I've brought this up before in LO forums, but I think this is time to discuss it again.
The problem is, since we're closing down to the ground level and vehicles becoming our main focus, we need to think about some improvements over them. Of course, this could be in form of new skins, models and movement improvements and they are being done as I've seen. But for a dedicated ground-pounder sim, this is not enough in my opinion.
The vehicles in LO have very simple damage models. They have hitpoints, and some properties that allow them to take damage from different weapons, or not get affected at all. When you do enough damage to them with your weapons, their hitpoints run out and they just pop up. Now, this is an ideal modelling for a sim like Lock-On. But for Blackshark, dealing with vehicles may get boring quickly if no improvements made for vehicle damage modelling.
What I'm trying to say is, make some improvements on vehicles. Let us be able to cripple them with machine gun fire, destroy their tracks, disable their engines, overkill(well, vaporise :) ) them with bombs and rockets, pop their turret up with our Vikhr's, disable their weapons and so on. Of course this will need some different damage models for all these situations and require extensive work, but it doesn't have to be done for all vehicles. It'd be logical if this was applied to our very common enemies like M1A1, T-80, Shilka, Avenger and trucks from both sides in initial BS version. Rest could be updated later with other add-ons.
Other things that bog my mind is, how the vehicle AI behave in combat. In current LO it doesn't look bright, they don't have any tactical behaviour at all. They still follow their waypoints senselessly. Blackshark do need some spice in this area as well. Here are some examples for what can be done:
First, if they cannot fight back yet, SAM's and AAA's should disband from the convoy and seek protection and a nice firing position in the surroundings.
Tanks, trucks and other transport should speed up to make targeting harder for the pilot.
Convoys should leave greater spaces between the vehicles to minimize the damage taken.
Tanks should seek cover, change position in cities or in forests under fire.
AAA's and SAM's assigned to defend certain areas should change positions rapidly to make targeting harder.
This kind of vehicle AI will make the mission replayable and much more fun and challenging to deal with. It'll also make the game much more interactive with the player. I know I may be "dreaming", but this is what I've expected from BS from the first minute. ED may have other plans, but if this was done, BS will be one of the best ground-pounder sim ever.
Please give your feedback :)
