A/G Ordnance Effectiveness

[169th_DedCat]

I did a quick search through the forums and didn't see anything already posted on this, but I could have missed it.

 

Have there been any changes to the bomb blast modeling in LOMAC for 1.1? I'm assuming with all the work on the new Frog there must be. In 1.02 the only bombs that seem worth caring are cluster munitions. Everything else, even the Mk-84s, don't seem very effective at killing even soft targets unless they score a direct hit.

 

I dropped a pair of large fuel air explosives over a line of parked aircraft in a coop last night and was quite surprised at how poorly they did against those kind of soft targets. It's like the blast range is severely stunted in most A/G bombs. In the past I've dropped Mk-82s on convoys of jeeps and have been surprised when the AI all just steer around 500 lbs. explosions that occur just a few meters away from their trucks.

[Kula66]

Agreed, even 2,000lbers seem to require an direct hit!! And attacking a line of a/c on a airfield with bombs ... 1 bomb per a/c even if they are parked very close together ...

 

James

[Guest Cali]

They do seem undermodeled. I have seen a live fire at Nellis, we were far away but the blast were still huge. Plus we had a jumbotron TV to look at also. I hope the blast area have increased in 1.1 :)

[Skywall23]

Yeah, I remember when i was playing an online Su-25 interdiction mission, and the bomb blast didnt destroy my targets unless I did a direct hit.

 

Weirdo to say the least.

[169th_DedCat]

Are there no official responses to this question?

 

I find this to be a major hindrance for my enjoyment of the A/G aspect of LOMAC outside of simple tank plinking. The Su-33 looks like it could be a lot of fun for high altitude bombing--a Hornet would be even cooler mind you--but wildly off bomb blast modeling really gets in the way of that.

[Vati]

One thing I know for sure is that they do have all the data they need.

The question is why is nothing said/done on this topic... as others had said... A damn shame. :?

[Dmut]

Gents, I would take a risk to mind you, that you are talking not about bugs in programme, but a "weapon-to-armour" balance issues. And balance is thing, which should be carefully investigated before changing, because some members posting "bombs are not strong enought" and some posting same about armour.

These days developers are extremely busy with upcoming release, and most likely they just have not time to discuss "weapon-to-armour" balance topics. I prefere to wait v1.1 release, check those changes in weapon and armour characteristic's and then rise this topic again if notice anything wrong.

Also betatesters are doing their job well, so I hope many "bomb" issues are already fixed in v1.1.

Generally saying - if you really believe that something modelled wrong, please post a recorded track and some info about how it works in real life.

 

regards, Dmut

[169th_DedCat]

Dmut, if you drop two big-as-they-come fuel air explosives right over a line of parked aircraft (can't get much less armour than that) and only one of them, if any, are destroyed, than something is wrong. If you drop two Mk-84's 2 meters to the left of a docked ship, or 10-14 right of a convoy of jeeps, and nothing takes damage, than something is wrong.

 

It isn't difficult to demonstrate the lack of A/G weapon effectiveness, just try using anything other than cluster munitions and then try near-missing a few soft targets. I'm not talking about hitting anything as solid as a bunker or T80 here...

 

I'm sure the developers and beta testers are very busy getting the release prepared as quickly and truly as possible, that's just another reason why I'm bringing attention to something like this. I'd really hate to see it overlooked.

[Dmut]

Hello 169th_DedCat

you know, when it comes to games - everything is modelled with some simplifications.

LO has following simplifications in ground\water damage modelling (from what I noticed as user):

1) ground and naval units (vehicles and ships) has a lifebar, instead of damage status of various components, like aircrafts has. that's why you can't damage a tank's track or ship's radar post alone from other parts.

2) units has limited number of damage textures, most has only "normal" texture and "dead" texture, so you can't tell "nothing takes damage" by viewing on it, I am sure those jeeps has received damage, which applied to their "lifebar".

3) units don't have a damage animation, meaning you can't see jeep flying in the air from Mk-84 blast. it's a significant simplification for ground war simulator, but not an important one for aircraft simulator, because it will take a lot of "man-hour" work of animators, and new physic model for units will slowdown implementation AFM for planes, which are more important.

 

I have used claster bombs, as well as big Mk-84 bombs - they act almost good as I would expect them to act.

 

Regards, Dmut

 

ps: sorry for imperfect English, trying to improve it with every post.

[Ice]

Its good to hear the beta testing is going so well. It's also good to know that minor issues like this will be allways open for imrovement down the Track. Thakyou Dmutt for your heads-up

[Caretaker]

Hi,

 

did some tests about that yesterday. Blast radius modelling seems ok to me in 1.1 - unfortunately my 1.02 installation doesn't work anymore so I couldn't do a direct comparison ;) There's quite a difference between the destructive radius of an Mk82, Mk83 and Mk84 - and even the Mk82 can destroy trucks and tanks that are several meters away from the impact point, while for the Mk84 it's rather dozens of meters. Similarly an FAB-250 has a lower destructive radius than an FAB-500 or an FAB-1500 (which is quite a killer, as it should ;)).

 

I can't give you any exact figures, but maybe I can post some screenshots tomorrow to demonstrate this. Keeping in mind that Lock On cannot model damage to ground units in more detail (as explained by Dmut above), but only shows the difference between "ok" and "destroyed", the results looked fine to me overall :)

[Vati]

Thx beta guys for responding to this thread.

Let me give you more examples why this topic need greater attention.

 

Lets pick Mk82.

 

In game, to damage yourself with the bomb you need to fly around 20m AGL or so. Now lets take a look what is clearance in RL (source is official mil manual). 1000ft is minial relase AGL for level flight at 400kts. Ok, safe release alts have some safe bufferzone. So lets take a look at frag chart and we can read there that in 1s after explosion, the frags will reach around 1300ft in height. The max height the frags can reach is around 2500ft in vertical and radius of around 3000ft. Of course that is max range which is non lethal in most cases. So even if we halve that, the LOMAC is still very off.

 

And that is only frag aspect of explosion without blast shock wave...

 

As said before, dev team already has all this official data, so I am wondering why is it so wrong in sim? I think modelling this aspect would make game better not the other way around. Afterall we are getting new CAS plane in 1.1...

[169th_DedCat]

Thanks for the update Caretaker. That sounds good to me. :)

[BIOLOG]

Last time I was testing A-G aspects of planes (from MiG-29A/C/G and Su-27/33), a long while ago, my aircraft was destroyed if I dropped bombs below 100-150m, and was flying slow... Also there has been a couple of cases when I bombed myself (works very well I might add). So there is a good blast damage. Of cause it depends on the bomb and aircraft you are talking about. I am sure Su-25T would have much better "blast damage" model then MiG's... I might test some A-G weapon preformance today (if I have time) and report with results.

However let me once again stress the fact that developers simply haven't got time to model everything in RL detail. Therefore you cannot expect them to model persise blast fragment paths. Simply impossible because of limited time.

 

{S}

[D-Scythe]

It also depends on the fuze that's being modelled in the bombs. For the Mk-80 series of bombs, it seems like the fuze sets off on impact, thus the damage radius is very much reduced.

 

The 500-800 ft damage radius for the Mk-82/84 bombs that you guys are talking about are the result of the weapons exploding a few feet above the ground, thus the blast and the frag shoot out pretty much to their max range. Vertically upwards, both impact fuzed bombs and air burst bombs should reach out to the same height, as there's nothing hindering the blast going upwards.

 

Still, I agree with the issue at hand here though. Even a Mk 84 impact fuzed warhead should kill a jeep 30-50 m away. For emphasis, some guys at SimHQ tested this out, and here's an image they posted of an Igla trooper standing in the middle of a few explosions caused by Mk-82s and -84s, the larger ones being the -84s.

 

EDIT: The pics are dead, but the link is here:

 

http://www.simhq.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=37;t=004218

[Vati]

I understand that D-Scythe... my figures are for impact fuze not air burst. But lets not misunderstand eachother. I am not saying that T80 tank could be destroyed by that range. All I was saying that there is something not right with the frag model.

For me it seems that dev team did try to model the lethal range vs ground targets like tanks, and buildings, but forgot about softer targets which could be damaged/destroyed by greater ranges. This has direct effect also on the aircraft who is deploying the ordinance (or the one which would fly into the explosion zone). Since Mk82 has lethal range in LOMAC around 20m, the aircraft flying is also damaged/destroyed only inside that range.

The easiest solution to the problem would be that dev. team would simply use two spheres. One as it is now, and another for softer targets. Not perfect, but 180deg turn on the better.

 

Bilog, please chk again. I belive you are remembering it wrong...

[BIOLOG]

I was testing it in btw 1.1...

[Vati]

aha.. rgr.. good to see then that it is moving into right direction...

[BIOLOG]

Hmm, in latest beta, it seems that MiG can't get killed that high. Which to the certain extend makes sence. How far did you say the fragments were supposed to fly? Just so I can compare game abnd RL geometry...

[GGTharos]

So far typical 'min release' cues for a 2000lbs bomb has been about 2000' ... which is what, about 600m, right? You probably have a margin of 500' in there for safety - this isn't really how far the frag travels, but rather how far it can reach with the aircraft overflying the bomb site. The frag may reach 3000', but not before the aircraft is out of that zone, is what I mean.

 

Naturally, the slower you fly, the farther up the frag will reach you.

 

Unfortunately I don't know RL blast and frag patterns :/. I've heard that a 500lbs bomb will easily throw stuff a mile away, but we're talking about quite a bit of time here for frag flight, whereas we're concrned with instantaneous blast and frag problems against the aircraft which will obviously be much smaller, but on the order of 100m or so? not quite enough ... well, maybe for a fast jet dropping retarded fall bombs. I think min clearance for any non-retarded Mk8X series bomb is about 1000'. That means there's a chance you'll get self-frag if you go under this for release, and ED could simulate this using an expanding 3D bubble to simulate the blast. This bubble can be invisible, but can easily check for collisions.

[Vati]

OK here is data from -34-1-1 manual for Mk82 and Mk84:

Lethal frag location from impact point after 1 second of detonation (slant range)

82: ~1300ft

84: ~1600ft

Safe min alt release flying level at 300kts:

82: 1200ft

84: 1800ft

 

As GGTharos said, the min release alt has safe buffer margin. You can aproximate the margin w/ info on the frags location after 1s.. if i simplify.. 300kts is around 150m/s ... then add, lets say, 100m lag of bomb due drag, this creates horizontal distance of 250m after 1s of explosion, calculate slant range which gives us that we have approx 100ft safe margin. (tho I would say that real margin is prolly greater)

[GGTharos]

Thanks Vati!

 

Incidentally, you got a link to this manual, or the full series number? Trying to google it is a nightmare :P

[S77th-konkussion]

I agree that the cluster munitions work quite well against vehicles and the like, but how many have seen a variety of munitions leave an igla unscathed? (igla with 2 massive mk84 craters 5 meters either side of him :lol: ) Definitely could use some work in a couple respects. I understand the lifebar thing, but certainly some smoke billowing out of a damaged vehicle, The bridges/ buildings do that well.

[Guest Cali]

I agree that the cluster munitions work quite well against vehicles and the like, but how many have seen a variety of munitions leave an igla unscathed? (igla with 2 massive mk84 craters 5 meters either side of him :lol: ) Definitely could use some work in a couple respects. I understand the lifebar thing, but certainly some smoke billowing out of a damaged vehicle, The bridges/ buildings do that well.

 

went to the darkside huh konkussion...

[GGTharos]

This isn't the place for this. Don't do it again.