Rocket effectivness

I wouldn't say useless. Just a bit underpowered in one way.

If you take the first A-10C Instant Action as an example: I normally kill the patrol with the rockets and a short burst of cannon. That's about as effective as in real life I guess. Except they would take cover in real life when they see me coming, which they don't in DCS.

Also bomb damage is ok, the only thing that is too weak is the splash damage. If you hit a building or a bridge or whatever with a mk-82 it is toast.

And I think a mk-84 a hundred feet away does kill troops and trucks right now. I have to test that though.

I'd like clarification on how "splash" is actually modeled.

 

If you drop a Mk84 in the game and compare it to videos of them, the explosion animation alone is incredibly small. The damage done is even less, being able to drop GBU-10's between tanks that are 10 feet apart and only damaging one of them.

Define damaging?

If you mean visible damage shown to you, the player, sure; to the player you'll currently only see either "alive", or "burning" (and then) "exploding". But that doesn't mean there are no things between those!

In such a scenario where one goes out of action and the other looks unharmed, it is actually likely to have suffered damage (think of it like some HitPoints being deducted) which in turn will reduce it's weapon accuracy, detection ranges etcetera. How severe the effect is depends on the amount of damage done, which depends on the force applied and where it was applied on (same as how you should attack with GAU-8 from rear and high, because armor is weaker there, meaning less rounds required to do fatal damage).

Define fairly far. Fragments are usually rather small, that means that not only is their density subject to the inverse square law, but they'll also loose energy quickly due to their low mass vs. air resistance, coupled with their less than aerodynamic shape.

True. However, it's worth considering that the airborne frag pattern for a impact detonated Mk-82 is 3000 ft x 3000ft for 30 seconds. Of course much of that is the fragments coming down, but still, frag is a significantly sized part of the weapon effect.

Regarding the MK-84 though, it's also worth noting that despite being 4 times the weight of the Mk-82, it has nowhere near 4 times the effective power. To illustrate, the optimum ripple spacing for employment against point targets is the Mk-82 is 75ft, for the Mk-84 it's only 150 ft. Of course it's true that all weapons are in some respect less effective than they are in reality though.

I can only say that rockets and bombs look to be way off from what can be expected and what are safety distances and specs.

Now when firing example S-8KOM (almost 4kg explosives) 10-20 meters from soft target on flat ground (lets say airfield or road) the damage to target is small.

Dropping a 500kg bomb 20m from MBT doesn't disable/destroy or cause any visible damage to it.

A 80mm rocket with pre-fragmentation is now in such state that you need direct hits to kill soft targets.

I find rockets and bombs to be almost useless in DCS World. More likely I fly shooting with cannon a HE shells to kill targets as it is more effective way than using rockets.

Even when flying Mi-8MTv2 in full load of S-8KOM I find it very difficult to get a un-armored targets (trucks) destroyed when saturating the area.

A 30mm HE shell (almost 400g from what explosive is about same as hand grenade ~150g) is very deadly to infantry at longer distance (up to 15-20m) and damaging to un-armored vehicles but in game it is less dangerous but still more effective than rockets with higher payload and fragmentation possibilities.

Of course just the shrapnel isn't only threat but other stuff what fly by shockwave. Human body can not stand well high impacts, so even a lighter but fast object can cause severe damage.

-40/41 500kg bomb against buildings

I should have somewhere a old Soviet artillery testing results how effective 155mm artillery fire can be against MBT. I don't remember now exact numbers but the difference to western studies was that Soviets did not overestimate protection or destruction but calculated effects by their minimal rates. And 155mm shells fragments were very effective that era MBT armors. If someone is dropping even a 250kg bomb 30m of you, it will kill you and destroy your car/truck and more likely damage MBT so badly that it needs to be withdraw to repair.

And what comes to FPS effect from fragments, it should be very well doable today. Like it was on Unreal Tournament already on late '90s to have a weapons what simulated fragment grenades (mod of course) and each fragment was calculated separately bouncing few times and transmitted over network to every player.

So how about today, would it be too much to have a single bomb to have 100-200 fragments distributed to target area, calculated the effect? We don't need visual effect of fragments itself, just the calculation from impact point. It does not need to be exactly real time, can have a 20-50ms latency after impact.

'splash damage' is a game term. Weapons cause blast damage and fragmentation damage.

Blast damage is modeled in the game - this is the damage caused by the explosive shockwave and while very powerful, it is very short-ranged (damage falls off as the inverse of the square or cube of distance, I forget which).

Fragmentation damage is not modeled - this is damage caused by things flying about at high speed and putting holes/dents in things (or people). Fragmentation damage is the most likely mechanism to cause damage to troop formations etc, typically, and it out-ranges blast damage by quite a bit.

The two types of damage are not alike in effect or how they would be simulated (blast delivers x damage per area unit at y range, frag has a probability of delivering a fragment per unit area at distance y, the fragment does some amount of damage. Depending on the the distance, you may receive multiple fragments, or none - you may be at a distance where you change of 'taking a hit' is 50/50. With blast, you WILL get hit).

but splash damage by bomb is already modelled no ?

There is a pretty simple fix by adding a second area to the weapons.

In this second fragmentation area you can use a simple algorithm (randomization) that will decide if the object is hit. DCS is very crappy when it comes to units health, so in order for this quick fix to work the fragmentation dmg would have to be equal to the existing blast dmg.

But the result will be far better then it is now..

I wouldn't say it's a simple fix. There are many issues with implementing fragmentation, the biggest one being the actual fragments themselves. For a truly realistic simulation each fragment would have to be spawned from the impact point and each one would need it's speed, trajectory, and damage calculated in real time. If we ever get vehicles and infantry with more accurate systems in place, then where the fragment hits would also need to be calculated. This isn't really possible with the current engine since we would get CBU-87 type slow downs whenever a bomb or rocket exploded.

Nothing has been said so I wouldn't expect it, but hopefully EDGE will be able to solve some of those issues. At the very least a basic fragmentation module would be nice, even if it wasn't really that accurate to real life. I would at least feel like rockets would be useful other than for WP. Mk-82s are okay since I save those for softer targets for now, but it would be nice to be able to drop them next to a tank and disable it.

As I didn't know that there is no fragmentation modeling, it makes now sense why example Vikhr is almost useless against any air target as it is only causing shock wave and directional damage.

The day when we get fragmentation modeling Vikhr starts being more useful as it can be used against light armored targets, un-armored targets and soft targets because proximity fuse and fragmentation sleeve to trigger area effects.

And same time rockets would turn to be more effective instead requiring direct hits to get even a un-armored target.

Define damaging?

 

If you mean visible damage shown to you, the player, sure; to the player you'll currently only see either "alive", or "burning" (and then) "exploding". But that doesn't mean there are no things between those!

 

In such a scenario where one goes out of action and the other looks unharmed, it is actually likely to have suffered damage (think of it like some HitPoints being deducted) which in turn will reduce it's weapon accuracy, detection ranges etcetera. How severe the effect is depends on the amount of damage done, which depends on the force applied and where it was applied on (same as how you should attack with GAU-8 from rear and high, because armor is weaker there, meaning less rounds required to do fatal damage).

Whilst I appreciate that the game does not rend the visual cue for damage taken upon the vehicle. I also understand and accept that vehicles have x hitpoints and depending on amount of damage done, decides if the vehicle is still alive or not.

That wasn't what I was getting at however. My entirely question was on splash damage, specifically that the Mk84 does not have enough of it. If you look at any video of a Mk84 warhead exploding, you have no option but to concede that tanks need to be spread by dozens of meters to not be obliterated.

Whilst I appreciate that the game does not rend the visual cue for damage taken upon the vehicle. I also understand and accept that vehicles have x hitpoints and depending on amount of damage done, decides if the vehicle is still alive or not.

That's not my point though.

In DCS, HP does is not only like this:

IF unitX hitPoints <= 0 THEN unitX == DEAD

It does of course do this also. This is the point where you get the smoke and explosion, and then a pretty dead tank (or whatever).

DCS also looks at a unit's health to decide on it's accuracy of fires, ability to detect threats, and so on. The difference is that you do not have a visual que for this. The tank you damaged will simply not be as good at shooting straight anymore, nor at detecting threats, reloading munitions, etcetera.

We can compare with a popular RTS: Starcraft 2.

In this, a basic infantryman has 45 Hitpoints and shoots for 6 damage. (I think it was, been a bit since I played actively.) In that game, if he takes a bullet to the head for 6 damage, he now has 39 hitpoints; nothing else is changed. Another bullet - 33 HP, nothing else changed. Etcetera etcetera. There is no difference in his ability to hurt you when he is at 45HP and 1HP.

NOT SO IN DCS. When his HP reduces, he loses proficiency at detecting enemies, aiming at said enemies, etcetera. That is what I mean when I say that there are things happening that are not graphically evident to you, the player.

That's not my point though.

 

In DCS, HP does is not only like this:

 

IF unitX hitPoints <= 0 THEN unitX == DEAD

 

It does of course do this also. This is the point where you get the smoke and explosion, and then a pretty dead tank (or whatever).

 

DCS also looks at a unit's health to decide on it's accuracy of fires, ability to detect threats, and so on. The difference is that you do not have a visual que for this. The tank you damaged will simply not be as good at shooting straight anymore, nor at detecting threats, reloading munitions, etcetera.

 

We can compare with a popular RTS: Starcraft 2.

 

In this, a basic infantryman has 45 Hitpoints and shoots for 6 damage. (I think it was, been a bit since I played actively.) In that game, if he takes a bullet to the head for 6 damage, he now has 39 hitpoints; nothing else is changed. Another bullet - 33 HP, nothing else changed. Etcetera etcetera. There is no difference in his ability to hurt you when he is at 45HP and 1HP.

 

NOT SO IN DCS. When his HP reduces, he loses proficiency at detecting enemies, aiming at said enemies, etcetera. That is what I mean when I say that there are things happening that are not graphically evident to you, the player.

That's fine, but this doesn't actually cover my point about the lacking splash damage of the Mk84.

Others have already explained this in this thread, I feel:

First, there is no such thing as "splash damage". See the posts by GG. It is a game concept with little relation to reality.

Second, adjusting blast damage to accurately reflect one situation including fragmentation etcetera will inevitably mean that it will be equally incorrect in other situations. And as far as selecting how to be incorrect, it is better to be incorrect in a way that may later be adjusted when engine limitations are lifted to make it correct in all factors.

I'll add an example of being wrong in the "other direction":

Damage to crew and vehicle effectiveness depends on many factors: was the vehicle buttoned up? Was the pressure wave able to cause damage to crew or sensitive systems? There are cases where having hatches open is better than being buttoned up, and the opposite. Similarly, I have heard accounts of "tankers" that had copper jets from RPGs pass through their hearing aids: the warhead hit the tank, the copper jet shot into and out of the tank, via the crewman's hearing aids (close call!), and the damage to the tanks combat worthiness was nil. Similarly, depending on many factors, a pressure wave may traverse the tank profile without causing great damage simply through aerodynamics; but might have taken out some sensors and other things reducing the combat effectiveness of the vehicle.

And what of situations where a blast or other damage might immobilize the vehicle, but still allow the vehicle to continue combat - albeit as a glorified pillbox? At present there is no way to deal with that. Errors will go both ways.

Be very careful with watching random youtube vids etc and thinking that what they display is what always happens. The details are always much more nebulous.

IMO , i think you are trying to push it too far . Ok DCS is a simulation, but its also a real time application, you can't simulate everything in the same time, sometimes you need to fake some . DCS is great for planes, heli, how missile gun and other react, but implementing a true fragmentation simulation would really put processor on their knees(just like cbu are atm ^^), unless its simplified .

I think the best way to combine it, is to create this famous splash zone , as said, depending on your distance from the blast zone , you will receive an amount of damage if the randoom factor is fullfilled .

That way it would looks like it approriate even if it isn't accurate

But in order to make it accurate as some said, you gonna had too much factors to take in count . Such as amount of explosive, density of air, density of metal , how it cracles, wind, terrain , target proxy , other proxies, direction , soft protection and so on...

or am i completly wrong ?

you will receive an amount of damage

The problem is: how to quantify said damage?

How to figure out how 50HP of damage from a bomb is different from 50HP of damage from a GAU-8?

And after that, when introducing desirable things like a "mission kill" (say, tank is immobolized), we are then looking at having to rework AI to adjust for broken formations etcetera. These are things that tend to cascade where "solving" one issue causes another. Much better to "attack" them all in a concerted manner when the time is right and the gains great enough to merit the effort.

I'm quite certain that we'll see these things eventually. It's just a question of when computers will be strong enough in combination with engine capability upgrades and other development considerations regarding time, money etcetera. I'd personally prefer to see this "on hold" until that time when a proper solution is viable to be developed rather than hacks that alternate errors in various directions.

you quantify damage by a number, for vehicules , i would rather destroy parts : wheels, turrets , munitions chambers exploding as secondaries

For infantry , simply kill .

Yeah, but that's a complete rewrite of ground unit code. See you in a few years. :)

It is definitely desirable, especially if we get to see more advancement with CA etcetera, but it is harder than might seem.

I don't know how the code exactly looks like . But i think if ED managed to create different hard points on tanks, they could probably do it aswell.

But as always , time and budget must be met ^^

However in the mean time , doing it for infantry should go quite quickly

However in the mean time , doing it for infantry should go quite quickly

*spits coffee all over keyboard*

;)

Implementing a completely new damage system "quite quickly"? ;)

Trust me, ED wants this too. It's just more complicated than it seems.

Others have already explained this in this thread, I feel:

 

First, there is no such thing as "splash damage". See the posts by GG. It is a game concept with little relation to reality.

 

Second, adjusting blast damage to accurately reflect one situation including fragmentation etcetera will inevitably mean that it will be equally incorrect in other situations. And as far as selecting how to be incorrect, it is better to be incorrect in a way that may later be adjusted when engine limitations are lifted to make it correct in all factors.

Are you arguing for inaction because any change would be inaccurate to a damage model that is already inaccurate?

My opinion is that rockets are next to useless in the game; I'd be happy for an update to the damage model for the rockets that makes them more useful.

I am arguing that the situation is that one thing is incorrect, and this can be fixed. But through "fixing" that, we make something else that is currently correct turn incorrect. Sum of incorrectness remains the same. The only difference will be who will complain.

My own experience is that rockets work very well. There are issues, but they are a potent weapon. Remember that rockets are an area-effect weapon; they are like artillery. Not a sniper weapon. You should salvo them. (Indeed, that is what the RuAF does.)

Also note that there is no damage model "for rockets". You are talking about changing the damage model of several hundred vehicles, and making this change to them will be universal - not just for the rockets. So now your rockets might be correct, but a bunch of other weapons will have gotten wrong instead.

Resource is pretty much the only barrier to this being done IMHO.

It can be done, and it can be done correctly, but it is not trivial or quick effort. There are specific effects that frag confers upon the core of this game: Air to air combat. The devs want to take advantage of that, so frag damage isn't likely to be done willy-nilly when they get around to it.

It also confers fairly complex damage dealing behaviour in air to ground situations that one might want modeled as well. You might choose a radar fuze when attacking light-skinned vehicles for example, to take advantage of that frag effect and nail a whole area, but when attacking a building you might prefer direct impact to take advantage of the blast effect ... different choice of fuze+warhead again vs a building ... etc.

It's easy to say 'they could easily do this', it'd be easy to say 'they could have easily done AFM for missiles earlier' as well, and if you were to look at equations, you might assume it was one man-week's worth of work for example, but the problem is that you must then create and check a huge new set of data for all the missiles that will be using this AFM, do your research, figure out this, that, the other, etc.

... and then listen to people whine about their weapons being under-modeled :D

EtherealN's isn't arguing inaction, he has no say on the matter. He's telling you why it hasn't been done and why it's not being done right now. It's not a new thing - as you can see we're well aware of the lack of frag damage.

PS: As far as rockets go specifically, they need to be very well aimed into the target area to be effective, at least according to USMC AH-1 training manuals :) Infantry are quite resilient.

I understand and accept what GG is saying. I understand what you are saying. What I am saying is that the blast radius off the Mk84 warhead is too small.

A video I quickly made where I meant to drop one GBU-10 but accidently dropped two.

In comparison to this video of a single GBU-31.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnT0hIrfnKU

You'll note the size of the crater of the GBU-31 is larger than the distance between the two tanks in the first video.

Ok, you are correct but with a couple of caveats:

The GBU-31 is moving a lot of mud. Generally speaking, IMHO if it exploded before 'going under', I don't think it would make as much visible damage. This is target impact physics.

The problem is that now we're talking about more than blast or frag damage, we're talking about explosive landscaping, and I'm not sure how that will be handled. :)

The problem I am thinking of is that it wouldn't so much directly damage the tanks (they don't care so much about over-pressure) as it would overturn them ... I don't even know if simulating that is anywhere near being a part of the plans - I just don't know. But it'd be so cool :)

Perhaps this once is better.

Rough numbers says everything within a 30 feet circle is gone.