Ground Attack (UGB/Rockets) Suggestions Thread - Vector Thrust

So, the CCIP seems off unless you're flying at exactly the right speed (Somewhere just in excess of 1,000 km/h), and rockets miss the CCIP as well. There's some good, and some bad here:

The Good:
The cannon CCIP and the rocket CCIP line up with each other
Bombs travel variable distances dependent on speed
Tanks have high HP encouraging players to use directional damage and proper weapons
BLU-27: reminding players to line themselves up for ground attack and actually sort of works even with the CCIP broken for bombs

The Bad:
Rockets and UGBs don't hit the CCIP
Bomb trajectory doesn't end up with the bomb ahead of the target so the player can actually see where the bomb will land during normal flight
UGBs, Rockets, PGB and AGMs share the same size explosions
GBU-27 seems to always just miss the target
Small bombs with large payloads before reloading don't have enough reserve to utilize the carpet bombing strategy they naturally entail
After a damage threshold, a lot of weapons are really easy to kill tanks when they shouldn't be great.
Mission boundaries (especially for challenges) do not behoove lining up for the most efficient attack runs (and in general are too tight on a lot of other missions) in that they are too small.

The biggest improvement I can think of is... Ditch the CCIP-esque sight for bombing, and go full arcade/Ace Combat/HAWX, showing a rendered impact point that also serves to document the AoE of a given weapon to a new player/player using a new weapon for the first time.

Try and keep the gunsight aligned with the rocket CCIP, and continue to keep the rocket CCIP, while aligning the rockets to actually hit the CCIP - and use the gun CCIP! I'm unfamiliar with other aircraft, but the A-10C's gun pip and rocket pip are the same and it serves to simplify things.

Finally, tone the health/resistance of ground units so that good tanks (not fodder/earlier ones for the earlier campaigns) demand either direct hits from weapons like bombs (possibly rockets) or use of missiles or cluster munitions while keeping softer skinned vehicles relatively easy to pop, so that for a co-operative or multiplayer mission, players are encouraged to utilize different SP weapons to achieve the most effectiveness, or have to consider other tactics in order to be effective with their loadout against the presented targets. It would be nice to have an interim between APCs like the M113 and tanks in terms of health with late IFVs representing the low end, and early tanks representing the higher end.

Edited by: Boogie_Van

I find that guns are almost always one of the most effective ground attack weapons in the game, especially if you're in a platform that accelerates well and handles well in the game's current rendition of AoA mode.

At times, the guns seem a little too powerful, especially against larger targets like ships. If you're attacking them with only missiles, their health pools seem to go down just about as fast as you'd expect them to. However, if you use cannons at all, you can easily kill a ship in a one second burst, especially with a gun like the M61, though plenty of the slower firing weapons can do the same.

I would really like to see some kind of negative damage modifier for guns against "armored" vs "soft" targets, or at least a distinction between light (splash damage, bullets, lasers) and heavy (direct hits, high caliber guns) damage. It'd certainly make taking out ships with sub-units on them more interesting, where it is actually possible to destroy the guns, as they might not have a light damage modifier.

For extra, how about an actual bombing cam?

IbizenThoth wrote: I find that guns are almost always one of the most effective ground attack weapons in the game, especially if you're in a platform that accelerates well and handles well in the game's current rendition of AoA mode.

At times, the guns seem a little too powerful, especially against larger targets like ships. If you're attacking them with only missiles, their health pools seem to go down just about as fast as you'd expect them to. However, if you use cannons at all, you can easily kill a ship in a one second burst, especially with a gun like the M61, though plenty of the slower firing weapons can do the same.

I would really like to see some kind of negative damage modifier for guns against "armored" vs "soft" targets, or at least a distinction between light (splash damage, bullets, lasers) and heavy (direct hits, high caliber guns) damage. It'd certainly make taking out ships with sub-units on them more interesting, where it is actually possible to destroy the guns, as they might not have a light damage modifier.

yeah it really skews the metagame when you can sink a carrier with 20mm HE rounds. What's the point of flying warthog when you can destroy everything just fine in an F-15?

IbizenThoth wrote: I would really like to see some kind of negative damage modifier for guns against "armored" vs "soft" targets, or at least a distinction between light (splash damage, bullets, lasers) and heavy (direct hits, high caliber guns) damage. It'd certainly make taking out ships with sub-units on them more interesting, where it is actually possible to destroy the guns, as they might not have a light damage modifier.

This would be nice, it'd be nice to have some sort of critical hit-esque hitbox somewhere on certain ships like the bridge, but, perhaps breaking ships off into sections would be the best way to handle this?

bornloser wrote:
yeah it really skews the metagame when you can sink a carrier with 20mm HE rounds. What's the point of flying warthog when you can destroy everything just fine in an F-15?

No matter what there's very little reason to go to a ground attack jet in games like these. If a really tricked out fighter can't do the same job or better, a multirole with at least some sort of ground attack SP weapon that goes fast generally wrecks these types of things.

The best way to give the slower ground attack jets some love is two fold: in mission design, there has to be enough ground targets in front of the player spaced out so that they can't be either steam rolled, nor would a fighter (or even particularly a multirole) be able to adequately spread their damage between these targets without reloading while maintaining an ideal line-up to attack targets, and then to give dedicated ground attack jets that aren't excessively fast would be to give them better reload times than their contemporaries, better cooling time for the gun, and possibly multiple ground attack SP weapons instead of limiting them to a single one. Also, there's not a lot of A-10s, nor would there be a lot of YA-9s, and etc, so they should probably have more than 3 SP weapons to choose from to begin with.

The A-10 also sort of handles backwards, from what it should, but that's a complaint for another thread. /rant

IbizenThoth wrote:
I would really like to see some kind of negative damage modifier for guns against "armored" vs "soft" targets, or at least a distinction between light (splash damage, bullets, lasers) and heavy (direct hits, high caliber guns) damage. It'd certainly make taking out ships with sub-units on them more interesting, where it is actually possible to destroy the guns, as they might not have a light damage modifier.

The code to modify the damage already exists in the game for a long time, it is just I just always had other priorities first.
I'm activating it now, because it feels wrong to destroy an arsenal ship more easily with a single pass with guns than with 10 bombs.

The code to modify the damage already exists in the game for a long time, it is just I just always had other priorities first.
I'm activating it now, because it feels wrong to destroy an arsenal ship more easily with a single pass with guns than with 10 bombs.

I wonder whether "attack weak point for maximum damage"/critical hit mechanic is in too.

@ Nergal01 there is the directional damage and a random critial hit.

Any chance we'll see areas of a hitbox that will guarantee a critical hit or have I been playing too much Borderlands?

That is possible to use a workaround for that; I just need to add in several sub objects. They can have visual geometry or be just collision models.

But I’ll keep that in mind, it is possible that I’ll expand the default collision system to allow that without having to use sub objects.

PS: the bomb CCIP has been fixed

What about rockets?

Boogie_Van wrote: No matter what there's very little reason to go to a ground attack jet in games like these. If a really tricked out fighter can't do the same job or better, a multirole with at least some sort of ground attack SP weapon that goes fast generally wrecks these types of things.

The best way to give the slower ground attack jets some love is two fold: in mission design, there has to be enough ground targets in front of the player spaced out so that they can't be either steam rolled, nor would a fighter (or even particularly a multirole) be able to adequately spread their damage between these targets without reloading while maintaining an ideal line-up to attack targets, and then to give dedicated ground attack jets that aren't excessively fast would be to give them better reload times than their contemporaries, better cooling time for the gun, and possibly multiple ground attack SP weapons instead of limiting them to a single one. Also, there's not a lot of A-10s, nor would there be a lot of YA-9s, and etc, so they should probably have more than 3 SP weapons to choose from to begin with.

The A-10 also sort of handles backwards, from what it should, but that's a complaint for another thread. /rant

At the very least the A-10A has the advantage of being able to fire six Mavericks at once. That's not much, but it's two more targets downed at range.

Boogie_Van wrote: What about rockets?

Not yet.

Boogie_Van wrote:
The A-10 also sort of handles backwards, from what it should, but that's a complaint for another thread. /rant

This is a complain that, to be honest I’m having a hard time understanding, A-10 has one of the lowest accelerations (do not be deceived by the camera movement when it accelerates)
(About bank I can’t say much because there are still some specs left to tweak.)
Acceleration Rate at sea level, no afterburning:
F-16A_B5: 28,06263388
F-104A: 21,03135983
Su-47: 31,23230284
F-117A: 12,51805835
A-10A: 12,11094973
Su-25: 24,27332475
Mirage_F1C-200: 11,43423013
F-22A: 31,1834899
Jaguar_A: 9,921263884
F-14A: 15,54321221
F-15C: 30,76929492

Also this is the planned warhead vs armor modifiers I’m planning to add in this update:

timeSymmetry wrote:

Boogie_Van wrote:
The A-10 also sort of handles backwards, from what it should, but that's a complaint for another thread. /rant

This is a complain that, to be honest I’m having a hard time understanding, A-10 has one of the lowest accelerations (do not be deceived by the camera movement when it accelerates)

I think the backwards handling is its wide turn radius.

About the turn radius I understand, there are several values that need to be tweaked to help the A-10 has tighter turning radius.

It would probably have a high roll rate too.

@bornloser, I think the roll is perfect, relatively it has value that makes sense, it even has better roll rate than the F-35A
A-10A: 165,3859579
F-117A: 85,10353873
Su-47: 309,2836472
F-16C block30: 191,8932446
Su-25: 144,9730507
Mirage_F1C-200: 98,16887508
F-35A: 141,2971808
EF2000_F2: 155,5413522
F-22A: 124,3688306
F-14A: 124,5228617
J 35J: 89,325346
MiG-21Bis: 96,35726478

If I reduce the gap between the lowest and the highest, makes all aircrafts feel that all have the same stats.

(I feel this is what I should show in the stats of aircraft selection screen, it is a lot more informative than the existing system)

@ Nergal01 there is the directional damage and a random critial hit.

What I meant by critical hit is by destroying certain subsystem to do massive damage, like how you typically shot the ship's bridge to sink it in Ace Combat.

Edited by: Nergal01

Yes, it has a special option that makes some sub object as critical and their destruction also destroys the parent object, although this system has not been used until now.

Maybe I can add it to the leviathan

timeSymmetry wrote:

Boogie_Van wrote:
The A-10 also sort of handles backwards, from what it should, but that's a complaint for another thread. /rant

This is a complain that, to be honest I’m having a hard time understanding, A-10 has one of the lowest accelerations (do not be deceived by the camera movement when it accelerates)
(About bank I can’t say much because there are still some specs left to tweak.)
Acceleration Rate at sea level, no afterburning:
F-16A_B5: 28,06263388
F-104A: 21,03135983
Su-47: 31,23230284
F-117A: 12,51805835
A-10A: 12,11094973
Su-25: 24,27332475
Mirage_F1C-200: 11,43423013
F-22A: 31,1834899
Jaguar_A: 9,921263884
F-14A: 15,54321221
F-15C: 30,76929492

Perhaps it's due to the nature of the game, but the A-10 has an easier time accelerating to its max speed than it does turning, pitching, or rolling, when it should feel fairly maneuverable at the low speeds it flies it while having a very tight turn radius, and struggle to reach speeds upwards of of 430 knots.

timeSymmetry wrote: @bornloser, I think the roll is perfect, relatively it has value that makes sense, it even has better roll rate than the F-35A
A-10A: 165,3859579
F-117A: 85,10353873
Su-47: 309,2836472
F-16C block30: 191,8932446
Su-25: 144,9730507
Mirage_F1C-200: 98,16887508
F-35A: 141,2971808
EF2000_F2: 155,5413522
F-22A: 124,3688306
F-14A: 124,5228617
J 35J: 89,325346
MiG-21Bis: 96,35726478

If I reduce the gap between the lowest and the highest, makes all aircrafts feel that all have the same stats.

(I feel this is what I should show in the stats of aircraft selection screen, it is a lot more informative than the existing system)

The F-14A does not roll at the same speed as the F-22A in-game. In fact, the F-14 series, and the F-15, and most other aircraft that I would describe as having crappy roll rates, their tails do not react to rolling at all, whereas the F-22 has a very snappy roll and its tail indeed does react.

In regards to aircraft stats, for maneuverability/agility, pitch rates (instant & sustained), yaw rate/authority, roll rates (instant & sustained) is a good start. Possibly climbing should be considered in agility? Or speed, pretty up in the air on that one.

timeSymmetry wrote: sub object... destruction also destroys the parent object

Oh wow! Exciting things! Though I think they have to have immunity/high resistance to splash damage, otherwise they could make a ship insanely easy to kill using big bombs. I assume that these sub objects will be invisible so that we can have fun figuring out where to aim?

Will the A-10/other 30mm wielding aircraft get the high caliber modifier? Or for that matter, a gun heat gauge? I mean, the GAU-8 is pretty impressive already but I really think that all aerial guns should have an overheat mechanic applied to them. Maybe using the heat gauge as a balancing mechanic favoring ground attackers?

otherwise they could make a ship insanely easy to kill using big bombs

*cough killing Hresvelgr/Aigaion using FAE cough*

Edited by: Nergal01

___

I also think that half of the acceleration complaint could be the camera movement not being proportional to the speed that is gained. I liken it to how the sound effects in Papers Please make it a much more effective game. Good audio and visual design have just as much impact on how good players perceive a game to be as solid underlying mechanics do. A the visceral experience is nothing to underestimate.

I find the acceleration rate for the A-10 is fine, but that I don't like the almost immediate speed decay to cruise speed as soon as I ease up on the throttle. I would prefer maintaining the speed and having it decaying slowly to cruise speed over time when the throttle is neutral, and then decelerating more quickly when using airbrake, with the same vice versa (slow speed will slowly come up to cruise unless throttle is applied). Maneuvering would of course factor into deceleration as well.

I'm complaining about the fact I can get it upwards of 500 knots with relative ease, not anything to do with the camera.

While it should be able to maintain speed, gaining speed should be a bit difficult for the A-10.

Something I just thought of for sub-units on ships: Directional Damage with Custom Armor Mods?

This is mostly to prevent a single large bomb from destroying all the subunits on a ship, while also making it possible for a gun to snipe certain components more easily. For example, an AA gun on one side of a ship would be shielded by the ship's own body, preventing damage by a weapon with splash damage. Additionally, critical weaknesses, might have both directional damage and custom armor resistances to a variety of damage so that certain weapons are more likely to destroy it.