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SB Pro PE 4.1 New Features (and stuff)


Ssnake

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In the original Steel Beasts and up to about 2015 or so we treated all vehicles as "rigid body point masses", that is, the model slides over the terrain (animated roads and tracks betray the human eye that the're sliding, of course). With a terrain that had a mesh width of 12.5m, slightly wider than the body of the tank, and some movement rules to adjust the position of the vehicle when transitioning from one angle to a new one (e.g. let the tank dip slightly into the terrain as to fake inertia, then accelerate it more up to the point of the greatest divergence between terrain normal vector and tank hull bell normal vector) you could fake relatively well the way how an actual suspension would behave, so the demand for an actual suspension model was rooted primarily in cosmetics, not functional necessity.

 

Now, a tank's movement in the 3D space can be looked at as a wave motion, if you just look at the angular deviation from a perfectly level resting position. With a given maximum travel velocity for a tank the resulting was sufficiently life-like, both in amplitude and frequency. But as soon as the underlying terrain's mesh width becomes smaller than the tank body, this simple model no longer works; mathematically it fails because over the length of the body you may have more than two reference surfaces, and functionally because the rigid body physics can no longer gradually adjust to a shifting underground. You get a wave motion that simply has a way too high frequency, the vehicle "rattles over the terrain". (That's the "doesn't cope" part you were asking about.)

 

At that point you have to implement a model of vehicle suspension that can handle a situation where the terrain mesh with is close to the diameter of a road wheel, and then you use each roadwheel's deviation from its equilibrium position to accelerate the actual hull (and while you're at it, you then might also have distributed masses for hull, turret, and gun assembly, as well as for consumables like fuel and ammo). But obviously, if you have 14 coupled springs and five connected mass points, the resulting calculations (a differential equation) are a tad more complicated, and then you don't just want it for one vehicle but "all of them", and then some customers tell you that the only reason they're using SB Pro is because it can handle large battles, and among them is one customer who doesn't need much fighting, but they're simulating a road traffic, and they need all ten extra parties to their maximum unit limit to populate the world with barely enough vehicles to create a credible environment for "the" student (in this case, indeed one single guy acting the role of a convoy leader in a simulator cabin, driving for four to eight hours in a single session, coupled to a bigger exercise where the convoy's location is updated by battlefield management system).

 

So, while the suspension thing in itself isn't entirely trivial, it's not an entire mystery either. The kicker is, you need a solution that works for several ten thousand entities that all drive around the map at the same time. And as it turned out, available commercial solutions couldn't handle that load, so we had to devise something of our own. I ... allow myself to be proud of the team here. That challenge wasn't entirely trivial.

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That would be the kind of a novelty feature that I would most certainly announce as a major feature.

 

So, No. Sorry.

 

Of course, there are changes in the Mission and Map Editors. I will describe them in the Release notes, possibly demonstrate the one or other in a tutorial video.

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Just now, Ssnake said:

That would be the kind of a novelty feature that I would most certainly announce as a major feature.

 

So, No. Sorry.

 

Of course, there are changes in the Mission and Map Editors. I will describe them in the Release notes, possibly demonstrate the one or other in a tutorial video.

ahh thats a shame. IMO thats whats really missing from this game.

 

For example, a matrix game called Armored Brigade has an awesome mission generator that lets you classify the enemy force type (Mechanized, armored, infantry) , pick an area on the map and it generates an appropriate enemy OOB with random objectives and such. 

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5 minutes ago, Chaosduck7 said:

ahh thats a shame. IMO thats whats really missing from this game.

 

For example, a matrix game called Armored Brigade has an awesome mission generator that lets you classify the enemy force type (Mechanized, armored, infantry) , pick an area on the map and it generates an appropriate enemy OOB with random objectives and such. 

Unfortunately, that's the only feature of that game.

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2 minutes ago, Gibsonm said:

Grenny,

 

Can we just confirm:

  • Single player F8 view available.
  • Multi-player F8 view not available (in order to avoid the potential exploit)?

F8 available in all cases.

Esim thinks us mature enough to punish exploiters on our own...as these are easy to spot in the AAR

 

Edited by Grenny
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Just now, Ssnake said:

Actually, I think we made F8 available generally. While we acknowledge the potential for exploit, that's also the matter of usability if you have no way to control the vehicle except indirectly through the map.

As I said, I think misuse of these vehicles might happen, its just a matter of discipliningthe jerks that do it 😛

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Ah OK.

 

Up to you but personally I've always found it workable to either:

 

a. Pair the ambulance with say an ARV (which you can control) and work around it that way, since players tend to break vehicles and crews in the same incident. Also having the medic wander off as a single vehicle is probably tactically "interesting" or

 

b. Move the medic to some place it can get to (even easier now with upcoming improved AI) and have the player withdraw the vehicle with the casualty X hundred metres so you aren't doing triage under fire.

 

But I guess we'll see how it goes (I guess we can always disable F8 for the ambulance in the Mission Editor).

 

Edited by Gibsonm
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Just now, Gibsonm said:

Ah OK.

 

Up to you but personally I've always found it workable to either:

 

a. Pair the ambulance with say an ARV (which you can control) and work around it that way, since players tend to break vehicles and crews in the same incident. Also having the medic wonder off as a single vehicle is probably tactically "interesting" or

 

b. Move the medic to some place it can get to (even easier now with upcoming improved AI) and have the player withdraw the vehicle with the casualty X hundred metres so you aren't doing triage under fire.

 

But I guess we'll see how it goes (I guess we can always disable F8 for the ambulance in the Mission Editor).

I see the possibilities in making "asymetric" scenarios (I never saw a long range patrol moving out without medic) and convoy missions.

Also any player who wants nothing to d with shooting can now join and "play" as the helper 😄

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40 minutes ago, Grenny said:

I see the possibilities in making "asymetric" scenarios (I never saw a long range patrol moving out without medic) and convoy missions.

Also any player who wants nothing to d with shooting can now join and "play" as the helper 😄

Sure but the same convoy tends to move with a recovery asset too. :)

 

Anyway not going to get overly excited about it - as I say we'll probably turn F8 off for the medic (unsure if you can do it per vehicle) or make it Blind for our sessions. :)

 

Edited by Gibsonm
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32 minutes ago, Marko said:

Is it policy for military personal in the RW not to fire on a ambulance in a combat situation.

I should imagine it varies from army to army.

Its not Policy - its ILLEGAL.

 

Most countries are bound by this legal requirement. In addition most "non state" actors abide by it too.

 

They as "non combatants" are covered (and protected) by the Laws of Armed Conflict.

 

If you shoot at a medic, being a medic, next stop for you is the ICC in The Hague.

 

They are entitled to carry arms for self defence but are not to be fired upon if they are doing their primary job - tending the wounded and displaying markings (hence Grenny's comment re Red Cross / Red Crescent / Red Star of David armbands).

 

If they abuse this (start reporting information, shooting at you, take their armbands off, etc.) they forgo that protection and can be engaged.

 

This is why up to now the Ambulances in SB were denied F8 view as they could be used as a indestructible recon asset because the AI would not fire on them because the AI assumed they were doing medic stuff and were "protected".

 

Same Laws apply to buildings such as Churches, Mosques, Synagogues, Temples, etc.

 

Edited by Gibsonm
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25 minutes ago, Gibsonm said:

Its not Policy - its ILLEGAL.

 

Most countries are bound by this legal requirement. In addition most "non state" actors abide by it too.

 

They as "non combatants" are covered (and protected) by the Laws of Armed Conflict.

 

If you shoot at a medic, being a medic, next stop for you is the ICC in The Hague.

 

They are entitled to carry arms for self defence but are not to be fired upon if they are doing their primary job - tending the wounded and displaying markings (hence Grenny's comment re Red Cross / Red Crescent / Red Star of David armbands).

 

If they abuse this (start reporting information, shooting at you, take their armbands off, etc.) they forgo that protection and can be engaged.

 

This is why up to now the Ambulances in SB were denied F8 view as they could be used as a indestructible recon asset because the AI would fire on them because the AI assumed they were doing medic stuff and were "protected".

 

Same Laws apply to buildings such as Churches, Mosques, Synagogues, Temples, etc.

 

Thanks for the reply.

 

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My mistake - left a very important "not" out of the initial post:

 

Should read:

 

This is why up to now the Ambulances in SB were denied F8 view as they could be used as a indestructible recon asset because the AI would not fire on them because the AI assumed they were doing medic stuff and were "protected".

 

Edited by Gibsonm
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I don't know what camouflage profile he used, but we added a few. 1980s (West) Germany is one of them, I think (at least I think I read that somewhere in the changelog, still on it...), which might explain plain olive with G3.

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