Improved ground unit damage

[Slazi]

A lot of people enjoy hitting ground targets. We have a lot of airframes dedicated to this task. Killing vehicles and infantry should be hugely satisfying, but it really isn't.

 

Units are dead or alive. There is no system damage: loss of optics, detracking, weapon loss, fuel leaks, ammo explosions. A 99% damaged tank performs exactly the same as a 0%er.

 

Infantry don't get injured, lose moral, panic, hide, run, or even get stunned.

 

The above make any multi-hit weapon tedious to employ.

 

Straffing a tank with 30mm rounds just slowly ticks down its health bar. Bombing inf either kills them or has no visible effect. Launching a barrage of rockets against IFVs just makes them pull over to the side of the road for a bit.

 

What we really need are more events. Unique situations bought about by these attacks. I want to see more damage and more of a reaction. I want to knock out targets without killing them completly.

 

This would make it much more satisfying.

[QuiGon]

+1

 

Badly needed! Especially for fragmentation damage.

[Terrorvogel]

+1

[Agresor]

+1

[Silver_Dragon]

the CA / Ground environment require a extend redesign and improve, but expected see in the future some improvement (as a better damage model and weapons effects vs vehicles), surely on the LONG ToDo list by ED.

[Kang]

Absolutely agree.

[lmp]

+1

[CallsignFrosty]

ED should use the Combat Mission games as inspiration for vehicle damage modelling.

Even calling them games feels wrong, they are more strategic sims. Ground pounding with anything unguided feels very tedious at the moment.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Rangi]

+1

[cichlidfan]

ED has a rather extensive laundry list, at this point. While I hope this is not on too low of a priority, I am not hopeful considering what they have already said that they are working on (i.e. missiles, ATC, etc.)

[zaelu]

One quick fix would be to have the ground vehicles pop smoke like crazy. Small puffs all around the units to make it difficult to re-attack.

 

It's understandable that is hard to code some believable AI for them (there are games where the NPC interaction is critical and still they do a bad job... AAA games) but the worst behaviors can be at least masked with some "believable" military style reaction.

 

Like getting cover after an attack or after the enemy aircraft was spotted and little counter attack can be employed by popping smoke or go fast to nearest buildings or both.

[probad]

One quick fix would be to have the ground vehicles pop smoke like crazy. Small puffs all around the units to make it difficult to re-attack.

 

ironically that might make it worse, as right now there's no real thing as cover, and terrain itself is of such low topological resolution that it barely means anything.

popping smoke on this green tabletop will remove the only challenge that stands between hunting tanks and playing whackamole, and so would have a reverse effect, making ground units feel even less sensible and intelligent.

 

this is without of course touching upon the matter that smoke itself is one of the most difficult and taxing things to replicate in computer games.

Edited October 13, 2016 by probad

[zaelu]

popping smoke on this green tabletop will remove the only challenge that stands between hunting tanks and playing whackamole, and so would have a reverse effect, making ground units feel even less sensible and intelligent.

 

I read a few times your post but I don't understand it (English is not my first language but I think I do understand it a bit especially if is written and I can read multiple times).

 

How is taking an evasive action when threatened or attacked, by moving towards buildings and/or popping smoke to masks you from the air less sensible than simply sit/move few meters then stop forever until destroyed?

 

Now in game a formation that is going on a road will break formation only after they are attacked although they can fire against the attacker before him. The breaking of formation is a good thing because it ruins the simple carpet bombing solution. But too late for a first attack and it stops there.

First logical step in improving this would be to make them break formation before an imminent attack - can be detected by laser illumination sensing or launch "visual" observation, exactly like the planes do when you launch IR missiles at them. They even pop flares before you launch.

 

Second step would be to make them hard to see. Smoke is simple to use. It is realistic and in the game already. It's not the best looking maybe but... "half an eye is better than no eye".

[Gierasimov]

As far as AI goes this is definitely something that needs some love, however there are also audio-visual aspects of destruction. Explosions, smoke, fireworks and stuff... But also debris and ground particles and finally destroyed environment (structures, land, trees)...

 

As for the ground units -- camo nets and entrenched positions for artillery, SAM and radar stations...

 

One can only dream judging from the works in the pipeline.

[gospadin]

I read a few times your post but I don't understand it (English is not my first language but I think I do understand it a bit especially if is written and I can read multiple times).

 

How is taking an evasive action when threatened or attacked, by moving towards buildings and/or popping smoke to masks you from the air less sensible than simply sit/move few meters then stop forever until destroyed?

 

What I believe he means is that:

 

Defense smoke ultimately makes units more visible, not less visible, because the terrain doesn't have enough resolution to allow hiding.

 

Therefore, defensive smoke is the same as offensive smoke markers. You know the enemy is nearby them.

[probad]

^ this is correct. if you want better, more "realistic" ground units, what you want is more human-like behavior.

considering the fact smoke is visible for miles, and there's no other regular source of smoke in dcs, all you'll be accomplishing by popping smoke is, instead of being "maybe in the ao" you suddenly become "definitely in the ao", and every tgp will be staring down your neck as strikers itch to be the one to drop that flaming hot dookie on your head.

 

no human would do something so stupid to themselves (i know im gonna regret saying that) therefore it doesnt make for better and more intelligent ai behavior.

Edited October 13, 2016 by probad

[Kang]

I think these are actually two very different things.

One being effects on ground units, which leaves a few things to be desired currently. Looking through the encyclopedia one can't help but notice how some of the ground units seem to come straight out of FC1, whereas others look much more refined and detailled. It would be nice to have them all updated again sometime, brought to a common standard, and - one can dream - incorporate slightly more elaborate damage effects. Especially things like fragmentation damage could make iron bombs much more interesting.

The other topic brought up is AI reaction to attack, which probably is a much more complex issue to tackle. I agree that popping plenty of smoke is probably a bit counterproductive, considering how it would just mark their positions more clearly. One of the points making it difficult is how there is not one reaction you would want to see every single time. Sure, convoys should break formation, but they shouldn't scatter all over town whenever they see a fighter plane flying over. The whole 'taking cover' requires plenty of information on lines of sights, attack directions and so on, which is very hard for AI to do.

I think it might work better to keep these major points seperate.

[Gierasimov]

True what you say, hard it is and there is no question about that. I am not saying two areas of improvement need to be done together, I am sayin' it is not only about AI and I am still on topic with this...

[Aginor]

+1 to the whole topic.

I tend to sum this up under "AI" when talking about DCSW, but yeah, ground units are very dumb. To me it isn't as bad for a flight sim as air units being dumb, but it could use some work.

[chardly38]

Something like this. In the A10 at 8000ft im not sure that bullet damage will show up well in the TGP. Might be good in CA but dont know if damage would start to use up resources in the engine. I agree with the one post about at 90% damage armor still acts the same. If a target is hit with a missile it should blow up. If you have a gun damaged model maybe have it smoke a little with sparks and thats it. No explosion. But for now we know when a target is dead.

[Fri13]

For a moment before radical AI update is done;

 

When an attack is detected, check what is causing it, a overpassing aircraft, a unknown distant threat or artillery etc?

 

Consider options based threat type and direction:

A: Drive quickly to closest concealment or cover

B: Stop and prepare self-defense

 

Now, if a threat is aircraft passing over etc, keep moving and make it difficult for pilot to aim the aircraft at you, dropping bombs, firing rockets or cannon ain't easy when target moves and changes direction.

 

And after each pass, drive to a new location and then hold as stationary target is far more difficult to spot than a moving one. So after passing > move and stop, when threat is coming toward you, start moving to different directions to make attack run difficult.

 

And definitely pop smokes as concealment is better than being totally clear, specially once your position is already known.

 

And while the firing accuracy has been improved (made less accurate) I would like to see infantry get unloaded and get some covering fire at close range, not perfect aiming but generally to direction so pilots needs to start avoiding random firing around them, as random slight movement doesn't fool AI to fire next predictable position but actually randomly toward air target.

 

After a artillery strikes close, every driver would drive like crazy all away from that location, not to park for coffee.

 

And why the heck does columns anyways drive 5-10m spacing? Like the common thing is under air warning to travel in 200-500m separation so air attacks ain't viable and once you attack one, you have a few kilometers wide self air defense cover area where infantry can have MANPADS ready for defense.

But no, let's stack to one nice tight column so aircrafts can do rocket runs, drop bombs or just fire cannon neatly, and if they don't get all at once, just park side of the road.

[Fri13]

Something like this. In the A10 at 8000ft im not sure that bullet damage will show up well in the TGP. Might be good in CA but dont know if damage would start to use up resources in the engine. I agree with the one post about at 90% damage armor still acts the same. If a target is hit with a missile it should blow up. If you have a gun damaged model maybe have it smoke a little with sparks and thats it. No explosion. But for now we know when a target is dead.

 

Yes, the smoking and setting on fire should be limited to serious penetrations. And then just have a immobile unit or one that lost hydraulics so the cannon points down etc.

[Pindol]

+100