Project Reality Forums

I'd like to implement or at least draft the heat seeking missle behaviors for this mod. I think I can create just the right mix of realism and playability (since after all, the air combat in this game would be very difficult to make realistic). I've gotten pretty intimate with the flying on this game already and dont think its really fair that planes can get amazing 30 and 2 ratios.

Here are some proposed changes that I could implement:

missle seeking delay- much lower so it misses a lot less
missle maximum turn speed- might have to be increased in order for missles missing less to work.
missle lock on time- more, probably 2x or 3x longer to compensate for missle missing less.
missle minimum range- a lot more most likely
missle damage- a lot.
missle range- more, most likely beyond the what you can see.

missles have to have a lock on time short enough they can still be used on helicopteres, but the 1 second lock on time is too short for them missing less (basically, you would die before you could react).

machine gun damage- this is something thats difficult to figure out. In real life, machine guns installed on airplanes completely eat out enemy airplanes very quickly (rarely in real life does a plane ever get to use them on another plane, since missles generally take out another plane before it is in range). Increasing the damage on this would probably ruin the gameplay.

The thing is, in real life, planes can go silent or use jammers to mess up missle locks, and usually have a lot of flares and chaff countermeasures to deploy.

A lot of what I'm basing this is off of a combat simulator I played a years ago, so it might not necessarily be accurate. This is BF2 though so I doubt a truely realistic combat sim could be attainable using this engine.

comments? suggestions?

I'm all for all those things.

ok I've gotten most of the missles in the mod at something worth trying. It seems to play ok, but I've only been able to test it against bots, and its frustrating how they often fly in straight lines once you lock on. I've gotten everything to work well except anti-aircraft vehicles, which I cannot change for some reason.

changes from release v.0.1:

all planes: lock on for missles longer, between 3.5 - 5 seconds depending on the plane.

all aircraft missles: have much higher top speed and lower turn speed. Do tremendous damage. Missles accelerate up once launched, increasing their effectiveness over distance (hopefully). A slightly damaged aircraft can be taken out a with one missle. A full health aircraft better hope he's flying over an airfield when he gets hit because he wont last long without healing. Attack choppers dont stand a chance once one of these babies is locked onto them. Also, the range of the missles have been bumped up as well.

all stationary anti-air (such as stingers): similar to plane behavior with minor changes. Missles do same damage as before.

anti-aircraft vehicles: extremely powerful against aircraft. Period. I cut the damage their guns do in half and they still kill very quickly. I've found the machine guns on these things easier to use to take out jets than the missles. That said, the missles dont seem to want to change. I've changed the locktime on them to 8 (8 seconds) and they still lock on after 1. Very strange.

overall playability: I found this to be fun and really want to try it out against human opponents. After applying the changes I dont think a single missle missed a helicopter (from jets), but they will still miss airplanes moving perpendicular to you at close range, if you manage to get a lock that long (not sure about far range, the AI is too stupid to perform maneuvors). Of course, this was tested against the AI, where I've noticed a lot better hit success in single player than online with the original settings.

Success towards achieving goals: got most of them, but the AA vehicles acting up and the fact I couldn't implement a minimum range (which seemed to not work either) just boggles my mind.

the zip file is from filecloud, it is 3 megs because it includes the original v.0.1 object file as backup.

http://www.filecloud.com/files/file.php ... e_id=42693

Anything that breaks the current dominance that planes have at the moment is welcome in my book.

Good work, FBX.

ok heres an update and something definately worth noting:

Found the reason my stuff wasn't getting updated because the zip file is all goofy for some reason. When I was copying folders into it to update the file, it wasn't overwriting the files, but was writing a seperately new one. This cauesd the game to act wierd. I fixed this and suddenly the AA vehicles and mig 29 were all working as I wanted... sorta. Turns out my missle behavior files weren't getting updated past a certain point too.

Anyways, I've gotten the missles to behave close to how I want- basically, it comes out REALLY fast, so if your target is at close range, it wont be able to hit it unless your looking right at it. Then, the missle slows down over time, increasing its maneuvorability, while still being faster than the fastest jet's top speed (well... actually havent been able to test this at REALLY long distances, where I suppose it could slow down to stop). Another bonus of this set-up is that you can aim the missles now when they aren't even locked in on a target in hopes of hitting them. Howeverr..

I found a bug in BF2 thats pervalent in all mods. Basically, if you shoot a missle, you automatically lock on instantly. yeah. Instantly. This completely messes up the whole "3 - 4 second" lock time I've put on these vehicles. To compensate for this bug, the rate of fire for missles HAS to be at least half a second less than the lock time in order to keep this from being exploitable.

Will probably post an updated version on filecloud once I get all the aircraft and AA vehicles update. Will also probably put

If you use them right, the vanilla BF2 SAM sites can get reliable kills.

I might not be able to finish this up for a few days- I'm moving back to college tomorrow- but unfortunately the "re-lock" thing seems to be an unchangable aspect of the engine, that will probably have to be fixed in later patches.

if a dev wouldn't mind filling in what they already plan on having changed in the next version (in relation to this), that would be nice.

Also, I'm not really trying to make missles as "effective" as "realistic". I dont think there is much info as to the maneuvorabilities of missles when chasing a very close target (except for movies) so you can only guess as they would do. From what I've seen from simulators and movies, is that homing missles are very inaccurate at close range, then gain speed and increase in maneuvorability. The BF2 game engine is BACKWARDS in this respect, as slower moving missles have more maneuvorability than faster moving ones, so true realism cannot be obtained.

So as I said above, the best way it seems to get the "functionality" of the missles without really getting their speed is to have them start out too fast to maneuvor and then slow down, which I can do with this engine.

are the devs even interested in this or not?

Do they have any ideas on how they believe missles should act?

There interested in everyones ideas, just becuz they dont respond doesnt mean they didnt read it.

ok, I've managed to get the missles to detonate based off of proximity and not collision, which is more realistic, and have actually gotten the missles to react more towards something I am satisifed with. The rate of fire still has to be slowed down, but the damage these missles do have been boosted to pretty much one hit kills. The collision damage has been lowered, so these things really are only good against aircraft or ground vehilces if you can aim them right.

Another bonus to it exploding by proximity, is that it wont explode when your very close to your target, due to the arming delay. I emphesize "very" close however.

This brings up the choppers and anti-air. A chopper wont last long if it can be shot down easily, as the flares on a chopper do not recharge fast enough to avoid a missle lock if it cannot get out of the way of fire. I cant think of a good reason why anti-air vehicles should suck more than their air counterparts, and honestly the air counter-parts at the point I have developed are pretty good at shooting down choppers (of course, I haven't tried this on a server running at low fps, where reason the missles miss in the first place seems to occur).

I think the best way to deal with this is to pump up the damage of rockets from choppers to very high levels. Likewise, choppers should be able to shoot each other down with probably a hit from a single rocket. Adaptive players should then realize that choppers will need to engage their targets from either hills where they can hide behind quickly after shooting, (i.e. pop-tarting) or hope they can take out an anti-air target quick enough with their powerful rockets they wont get shot down. Mainly, choppers take out their targets at a distance, where a single rocket will suffice. As another thing, choppers should definately be more fragile to anti-air rounds. The gattling guns from anti-air vehicles should eat up a chopper in just a few seconds. In real life, choppers employ tactics such as pop-tarting to avoid even getting hit once by these things.

I've updated the file on filecloud to include a huge update to a lot of things. Please take a look at this as its pretty sweet so far.

Changes:

Heat seeking missles:
-------------------------------------
All heat seeking missles have a lower tracking delay than default.

aircraft missles feature a longer lock time. However, the behavior has been tweaked to where it shoots out straight and then gains turning ability over distance. Likewise, missles now explode when within proximity of their target, meaning they really dont miss much. One missle kills, and rate of fire had to be decreased to compensate for BF2 bug to prevent exploiting it.

anti-air missles are little unique and probably not realistic at this point, but I had to compensate for flaws in the BF2 game engine. Basically, the IGLA and stinger sites now shoot both of their missles at once in a volley. The missle itself has a low tracking ability, but volley does great damage. For the IGLA and stinger sites, THERE IS NO LOCK ON DELAY. They will pretty much track something just by looking at it. However, as I mentioned earlier, they have low tracking ability and still maintain the long reload time they have had before, so yes, you can catch someone by surprise but these things aren't exactly awesome at a distance. To boost the capabilities against aircraft, the missles will detonate with a huge high damage explosion when within proximity of a fast moving vehicle. The splash damage these things do against ground targets are actually rather impressive now.

anti-aircraft vehicles share the same missle behavior as the IGLAs and stingers, but have a low rate of fire and long lock on time. Dont worry though, they are anything but weak. I reduced the damage of the weapons on these vehicles in half and they still eat up aircraft rather quickly. Especially once you see how helicopters have changed, as if the missles these fires weren't enough to take down a helicopter. They are still decent anti-infantry vehicles too.

The USS essex has the same missle behavior as other anti-aircraft missles, but also have a long lock time and slow rate of fire.

Helicopters
--------------------
Some inconsistancies with the number of rockets each helicopter could hold were fixed. The MEC helicopter, with 16 rocket pods visibly on it, could only shoot 14 rockets. I fixed this. Likewise, the US and chinese helicopters hold 8 rockets.

I tweaked the damage helicopter rockets do now. Rockets can now take out tanks in 2 - 3 hits (from full health), an enemy airplane in one, and another attack helicopter in 2 (3 if your the MEC chopper). The US rockets do the most damage, the MEC the least.

All helicopters now have a raised "critical health" to a much higher level. For attack choppers, this is 70% of the choppers health, under which the chopper will die if it is not repaired soon. For transport choppers this level is lower. This is to simulate the fragile-ness of a chopper without having it just explode after a few hits. If the engine let me change its controls based on damage I would completely do that instead, however, this seems to be an ok and fun substitute for "we're going down!". This also means it only takes a single hit from a rocket to force the chopper down to repairs.

I'm probably forgetting more, but hell just take a look at this and try it out against bots or something, it plays pretty well and is better than the vanilla BF2 way of doing things.

changed files:
aa11_archer.tweak
aim9m_sidewinder.tweak
igla_9k38.tweak
aav_tungska.tweak
aav_type95.tweak
usaav_m6.tweak
aas_seasparrow.tweak
igla_djigit.tweak
usaas_stinger.tweak
all of the aircraft tweaks

http://www.filecloud.com/files/file.php ... e_id=46064

discovered that I forgot to fix the missle rate of fire on most of the jets. Here is an updated version that fixes it.

http://www.filecloud.com/files/file.php ... e_id=46836

Interesting. I will download and try it out. For now, I'm working on other things, but I think we should definitely improve the missile seeking code.