martyc

It should be possible with a few minor config tweaks to increase the realism when using / fighting against Tanks / AFVs 1) Reduce the chances of total destruction (fire balling) Modern Tanks and AFVs are easy to disable, but very difficult to destroy outright (particularly the M1) And if they are hit and disabled, it is much safer to stay in the vehicle than to bail out (at least in tanks). It is extremely unlikely that an RPG hit would cause the total destruction of a vehicle like a Stryker or a BMP (like we see in Arma2) however it would be likely that the vehicle would be disabled and/or some (but not all) of the passengers and crew would be killed / wounded. 2) Variable Formation Spacing The ability to increase or decrease the space between vehicles when moving in formation. Currently vehicles travel much too close together for tactical movement. However for "admin" or safe moves then the current formation spacing is ok. 3) Reduce AI situational awareness In my experience the AI in vehicles have too much situational awareness, particularly when turned in. Being a tank crewman is like looking a the world through a straw, your field of view is very narrow and if you were taking small arms fire you would still have no idea where it was coming from except for a rough 90 degree approximation, unless you were looking at the source of the fire when it began. The AI seems to know exactly where small arms fire is coming from, even if the turret is scanning in the opposite direction. 4) AI will fire HE at infantry in buildings and/or cover If an AI spots a target hiding in a building he should engage with MG, if after a few rounds the target is not destroyed then switch to HE and take the building apart, same for vegetation / natural cover. Increasing the survivability of tanks but reducing their situational awareness should maintain a good balance in the overall gameplay and make armored fighting slower and more dependent on AFV / infantry cooperation; resulting in an overall more realistic experience. Keep up the good work! -MC

I'd like to suggest an improvement that shouldn't be too hard to implement; Heavy weapons (machine guns / .50 cal sniper rifles) should be held / fired from the hip when standing, just as they would be in real life. It is practically impossible to hold an M240 up to the shoulder when standing (I've tried), and firing it would most likely knock you on your ass, same with .50 cal sniper rifles. I understand that A3 will go with a weight-based inventory system, so hopefully this weight will effect not only how fast you can move, but also how long you could hold a heavy rifle up to your shoulder before it becomes too difficult to maintain a point of aim. That means machine guns would perform more like machine guns, instead of just big rifles. I'm also a bit skeptical about the concept of removing / changing gunsights in the middle of combat. I see that it's being touted as a big deal in the promo vids, but you cannot simply remove a CQB sight and replace it with a sniper scope and vice versa because it ruins the zero on the sights (aim point will be off because sights won't realign perfectly when they are placed back on the rail) Some gunsights have removable magnification attachements (such as the ones made by EOTech and some Aimpoint Sights) and some have variable magnification (Like the ELCAN spectre) which allow you to change the magnification without ruining the zero. Again it comes down to a realism-versus-gameplay question, perhaps for the more advanced difficulties scope changing could be restricted to what is realistic. I also think placing some restrictions on modifying weapons is ultimately a good thing because it means that you can't just have an uber-weapon that does everything (think suppressed M14 with ACOG / reflex sight and M320 - would you ever need anything else?) that means you are more inclined to try a wide range of weapons and select the right one for the job.

Hi Specialist Excellent work on the campaign; really enjoyed playing it through with OA Vanilla (Veteran diff) had no major glitches or bugs. Excellent implementation of the First Aid feature, campaign would have been extremely difficult to complete without it. Agree with Nettrucker with regards to the story telling aspects, and the briefings were a bit light on details, although I understand how time consuming cinematics are to design and implement so totally understandable. If I had to suggest improvements (and because this is an internet forum it's practically a duty to do so :) for future missions / campaigns consider mixing it up a bit, I felt that each mission involved some variation of a mounted patrol to contact followed by a village clearance. Consider adding the odd defensive scenario or an ambush to vary the player's experience. Ambushing has been one of the best features since OFP but it seems to have fallen by the way side in recent years - probably because it involves planning and *gasp* patience to pull off a really tidy ambush. Plus as a mission maker ambush scenarios are pretty quick and easy to script compared to other offensive operations with lots of moving parts. (-- End tangent) Also, consider some tweaks to friendly AI; some small adjustments can produce big results in terms of the "feel" of your mission. For example in the final mission you could assign waypoints to the other AI squads based on the player's position rather than a destination. That way the friendly AI squads will move with the player's squad giving the impression that you are part of a platoon or company assault, rather than just watching the friendly AI squads getting fed piecemeal into the death trap that is Zargabad. Anyways, excellent work on the campaign, I reckon you've made one of the best community made campaigns out there and I hope we get more from you at some stage. _marty

There needs to be a FORCE COMBAT MODE function, or more precisely, there needs to be a way of forcing the individual combat modes of soldiers. Sometimes during combat whilst leading AI you need to get them to revert to "Aware" mode, to manoeuvre quickly, or drive quickly on roads instead of the COMBAT MODE DANGER, off-road driving style. Or you have manoeurved out of contact but as the friend AI still has targets they cannot be moved from COMBAT MODE DANGER. ---------- Post added at 03:23 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:16 PM ---------- Also, I would like to see a CANCEL LOOK AT command. When commanding tanks in combat I find it useful to command the gunners to watch a particular area, say a defile or appraoch route, however, the only way I can get them to stop staring at the designated location is to select another position for them to watch or use the WATCH DIRECTION (N,S,E,W) / SCAN HORIZON command. Neither of these commands are suitable for armoured vehicles moving cross country or on roads.

1. Don't be a tightass :D. OA / A2 / BAF / PMC are tremendous value for money. BIS has already offered a great deal with the "lite" versions of their DLC (I couldn't envision any other studio being so generous with free content / missions). I see no reason why they should to go to the trouble of selling maps individually. 2. I like the idea of BIS sponsored-tournaments. A regional warfare tournament would be great. However, the big problem would be with convincing people to compete in un-modded vanilla missions, as most serious clans are used to playing heavily modified versions of Vanilla (such as ACE etc) In short; would be awesome but very difficult to pull off. If I were them I would use a tournament as a marketing instrument to promote the release of new DLC (hint hint)

I agree with NUFAN, tanks brew up way too frequently in Arma 2, also the crew bail too readily as well. When under AT attack, you're generally safer in the vehicle than outside of it, especially in an Abrams that has a system of protecting the crew compartment if the ammo cooks off. Also, when the crew bail, they should be at maximum exhaustion and suppression if not incapacitated / severly wounded. It is disappointing to destroy a tank or BMP and have the crew bail out and immediately begin returning fire. I also agree with CarlGustaffa, their should be a degree of randomness applied to ammuntion cook-offs, and also to AT weapons functioning correctly against armour. Debate rages on about AT weapons versus armour, with people referencing wikipedia and saying "Look here the ATGM (W) can penetrate (X)mm of armour and the (Y) tank only has (<X)mm of armour, therefore ATGM (W) should destroy the (Y) tank in one hit. In reality their are many, many factors that will affect an AT weapon's ability to penerate armour, in Arma this could best be simulated by a randomness effect applied to AT weapons. In practice though, I think it could piss a lot of people off when they shoot an RPG-7 at an Abrams, only to see it either dud, bounce off or otherwise do f**k all. But hey, that's what happens in reality (I've seen all three of these things occur IRL against practice targets), and I think it would enhance the armoured warfare experience of Arma 2 to a great degree.

The VERY FIRST QUOTE for BIS new game (or April fools prank - yet to be determined) Contains a complaint. I hope you were being ironic.

yeah I reckon you're right; from what i've read the Osprey uses a pretty run of the mill swashplate assembly to control the angle of attack of the blades; the discs don't physically "tilt" as most people think but the unbalanced lift caused by cyclic input "tilts" the lift vector of the disc. For Yaw control, one of the Osprey's discs generate a forward and inward component of lift while the other generates a rearward and inward component of lift. this would cause yaw. Someone said earlier that Yaw is achieved by varying the amount of Torque in each rotor, I can't see how this is possible without varying the amount of lift (as torque and lift are related) which would mean that a yawing effect could be created, but a significant rolling force (caused by the rotors producing uneven lift) would occur. But hey I might be wrong, if someone could explain it to me I'd be grateful.

You're telling me :) I think my post was too long because it doesn't look like anybody has read it :p Seems that there's confusion around the term "tilting the rotors". To clarify, there are two types of "tilt" here; one is caused by increasing the angle of attack of the rotors to "tilt the discs", which is referred to as cyclic control. This is common to all helicopters. The second is the "tilt" of the engine and rotor assembiles to convert from rotary to fixed wing flight. This type of tilt is actuated by motors in the engine compartments, not by altering the pitch of the rotors. Also, to answer and earlier question the Osprey's engines can be tilted 7.5 degrees past vertical. Yaw control is achieved by applying differential lift to each rotor using the cyclic control, not by tilting the enigne and rotor assembilies. I've done a bit more research (yes my day job is that boring) and I'm pretty certain that Ospreys don't "split" their engines.

You need to make sure your gunner has the main Cannon selected (M256) not the Coax (M240). If your gunner has the Coax selected you will not receive the option to < Reload HE rounds > from the action menu. To recap: 1) Playing as the commander; make sure your gunner has the main gun selected (M256) use < CTRL + F > to swtich gunner weapon. 2) Select you gunner and only your gunner using the function keys ( F2, F3 etc ) 3) Press < 6 > to bring up the gunner's action menu. 4) Select < Reload HE Rounds > from the action menu; using the < 0 > key to view more options if neccessary 5) Get your kill on.

Yeah I'm not sold on the whole "Nuclear Winter" hypothesis. Have not looked at the numbers I would say that the total amount of particulate pushed into the air, even from 100 freshly vaporised cities would be insignificant in terms of the total volume of air in the troposphere (where most of the particulate from a nuclear blast would disperse) Even with high-yield warheads (1-10 MT range) "citykillers" (Hiroshima was about 0.012MT) there would only be fairly localized destruction when comparing the size of cities to the size of whole countries and continents. Furthermore these calculations may or may not assume that all weapons utilise a ground-burst attack method (which maximises radioactive fallout). In a conventional nuclear exchange warheads would be employed in a number is different methods including low level airburst (to maximise devastation) to exo-atmospheric bursts (nukes in space). In short, I reckon the amount of carbon we pump into the atmoshpere each year burning fossil fuels is probably doing more damage than having the odd nuclear war here and there. I think humanity will probably die out in a long lingering over-population-and-pollution-caused famine rather than in a blinding nuclear flash. Happy Thursday!

Ok guys, I'm new to these forums, but I thought i'd weigh in with my thoughts on why the Osprey behaves the way it does. First of all I want to address the question of why aircraft turn faster when on the ground than in the air, even if they are at the same speed (say a harrier on landing). This is pretty much flying 101. in aircraft with tricycle undercarriage, meaning two main landing gear at the back (behind the centre of gravity) and a nose wheel at the front. The nose wheel is connected to the rudder control (via cables or electronics) so when you're on the ground, depressing the rudder will turn the wheel, as well as the control surface, otherwise aircraft would be uncontrollable when taxiing. Now as for why an Osprey has a very low rate of yaw in/near the hover... A few fast facts: 1) The Osprey does not have a tail fan! Unlike most helicopters it cannot simply increase/decrease the amount of power to the tail rotor to counteract the torque from the main rotor. 2) The Osprey cannot duct thrust from the engines to the aircrafts extremities to control pitch and yaw like a harrier, it must increase and decrease power to its rotors. 3) Both engines supply power to both rotors, Ospreys have a drive shaft that runs through the wings to connect both engines so in the event of a single engine failure power is available to both rotors. Not completely relevant in this case, but interesting nonetheless. This one isn't a fact but an educated guess – 4) An Osprey cannot ‘split’ it’s rotors ie – tilt one rotor forward and one rotor backward to produce a yaw effect, if you understand how a helicopter works (worth reading the Wikipedia article if you don’t) then you’ll see that having the rotors producing lift on different axes would most likely create wild and erratic secondary effects of controls. But this is just a guess; maybe it can, which would make the flight control system on this impressive aircraft even more amazing. The only way that an Osprey would have yaw control at/near the hover would be to increase lift through the front section of one rotor, and balance it with increasing power through the rear section of the other rotor. Sounds simple, but every change in the profile of the rotors corresponds with increases and decreases in rotor angle of attack, rotor and engine RPM changes, torque, and secondary effects of controls. I’m no aeronautical engineer, but my guess is that heavy pitching and rolling forces would accompany yaw so minimal rates of Yaw are allowed by the flight control system to keep the aircraft controllable. In the YT video posted you can see at the start the Osprey rolling heavily as the rate of Yaw increases. So in short, why does the Osprey have a really low rate of Yaw? Because it’s really, really complicated, that’s why. Handling the Osprey in Arma 2 – I agree with the earlier comments that the Osprey is hard to handle and it is under-used in Arma. I think it’s because most people love flying into “hot†LZ’s with all guns blazing; yeah Black Hawk Down was cool, but it is not how airmobile operations work, and it certainly isn’t what the Osprey was designed for. Saying that, learning to fly the Osprey well takes time and is very rewarding. Firstly, learn when to, and when not, engage the auto-hover. The ability to lock the engines in the vertical position means you can decelerate incredibly quickly if need be. Learn what speeds the engines tilt at, I haven’t flown the Osprey for a while but I think it is around 150 when accelerating and about 180 when decelerating. Also plan your approaches and departures (just like real pilots do) and if you need to turn 90 or 180 degrees on approach or departure, do it early or before you lift off. When you’ve mastered the Osprey; take it up to ~ 1500 m and put it into a hover over the island of Utes, then cut the throttle to zero and try and land it without any engine power; it’s wicked fun :) Peace (through superior firepower) -Marty

I agree with you Inko, the Recoilless weapon systems in Arma 2 aren't quite up to the same level of authenticity as most of the other weapons in the game. Firstly, the sounds aren't quite as accurate as they could be. Weapons like the AT4, MAAWS, RPG 7 / 18 and pretty much all other soldier fired weapons tend to make an airy whooshing sound in the game. I can tell you that in real life MAAWSs etc go bang, and it's really f**king loud :) . The sound is short, sharp and incapacitating (for about a quarter of a second). Secondly the models of the projectiles in flight aren't quite as accurate as they could be. Projectiles like the AT 4 / MAAWS / RPG 18 look a lot like tracer when they're in flight, except they glow a bright orange colour instead of red. This is not the rocket motor firing as some people think, but rather the glow from the residual heat generated by the motor. I the game they appear as big yellow dots, much larger that they look in real life. It's not really a biggie but it would impress the hell out of me if they looked more realistic. They can also bounce like tracer too if they strike an angled target (which is hilarious to watch) It's not a massive issue, but it would probably be an easy update to make. Also, zeroing AT weapons is incredibly important in real life as they have a highly curved trajectory comapred to bullets, yet zeroing has not yet been incorporated into AT weapons, beyond using the aiming marks on the optics. I know there's serious issues with changing the eye point for iron sights but it would be good see it done. Same-same for GLs as well Love INKO disposable btw; it should be incorporated into the core game I reckon.