[Concept] Tank FCS

[CanuckCommander]

Intro

1.0 will see the revamp of deviation and thus infantry combat, yet vehicles (air and ground) in PR have not gotten a lot of love for the longest time. Tank battles in PR are extremely unrealistic due to the lack of FCS, making them feel very static. With a FCS, tanks will be able to fire on the move and thus battles will be more dynamic. Since the creation of a true FCS system is probably not possible in the BF2 engine, I will attempt to use an elaborate work-around to create the illusion of a FCS through clever game mechanics and animations.

My idea is based on the TV missile from BF2. This concept is already applied on PR's hellfire missiles and player-guided bombs. I will be as concise as possible in my explanation. There will no doubt be questions, but I'd rather clarify my idea through answering questions than writing a wall of text which may or may not be universally understood right away.

Steps:

1) When the gunner spots a target in FCS mode while the tank is on the move, he would "designate" the target.

2) This "designation" sequence would spawn an invisible missile/tank round that is stationary slightly above or in front of the tank. This "missile" would have similar properties as the TV missile in BF2, and the gunner's view would be transfered to this projectile. The hud of this "TV Missile/Tank Round" would be similar to the sights from the internal tank sight (to create the illusion of the gunner still looking through his sights). Since this projectile is floating in mid air and separate from the fast moving tank, it is therefore relatively still and can act as the stabilized gun sight of the tank. The gunner can also adjust the point of aim just as he would to a TV missile or a PR Hellfire if the enemy tank/target is not stationary, and thus simulating the tank's firing computer tracking the target.

3) When the gunner is ready to fire, he would press another "fire" command that is linked to the vehicle speed-boost code of BF2. This will boost the otherwise slow moving or stationary projectile to the speed of a normal tank round, thus simulating the firing of the round. At the same time, the screen should go black and shake due to the "recoil" in order to smoothly transition back to the gunner's view inside the tank to help create the illusion that the gunner's view never left the tank at all.

The projectile should have a limited time to live and a slight zoom so gunners can't see their own tank zooming into view because that would look silly. A reasonable time to live should be determined through testing. It would probably be around 5-10 seconds. Of course, the manual mode of fire that is the current system should complement this new "FCS."

Although this may not be the most realistic FCS system, but it will allow tanks to fire on the move, which is a realistic feature in itself. This system may only work for tanks (maybe attack choppers) since they have a relatively slow rate of fire. I would not know how it could be implemented into fast firing APCs and IFVs.

Since I'm not a coder, I must solicit the help of the community coders to help determine whether this idea is even feasible. Feel free to ask questions. Also I don't know how it would look from the 3rd person.

[L4gi]

Just remove TOWs from tanks and youre back to awesome tankbattles where its actually about skill and not 1hit wonders.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 2

[Zemciugas]

Project reality > Remove real tank capabilities so it doesn't pwn other tanks. Does not compute.

[Pvt.LHeureux]

What you propose makes sense and should be looked into.

[godfather_596]

Firing on the move on bumpy terrain is horribly difficult. I hope an FCS gets implemented.

[CanuckCommander]

What you propose makes sense and should be looked into.

The only problem I see is how to make it look like the projectile has been fired from the barrel in 3rd person since the actual projectile will be separate from the tank gun. Thereby, whatever players see in 3rd person will have to be some kind of dummy or special effects.

Hopefully, expert DEVs/coders like Rhino can chime in on this. This system will not only add a simulated FCS but also a simulated stabilized gunner view.

[{ZW}C-LOKE]

Sounds like a whole lot of added networkable info... Don't get me wrong, it's a great idea and the end result is closer to reality.

But...

I can see this being slightly messy on the coding side, as well as adding to network overhead. In support of your argument, 1.0 will have more HAT/LAT kits floating around, and something like this will balance that out more.

[CanuckCommander]

Yeah i agree LOKE, the idea is great, and the DEVs do HAVE played around with it i believe, but i don't really see how this is gonna work, while the idea in theory is pretty good, atleast i believe it's gonna be practically impossible to code it and implement it.

It's not impossible to code because it is based on existing code models, such as the TV missile from the bf2 cobra.

I have a new idea on how this could work. In FCS mode, instead of using the movement of the mouse to turn the turret, the gunner would click on the screen to turn, like how the TV missile would in BF2. Like the old idea, when the gunner first clicks, the tank spawns a tank round. This is the missile and the gunner's view would be in the tank round/missile cam.

When the gunner wants to adjust the point of aim of the projectile, he simply clicks and the camera will turn toward the target. There would be a turn rate limit on the projectile, so that gunners can't 360 within seconds. This turn rate would be appropriate to the turret's turn rate. When the gunner actually needs to fire the round, he would press another button that's linked to the boost ability as previously mentioned and the round is accelerated to the speed of the tank round. During this time, the turn rate of the missile will be reduced to minimal or disabled in order to prevent gunners from adjusting the tank round mid-flight.

[Moszeusz6Pl]

Ok, but how will you make camera linked with tank, when it won't move with it? And how will you limit how long it can be used? I think that it could be used to place camera in one place and observe it from safe distance, and then when enemy came, kill him from nowhere.

[40mmrain]

I've made multiple posts about updating tanks to have slats, and CROWS. All modern tanks employ these upgrades. That would bring them up to date in their relationship with infantry, and missile based AT vehicles.

Also, the viewport, and commander camera bug ought to be fixed

theres a video out there of some PR dev who actually made a stabilization system for tanks, though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xbdfja3qtbY

would REALLY improve armour's ability, and tactics overall, I actually wonder if this is employed in the next patch, I Should hope so

[Navo]

That was made on Bf2142's engine, sadly.

[40mmrain]

what a shame

[Mineral]

na,that video is PRBF2. but mosquill probably had a good reason not to have this in PR. Lots of things work on local but not on dedi server.

[Spush]

na,that video is PRBF2. but mosquill probably had a good reason not to have this in PR. Lots of things work on local but not on dedi server.

No that was 2142.

[Rhino]

TBH guys I haven't heard any ideas here that even if they where workable code wise (which I can't see how any of them really can) would be exploitable and not really work that well practicality wise either.

The only way to really solve the problem is fixing the underlying problem which is stabilization, trying to work around it just makes things worse than they already are IMO.

No that was 2142.

Says in the comments it was BF2 but it didn't work on a dedicated server in BF2, only on local, as most things with BF2

Most of what Mosquill had done has been experimental and anything that hasn't been implemented into PR, hasn't been implemented for good reason, normally because it a, doesn't work (this) or b, waay to much work for little reward on a large scale (working gauges in vehicles and 3D HUDs, combined with the problem in that case of limited moving parts on a vehicle too meaning you can only have so many needles etc working, even if it all was set up)

[Spush]

Aw my bad then, figured if it was stabilization it was 2142.