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Damage Model of Ground Units


Steinsch

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Hi,

 

After getting acquainted with DCS World through the F-15C module, I recently started learning the A-10C. Everything is going smoothly, from cold start to basic navigation and targeting.

 

I'm now learning the basics of combat employment, and I have a question regarding the damage model of ground units. I understand the damage to aircraft is very well modeled under the latest versions of DCS World. But how about ground units?

For example, if I shoot a tank through the rear with the Avenger cannon, will it be easier to blow it up? Or if I drop bombs and miss the tank, can I still damage its tracks and disable it? If I shoot a truck without hitting the engine or the gas tank, will it still explode?

 

I'm simply trying to understand what kind of accuracy and thus effort is needed to destroy enemy ground units. Is it hit to destroy? Is it hit enough times to destroy? Or is it hit at the right location, enough time, to destroy?

 

If this was asked before, please redirect me. Thank you!

Steinsch

Flying Virtual F-15s since 1989

YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/c/CommanderSteinsch

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Speaking of Combat Mission games in another thread on here just had me thinking about their damage modelling and how perfect it would be in DCS.

 

The ability to damage part of the vehicle, i.e. tracks, smoke launcher, optics.

In states like;

Green - 100% working

Amber - Limited use

Red - Completely f*****

 

Even if the damage was done like rolling a dice e.g. A nearby blast has a 2% chance of taking doing amber damage to the thermal camera on a vehicle and a 15% chance of damaging the radio antenna. Obviously direct hits would be worked out with hit point boxes on the models.

 

Basically I am bored at work and this is really obvious, especially to the devs lol.

I just wanted to type something instead of working!

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There is no damage model you speak of. It runs off of hit points or a percentage of health left. You can't "disable" a tank, you have to absolutely kill it... it sucks, but it's the way it is.

 

Is there a file where we can see the values of the hit points of various ground units, and how they're affected by the different weapons we can use?

Steinsch

Flying Virtual F-15s since 1989

YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/c/CommanderSteinsch

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  • 2 weeks later...
Is there a file where we can see the values of the hit points of various ground units, and how they're affected by the different weapons we can use?

 

If you have certain options turned on, you can see the health bar in the F-10 map of units. It's one of the options on the top in the F-10 map. But you will need to be able to see enemies on the map, so server side options have to be changed for that.

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Is there a file where we can see the values of the hit points of various ground units, and how they're affected by the different weapons we can use?

 

Not a single file. Within the Scripts/Database folder there are a number of files that are related to each unit, somewhere in there will be a "life" value which dictates how much HP units have. Also the scripting engine has a function for getting the life of a given unit. That'd probably be the easier way to figure it out. The gist of it is that non armor vehicles are have a life up to 10, lightly armored up to 15-20ish, tanks around 30, and ships can have a few thousand.

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  • 4 years later...
Not a single file. Within the Scripts/Database folder there are a number of files that are related to each unit, somewhere in there will be a "life" value which dictates how much HP units have. Also the scripting engine has a function for getting the life of a given unit. That'd probably be the easier way to figure it out. The gist of it is that non armor vehicles are have a life up to 10, lightly armored up to 15-20ish, tanks around 30, and ships can have a few thousand.

 

 

 

 

Has this changed since this article was posted back in 2015 much?

Because I noted that HE ordinance does not damage armored units as far as I can tell, so it must be more than just hits points?

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  • 9 months later...

 

 

 

 

Has this changed since this article was posted back in 2015 much?

Because I noted that HE ordinance does not damage armored units as far as I can tell, so it must be more than just hits points?

 

Blast is modeled but damage is still based on hit points. Armored vehicles front side will be less affected by the blast than sides and rear.

 

Here's a video showing blast radius and effects:

 

Steinsch

Flying Virtual F-15s since 1989

YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/c/CommanderSteinsch

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I'd argue that it's probably more the damage model rather than the blast damage of bombs being the thing that's missing.

 

If you set up a bombing mission against some soft/lightly armoured targets come low and drop a large bomb, the blast and fragmentation will absolutely destroy your aircraft. However the ground targets (which are much closer to the bomb impacts) will suffer minor/no damage whatsoever. Even though your aircraft was taken out by the same bomb from relatively further away.

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Blast is modeled but damage is still based on hit points. Armored vehicles front side will be less affected by the blast than sides and rear.

 

Here's a video showing blast radius and effects:

 

 

That was an eye opener. Not sure i'll even bother with rockets anymore.

Buzz

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