Meh, Realism Srealism... Options

[Horuseye]

I like FPS's where bullets hurt,.. a lot. My favorite FPS is Stalker on master difficulty - four shots and you're out, yeah good times.

In principle I like the idea of "realistic" military FSP's. But there are two things that annoys me to no end about the whole Tom Clancy's line and the like.
A. Even a popgun kills in on one shot, two tops. That by itself wouldn't be so bad if...
B. The enemy is insanely accurate, and I mean really really accurate, as in pumped you full of lead from 100+ m in one second.

ArmA it seems faithully implemented those two two and sold it as "realistic"

Just how much punisment a human body can take is debatable, some people survived a half a dosen gunshots and others are brought down by small caliber popguns. But I do think that a strong healthy male with an armor vest rated to stop 7.62mm i. e. you... should be able to survive getting shot in the chest by the said 7.62mm. And helmets DO save lives, they are not just for decoration.

About point B, when I played Direct Hit mission, I got on top of the hill and commensed to disintegrate enemy tanks, untill I got wated by a stray bullet. Confused I tried again, this time I alerted the enemy and lay prone to see how long I would last under file, to my horror some guy with a lousy AK wasted me from a 100m on a second burst. So I toned donw the accuracy ALL the way down, well it did exted my life expectancy... to 3 seconds.

Curious I downloaded some editing tools and after a week of frustration opened the weapon config files and was amused that precision spread for most auto weapons was half, yes HALF a meter per 100m. Just think about this for a second, this kind of spread means that more often than not you'll hit a standing person 200 freaking meters away... on FULL AUTO. It seems that BI's got its specs stright from manufacturers and target ranges. Yes I know that under ideal conditions even a noob that has never fired a rifle before can score 9/10 on human sized target at 200m.

But even a cursory research shows that at typical miss to hit ratio under battlefield conditions is over 100, sometimes WAY over.

It wouldn't be so bad if I didn't crush my comp every time I try to mod ArmA, but there you go that's my 5 cents...

This post has been edited by Horuseye: Jan 12 2009, 04:02

[Supr3me KiLL3r]

You cannot, let me stress this, cannot, make a perfectly realistic game. I always go for plausible realism, not total realism. Its a game you know, not reality. In reality, theres 1000 more factors you couldn't possibly think of that can affect what does or does not happen.

Games are computer programs, they have limits. ArmA doesn't really take into account wind, temperature, skill of soldiers, type of ammo, type of weapon, condition of ammo, condition of weapon, density of the target, whether the soldier firing is nervous or has adrenaline pumping... its just too hard for too little to do.

You think ArmA is frustrating? try playing Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter. That is extremely frustrating and I wouldn't say completely realistic either. Opposing force soldiers could hit you if you poke an eye around a corner, and if you come across a MK19 grenade launcher you might as well turn it off. Although sometimes you could have some interesting firefights. Sometimes. I stopped playing it halfway through because the only way to advance was through trial and error, getting killed/loading saved game, because any rational tactics you could think never worked, like flanking a heavy MG, nope, doesn't work, the f*** turns around instantly and fires at you.

That being said, if you mod ArmA enough, you can improve the game. For example, surviving more than a few rounds hitting you, you can download a body armor script and use that (its on armaholic.com under scripts somewhere).

[afp]

I think I am in a similar position to yours, maybe a bit more advanced. I've been starting Arma more than 2 weeks ago, in the first week I had to configure all sort of things, in the second I've been doing the campaign, now I almost finished it.
I think you are mostly right, it is unlikely to belive that under combat condition, an enemy you shoot over will turn back and hits you between the eyes in split second from long distance. But after first missions you will get used to arma style and you will turn the accuracy back to high again. Also dont play the campaign unmoded, use ACE, the health system and a lot others are way improved.
(There are very few bulletproof vests able to resist, without ceramic plates, to 7.62 fired from an AK in short distance, and certainly not the common ones used on a battlefied. Same about helmets...)

Dont forget to edit also the config file, enemyskill seems to count too. How you edited weapons parameters?

This post has been edited by afp: Jan 12 2009, 08:39

[D@V£]

The idea that interceptor vests can stop multiple rifle rounds is actually a common misconception.

Firstly, the grading used to measure this uses three 7,62x54 rounds at around 400m/s. These are pretty common in civil hands, but don't see much military use outside sniper rifles and machine guns. Both of which will usually have a muzzle velocity around twice the interceptor can stop. Not to mention that machineguns tend to fire significantly more than 3 bullets and snipers rarely aim for the chest.

Can't help but agree on the enemy accuracy though...

[Supr3me KiLL3r]

No helmet I have seen will stop any high velocity rifle round, I doubt they can stop a 9mm pistol round, since their meant to stop fragments from explosives.

As far as body armor, dragon skin is the only thing I would think that might survive more than three 7.62x51mm rounds.

[Horuseye]

Meh, it took me two long weeks but I finally managed to mod Arma without crashing my computer, hooray! On the side note Bin PBO is a buggy piece of GARBAGE... Aghem, anyway after a bit of tweaking I think I managed to find dispersion values that are a good compromise between accuracy and survival expectancy. For M16 semi 0.005, burst 0.007 and Auto 0.01. Carabines have +50% dispersion, submachine guns +100% and most soviet stuff +50%. Machine Guns 0.01-0.015, tank guns 0.02 and rocket/grenade launcers at 0.03, pistols at 0.02, sniper rifles at 0.0005.

I tested these values on shooting range and some missions. I qualified for all weapons ok, athough it takes a lot of effort to get high scores, getting sniper training is a bitch, but M16 is accurate enough to hit a standing person at 100m most of the time so that's OK. Overall with these values guns are about 10 to 20 times more inaccurate than defalut depending on your version. On missions firefights last a LOT longer - about 5 to 20 minutes typical engagement depending on distance, tanks are harder to kill, even APC's since at 200m you've got 50/50 chance of hitting them. Ammo becomes a bit of an issue though, especially for those classes that carry only 3-4 mags. Maybe I should edit the loadouts, most times you don't need more than a single handgrenade anyway and an extral mag is more useful.

Another thing that I edited was the indirect damage which is simply rediculous in vanilla. In vanilla you can't really survive more than 10 indirect hit as infantry, but most weapons had in excess of 100 indirect hit! Yeah, right...

If anyone else wants to edit the dispersion values they are found in "weapons", "weapons3", "DBE1" and "hotfix" (for those with patches). If you get a mod with weapons in it, all you have to do is to unpack it (I use PBO View and UnRap), open config file, press Ctrl+F and type in "dispersion" it should get you to dispersion settings if the file has any. Personally I find inaccurate weapons more satisfying but Meh... do whatever you want.

[JdB]

No helmet I have seen will stop any high velocity rifle round, I doubt they can stop a 9mm pistol round, since their meant to stop fragments from explosives.

Most military (and police) helmets are designed to stop 9mm rounds. To design helmets above that level would make them extremely heavy and useless for any actual use.

[Marine4Life51]

I've been a great fan of tactical shooters, and I've played both ArmA and tom clancy's ghost recon advanced warfighter. While both are fun and frustrating to play at the same time, I find ArmA to be way more difficult (even on the regular difficulty setting). I agree with the original poster that the enemy's rifle fire is simply too accurate, in this game you have to find cover, going prone won't do you much good if the enemy can already see you, and even if you go prone you can't really fire back cuz the blades of grass are blocking ur FOV.

On the whole, though ArmA is a very realistic shooter with a hardcore fanbase (myself included), I find that even after 1.14 it is still an unpolished product. It is not very user-friendly, and often the player has to figure out things for him/herself (for instance, using menus, etc., among other things) rather than getting helpful guidance from in-game messages and so forth, and also sometimes the briefings are not very clear. The AI (both enemy and allied) clearly need a lot of work, and squad commands are often extremely frustrating. In addition, the huge amount of spelling and grammatical errors throught the game is simply unacceptable, considering how ArmA has been touted for its' mature and dedicated community. All in all, in found ArmA to be an fun but frustrating and difficult game, and also in need of serious polishing to make it look more professional and user-friendly.

[Fatality]

i've watched a vid on youtube a good while ago and they shot a ballistic plate 64 times with a M16 (yes i know it doesnt have very much power compared to the Kalashnikov but it still has higher speed) and they didnt get a single penetration thil the 65th round and no it wasnt dragon skin

[bulkington80]

1. disable the grass & no more view blocking + more FPS
2. there was a game called "hacker" that had no readme, no tutorials, nada, & the first quest you had to complete was the password challange - you actually had to guess what the password was
Now, that was frustrating and difficult, and ArmA1 is just pure fun.

[Echo5Bravo]

hi guys.
Im trying to fit Arma to my current abilities, ie, get the AI accuracy down and reduce the recoil. how can I do all that? I cant seem to find the config file anywhere in my ArmA folder.

This post has been edited by Echo5Bravo: Aug 12 2009, 07:14

[Rellikki]

Your user folder should be somewhere in C:\Documents and Settings\Your username\.... To reduce the AI's accuracy, edit the following lines in the user config file:

CODE

precisionFriendly=1;
precisionEnemy=1;

Change the values to which you prefer. It can be between 0 and 1. The greater the number, the more accurate they are.

[fX8]

Fully realistic war simulator won't be done soon. Our computers just won't handle all those calculations. Arma is realistic enough. It makes you think...make tactics. You can't reload while walking. Maybe that su**s. To reload you need to think and find a cover. Maybe enemies are too accurate. But this makes you think again. You can't just run and gun. Maybe OFP:DR has more realistic recoil, accuracy...but i just run over the field and no one sees me, bullets don't hit me. I can't rearm from dead bodies. why? because they disappear after 60 seconds. That's wery realistic! Codemasters did it. They told that they want to make a realistic war game...they did it. i kill my soldiers and no one cares. I prefer to play sh*tty and buggy arma than that. I always play on difficult settings. why? enemy's too accurate, not realistic? It IS realistic. It make game difficult....it makes you feel alive and mortal. You are hiding and know that in any moment you could hear a shot from a bushes...in any moment you could be lying on the ground dead....

Sorry for my bad english. hope you can understand me

[Daniel]

Your user folder should be somewhere in C:\Documents and Settings\Your username\.... To reduce the AI's accuracy, edit the following lines in the user config file:

CODE

precisionFriendly=1;
precisionEnemy=1;

Change the values to which you prefer. It can be between 0 and 1. The greater the number, the more accurate they are.

This.

Makes the world of difference. I just wish BIS would implement "marksmanship" sliders to AI the same way they have "skill" sliders.

[vilas]

concerning topic issues:
- yes, i made the same, all my Arma1 addons of weapons have twice worse accuracy than BIS values, cause Arma1 is "too accurate soldiers", accuracy of soldiers in A1 was problem since Arma1 was released, AI in Arma1 is god-skilled, god-knowledge and marksmans with AK while snipers are not so super comparing to "usual GI"
- bulletproof vests and helmets - in my addons (and in P85) i made bigger armor_xxx values for soldiers in helmet or vest
but.. Arma2, Arma1, OFP - have almost the same engine structure, so it is impossible to create really working vest or helmet
it is limitation of this game, simply it cannot be done in Arma engine to have realistic penetration

but when it comes to mil-sim, Arma has no competition, other games are less real

This post has been edited by vilas: Nov 23 2009, 09:13