Armor destruction/damage model rework

[rogdozz]

Hello, I would like to suggest something regarding the behavior of armor upon being destroyed.

As it is right now, most of the time when you kill a tank or APC it blows up immediately and you can tell right away that it's destroyed, even at high distance or through smoke you can immediately tell that you just killed the vehicle. This is not realistic, if you look at real footage of tanks being hit, the majority of them do not explode immediately. At best you will be able to see flames coming out of the engine or ammo storage, and then only some time later it will cook off like it does in PR. Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roQFb-cZ_hM

We do have a "burning vehicle" mechanic in PR: When a vehicle is very low on HP, it starts burning and bleeds more HP over time. In my opinion this feature is implemented in an unrealistic manner and doesn't serve good gameplay. When a tank is burning in PR, you have basically killed it already, but it's gun and movement is often still operating so it can still kill you. First of all, this is completely unrealistic since no tank in real life would still be operating for even a second after suffering such a catastrophic hit. Second, I also don't see how this serves good gameplay that enemies can still drive around and kill you after they're basically dead.

So my suggestion is this: Change it so that when a tank is killed, it doesn't blow up immediately but the gun, coax and movement are instantly disabled, crew suffers damage/gets killed, and the vehicle's HP goes so low that it starts burning until it gets destroyed/blows up between 3-20 seconds later. So a tank kill would look much less dramatic, you would have to look somewhat closely to even be able to tell that the tank is dead. Just like in real life. Then after some time has passed the tank would blow up and you'd be 100% certain that it's dead.

All of this could be achieved with existing game mechanics, afaict all you would have to do is change some values like HP value for each vehicle.

To sum it up, the purpose of the change would be this:
1. Make armor kills more realistic visually. Most armor kills in real life don't look like in PR where they blow up in flames instantly.
2. Solve the issue of armor still driving around and killing things while they're burning, which imo is unrealistic and bad gameplay
3. Increase fog of war by making it harder to confirm armor kills, which in my opinion serves to make PR closer to what it's intended to be. This is not intended to be an arcade game where the game tells you immediately that the enemy is dead. Especially being able to clearly see armor explosions through smoke walls is just stupid.

[Grump/Gump.45]

3. Increase fog of war by making it harder to confirm armor kills

Exactly, I can't play dead in a piece of armor with my barrel pointed slightly up to sell it if all dead tank carcasses look equally burned out. I want to be able to turn my engine off and play dead without needing my tank to look burnt. We have static destroyed tanks made for playing dead in view of on maps like Black Gold.

[Redamare]

also remove the wreckage exploding upon re spawn. keep the carcass
there until the end of the round

Also Forgotten hope I believe had active rpg hit position effects. if the vehicle got hit by a rocket there would be a little overlay of damage on the texture

[Suchar]

To sum it up, the purpose of the change would be this:
1. Make armor kills more realistic visually. Most armor kills in real life don't look like in PR where they blow up in flames instantly.
2. Solve the issue of armor still driving around and killing things while they're burning, which imo is unrealistic and bad gameplay
3. Increase fog of war by making it harder to confirm armor kills, which in my opinion serves to make PR closer to what it's intended to be. This is not intended to be an arcade game where the game tells you immediately that the enemy is dead. Especially being able to clearly see armor explosions through smoke walls is just stupid.

I've investigated the possibility of implementic this suggestion. Delaying wreck state is possible but I haven't found a way to trigger explosion effects (or any new effects in general) for delayed geometry switch.

tl;dr
Not possible.


very little chance of ever getting reverse engineered

[rogdozz]

I've investigated the possibility of implementic this suggestion. Delaying wreck state is possible but I haven't found a way to trigger explosion effects (or any new effects in general) for delayed geometry switch.

tl;dr
Not possible.


very little chance of ever getting reverse engineered

Thanks for the update. What about simply changing health and damage values for every vehicle to achieve the same effect? For example:

1. Every armored vehicle has their max HP increased by 500 (just an example).
2. When an armored vehicle drops below 500 HP, it starts burning. I assume this would involve only modifying a value, since there is already a specific HP below which a vehicle will start burning. I don't know if this value is hardcoded however, and if it can be modified for each vehicle separately.
3. When an armored vehicle drops below 500 HP, both gun and tracks have a 100% chance of being disabled. This should also only involve modifying some values since the damage model already works with disabling parts based on HP values.

These 3 changes together would achieve that a tank can be basically dead (unable to move, unable to shoot, burning and bleeding HP) but not blown up yet. It would also remove the possibility of burning tank driving around and shooting people which we can see in-game now and which is unrealistic.

[Coalz101]

Similar to what Rogdozz said:

Increase vehicle health, make vehicles become completely immobile (just be clear its not 'tracked' but it is immobilized meaning it can't move AT ALL) after a certain health has passed.
Once that health has been passed, the vehicle slowly takes damaged until it catches fire and explodes and only then becoming the current wreck as we know it.

[Grump/Gump.45]

Thanks for the update. What about simply changing health and damage values for every vehicle to achieve the same effect? For example:

1. Every armored vehicle has their max HP increased by 500 (just an example).
2. When an armored vehicle drops below 500 HP, it starts burning. I assume this would involve only modifying a value, since there is already a specific HP below which a vehicle will start burning. I don't know if this value is hardcoded however, and if it can be modified for each vehicle separately.
3. When an armored vehicle drops below 500 HP, both gun and tracks have a 100% chance of being disabled. This should also only involve modifying some values since the damage model already works with disabling parts based on HP values.

These 3 changes together would achieve that a tank can be basically dead (unable to move, unable to shoot, burning and bleeding HP) but not blown up yet. It would also remove the possibility of burning tank driving around and shooting people which we can see in-game now and which is unrealistic.

From my perspective we need realistic hit boxes. Human players can already get grazed looking like they got hit but tanks can't. If a round scrapes the outside edge of a tank its not going to do much if any mechanical damage. If barrel gets hit its out of course and I think that is currently the case.

The guns turret rotation can go out completely or be restricted to certain degrees from a powerful jerking hit that moves the turret putting sudden pressure on hydraulics or mechanical turret parts. Grazing the turret but the barrel elevation and breach will be fine so the gun can still fire unless justified by some information about hydraulic turret failure also prevents gun from firing.

Penetration to vitals of the tank like the crew, ammo rack or mechanical versus non-vitals like the outer edge of the turret or chassis edge like a through and through metal deformation on the edge that would have been a graze or bounce but penetrated. None of these would damage the crew or function of the tank.

In PR I fired RPG 7 at the tanks tracks directly many times and it still moves. I have done side sprocket hits which would deform, displace metal and expand sprocket driving the tracks. I have hit the tracks directly on the face of the metal track belt.

We do need some changes or improvements for realism.

[Death!]

I've investigated the possibility of implementic this suggestion. Delaying wreck state is possible but I haven't found a way to trigger explosion effects (or any new effects in general) for delayed geometry switch.

tl;dr
Not possible.


very little chance of ever getting reverse engineered

Once the vehicle is disabled (gun unmovable and tracks not funcional), can it be scripted to take no damage for a set amount of time? I guess this would solve the issue, if possible.

To put it short, vehicle would be unvunerable for 3-20 seconds once it reaches 1% of health and then geometry switch kicks in as usual.