Any planned update to the damage system for rockets?

[Steamthrower]

Title, specifically that we are getting three new helicopters- rockets being one of the main armaments on all three, will there be an update to the damage system for ground targets to enhance the damage of rockets, to make them more viable and fun to use?

[Northstar98]

14 hours ago, Steamthrower said:

Title, specifically that we are getting three new helicopters- rockets being one of the main armaments on all three, will there be an update to the damage system for ground targets to enhance the damage of rockets, to make them more viable and fun to use?

 

Some time in the future, there will probably be an update to the damage modelling of ground vehicles, though I'm more inclined to say far future rather than near as it will require a major overhaul of every ground vehicle, including the most recent ones. At the moment DCS uses a HP system with no component level damage modelling; and, as far as I can tell by looking through the .lua files contained in the database, only a few vehicles have different zones with differing resistance (so far only the M1A2 and the T-72B3); however it is just a single number for each zone (which looks a lot like it could be RHAe), but doesn't differentiate between HEAT and KE projectiles (unless I'm missing a modifier in the projectiles themselves). What it definitely doesn't have is any sort of dynamic armour arrays, that calculate the LOS effective thickness, like that other plane/tank game.   

 

With regard to warheads; at least going by the warheads.lua file in Scripts -> Database -> Weapons. It seems that DCS only really models HE effects, and for fragmentation it uses a modifier to make up the difference. For instance, the S-130F has a 33kg warhead of which 7kg is actual explosives; in DCS the explosive mass is treated as 33kg to make up the difference. Whereas the S-5KO, S-8KOM and S-8OFP2 have the correct warhead mass and the correct explosive mass.

 

This also calls into doubt whether or not DCS models the difference between different HE warhead types, such as HE, HEF, HEAT and HESH, at least by looking through the scripts.

 

There is penetration but I'm not sure how exactly it's implemented; there's things like concrete factors and object factors, but not sure what they do in practice (here, for HEAT warheads, a LUT would be preferable with penetration values given in RHAe (which should be a decent approximation), at difference angles of attack (such as 0°, 30° and 60°) and distances where applicable.