 method looks superior (though no doubt I would love to see a bit of DayZ method worked in there as well - I want it all of course). Overall, I don't think there really is a truly "authentic" method to simulating the effect heavy cumbersome weapons have on weapon handling. Simple as that. To me, the sway is actually the more important part. That is what actually throws your aim off. The alignment in itself is actually really not that big of a deal - your aim will be a couple of feet off and it will take less than a second for it to be spot on again. Even with a machinegun or antimaterial rifle. Put on a holographic sight and the effect is even less. Its the sway that makes it difficult to quickly and accurately engage targets with heavy weapons. Its the important part. Just my opinion though. I do agree that the sway seems somewhat inconsistent however. I can't pinpoint why I get that feeling. Might be because the sway doesn't seem to kick in until after you stop your rotation. Or maybe its because the sway doesn't seem to be effected by the direction and force you swing your weapon. Or maybe my imagination. Personally I find that I do fine if I just really take my time. Move from cover to cover. Only engage from cover. If you are playing with others, inertia makes covering ones sector much more important. Everyone cover an angle and there shouldn't be any need to rotate quick to engage targets on the flank. In short though, don't run and gun, and play with patience. Has been working for me in singleplayer and multiplayer. And if bullets are snapping by your head, (especially against ai) for the love of god, don't try to find the enemy, fight the sway and line up a shot. Reposition to a location that will let you take your time lining up your shots. Finding those spots are what makes things interesting and where tactics and planning comes into play.

Jog for 15 seconds, walk for 3 and repeat until you reach the objective. You will maintain a 5 minute kilometre even with full (blufor rifleman) gear on. That is not a slow pace. And you'll never be more than 5% fatigued, (which takes seconds of rest to get rid of). I don't think that is unreasonable. In fact, since you could do this for hours on end, without any real fatigue build up, it is actually less limited than real life. Managing your fatigue takes a bit more than "jog with weapon lowered".

This part is not true. A vest offers protection only to the torso. A helmet only to the head. It is just the opfor uniform that protects the arms and legs to a degree. That said, the problem of the helmet protecting the entirety of the face, or a plate protecting the whole torso from any angles does exist.

Ouch! Of course I would love to see Ai improvements as well. And just because there isn't any hugely noticeable improvements as of late doesn't mean nobody is working on it I am sure (well hope.)

Well... no it doesn't... or at least not in all cases. You must understand that the editor slider isn't the only thing at play and certain attributes are by default set lower than others even when editor skill sliders are maxed. I will try to explain more; Here is a run down of my findings (and please keep that in mind - this is not necessarily fact): Sub-Skills All units have 10 subskills that define how well they can perform tasks ingame. The skill values can be anywhere from 0 (minimum/worst) to 1.0 (maximum/best). The skills are listed below. Generally the names explain what task that skill effects. However do note, that the way in which a skill takes effect is not always as expected or even known. For example: I know that AimingAccuracy makes the ai less of a precise/picky shot. In contrast, I have no idea how endurance works, if it even works. Hierarchy First things first. Here is the order in which units are given their skills: Unit is assigned skills via editor slider Unit is assigned skills via scripting (these skills override ones set by editor slider) The skills of the unit are then manipulated depending on difficulty sliders/settings Now, I believe there is a step before this, which has to do with skill configs, but I am not knowledgeable enough to explain its effects and generally that is not important to us at this point. So don't worry about it, but know that there is "more to the story". Editor Sliders The editor sliders are a quick and dirty way to adjust the overall ability of a unit. When you decrease/increase this it will decrease/increase all ten of the subskills in equal proportions. When the you raise it to 100%, all the skills will be at 1.0... EXCEPT for two. SpotTime, and SpotDistance are both shrunk by a factor 70% and 40% respectively, compared to the other skills. This means that they will be 70% and 40% of what you adjust the editor slider to be. All other skills will be 100% of what the editor slider is set to be. As a closing example: if you set your skill slider to 50%, all skills will be at 0.5 except for SpotTime, which will be 0.35, and SpotDistance, which will be 0.2. This is before the in menu difficulty slider is taken into account which can further manipulate skills. Does that make sense? Moving on. Scripting Commands Now from what I explain about editor sliders, you should notice that there are many limitations. For example how would one get a SpotDistance of more than 0.4. Or what if one wanted to get AimingAccuracy lower, but keep AimingSpeed high? With the editor slider, these things are simply not possible to achieve. This is where the SetSkill Array scripting commands come in. Using the commands is quite easy. Use this simple format: UNIT setskill ["SUBSKILL", NUMBER]; Where UNIT is the name of the unit whose skills you want to adjust, SUBSKILL is the name of the subskill you want to adjust, and NUMBER is the value (0-1.0) you want to set the given subskill to. For example: soldier1 setskill ["spottime", 0.8]; will give "soldier1" a "spottime" skill of "0.8". When you set a skill with this method it will override the editor slider's skill. The other skills that are not changed by scripting will be based on the slider. But the one you define using scripting will be replaced by the scripted value. This allows you to make individual sub skills lower or higher without touching others. This is, in my opinion, the best way for a missionmaker to set skills. Difficulty Sliders/Settings The difficulty sliders/settings are found in the Esc menu/ main menu, under CONFIGURE>>GAME>>DIFFICULTY. You will see an AI LEVELING setting. The presets are Novice, Normal, Expert and Custom. When you choose the one of the first three, a preset ratio of precision and skill is applied to your ai. When you select custom, you get to choose those numbers yourself with the precision slider and skill slider. For our purposes, we will assume to be using a custom setting. The precision and skill slider basically takes a percentage of a unit's originally assigned skills away. This percentage is anywhere from 0% (empty slider) to 20% (full slider) of the original units skills (which were set by editor slider or scripting as explained above). The exact formula that determines just what percentage is shaved off is unknown to me. I just know it limits (0%-20%) Each slider effects a host of different sub skills. The Precision slider effects only AimingAccuracy, and AimingShake. The Skill slider effects the other eight subskills. Both sliders effect their given subskills in equal proportions. Here are some rough examples: A unit is set to have 0.5 AimingAccuracy (via scripting commands) and the precision slider is at 50%. He will end up having .45 AimingAccuracy overall. A unit is set to have 0.75 AimingShake (via scripting commands) and the skill slider is set to 0%. He will still end up having 0.75 AimingShake (skill slider does not effect aimingshake, precision slider does.) A unit is set to have 1.0 AimingSpeed (via editor slider) and the skill slider is set to 0%. He will end up having 0.8 AimingSpeed. Like I mention above, I don't know the precise formula to calculate the final skill. I am just going off of the extents of the sliders. But these example do demonstrate roughly, how the system works. Questions? In closing, the system is more intricate than one might think. All the seperate skill sliders, subskills, difficulty options etc. may seem confusing at first. But they do serve a purpose, and once you get the hang of it, its pretty easy stuff. My personal suggestion is just to stick to scripting commands when making missions. Skill sliders are imprecise and hard to apply to many units quickly. Scripting commands are not. A more elaborate answer to your question at the top of the post, TMP95, based on what I have explained above is... Not in most cases or for all the subskill. If difficulty sliders are set to maximum, editor sliders are set to maximum and no scripting is done you could get all the unit's subskills to 1.0 except for SpotTime and SpotDistance, which max out at 0.7 and 0.4. You can increase those further however with scripting commands. Hope that helps more than it confuses. Let me know.

Hi TMP95, if you just want to change the abilities of units in missions you are creating, it is totally possible to change individual skills like spotting, accuracy, reaction time, etc. via scripting commands. I don't have enough time to elaborate much more on it right now, but if you want me to, I can try to walk you through how to change multiple groups of units' skills quickly and easily at a later time. Just let me know. Or maybe someone else will jump in to show you how. When it comes to changing the idividual skills of units for "already made missions" it is not really possible besides the current precision slider we have now. Basically the idea is the mission maker balances that, and you only have the option to scale it up or down. Of course sometimes they balance it poorly or people have varying tastes for their missions. Sometimes not everything works out perfectly. Its just the way it is. It would be possible to fine tune ai abilities for already made missions via modding however. But that is fair sized project in itself.

Yeah I am aware that breath control is practiced alot differently in game than in real life. The goal of my suggestions was to make the general results, limitations and benefits of breath control more accurately match that of real life. Not the actual method it is achieved by. And regarding basic training and "trained military shooter" who can drop a target in every breathing state known to mankind... I have seen guys who get through basic and can't shoot for shit. When their rested. I also know people who have been shooting many years, who I would consider to be excellent shots, who never even considered joining the army. I think your statement that soldiers can shoot (accurately) in any breathing state might be a bit unrealistic. 15 weeks of basic training definitely isn't guaranteed to turn you into a super marksman. I'm not exactly sure how the speed of the bullet really pertains to hold breath... care to elaborate? So... you want the feature scrapped entirely? You want it to be more limited? less limited? How would you improve upon what we already have?

On the topic of hold breath: Do people not agree that the limitations of hold breath are rather nonexistant. Here's how I found it to work the last time I played: You can hold breath for a full 8 seconds takes about half a second to take effect Hold breath virtually eliminates all vertical sway After you release breath or 8 seconds are up you have about a second and a half of intense sway Sway the then returns to normal You can then immediately hold breath for another 8 seconds with the same efficiency Most of that is fine and dandy, except for the bolded points 2 and 6. I think these make hold breath too effective, especially point 6. 2 : In reality it takes time to control your breathing to help make a precise shot. You don't hold your breath on half a seconds notice and get a good shot. This is why I believe: The time it takes for hold breath to take full effect should be extended to at least over a second. 6 : In reality, controlling your breath for proper shooting takes more time to recover from, before you can do it effectively again. Right now you can basically make it so your soldier inhales every 8 seconds forever... and this makes you shoot better! That's just ridiculous. Holding breath for a few moments can help a shot, but repetitively depriving yourself of oxygen is not going to help anybody shoot better. It gets even sillier when you find out that you can still do this while fully fatigued. This is why I believe: The time required to hold breath again should be equal to the time the breath was originally held for. Hold for 3 seconds, wait 3 seconds (after the inhale) till you can hold breath again. This recovery time would then be further increased depending on fatigue. At 50% fatigue, hold for 2 seconds, take 10 seconds till you can hold breath again. These changes would make the system far closer to reality, and make hold breath something that needs to be used wisely, rather than something you constantly spam. And as a side note, I believe firing a shot should automatically end hold breath.

Yes, really a fatigue bar would not be that out of place. I am unsure if arma really has a "design philosophy"; It kind of seems random, ie. we have stance and ammo indicators, but don't have stamina, wound/health, and oxygen (for underwater) indicators. I don't really think that there is some sort of design goal they are going for. All in all, something needs to be done to make it clearer how fatigued you are, especially in the earlier stages and final stages of fatigue. Whether it is screen effects, sound effects, stamina bar, fading icon, coloured icon, or some other creative method doesn't matter that much. I do think that a stamina bar does give an unrealistic amount of data, but its definitely not so much as to be considered "not an option" in my opinion. And personally I have never had a problem with HUDs.

You can only do so much in five months of bootcamp. Athletes train years to be in shape and still even they sometimes mistake just what they are/n't capable of. You a right that a fatigue bar isn't more precise than a rough guess (+/-10%). But even still it seems too numerical to be perfectly realistic. Overall I would not complain at all if a bar was put in. In fact I would be happy. It would be better than what we have now. But I do think that adding faster occurring effects, that don't actually hamper your abilities (ie Pulsing vignetting where frequency of pulse depend on fatigue), or some sort of icon with variable transparency depending on fatigue would be a more "realistic" solution.

As far as I know: Wounds temporarily effect ai aiming error. Movement temporarily effects ai aiming error. Sway and wound effect ai weapon sway but the ai are perhaps (well definitely) to good at compensating for it. Fatigue effects ai animation speed just as it does a player. So basically some basic steps have been taken, but the results definitely aren't where they should be. And be forewarned this just the feeling I got from the dev's posts and some testing, but it could very well be a load of BS. BI please correct me if I misinterpreted anything you said. However I do believe (as well as hope) the devs are working on a better way of making fatigue really effect the ai aiming like it does a player.

It makes it hard to actually take them serious when they don't even bother to actually test the system out and stick to the facts, rather than exaggerations. Regarding the fatigue bar, I want a better way to see how fatigued I am, but I have to agree with froggyluv that "feeling" how tired you are is not nearly as accurate as a fatigue bar. It's easy to think you know exactly how tired you are, but in my experience it is actually quite difficult to precisely know how much juice you have left. For runners (as well as soccer, rugby, boxing and I am sure all other sports), it is one of the things that you need alot of experience at, before you can know exactly what your limits are and how you must pace yourself to maximise your potential. A personal example: I was running a provincial 400m final. I was favoured as one of the top 3 to win. Had tonnes of adrenaline on the start line. Ran the first 200m at 49 seconds pace, which was really great for my age at the time. Was a good 10 metres ahead of second. And I was feeling like I could do it all day. When I hit the 300m I knew I was tired but was still going strong - didn't feel I would have any trouble completing the race. It wasn't till I hit 10 metres before the finish, that I realized how tired I really was and how poorly I had paced myself. I simply lost all control and barely stumbled over the finish line and promptly fell flat on my face. In the last 5 metres I went from first to third. Anyhow moral of the story is, knowing how much you've got left in you isn't actually that accurate a science. Infact it is something athletes have to train for many years to get the hang of. And even then they still don't get it perfect. In the chaotic conditions of combat, with various loadouts, environments and levels of training, it is not unreasonable to say that a fatigue bar gives the player too much information. I am not saying that you would be as clueless as currently ingame. I do want something more than what we've got (though personally I don't find it all that bad because I am very frugal with my fatiguing actions). But you certainly don't have as an accurate idea as a fatigue bar would give. All that being said, I think more people need to do a mission with a fatigue bar just to get a better idea of how the fatigue system actually works.

Agreed. Stamina bar might be a bit too precise, but just "judging by sway and breathing" is not good enough. However, I do think there should be a bootcamp mission with a stamina bar so that players can more easily learn how to manage stamina. It is actually really quite easy, but without clearer indication of the rate of fatigue/recovery, it will be hard to realize that.

Yes exactly. Pronte should have far slower realignment time and sway distortion.

I am well aware that there is alot of copy and paste in both maps. But com'n haystack, would you rather fight in a village on altis or Chernarus. Which one do you think you would be able to explore fully quicker. The amount of different objects on altis far outnumbers that of chernarus. And that leads to exponentially more ways that these objects can be uniquely combined to form a scene. I think you are taking me a bit too literally. Basically there is much more options on altis, and much more interesting options. There car wreck, buildings, building interiors, ditches, compounds, alleyways, sidestreets, balconies, high plants (whatever those are), stone walls, playgrounds and more that can be combined to make a very unique scene. In chernarus its basically beside the red house, the green house, the picket fence, the chicken coup or the low stone wall. Doesn't give you much options to make a variety of uniqe scenes. Add ontop of it that Chernarus usually lacks any form of microterrain smaller than a soft hill where as Altis has ridges, ditches etc. And even forsest and open ground in altis is interesting and somewhat unique. Not sayin Chernarus didn't have interesting geography, but 80% of the map was just flat smooth fields or forsests with absolutey zero oppurtunity to use the contours of the ground to your advantage (in a small scale infantry fight.). Who knows, Maybe what I say is a bunch of bull, but I am positive Altis provides me with more interesting infantry combat and its not because I like the setting better - I don't. The reason, I theorize, is because altis has more variety in objects and lowlevel terrain details, which leads to more complex, interesting and unique scenes and scenarios.

Regarding the Altis vs. Chernarus debate, to me, altis is the better map. It has far more low level details than chernarus. small ridges hills and deflades, many many objects, many unique objects etc. Chenerus you get in a firefight in a town and its basically the same as getting in a firefight in any other town. Get in a firefight in a forest and it feels the same for any other forested area. Basically there is very little variation between the alike terrains. Every forest is the same, every village is the same, even the fields are the same with their rows of bushes and low stone walls. On altis, unless its the exact same place, everywhere is different, whether it be in a town a forest, the mountains or the open. There is always some rock or ridge or structure that makes an encounter unique even if its technically in the same terrain type, if that makes sense. If you look at Chernerus from a low level perspective its not nearly as interesting. And since I play only small scale infantry really, I am always low level. Now I do much prefer the theme and feel of Chernerus. And if it had as much detail I would prefer it over Altis. But it doesn't. Altis is the best map by BI to date imo.

Yeah pretty much. A carbine will be quick and easy to align (and more importantly, to properly position/grip/support) than an LMG. And ideally, using a scope with magnification would further increase the time to align as well. Though I think that having the different inertia based on scopes is problematic, because the inertia is based on the scope itself, and not the sight you are actually using (primary vs. secondary back up sights). Yes same here. Hell even sway could look more natural with inertia effects (Front sight leads the sway while back sight kind of slowly drifts behind). It would lessen that feeling that the gun isn't properly nested on your shoulder and make it look more like it is pivoting around your shoulder, rather than the stock sliding up and down your shoulder (like it does when you are severely fatigued). I don't see it as necessary, sway is fine enough as is, but the inertia effects just make everything seem more 3 dimensional. Which is why it would be good for recoil, to get rid of the "straight up" 2d recoil we have now, as well as bringing up the sights to the eye. I do believe that BI said that as of right now they are not going to do anything to recoil, but come the marksman DLC they might touch on it to finish off the weapon handling mechanics. We can hope.

Do you mean due to recoil? I would agree. Also when you bring up the sights initially, It would be much better if the sights came into alignment via weapon inertia method rather than the way they are already in alignment as soon as your right mouse click ala now.

What this boils down to is how much BI is willing to simulate. If BI try to simulate every detail like you suggest, that means BI have to simulate EVERY detail. You miss one and you throw things off the realistic balance. BI's approach is the opposite. Worry about the realistic balance first and then worry about whether things are a perfect simulation after if at all. I would rather have abstract mechanics that achieve realistic gameplay, than a few totally realistic mechanics, that don't add up to achieve that realistic gameplay.

Its not "forcing" anyone to do anything. In fact I think BI is trying too avoid, by all means possible, forcing people to do things. That is why they didn't implmented limited turn speeds. All the feature does is encourage you to play a certain way, and reward use of realistic tactics, much like they are rewarded in real life. That's enough for me to like the changes. People got tired of repeating the same thing other and other again to others that, for the most part, refused to try and understand. The OPREP sums up pretty much everything, as vegeta pointes out. I don't think this has really been said in this thread. The worst that's been said is: try to change up your playstyle and take it slow and cautious instead.

Possibly, but I don't think that weapon resting will actually be the saviour that everyone thinks it to be. It will be an interesting day indeed though, if it ever comes. These forums will just explode or something.

Yes, I must agree and in addition, nothing in arma 3 is really too futuristic to "simulate". Simulations are all about predicting what would/could/should happen in an event you have never gotten to observe in real life. When I was studying civil engineering we had tonnes of simulations of bridges/structures and how they would fare in certain conditions. No ones ever made a 50 metre bridge made out of A single block or 50 foot thick iron before, but that doesn't mean it isn't possible to simulate. Same goes for a futuristic weapon, vehicle armour, etc. Even if no one has done extensive testing on it, as long as you know the physics behind it it is possible to simulate it. Nothing in arma is so futuristic that you can't do basic physics to see how it would interact with the virtual environment around it. Tying all that back onto topic, the "futuristic setting" is not why arma 3 isn't a simulator. A good read. But why then do you think BI continues to provide the vast amount of support and possibly controversial features? Is is purely love of their game and having a vision for what they want it to be? Maybe constant updates means constant sales? What do you think?

You shouldn't have to read through a manual to drive a tank or fly a helicopter. But at the same time you shouldn't be able to perform tasks any easier than an actual pilot or driver can. For example you should be able to take off and land with a helicopter with just a bit of practice. A pilot can do that easily, if they are focusing on the task at at hand. But you shouldn't be able to tab lock and click to kill like you currently can. Because even an experienced pilot doesn't have it that easy. I think that is what BI is aiming for. It doesn't have to be a simulation, but the results and abilities of the players should be within the realm of realism. Of course I personally would love for full on simulation. I wouldn't mind having to learn how to fly for months on end. But it is definitely unfair to expect BI to produce that. Not only would it take alot of effort, but it would make the game alot less accessible, meaning less sales.