A few thigs for mission building and better ground game

[Galwran]

I love mission building and having a good ground combat scenario involving air to ground assets. During the years I have noticed a few irritating things that need to updated. These changes mostly affect land units or destroying ground targets but the changes are not geared only towards the Combined Arms crowd.

 

I know that some of these things have been modded in or can be done with tricks. But I feel that they should be standard features and not something that you have to do laborously every time.

 

1) Better splash/shrapnel damage modelling for weapons. Does not need to be 100% accurate; it would be enough that there would be a X% probability for units to get damaged at 0-20m distance from an explosion, Y% probability for 20-50 meters, Z% probability for 50-100 meters.

 

The important thing is that you don’t have to simulate flying shrapnel; probability of damage that in inverse related to the distance from the explosion is enough.

Like in this:

With the Mk-82 LD 500-lb bomb there is a 10% chance on incapacitating the target at 250 meters and 0,1% chance at 425 meters. The values for the MK84 are 325 and 500 meters.

https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/usmc/mcwp/3-23-1/appf.pdf

 

2) Better damage modeling for targets. Does not need to be perfect, and just having multiple damage states would be a big plus even if those levels were caused by random amount of damage. We need at least these states:

-immobile

-main gun broken

-sensor broken (great for SEAD missions; anti radar missiles should not destroy the whole vehicle)

-dead but not burning (so you cannot tell from the distance and missiles will still lock to it)

This could even almost be simulated by having units with 40% damage stop moving and units with 60% damage stop firing their main gun, but of course more complex system would be better.

 

3)Complex stores management for land units (ie. ability to set in the editor how many missiles certain unit is carrying). I quick fix is to add modded variants of tanks that do not carry missiles. Many countries that have T-72s or BMP-1/2s do not have missiles for the vehicles. And even if they did, it would be nice to be able to simulate a situation, in which the missile supply is depleted at the beginning of the mission. This would mean for example that a single BMP-1 would not destroy a column of Leopard 1s.

 

4)There should be an option to set units travelling on roads to keep longer distances between each other. Something like “On road” and “On road – sparse”. Could be useful on the other formations too. This is so that a single CBU/SFW would not destroy the whole column.

 

5) More armed soft units. The main goal being here that there should be more targets for machineguns/rockets/non-precision weapons. I guess Mi-8 pilots agree when I complain that most of the ground units are armored and currently the weakest anti-air asset is the ZU-23mm.

 

We need least these:

-tripod mounted general purpose machine gun and tripod mounted 50 cal

-pickup truck mounted general purpose machine gun and a 50 cal (technicals)

-tripod mounted automatic grenade launcher like the AGS-17 or the MK40

-a shoulder fired AT for the blue units, like M72 LAW, AT-4 and Carl Gustav

-a heavy tripod mounted recoilless rifle like the SPG-9, could also be mounted on a pickup truck

-Crew served antitank missiles like the AT-3 Sagger, AT-5 Spandrel, Dragon and TOW teams. Preferably mobile, but static units would be a good start.

-towed artillery pieces like the 122-mm howitzer D-30, 152 mm towed gun-howitzer M1955 D-20 and the 155mm M198 howitzer. These units could be immobile if the towing mechanic is too hard to implement but they would make for a great target. Currently all of the artillery is tracked and armored.

 

Please note that most of these weapon systems are already simulated in a way or the other; they just need new spawnable 3D units to use them. For example the .50 cal in the Mi-8 would be perfect if you just move him out of the helicopter, the ATGMs and artillery weapons modelling is already done, etc.

 

6)Missions editor needs triggers like coalition_ground_unit_in_zone and coalition_air_unit_in_zone so that the overflying planes will not complicate the triggers made for the ground game. I know that you can use part_of_group_in_zone but that is at least ten times more time consuming than having the ability to differentiate between air and ground.

Also we could also use a coalition_naval_unit_in zone trigger type.

 

7)Better way to trigger functions relating to the map assets like bridges, buildings, oil rigs, factories, airbase assets (static fuel trucks, static planes, runways, fuel tanks, tower). After this could have bridge destruction as a mission goal or and with scripting destroying static fuel trucks or fuel tanks would cause the airfield to lose refueling capability, etc. Currently all of the airfield assets besides the runways are just eye candy.

 

8 )Deploying land mines during the mission. Mines already exist, but it would be nice to dispense them with the Mi-8 or with vehicles.

 

9)The ability to make proper artillery fire missions from the F10 map. Like: “shoot 60 rounds in to this 100x300m rectangle, start at 08:15:00”

The ability to act as a forward observer/spotter and make adjustments would be a big plus. At least the JTAC should be able to automatically get his laser-marked targets appear on the F10 map.

You should be able to assign AI units as FAC/FIST and then they would order fire missions on the enemies that that they spot. This would make AI artillery a lot more useful.

 

10) when you are using an artillery unit in the first person mode, your view point should not change upwards when you change the elevation. Only the barrel and the distance scale should move. Also, the distance scale and the direction scales should be in mils. The distance reading in meters could be an option, but distance is not the same from all altitudes or inclines. Also, you should be able to command all of the guns in the group to shoot with your target values. This would be fun when shooting at ships, etc.

 

11)Better AI behavior for the ground units. I don’t mean that they should know how to do complex tactical manoveurs, but even in games like the Combat Mission in 2002 the ground units had enough AI to seek cover when under fire and try to get to a target zone when not under fire.

[Jester986]

Some good points on here but I doubt we'll see much of it. I'd like to +1 some armed soft targets to for light cas. Technicals, Russian trucks with dshka's, pkm's, etc.

[msalama]

I agree. The ground part of the game is way too rudimental as it is, plus some of the stuff is broken too. Would really like to see this part of the sim receive some TLC...

[MikeMikeJuliet]

I support the ideas. I think they are well thought out and argumented. Expanded ground warfare options and assets will also affect aircraft in a positive way and give multiplayer scenarios much needed depth and complexity.

 

Regards,

MikeMikeJuliet

[Johnny_Rico]

+1 great post