reported earlier mk-20 and cbu99 not damaging any target or basically doing nothing

[jppsx]

i just did the training mission and it seam mk-20 and cbu-99 wont do any damage to the target or very little damage  . is there something not mentioned in the training mission or the bomb is not functional 

Edited April 30, 2021 by jppsx

[jppsx]

there a trk file dropped 4xcbu-99 and 4x mk20 in a group of mtlb none of them die they just get very little damage 

mk20 and cbu-99 fail .trk

Edited April 30, 2021 by jppsx

[Blinky.ben]

In my opinion the weapons are modelled fairly accurately in that they shouldn’t make a vehicle go up in a Hollywood explosion, but this is where the damage modelling needs some work. These types of weapons don’t cause vehicles, particularly armour or equipment to explode into a mushroom cloud. But they do neutralise vehicles and equipment by shredding tyres and antennas or possibly fragging the engine and fragging personal in light skinned vehicle's however a vehicle isn’t downed just cause it has a hole in it. But for a cluster attack there wouldn’t be too much visual indications from a aircrafts perspective to indicate that a vehicle has indeed been neutralised other then it has stopped moving or it is smoking cause a lucky hit into a fuel tank. I think the modelling will get there one day which will be awesome but expecting an entire convoy to explode into flames would be incorrect and very wrong for a realism point of view. It’s a big deal trying to confirm an attack has indeed been successful which I think is a very big part of DCS that is lacking and a huge part most people in DCS take for granted.

[Tippis]

It's working, and nothing is wrong. Well… not wrong as such.

 

it's just that due to how there is zero fragmentation and ridiculously tiny blast effects in DCS, on top of there only being the most trivial and limited damage effect modelling imaginable, cluster bombs are pretty useless against the very target they are designed to defeat. They work as expected, but your expectation should not be that they disable infantry or unarmoured vehicles, much less anything with a shred of damage mitigation, unless you hit them straight on — and if you able to do that, you're better off using any other weapon (including guns) because those pack enough oomph to actually get a game-mechanical kill.

[BIGNEWY]

We are looking at the issue, and we will tweak in a future patch 

 

thanks

[Blinky.ben]

1 hour ago, BIGNEWY said:

We are looking at the issue, and we will tweak in a future patch 

 

thanks

I hope its not tweaked to just make everything explode.

[BIGNEWY]

1 minute ago, Blinky.ben said:

I hope its not tweaked to just make everything explode.

 

the team know what they are doing, it will be tweaked for the correct damage. 

[nighthawk2174]

Yeah the lack of frag damage is a big deal just watch the video below.  You'll see especially against the pickup truck at 1:25 that the frag was showering it all over which would have turned the crew into swiss cheese. (also @BIGNEWY what penetration values are on the bomblets iirc there was a doc that listed it at ~220'ish mm against rhae)

 

 

[jppsx]

On 4/30/2021 at 7:01 PM, Blinky.ben said:

In my opinion the weapons are modelled fairly accurately in that they shouldn’t make a vehicle go up in a Hollywood explosion, but this is where the damage modelling needs some work. These types of weapons don’t cause vehicles, particularly armour or equipment to explode into a mushroom cloud. But they do neutralise vehicles and equipment by shredding tyres and antennas or possibly fragging the engine and fragging personal in light skinned vehicle's however a vehicle isn’t downed just cause it has a hole in it. But for a cluster attack there wouldn’t be too much visual indications from a aircrafts perspective to indicate that a vehicle has indeed been neutralised other then it has stopped moving or it is smoking cause a lucky hit into a fuel tank. I think the modelling will get there one day which will be awesome but expecting an entire convoy to explode into flames would be incorrect and very wrong for a realism point of view. It’s a big deal trying to confirm an attack has indeed been successful which I think is a very big part of DCS that is lacking and a huge part most people in DCS take for granted.

it not about the future in maybe 5-10 year if they give ultra realistic armor model to every vehicle in games  but what going on now and how useless are the  cbu-99 , mk20 and  agm-154 whit the actual damage model that is basically a basic health bar . 

soft skinned vehicle like  mtlb that have not even enough armor to stop a.50bmg should not survive shape charge (heat) that have 190mm/7.5in of armor penetration whit the actual damage model .
 having  cbu-99 , mk20 and  agm-154 doing basically nothing and having something like a mtlb just driving away is even less realistic  than having entire convoy in flame .
maybe to you it fell realistic to drop  8+ mk20 on 6 mtlb to maybe destroy just one but that just you .

Edited May 2, 2021 by jppsx

[Blinky.ben]

42 minutes ago, jppsx said:

it not about the future in maybe 5-10 year if they give ultra realistic armor model to every vehicle in games  but what going on now and how useless are the  cbu-99 , mk20 and  agm-154 whit the actual damage model that is basically a basic health bar . 

soft skinned vehicle like  mtlb that have not even enough armor to stop a.50bmg should not survive shape charge (heat) that have 190mm/7.5in of armor penetration whit the actual damage model .
 having  cbu-99 , mk20 and  agm-154 doing basically nothing and having something like a mtlb just driving away is even less realistic  than having entire convoy in flame .
maybe to you it fell realistic to drop  8+ mk20 on 6 mtlb to maybe destroy just one but that just you .

 

Uummm can I suggest you read my post again, or maybe a third time I’ll quote it here so you don’t need to scroll up. I highlighted some areas to help you out.

On 5/1/2021 at 9:01 AM, Blinky.ben said:

In my opinion the weapons are modelled fairly accurately in that they shouldn’t make a vehicle go up in a Hollywood explosion, but this is where the damage modelling needs some work. These types of weapons don’t cause vehicles, particularly armour or equipment to explode into a mushroom cloud. But they do neutralise vehicles and equipment by shredding tyres and antennas or possibly fragging the engine and fragging personal in light skinned vehicle's however a vehicle isn’t downed just cause it has a hole in it. But for a cluster attack there wouldn’t be too much visual indications from a aircrafts perspective to indicate that a vehicle has indeed been neutralised other then it has stopped moving or it is smoking cause a lucky hit into a fuel tank. I think the modelling will get there one day which will be awesome but expecting an entire convoy to explode into flames would be incorrect and very wrong for a realism point of view. It’s a big deal trying to confirm an attack has indeed been successful which I think is a very big part of DCS that is lacking and a huge part most people in DCS take for granted.

So after that time did you notice how I’m basically agreeing with your original point, however I wanted to point out that the damage model shouldn’t show them exploding with a Hollywood explosion but just simply they get damaged and no longer function. Did you notice any massive balls of smoking explosions seen from space in the video nighthawke2174 posted? This will Make a level of realism that your not really sure that you have in fact destroyed (or neutralised to be more accurate for this case) the unit, not without some kind of battle damage report. I personally would love to see a modelling with mobility kills but the turret still working or vis versa.

 

ED staff have pointed out a number of times they are addressing this issue at the moment and with my very minimal knowledge of coding I would assume this wouldn’t happen over night but I’m more optimistic then it taking 5-10 years

 

and as for this

49 minutes ago, jppsx said:

having entire convoy in flame .

This is people mistaking Hollywood for a educational documentary.

[Tippis]

Fundamentally, the problem is that the damage application is completely backwards.

 

Even a simple hit point system can be made to work while they chip away at more intricate systems modelling in all vehicles, but only if that hitpoint pile is treated properly. Right now, it isn't.

 

At the moment, ground vehicle damage application basically consists of three different components:

• A hitpoint pile — the bigger the vehicle, the more hitpoints it has, and the tougher it is.

• A damage mitigation stat — an abstraction of armour to simply deflect some smaller amounts of damage application, including an aspect calculation whereby, depending on the vehicle and the angle of attack, the damage mitigation is scaled up or down.

• A four-(and-a-half)-tiered damage state: fine(ish), system-crippled, movement-crippled, (burning, soon to be) dead.

 

It's that last one that is set up horribly. In particular, the thresholds are nonsensical in relation to the full hitpoint pile, although the order is also questionable. Essentially, it's a case of, at 50% HP, the unit stops working; at 25% (or thereabouts), it starts moving slowly; at 10% it starts burning and will slowly lose its remaining hitpoints; and at 0% it dies and explodes. Not a single one of those are where they should be.

 

By all means, units should probably explode at 0% HP, but they should start burning a lot sooner (and and stay burning a long time after), and in particular they should be dead long before that. The reason this matters is that the only event you can reliably automate without scripting up every single unit in a mission (say goodbye to your CPU) is death. It's what scores point in the kill screen; it's what most mass triggers (“group dead”, “group alive” and the “…less than” versions of the same triggers) use to do their thing. To make that happen, and to make the attack actually count from a game-mechanical perspective, you end up having to hit individual trucks with 500lbs bombs, where a 0.5lbs bomblet should really be able do the same job: in this case, to reduce the hitpoint pile to 0 to trigger the “death” state.

 

Similarly, somewhat depending on exactly what kind of unit we're talking about, movement should probably be lost long before the system as a whole is gone, unless we're talking about something flimsy (eg. radar antennas and the like on anti-air), in which case the systems should be gone the moment something sneezes in their general direction.

 

Ideally, the whole thing would be set up something like:

 

• The hitpoint pile is still there because it's too much effort to get rid of it.

• The damage states are set by unit type, and all happen a lot sooner. Eg. for a tank, it's mobility loss at 80%, system loss at 70%, death at 50%; for a mobile SAM, it might instead be system loss at 95%, mobility loss at 80%, death at 50%. The only unit where death should happen at 0% HP is infantry, and they should still lose their ability to fight long before that.

• For added bonus funtime: have system loss also affect mobility so that units that lose their offensive capabilities run away really fast, until mobility damage sets in and they instead have to run away really slow… (or just have two stages of reduced mobility if you're boring).

• Tie triggers into not just the revised death limit, but also to the “non-operational” and “immobile” thresholds so those can be used as mass triggers to score points and achieve objectives with ease.

 

ED have already indicated that they're working on a ground vehicle damage model update Later™, so this kind of stopgap isn't likely to happen and thus not worth a full wishlist thread, but at least that last point will still need to happen.

Edited May 2, 2021 by Tippis

[maxTRX]

My expectations might be too low but is this Mk20 Rockeye we're talking about here?...  The only issue I had was VT setting. No matter what you set, the bomb bursts at 1200', which actually is pretty optimal if you ask me.

I put them through the test here, on static targets. (I tested the movers few days ago and posted a vid on the Hornet's forum):

 

 

Edited May 2, 2021 by Gripes323

[shagrat]

On 5/1/2021 at 1:27 AM, Tippis said:

It's working, and nothing is wrong. Well… not wrong as such.

 

it's just that due to how there is zero fragmentation and ridiculously tiny blast effects in DCS, on top of there only being the most trivial and limited damage effect modelling imaginable, cluster bombs are pretty useless against the very target they are designed to defeat. They work as expected, but your expectation should not be that they disable infantry or unarmoured vehicles, much less anything with a shred of damage mitigation, unless you hit them straight on — and if you able to do that, you're better off using any other weapon (including guns) because those pack enough oomph to actually get a game-mechanical kill.

Actually, the bomblets inside are HE-AT, so basically explosive shaped copper jets penetrating armor from above. though I agree, that the HE part with the shell and explosion isn't well modeled against infantry and unarmored vehicles, the individual hit of a bomblet to say an APC, BMP or truck is pretty much accurate and a kill.

You can observe the submunitions at work after pressing F6 (Weapon view) a second time, after the canister opens... DCS already models the individual Bomblets.

 

Still, the explosive effects of the submunitions exploding are not/marginally modeled. 

[Tippis]

4 minutes ago, shagrat said:

Actually, the bomblets inside are HE-AT, so basically explosive shaped copper jets penetrating armor from above. though I agree, that the HE part with the shell and explosion isn't well modeled against infantry and unarmored vehicles, the individual hit of a bomblet to say an APC, BMP or truck is pretty much accurate and a kill.

You can observe the submunitions at work after pressing F6 (Weapon view) a second time, after the canister opens... DCS already models the individual Bomblets.

 

Still, the explosive effects of the submunitions exploding are not/marginally modeled. 

Yes, that's kind of my point: a direct hit works; the fragmentation and incendiary effects that make them effective against other soft targets just isn't there. They're not really releasing Combined Effects Munitions at the moment so much as “single largely pointless (given the target) effect”.  And SLPGTTEM just isn't as catchy a name…

 

For tight clusters, you can at times get pretty much the same effect from the (equally limited and poorly implemented) blast from an Mk82 — you need to have the same combination of luck and skill to get a good hit either way, which kind of defeats the point of having a cluster munition to begin with, and they're more annoying to aim and deploy on to boot.

[shagrat]

4 minutes ago, Tippis said:

Yes, that's kind of my point: a direct hit works; the fragmentation and incendiary effects that make them effective against other soft targets just isn't there. They're not really releasing Combined Effects Munitions at the moment so much as “single largely pointless (given the target) effect”.  And SLPGTTEM just isn't as catchy a name…

 

For tight clusters, you can at times get pretty much the same effect from the (equally limited and poorly implemented) blast from an Mk82 — you need to have the same combination of luck and skill to get a good hit either way, which kind of defeats the point of having a cluster munition to begin with, and they're more annoying to aim and deploy on to boot.

Careful, the Mk118 bomblets are not combined effects it's a simple shaped charge AT like handheld AT weapons with that "stinger" to detonate the explosive to form the copper jet.

Nonetheless, this explosion will deal damage/incapacitate to infantry and unarmored vehicles, in the area of effect.

The CBU-87 uses combined effects munitions if I am not mistaken, but that's a different beast.

[Tippis]

8 hours ago, deadpool said:

As far as I understand it for now:

- There is an overall healthbar, it's a binary system. As long as the thing has 1hp left, it will be 100% functional. If it's dead, it's dead.

 

Meaning:

- You can have the topside of a ship on fire, it will still be perfectly capable of using radar, firing missiles, guns, everything.

- A SAM site could have been struck, the radar dish subjected to shrapnel, but since it has 1HP left it's operational as if nothing happened

- Tanks won't have their tracks blown off, crew impacted by concussion, vehicles will have tires that will only blow out as soon as the entire vehicle goes.

 

I wrote it in another thread: I'd expect this from a game pre 1990, but nothing newer. But as BIGNEWY said, they know what they are doing and it will be fixed in "a future patch".

It's not quite as binary as that. The health bar does have intermediary damage states, but they're very rough, they don't necessarily come in the right order, and they're tied to the only trigger that currently matters (unit dead) in a not entirely sensible way. It's that latter in particular that makes it seem very binary: because if you don't pay attention, you won't even notice the other states actually happen and the difference they make is quite small to begin with.

[Stratos]

On 5/1/2021 at 2:55 AM, BIGNEWY said:

 

the team know what they are doing, it will be tweaked for the correct damage. 

Will this be corrected in Russian weapons too? Rockets and bombs?

[SgtPappy]

On 4/30/2021 at 8:55 PM, BIGNEWY said:

 

the team know what they are doing, it will be tweaked for the correct damage. 

Thanks BIGNEWY!

 

I noticed this bug as well when my friend tested the Mk 20s the other night in the Harrier on a bunch of infantry and none of them died even though they were completely enveloped by the explosions at each attempt. The APCs were also barely damaged though they used to explode every time a few patches ago. I'll see if I can get a track with this happening.

[kingsnake11]

Same with the jsow A's...  covered infantry and sam's with little to no effect. SA-2's on launchers are very soft skinned targets and should have been knocked out. IIRC in real life, the mk 20's were used to kill AAA crews and take out sam's on launchers... but did little to no damage on armor or the AAA guns themselves.  Glad to see that ED is looking into the damage issues as it's been a topic of (sometime heated) discussion in my group.

[Tippis]

Since the thread it was posted in was shut down and the data dismissed, I'd like to offer this simple (or simplistic) testing suite as something people can download and modify to suit their plane/weapon-combo needs, and get some kind of comparable, quantitative data out of it.

 

The base mission is set up for A-10C + CBU-87, but it should be pretty darn trivial to make it F-18 + Mk20 (or anything else really). The only tricky part is moving the aircraft into a position where you will automatically hit in the middle of the target group when you drop the weapon.

[NineLine]

51 minutes ago, Tippis said:

Since the thread it was posted in was shut down and the data dismissed

I'm sorry, my last post in that thread was that we id's an issue and I had reported it, currently the bug is being worked on internally, and I am tasting adjustment and fixes all the time, I am not sure where you get that anything was dismissed. 

 

2 hours ago, kingsnake11 said:

Same with the jsow A's...  covered infantry and sam's with little to no effect. SA-2's on launchers are very soft skinned targets and should have been knocked out. IIRC in real life, the mk 20's were used to kill AAA crews and take out sam's on launchers... but did little to no damage on armor or the AAA guns themselves.  Glad to see that ED is looking into the damage issues as it's been a topic of (sometime heated) discussion in my group.

Please supply tracks, and if it is indeed the JSOW then you need to open a new bug thread with all the required information. Please and thank you.