mbbird

best dev patch of the year right here

I was able to fix this problem by removing mnk_lcs.pbo, the LCS-2 tech demo released as a test, by Mankyle on here, for men/vehicles walking aboard ships. You say you disabled mods though so I don't know of what the problem could be.

I love arma 3 and all, but the release of the sandbox content really woke me up. It seems to have jolted a portion of you guys too, because some are starting to speak out against the really weird and lazy things BI has had going on lately. Perhaps it wouldn't be brought up at all if the platform were as stable as it maybe should, but nonetheless: I apologize for the image quality, as 100kb is a tad difficult to work around, but it saves you lot 10 clicks. Disclaimer: This is called being facetious, thanks. If I offended you, stop, because video games shouldn't do that anyway. I love Arma, but reality check people. To not mention the above would be unfair. The above standing, I'm also excited to make missions/play with this new shit, but again, this can't go unsaid.

This would take actual work; we all know BI doesn't believe in something as silly as that.

Yeah but when that old thing starts showing it's age by performing as inefficiently as possible, flaunting its optimization issues across the floor, holding back expansive development through stone-age limitations, and baffling modders/mission-makers through its backwards, ancient methods, one might consider disposing of it. It's almost certainly a matter of money, not logic, Deadfast.

Edgiest mod I've seen in years.

Yeah they frontloaded the Alpha a little bit with the very well modeled MRAPs and helicopters with interiors then totally gave up even BOTHERING with ANY of the other vehicles. Vehicle simulation as a whole is pretty terrible right now.

Because infantry have 180 degree fields of view, ears, incredible response times, flexibility, feet, abilities of communication, staying power, don't have a massive IR/sound/visual footprint, are lightweight, are less expensive (if we want to go down that road), can as a group carry greater firepower to more places, don't run on gas, are more mobile even if less rapid, etc etc etc. I don't imagine, while the technology for autonomy in movement and targetting exists, that HQ would just say "okay lets let them free on the island, they'll figure it out on their own". This isn't space-age corporation warfare on a different planet. IIRC the NATO force was actually a peacekeeping operation. ---------- Post added at 09:43 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:41 PM ---------- Their presence in the game really isn't the problem, and neither are they gamebreaking (whoever said that should get into Dramatic Theatre). It's their wonkiness in interfacing, their limitations, and the halfassed nature of their content-embodiment.

I'm going to start by saying: I apologize for being antagonistic. I'd like to clarify some things though. I'm not the opposite side of the spectrum with EAST IS THE BEST, and I make every attempt to be as unaffected by Eastern propaganda as possible. You know your stuff, that's pretty clear, but the armor/crew arrangements are important! You admit it yourself, 45 vs 65-70 tons is a big difference, but getting a similar amount of armor to 70 tons out of 45 tons is not difficult when such sacrifices have indeed been made! The crew and size arrangements were carried out, and that's where the majority of the weight disparity comes from. I don't mean to say it's the same amount of armor, some Western tanks have absolutely bonkers amounts of armor by LOS in the turret or UFP, but the sacrifices have been made to give Eastern tanks reasonably high amounts of front LOS armor. Regardless, when the big guns start duking it out I don't expect either West or East tanks to withstand optimal frontal 120/125mm hits anyway, but there are some provisions for anything of lesser power or of the (not tandem, which is gaining popularity in the ME) HEAT variety. But at least we're both acknowledging tradeoffs here and that's significantly better than the original post of yours from before (and I apologize for just having jumped into this thread). As for the middle Russian bit: yeah, to say that certain hardware or specifically tank hardware alone was the only good thing the Soviets had going for them would be unfair. And to address a similar point, any information about the Russian military that comes from Russian sources is to be almost entirely ignored. That said, and I wish I could find the source right now, the last I read, the US government had reason to fear Soviet tanks with the data they worked with in the 80s and then 90s. You mentioned it yourself: they're not perfect but they're frightening in some respects. The Eastern design is perhaps a bit dated if we want to compare their performance to Western tanks in COIN warfare, but I wouldn't call them jokes. And for the last bit. Yeah, Soviet/Russian tank design got convoluted and lost by the late 80s and fell apart entirely in the 90s. It's almost not fair, with the state Russia is in, to even compare them to the East anymore, but the concepts are all there. The claim is not that K-5 has improved KE protection performance, it's that it practically removes the danger of certain KE rounds entirely. I don't know whether or not to believe the claim or even part of it, but that's the idea. The drawbacks come with their tradeoffs, and maybe a part of the above is true, but who knows. It's actually physically exhausting trying to find solid, citable research on tanks since the 90s. I agree with most of what you've said about the T-90 (although the MS looks promising) but again, it's almost not fair considering the military funding of post-Soviet Russia. India seems to be enjoying it as a platform despite the stock drawbacks you mentioned. That all aside, none of this, as interesting as it is, is particularly relevant to Arma 3 and while I totally love ontopic threads gone offtopic, I'm starting to ramble. I don't actually know if we can assume anything about DU rounds with our Armaverse NATO faction, I was actually just throwing the idea out there, remembering that a lot of EU nations don't use DU. Hell, there's like a 95% chance that the 120mm gun is a placeholder/WIP, along with large parts of A3 right now, so we'd better see improved armor simulation in the future, but I'm sure proper parallels between real life and vidya can be struck.

Ah, another WEST IS THE BEST man, incapable of seeing both sides of the story. You're wrong on both accounts; I imagine your ignorance to Kontakt-5 has something to do with the above. And as for Eastern tanks? Yeah lets forget the fact that the tanks are not even remotely similar in size to the Abrams-esque vehicles of the west. Silhouette differences, cabin space differences, shape differences, slopes, cavity additions, and armor composition differences. You're absolutely delusional if you think the weight difference and your own lacking understanding of "the laws of physics" alone equates to the conclusion you want. ---------- Post added at 02:38 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:36 PM ---------- Lets also consider the fact that A. "NATO" is likely not using depleted uranium and B. The entire silhouette of the tank is not the entire silhouette of the crew compartment, and moreover, IFVs/APCs have separate compartments entirely for separate crews and sometimes for the driver on his own. Bits of spall, intense pressure waves, and fast metal rods are all very dangerous, but they do not cause lazer-like destruction through every inch of the vehicle. A good hit into the turret cabin area would nearly certainly kill the gunner and commander, but to say it destroys everything in sight of the point of penetration is absolutely silly, and that every hit is a crew cabin hit is even worse.

Citation needed. The only kind of AI my group and I play with, meaning on our team, are autonomous drones. The jankyness and weird tendencies of the AI (that controls it when the player doesn't) are then justified with an in-game reason: "it's just a computer, it's stupid". I think that's pretty cool and is actually adding something to gameplay. That's not to say the current system is perfect, because it isn't, but saying they straight up shouldn't be autonomous outside of flight is silly. Now they just need to get off their lazy professional asses and do some actual model work for the entirely separate factions currently using the same damned models for half of the game's content.

The only "acceptable" way to portray modern tank warfare? Excuse me? Are you even aware of what a sabot round is? Subcaliber. It's a tiny little non explosive dart flying into your tank, and if you don't hit anything important and there's not much to spall then it's not going to do anything. Tanks of the '60s and '70s were built with such little armor and with so little of the frontal profile not covered in ammo that "1 hit = 1 kill" could in some instances be true, but no longer. Your little anecdote about destroying a target under optimal conditions is silly. That logic is intended to work on a large operational level, not in a 1v1 stat engagement of a video game that does damage via raw numbers. I don't get why you say 1 shot should equal 1 kill right after stating that tanks have a little something called staying power. Tanks are durable machines. This silly "logic" of yours on as to why damage should be so binary is what made tank battles in all the previous games so uninteresting. On top of all that, Arma is not a simulator. There's very little interesting about 1 hit = 1 kill for tanks.

My calling you optimistic does not immediately mean I disagree in a such a completely binary manner with every single one of your so righteous beliefs. Since you've stood it all up so nicely, allow me to knock it all down: - Playability is highly arguable. The game comes with no real meaty, replayable MP missions. In addition, currently the netcode produces rather extreme performance issues, and having just 20 AI in-game at the same time can slow all clients' FPS down to unplayable levels. - It looks okay. It's still highly unoptimized. I'm not really seeing an improvement over A2/OA outside of texture resolution. - Calling the AI "better than ever" is a massive overstatement. The AI is still awkward, wonky, incapable of using buildings properly, doing anything logically, etc, and is currently riddled with other issues that are well documented on a daily basis in the AI dev thread of this very subforum. - High quality units? You're joking. To which dungeon of indoctrination did BI send you away to over the summer? - Stratis is complete, and Altis currently gives massive performance issues while moving at any speed or through any major town. - Lets not even discuss the editor. It's the same one as OFP as of 2001, which someone you conveniently ignored already mentioned. It's an outdated joke that needs serious working on. - I'd call MP performing so badly on even the best rigs and Altis' performance on 32-bit systems two humongous, game breaking bugs. - Campaign isn't coming with release. I don't care, because I'd probably not play much of it anyway, but a lack of a campaign originally promised at release is going to destroy most A3 reviews, making A3 an "unfinished" game by definition, and in a rather large way. And as Kemeros has done above me, I will refrain from mentioning the countless implied or promised features that were awkwardly shuffled aside as the intended release date zoomed closer (COUGH Java scripting, ToH features/flight models, proper sounds, improved wounding/armor system, fast roping, ETC). So yes, maybe I missed whatever magical point you were aiming for, but optimistic realists don't exist. If you really want a label, blind fanboy might be more fitting.

It's not nonsense. We have no idea of as to what will be in those first few dev branch updates, and until today we were being led to believe the dev-branch was the release version (I apologize for not noticing the SITREP as soon as I hopped onto the computer). Personally I'd love a surprise but who knows. That aside, my images have nothing to do with it the engine's/platform's problems. They're directed mostly at content decisions, and maybe BI has some super PR event planned where they include a bunch of new unreleased content in the launch on the 12th, but we have literally no reason to believe or count on such a thing. ---------- Post added at 08:04 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:00 PM ---------- This entire post is hilariously optimistic. I applaud you, but you're going out of your way to defend A3. We criticize because we care :)

Unless the "release" has a patch of its own that I am currently unaware of that is significantly different from the current dev build, no, the game is practically launched already, and since we have 2 days (under feature lock) until "release", we can judge it as such. Surely there will be hundreds of post-release patches, but please do not further such blind nonsense, David77.

Well to be fair, all of the vehicles are feasible, but that doesn't mean reuse of turrets, vehicles, or weaponry across factions is anything more than (unfeasible) fiction. However while it's a related problem it doesn't appear to be what he's talking about, so don't mind me haha.

A few things (and here I was telling myself I wouldn't even respond past the OP): 1. I'm not calling the models shit. Not at all. They're good models. They're also reused and recycled FAR too much. So in a sense, they're of less quality not because of the modeler's work, but because of the content directors' decisions (and subsequent lack of work). That's the purpose of any critiques on the content I have there; the reusing and recycling is obnoxious. 2. A lot of the models and textures we're seeing in the content right now were seemingly created 1 or 2 years ago. The difference between laziness and lack of time is the amount of work pumped out. They had a fair amount of time. Perhaps they have less modelers than I think, but the situation with the turrets, RCWS, drones, ships etc is terrible. 3. I'm referring to the reticle/sprite used for tank guns, not the grass or bushes in the picture in which I reference Arma 1. Another (minor, but boring) piece of content reused across factions. And finally, yes, we will get copious amounts of post release support. But BI has shown a liking to paid DLC with small amounts of content. EG: Czech DLC (of which a turret and 2 vehicles were directly ported to Arma 3. Insulting), BAF DLC, etc. I'd rather have an acceptable amount of content at release than have to pay $15 to get proper res textures for them some 4-6 months post release. It's a worry and a consideration: BI has done paid DLC before.

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?163264-Reality-Check&p=2491409#post2491409 My new thread is relevant to this one, but I felt it deserved it's own spot for a while, and it will keep this thread perhaps less cluttered.

This is not how realistic, plausible balance works. Stop. ---------- Post added at 05:15 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:15 PM ---------- And I concur on the point about the L-159's glass. It's hideous and EXTREMELY glossy for no particular reason other than to look ugly.

No, fudging of damage is not a bad idea. Not at all. Abstractions of combat abilities are far more accurate than than strict reliance on already weird numbers. Games that rely exclusively on RHA equivalent values come out with very strange results. WinSPMBT and Wargame:EE/ALB are good examples of this. And please. The Panther is the Merkava chassis. It has far better than 30mm cannon round protection. If anything, I'd like to see the abstraction taken further. The 40mm rounds should slowly wear away anything external and slowly pound out armor and interior structures. Not enough to get a decisive kill in nearly the time it takes for the Panther to fire back, but capable of damaging or picking off an already damaged one. However I haven't tested the RPGs against the Panther, so sorry if I'm not seeing the whole picture. But please, RHA-based system reliance rarely goes well.

Note the part where this has nothing to do with the dev build.

Perhaps the 40mm shouldn't destroy the Kamysh nearly as fast as it does, but the 30mm Sabot rounds shouldn't be able to penetrate the Panther afaik. It's a very heavily armored tank chassis, and it's kinda slow too (if we want to talk balance).

So I'm not the only one who found this to be a shame? Haha, yeah. Here we have the Namer, in-game as Panther, but the Merkava on its own does a half-good job of being an APC in real life, in addition to the APS and mortar. I suppose for gameplay purposes the infantry carrying capacity was ignored, but it's a shame that Active Protection Systems didn't come vanilla with Arma 3 on release. I wonder if we'll be seeing them in future... but yeah that Merkava mortar would've been neat to have.

That's not really how coaxial rotors work lol. It's virtually impossible to have a rotor-rotor collision with such aircraft outside of vertical loops. Gravity is a predictable creature. ---------- Post added at 10:29 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:26 AM ---------- You just can't say this. This isn't how things work. There isn't a pilot in the universe that would count on his crew physically protecting some function of the aircraft, and the coverage of a small 14x4x6 rectangle of flesh sitting in the back of the helicopter is going to be next to nothing, useful in "protecting" the craft EXCLUSIVELY in direct bottom strikes by the heaviest of cannons. And what kind of 20 or 30mm cannon can fire straight up or traverse/react fast enough to hit a helicopter flying perpendicular to its view while staring 80 or 90 degrees up into the air?

That is not for you to decide.