kill radius

[Field Marshal Blücher]

Rainbow6 Ravenshield was perhaps the best online FPS in my view. Vegas looks nice too, but only a few players and I somehow liked ravenshield better.

Somehow? IMO Raven Shield is a far, far better game. The only aspect in which it loses is graphics.

[zwobot]

ArmA is the successor to OFP is it not? OFP2 is something else entirely... (and apparently not that good? I havn't followed the series in a while).

Ofp was developed by Bohemia Interactive as well as Arma and Arma2. Codemasters published Ofp and now is developing Ofp2 on their own.

[DaveDash]

Ofp was developed by Bohemia Interactive as well as Arma and Arma2. Codemasters published Ofp and now is developing Ofp2 on their own.

Yeah, which led me to believe ArmA was the "real" successor to OFP given BIS were the programmers and Codemasters the publishing house. I read a while back that most people in the community didn't have very high hopes for OFP2 for this reason.

[zwobot]

The Ofp/Arma community is a bit divided about what to expect from Ofp2 and Arma2 I think but by now most of the people think Arma2 will be the better combat simulator than Ofp2. I haven't really followed the development of both in the past but the last preview of Arma2 confirmed my opinion that it has high potential to be as disastrous as Arma when it was released (the initial Arma release was buggy as hell and high expectations of the community were disappointed - I think the community is in the exact same situation now before Arma2 release than it was a few years ago before Arma was released.)

To get back on topic: I also think that infantry is very fragile in CMSF compared to CMBB or any other previous CM game. I did not observe anything about it getting better or worse with the patches (Steve said the kill ratio of high explosives was tuned down since 1.0 if I remember correctly). Fact is that it is far more easy to get your infantry wasted in CMSF than in CMx1 games. But what is the reason behind that? The 1:1 representation? Are the modern rifles/weapons more lethal than WW2 ones? I know it is a bit like comparing apples and oranges and I know something similar has been discussed before but I'm too lazy to search this thread and read it to find out the conclusion

[YankeeDog]

Arcade.... Phooey.

Speaking of lethality being severely reduced from realistic levels, would taking a 5.56mm round to the ballistic plate (i.e., a round that didn't penetrate) be likely to knock me down? Taking a non-lethal/non-wounding hit and being knocked down certainly isn't something I've seen in any FPS I've played. In all the FPS and tactical shooter games I've played, getting hit is a matter of either seeing the view jerk violently and flashing red-tinged or of getting knocked down dead.

...

In a word, no. While a high-velocity 5.56mm round has a lot of KE, it's just too small and light to have much momentum. Looking purely at the kinetic physics, even assuming a perfect "shoot and stick" transmission of momentum, a ~4-gram 5.56 round just isn't going to "knock down" a 75-100 kilo human, unless said human is already on the edge of falling over anyway.

That said, I've heard the sensation of getting hit by a high-velocity round in the trauma plate is something like getting whacked in the chest with a hammer. So you might fall over, or at least drop to a knee, due to the shock and pain. But in this case, it's not really the bullet "knocking you down," but rather a physio-psychological reaction to pain and surprise.

[birdstrike]

Somehow? IMO Raven Shield is a far, far better game. The only aspect in which it loses is graphics.

Agree. I really liked the way cover was handled in Vegas, but overall, the game felt more like a movie - lacking all the tactical options and freedom of decisions which actually made the previous games great.

My only major gripe with Raven Shield was the deadly accuracy of the AI.

[Dietrich]

Play Operation Flashpoint with WGL mod or Armed Assault with ACE if you want to have a more realistic yet entertaining "Shooter" experience...

Thanks for the recommendations.

The Ofp/Arma community is a bit divided about what to expect from Ofp2 and Arma2...

I've done a bit of looking into OFP2 and ArmA2 and read some on each game's forum, and the opinion I've formed is that the games, while similar, are different yet comparably well made, so I figure I'll end up getting both, since each has plenty to offer.

I also think that infantry is very fragile in CMSF compared to CMBB or any other previous CM game. I did not observe anything about it getting better or worse with the patches (Steve said the kill ratio of high explosives was tuned down since 1.0 if I remember correctly). Fact is that it is far more easy to get your infantry wasted in CMSF than in CMx1 games. But what is the reason behind that? The 1:1 representation? Are the modern rifles/weapons more lethal than WW2 ones? I know it is a bit like comparing apples and oranges....

Something obvious: In WW2, most infantrymen had bolt-action rifles of .30 caliber (British .303-inch, German 7.92mm, Soviet 7.62mm), whereas nowadays infantrymen have semi-auto rifles/carbines of .223 or .30+ caliber (5.56mm vis-a-vis 7.62mm). So the number of bullets flying around at any given moment in modern combat is rather greater than in WW2, but the bullets themselves are often smaller.

Believe me though, many frustrated times in AA I have thought "if the game actually wiped your hard-drive when you died, you wouldn't have done that!" after seeing guys rambo around with no tactics what so ever, seemingly impervious to fire.

On a given co-op map, once I was blown up (along with one other guy) by a friendly player who decided to randomly fire off an AT4 in a narrow underground corridor, and a couple games later I was felled by a burst of 5.56 when a different friendly player didn't bother to confirm I was an enemy as I hurried round a corner. He was probably one of those guys who have a million honor points already, so he didn't have to care if he riddled a teammate, since he could afford the ROE penalty.

While a high-velocity 5.56mm round has a lot of KE, it's just too small and light to have much momentum. Looking purely at the kinetic physics, even assuming a perfect "shoot and stick" transmission of momentum, a ~4-gram 5.56 round just isn't going to "knock down" a 75-100 kilo human, unless said human is already on the edge of falling over anyway.

That said, I've heard the sensation of getting hit by a high-velocity round in the trauma plate is something like getting whacked in the chest with a hammer. So you might fall over, or at least drop to a knee, due to the shock and pain. But in this case, it's not really the bullet "knocking you down," but rather a physio-psychological reaction to pain and surprise.

Thanks for the explanation.

What sort(s) of rounds would knock a guy down without necessarily penetrating his ballistic plate? Or is it a given that if a round has enough KE to knock a guy down, it has plenty of KE to punch through his armor?

[Vark]

"My only major gripe with Raven Shield was the deadly accuracy of the AI"

What setting was that? On elite the AI is lethal and so fast its useless going round corners or opening doors if they are there. I usually put a burst through doors or used flashbangs to buy me an edge. On recruit they are easy to take down, slow on the uptake and pretty lousy shots. Rogue Spear on the other hand, suffered from lethally accurate AI even at the recruit level, fail to drop that Russian guard and he'd head shoot you from 100m, at night, in the snow! My main bug with Ravenshield was the lack of a climb option to get over obstacles, so my elite unit glided around as though on casters, oops a raise loading ramp, where the heck are the stairs!

[acrashb]

What sort(s) of rounds would knock a guy down without necessarily penetrating his ballistic plate?

Any bullet that will physically knock-back/over a target will do the same to the person firing it. Momentum - the thing that pushes you back - is conserved.

KE does not knock things down.

[YankeeDog]

Ya, acrashb has it exactly right. It's important not to confuse Kinetic Energy with Momentum. Very different concepts.

To expand a bit, what acrashb is saying is that the law of Conservation of Momentum means that the bullet can't "push" on whatever it hits any harder than the recoil "pushing" on the firer when it leaves the barrel. And in fact, it will push significantly less than the recoil due to loss of momentum due to air resistance, incomplete transfer of momentum, etc. High velocity, small caliber assault cartridges like 5.56 actually have very low recoil. My 84 year-old grandmother could fire an M-16.

So if you want know what kinds of bullets will actually knock someone over purely from ballistic effect, just think about weapons that have a really big recoil -- a 12 gauge firing a deer slug, for example. Firing A 12 gauge won't you knock over if you have a bit of basic firearms training and know how to assume a good shooting position and absorb the force, but the same force hitting unexpectedly, and/or from an unusual angle, could certainly knock you over.

[Dietrich]

Ah, I see. So my mind's-eye image of a hurrying Marine taking a tumble after receiving a non-penetrating 7.62mm round to his chest plate (I think there's a shot in Black Hawk Down with something like this) is more a matter of how relatively off-balance the Marine is at the moment he gets hit.

[acrashb]

is more a matter of how relatively off-balance the Marine is at the moment he gets hit.

And the surprise, and the pain. Larger rounds leave healthy bruises under the armour.

After being hit by, I believe, a 7.62x54mmR ( a lot more "oomph" than the AK-pattern 7.62x39mm round ). He collapsed briefly, got back in the fight and participated in the capture (and medical intervention) of the person who shot him.

[Lethaface]

Somehow? IMO Raven Shield is a far, far better game. The only aspect in which it loses is graphics.

Hehe, 'somehow' indeed wasn't the right word for what I ment in this context

RVS is the number 1 online MP fps game for me ever. Played that one a couple of hundred hours and got it installed atm Will never forget some ownage with the TMP cqb or the FAL on distance

Vegas lacks 'something' altough it has better graphics, sounds and a cover system. They shouldn't have took out the leaning (Q&E) from RVS i guess.

I used the word 'somehow' because I cant really describe what Vegas lacks. It just feels much more arcady, altough the phycis in the game are quite good. Also, vegas being one of the few games where you can attach a red dot AND a silencer, the immersion is quite 'awesome'

The real r6 feeling was gone though, after playing it some time and I never really got to play MP a lot since there were no other players.

I think there was a r6 game between raven shield and Vegas which I have intentionally forgot about, although I'm sure I bought it.

Give me Raven Shield with the graphics of COD4 or even Vegas and i'm sold.

[birdstrike]

"My only major gripe with Raven Shield was the deadly accuracy of the AI"

What setting was that? On elite the AI is lethal and so fast its useless going round corners or opening doors if they are there. I usually put a burst through doors or used flashbangs to buy me an edge. On recruit they are easy to take down, slow on the uptake and pretty lousy shots. Rogue Spear on the other hand, suffered from lethally accurate AI even at the recruit level, fail to drop that Russian guard and he'd head shoot you from 100m, at night, in the snow!

Either elite or veteran. I always had the impression those classic Clancy games had the best AI marksmen I ever met in any game - up to plain out frustrating levels. This was probably enhanced by the fact that very often a single hit was enough to take you out.

My main bug with Ravenshield was the lack of a climb option to get over obstacles, so my elite unit glided around as though on casters, oops a raise loading ramp, where the heck are the stairs!

Haha, yes I remember that, too . Though, I think there was an option to climb over obstacles in the earlier R6 games?

[birdstrike]

Vegas lacks 'something' altough it has better graphics, sounds and a cover system.

Putting together teams and picking their equipment, a planning phase, controlling different team members, multiple approaches to a single level...

Vegas is an entertaining game, but in the end not deep enough to convince me to buy the sequel.

[Field Marshal Blücher]

Vegas lacks 'something' altough it has better graphics, sounds and a cover system.

I would personally put Vegas's cover system as a negative rather than a positive, which is why I agree completely with this next point:

They shouldn't have took out the leaning (Q&E) from RVS i guess.

Amen.

The cover system just doesn't work well, at least for me. Frequently, the game has a hard time figuring out what I want to do.

I used the word 'somehow' because I cant really describe what Vegas lacks. It just feels much more arcady, altough the phycis in the game are quite good. Also, vegas being one of the few games where you can attach a red dot AND a silencer, the immersion is quite 'awesome'

I think it's incredibly arcadey. I like the weapon customization and the idea of Persistent Elite Creation in Vegas 2 (although not the execution of it). However, for me the immersion is not there (especially in Vegas 2!). The way your team acts makes you seem like a bunch of rag-tag mercenaries rather than professional, best-of-the-best counterterrorism operators.

I think there was a r6 game between raven shield and Vegas which I have intentionally forgot about, although I'm sure I bought it.

Rainbow Six: Lockdown. Easily the least controversial game in the series regarding its merits: nobody liked it! (Whereas fans of the original game frequently disagree with fans of the latest two games).

Give me Raven Shield with the graphics of COD4 or even Vegas and i'm sold.

I repeat: Amen.

[Vark]

Dietrich, here's a good link from Mythbusters revisited about knockdown. Most of the accounts I have seen examined suggest the knockdown effect is as much psychological as kinetic.

Rogue Spear had the climb obstacle option, which opened up far more tactical options. I also appreciated the fact that my elite squad used single shots, not full auto, as in Ravenshield. "Hey, I'm a super elite soldier, I'll engage that target at 200m with my M-14 with full auto fire", I guess that neatly links to the idea of knockdown, though to the firer not the target!

The things missing from Ravenshield was the sight picture option, you only got a magnified view and the limitation with the weapon enhancements, I really wanted a scoped M4 with a suppressor, had to make do with the G36. Also would like a choice between AGOGS and red dot and and...damn I was meant to do some work tonight!

If you want a truly brutal gaming experience try Konami's The Regiment, no choice of weapons, more scripted, but 5 mins to complete a mission, enemies playing possum, confined, low light environments, defusing booby traps and choice of picking up dropped weapons. Its Ravenshield's uncouth brother, weapons are battered and chipped, pools of blood spread from corpses giving death rattles and your team mates scream "shift your arse" if you are seconds late doing something. Graphics are pretty rough and the motion capture for the troopers running is comical, but when you shout out clear, your wingman realistically bounds ahead and covers your advance and you can break your AI squad down into two, two man teams.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zio4-iuCLZQ

[Battlefront.com]

Good discussion about FPS games, but I'd like to to be a wee bit more "on topic" than the direction it is going in

Steve

[Apocal]

As for TacAI figuring out it's time to bugger out... correct. We definitely have under modeled that on purpose. If we modeled things correctly you'd have even small firefights lasting 2-3 hours and one side calling it quits before anything decisive happens. That might be realistic, for the most part, but it's definitely not viable for us. Therefore, we basically are obligated to simulate the more unusual "balls out" type of fight where both sides want to stick it out to the end. We let the player decide when there should be tactical exceptions instead of having it be SOP.

I was speaking more for the AI. As it stands right now, high motivation forces have this kind of bizarre side effect of being an easier fight when you significantly overmatch than lower motivation formations. The fanatics stand there and eat bullets like Tony Montoya on coke until they are annihilated. The low-mo guys take one or two dead and book it, then setup nearby, so when you move closer it's a whole 'nother firefight on your hands.

It doesn't happen all the time, mind, but often enough.

Players though, players are quite adept at giving you drawn-out running firefights.

Not to say we couldn't tweak this some more as we go along, because that's easy enough to do. The problem is that it's VERY difficult to code the TacAI to logically get itself back into the fight in some way. We simply fear the players feeling they have to micro-manage every single unit to keep them in the fight.

Obviously I don't know how your code works, but I always thought Steel Panthers: MBT did this quite elegantly by placing a victory location on the unit's vacated position, so that once rallied, they'd counterattack to regain it. Occassionally, there was some shennigans due to it's simplicity, but overall you'd get reasonably realistic reactions out of it. Maybe tie it in with a basic calculation of combat power and local fire superiority so that a depleted airborne squad won't charge two platoon's worth of troops who are sitting in their foxholes.

[Battlefront.com]

Ah, I see what you mean.

Well, the downside of CMx2's vastly more diverse victory conditions is that a simplistic "grab the flag" concept like CMx1 and Steel Panthers no longer works. Or at least doesn't work easily. Very often the defender in a CMx2 game isn't defending specific territory, so specific pieces of terrain are meaningless to take/hold.

TacAI is what determines if a unit buggers out or stays put. If the unit is in good shape and thinks it can fulfill its mission in its current spot it stays there. If it doesn't it moves. This is reactive behavior. What is missing is active behavior to get the units to do something else. So if we lowered the threshold for staying in place then the enemy would continually withdraw every time it got peppered with fire of any significance. Since relocating to new positions is a huge danger in many circumstances, it wouldn't take more than one or two of these situations to cause the unit to become ineffective.

On top of that this SAME behavior would apply to your friendly units as well since the TacAI is identical for both sides. It's the variables which determine how specific units react.

What you're talking about is a the OpAI (Operational AI) to be able to make somewhat proactive decisions about disengagement, coordinate that disengagement, and then to redeploy them to sensible alternative positions. Then, depending on what that side is supposed to be doing, possibly counter-attack or perhaps retreat in specific direction. Whatever the case is, it's a ton of AI coding and we've not had the time to do that yet. Eventually we will

Note that CMx1 didn't have much of this AI because it did have the simplistic Capture/Defend Flag thing. Its forces could bugger out as much as they felt they needed to and eventually they would gravitate back towards the flags. Quite simple to code that because the amount of logic in how that is achieved is quite simplistic.

Steve

[birdstrike]

Whatever the case is, it's a ton of AI coding and we've not had the time to do that yet. Eventually we will

(cough) Triggers? (cough)

[Battlefront.com]

Triggers definitely are the way to go. Unfortunately the little buggers don't just program themselves

Steve

[Lethaface]

I thought that with the new enigne it would be easy to build in small new components, like basic, uncomplex IF, ELSEIF, ELSE thingies

[Clavicula_Nox]

In a word, no. While a high-velocity 5.56mm round has a lot of KE, it's just too small and light to have much momentum. Looking purely at the kinetic physics, even assuming a perfect "shoot and stick" transmission of momentum, a ~4-gram 5.56 round just isn't going to "knock down" a 75-100 kilo human, unless said human is already on the edge of falling over anyway.

That said, I've heard the sensation of getting hit by a high-velocity round in the trauma plate is something like getting whacked in the chest with a hammer. So you might fall over, or at least drop to a knee, due to the shock and pain. But in this case, it's not really the bullet "knocking you down," but rather a physio-psychological reaction to pain and surprise.

It isn't fun and can knock the wind out of you almost immediately. If you're in the middle of a big adrenaline rush, taking a hit to the armor can knock you out of it instantly.

the knockdown effect is as much psychological as kinetic.

we can thank movies for this. People watch movies where a person is shot once and flies backwards 10 feet before dying instantly. They get shot and the only thing their brain knows to do is fall down as it has been trained to do. There are ways to train against this, but they're expensive and require some careful conditioning.

*edit*

I think HE kill ratios are okay. If anything, I think the kill ratios in general are way way too high, but that has already been pointed at and explained.