reported SAMP-250/400 damage

[MBot]

SAMP-240 (540 lbs) and SAMP-400 (794 lbs) do roughly twice the amount of damage compared to Mk-82 (503 lbs) and M117 (919 lbs) respectively.

Unless SAMP-250/400 are special in a certain way, I would expect that bombs of roughly the same size should do equal amount of damage.

This report is regarding consistency between bombs of the same class, not whether bombs should do less or more damage in general.

SAMP-250_400_damage.trk

[Baco]

Hopefully FIX the ones that don´t do the correct amount of damage, and not bring the ones model right to the Wrong standard...

Very frustrating of attack pilots by the way...

[Flappie]

Thanks for the track, @MBot. Since SAMP bombs were replaced by good old Mk-82 to equip 4th gen French aircraft, I guess we can safely say SAMP-250 and SAMP-400 were not doing a better job than their american counterpart.

Issues reported.

[Proper Charlie]

Some images for comparison.  A single 550lb SAMP-250 vs a single 500lb Mk.82

Edited May 19, 2023 by Proper Charlie

[Dragon1-1]

On 12/26/2022 at 7:32 PM, Flappie said:

Thanks for the track, @MBot. Since SAMP bombs were replaced by good old Mk-82 to equip 4th gen French aircraft, I guess we can safely say SAMP-250 and SAMP-400 were not doing a better job than their american counterpart.

That doesn't mean a thing. It might have been anything from politics to logistics. I suspect it's because NATO standardized on the US Mk series bombs, and in a war, interchangeability is worth more than a slight increase in explosive load. There's also a matter of aerodynamics, the Mk series typically have lower drag than older types of bombs.

Explosive power is a function of explosive weight and its specific energy. If the explosive material of the SAMP bombs can be identified, they can be compared. For the US bombs, it's typically Tritonal, which has a specific energy of about 9MJ/kg, although it's not the only possible filler (however, I wouldn't expect specific energies to vary a whole lot).

[Bacab]

To my knowledge SAMP stopped manufacturing bombs (more precisely bombs' body, the filling was done by an other company) because there were not enough orders from the French government. So it was more logical from an economic perspective to source bombs from a foreign supplier. And the French government wasn't very logical either if I remember correctly : at one point the SAMP factory received help from the government to (re)establish a bomb production line but after the first batch of production there was no subsequent order (I think to recall that there was an order but with such volume and short planned delivery that only a US supplier could do it). Nowadays SAMP resumed the production of bombs (I think) but they no longer use their own design : they license build Mk-8X. I believe this has to do with ease of integration onto the plane : the ballistic was not the same between Mk-8X and their proprietary design so the plane manufacturer had to integrate both designs, one for the French with SAMP ballistic and one for foreign customer, usually with Mk-8X ballistic.

For a more related to the topic consideration : I think to recall that old SAMP bombs usually had a different weight distribution than the Mk-8X bombs. The casing was lighter and there were more explosives inside, hence maybe the damage difference ingame (even if it might be exaggerated). I am looking for a source to back up my defective memory. None found in my archive however I have found several websites claiming 123 kg of explosives for the SAMP 250 (50% of the mass are explosives) instead of 89 kg for the Mk-82 (35%). I don't know how much blast 30 kg of explosives add but it would be difficult to balance due to the rudimentary damage model in DCS : on one hand more explosive means a stronger blast/a greater blast radius, on the other hand the lighter casing may imply smaller, lighter fragments that travel less and less initial penetration before the bomb body breaks so smaller cratering effects perhaps.

Reason for edits : I add details as I found them online.

Edited May 19, 2023 by Bacab

[BlindS]

Hi,

where are we with this reported "weapon's bug"? Did someone @ED aknowledge it is actually a bug and it will be fixed or should we just consider the model to be accurate? 

BR,

[Flappie]

ED did acknowledge the bug. The fix is yet to be made.

I've just bumped the report.