Another little topic and poll on this change.
In the v1.0 Open Beta, we made Air to Ground (AtG) Anti-Tank (AT) Missiles only significantly damage/destroy armoured vehicles, such as Tanks and APC if they scored a direct hit, while soft targets such as jeeps, trucks and infantry would still get damaged or killed/destroyed by an AtG AT Missile exploding near them.
This is to simulate the missiles real life capabilities, as these missiles have a shaped charge warhead, designed to out all the power of that warhead into one spot in front of it, to penetrate directly though a tanks armour on a direct hit. If this missile hits the ground then 90% of the warheads energy goes directly into the ground, just like if it was trying to dig its way though the tanks armour, instead all it succeeds in doing is digging a massive crater and throwing up some debris which if it hits the armour of a tank or APC, is just going to bounce right off with causing a minor scratch to the paintwork at best, although can kill a person or significantly damage a light armoured vehicle that's very close to the initial explosion.
This change however has sparked up a bit of a debate on if this is the best change for gameplay since in real life, the targeting systems on jets and choppers are far more advanced and can much more easily guarantee a direct hit than we can ingame, and its quite hard for a spotter to get his laser target to "stick" directly on a tank/APC as most of the time they seem to stick a bit off to the side, which means if a missile is locking onto that lase which is slightly off the target, then it will probably miss the target and will only strike next to it. On the other side of the argument many players don't want to go back to the old system where a missile can explode 10m from a Tank or APC and destroy it outright with very little skill involved. As you can see in this video below at 1:15, the missile detonated miles away from the target after a quick twitch fire after the gunner finally saw it, and still managed to kill it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cklxPjW ... page#t=75s One thing to keep in mind is that the Air to Ground Missiles carried by jets are generally much larger than the ones carried by helicopters, which means they have a bigger splash damage radius, and cause more damage, but can only really be fired at lazed targets. The above damage values in the polls is also as per the smaller AtG Missiles on Choppers such as the Hellfire.
What we (the Devs) are currently thinking (before this poll has gone live) is a slight compromise between the two, rewarding direct hits with a kill as per the v1.0 Open Beta setup (front hit on a tank = burning, rear/top hit = destroyed) but also making these missiles have "some" splash damage when hitting very close to an armoured vehicle, under 5ms, but only doing something like taking off 1/2 the HP of tank, so you need two near misses to kill a Tank or APC, but still killing soft skinned vehicles and infantry with a near miss. This way it still takes skill while also keeping it semi-realistic, more realistic than post releases but also making the survivability of ground forces a bit higher too from before, but still a skilled pilot and gunner with spotters will still have a very powerful tool at their disposal when used right
But before we make any changes we thought it would be best to post this poll to see what you, the community think and we will go from there
Cheers!
