Steel Beasts: Content Wish List

[mpow66m]

and hippies for target practice!

[Gibsonm]

and hippies for target practice!

Well you can already have civilians - just pick the more rustic outfits.

And there’s a 4 x 4 van that looks pretty much like a VW Combi.

[mpow66m]

lol.true.

also i was browsing thru some of the files in the program files and i saw some wooden lookin tank targets and little green men pop ups,a F16 and some ominus looking buildin type.Hmmmm

[Lt DeFault]

...zombies...

[Tacbat]

LOL.

[drcancerman]

and hippies for target practice!

Oh, yesss!!! Please!!! :gun::gun::luxhello::luxhello::bigsmile:

[mpow66m]

:luxhello::gun:

[mpow66m]

I'd like to see lights and lighting. Interior lights/shadows, spotlights, IR spotlights, headlights, etc.

And the M1A2sepV3, T-14 Armata, zombies, & Area 51 w/UFOs.

Area 51 might be a little hard to pull off.....dont know if Ssnake has that kind of pull.

[drcancerman]

:luxhello::gun:

My small contribution to the joke :bigsmile:

[BigBadVuk]

Can we have keyboard command for "Platoon, reload all"?

Right now we can order reload if we click on platoon icon and then pick reload but there is no keyboard shortcut. (If there is i need a new pair of glasses,i checked list in game)

If we would have shortcut for keyboard i could assign it to voice attack and make whole platoon stop & reload with simple "Platoon , reload!" voice command. This should be no big issue to add ( i guess )

[Ssnake]

I suppose it's possible, but tactically speaking, would it be a smart thing to do?

[BigBadVuk]

When a man must reload ..well he must reload

Same goes for platoon management: Will you order them to start reloading in the middle of fight in open or during the break in action in cover is the matter of Co choice. Be stupid and pay the price. :c:

I just would like to be able to do it without getting my hands away from joystick and searching for mouse cursor around in order to click on small icon. :cool3:

[Ssnake]

There will ALWAYS be something for which you'll have to take your hand away from the joystick to do something with the mouse. Implementing this command/hotkey won't change that.

[Gibsonm]

Same goes for platoon management: Will you order them to start reloading in the middle of fight in open or during the break in action in cover is the matter of Co choice. Be stupid and pay the price. :c:

I think the point Ssnake was trying to make was that in RL you usually do not reload every vehicle in the Troop / Platoon at the same time, hence his query about it being tactically sound.

You usually pull one vehicle out of the fight at a time and rotate the reload process that way.

This allows your Troop / Platoon to maintain the engagement, albeit with a reduced weight of fire during the reload process.

Of course if you are well out of the fight the Troop / Platoon can reload at its leisure.

[Major duck]

After playing some scenarios with the UKA i would like to get the damage model of wooden houses fixed if fx i fire 120 Heat rounds into a wooden house i am pretty sure that anybody in the house is a: either dead or at least have pretty big f.... headache or have a lot of holes in them aka rendered useless for the length of most of the games we play

But then again i might be wrong i have only seen what a 105, 155 or 203 mm shells those to houses and even the blowpipes (105) pretty much level a wooden house if it get a direct hit even when its a heat round from a 105mm howitzer

[Gibsonm]

After playing some scenarios with the UKA i would like to get the damage model of wooden houses fixed if fx i fire 120 Heat rounds into a wooden house i am pretty sure that anybody in the house is a: either dead or at least have pretty big f.... headache or have a lot of holes in them aka rendered useless for the length of most of the games we play

But then again I might be wrong i have only seen what a 105, 155 or 203 mm shells those to houses and even the blowpipes (105) pretty much level a wooden house if it get a direct hit even when its a heat round from a 105mm howitzer

Are the larger calibres you mention HE rounds fused for “point detonation”?

I suspect that a wooden house may not even cause a HEAT fuse to arm, let alone a HESH round to deform, before the round had gone right through it?

Masonry, stone, or mud brick sure (or even if the HEAT / HESH round hit say a fire place inside the wooden house).

So I’m not sure if its a case of being poorly modelled or penetration over match correctly modelled?

[Captain_Colossus]

If rubber flaps on tanks are intended to pre-detonate HEAT warheads and if leaves and branches are assumed to do it, I wouldn't per se rule it out. Granted, there are no duds or rounds failing to fuse in Steel Beasts, so given that all rounds perform ideally, it would seem to be consistent that HEAT rounds blow up hitting wooden structures. Otherwise, there would need to be some kind of justification why they wouldn't.

[Grenny]

HEAT round fuses are very itchi.(at least the DM-12) they set of at very little contact. The round also has a significant frag-sleeve. So IRL it will detonate 20cm from the woodwall and sent a huge wave of primary and secondary fragments inside.

[Major duck]

Are the larger calibres you mention HE rounds fused for “point detonation”?

I suspect that a wooden house may not even cause a HEAT fuse to arm, let alone a HESH round to deform, before the round had gone right through it?

Masonry, stone, or mud brick sure (or even if the HEAT / HESH round hit say a fire place inside the wooden house).

So I’m not sure if its a case of being poorly modelled or penetration over match correctly modelled?

I thought that Australia got 120mm Heat rounds with your 59 M-1A1 rebuilt to M-1A1AIM(D) version because in Afghanistan the heat rounds the danish army used there exploded even on clay compounds used in the green zone we actually had to install a 12,7mm HMG (Ma-Deuce) to keep collateral damage to a minimum whenever it was feasible.

If the Australian army are using the US designations the DM-12 are called HEAT-MP-T M830 and that's the one the danish army uses.

The next is a google translation of part of an article of the danish army news magazine and before the 12,7mm was in use

Ammunition Conditions

On munitions area, our experience shows that the fight take place primarily up to several kilometers. Some battles are fought on greatly shorter distances.

To get the right ammunition for just these conditions, the army can make choices among the many types of ammunition that are available for the 120 mm, smooth-bore cannon, as Leopard 2A5 is equipped with.

The choice fell on HEAT DM 12, PELE DM 33, M1028 CANISTER (different ammunition types with different effects, see details below) and ordinary armor cartridge (primarily for combating armored targets).

Selected ammunition types all have limitations relative to the temperature, but the experience of the area showed that the ammunition in the tank does not reach a critical temperature level.

The different types

HEAT (Shell with some explosive effect) has emerged as the absolute first choice for all engagements. HEAT is very precise and has a good fragmentation / pressure effect of Compounds (houses in Afghanistan, built up in clay and the dried clay bricks) and spider holes and foxholes). It is very precise due to its comparatively high muzzle velocity, and can be pushed very close to other blue forces in a "close support role"

HEAT grenade into and exit holes in one Compound wall in the background can be seen the high ground.

PELE (Penetrator with Enhanced Lateral Effect) are intended to fragment on impact with even unarmored target such as a Compound or a car. It has a large penetration of the first layer, then shatter and not, or only to a very limited extent, continues through the target.

Great expectations associated with that ammunition, especially to counter enemy snipers and fortified positions.

In practice it has, however, proved to be very difficult to apply in that it sheds some guiding and stabilization stages from shortly after the firing. (Sabot - from Spanish Zapato: Clogs, used by French industrial workers in the 1890s, when they threw their clogs in the company's machinery and therefore made sabotage). It makes shooting over own units and civilian risky.

CANISTER round (to the tank cannon) is a 120 mm shot, shot which is effective out to several hundred meters.

It has proved very effective against enemies with guns and anti-tank weapons that pop up on cardholders in hedgerows and ditches. The Hail swarm has a good effect in the target and continues only in very limited way through the target. It makes it easy for tank crew to control the impact area, while achieving significant fire supremacy.

Finally, the turret MG

It is a very precise and effective weapon that can be used for warning shots or against point goal at long distances. The advantages of the gun turret are far fewer disturbances in front of the mouth of the tank - the dust cloud in front of the optics caused by pressure and subsequently under pressure from the projectile exiting the muzzle - while the disadvantage is the lack of penetration of the cover, for example, a thick wall or the like. A hostile that is firing a shot and immediately change position, when most of the coverage before the turret MG 7.62 mm projectiles reach. By contrast, it seems that HEAT through coverage has a spread that ensures efficacy in the target without causing too much damage.

That would also mean that the damage model for canister should be changed as inf in the open are hamburger if hit by a canister round and thats not what i am seeing the same can be said about the Beehive round for the CG 84mm that all DK squads carry around and have used i Afghanistan as well

[Grenny]

Well, the damage model of canon/maschinecanon fire against buildings is still very limited in SB. For example the 40mm 3P ammo rarely has the effect one would like ;-).

If I understood Ssnake correctly, an issue is the time-resolution of the simulation...the fuse times are shorter then the time steps of SB.

[Ssnake]

...that's one effect we need to deal with. SB Pro is very good at calculating ammunition effects on armor plate, particularly in the APFSDS and the HEAT domain. We still need to do more about overpressure, incendiary, and general fragmentation effects (both primary and secondary), impulse loading, and generally the visualization of damages in the environment.

Unfortunately the work on the HE/fragmentation model has always been forced to take a back seat in the past six or more years since I decided that we had to improve in this area since there was always something that appeared to be more urgent since the current HE effects are not TERRIBLY wrong, and because addressing all of the aspects above will either require a particularly clever approach from the programming side to achieve the desired effects while keeping the computational load manageable (the preferred solution), or a somewhat less ambitious approach with significant repercussions for all 3D artwork (less desirable for a whole host of reasons).

So, it's one of those topics that require a significant effort and which offer only a moderate improvement (arguably significant in the modeling&simulation domain, but potentially with a low profile for the actual end-user). When in a pinch you usually focus on items that require little effort and offer significant improvements that are immediately visible for everybody.

My latest plan to have one programmer work on this has, unfortunately, been foiled once again because of cascading effects of the introduction of the new terrain engine that absolutely needed to be addressed. We'll resume work on this with a high priority after those latest necessities have been addressed, but I'm skeptical that it will have reached a maturity level sufficient to allow its inclusion in the coming PE release.

Sigh.

[JustSomeGuy]

Could you find some time to script-in "AFV crews"?

So that

1) if an AFV is hit, appropriate number of "infantry" (or even "leather" civilian) models spawn next to it and try to crawl away

2) if an AFV's crew dies (upon colliding with a house, being exposed to enemy fire or whatever) but AFV survives, it could be re-crewed with such crew spawned from dead vehicle (i.e. not only by bulky ambulances which cannot be manually driven around)

3) in the vehicle context menu, there would be an "evacuate" command and when used before the vehicle would be destroyed, it's crew wouldn't be "counted as dead" in the statistics (eg. losing AFV+crew would be worse than losing AFV minus the crew)

It would add the benefits of

1) having to deal with "movement around dead tanks " (similar as around dead IFVs) "even after they're dead"

2) for the those of us obsessed with preserving/saving lives of the "soldiers" under their command, it would enable one more try to mount a rescue mission even after the AFV itself would be destroyed - and thus often left alone by the advancing force

[Grenny]

Not a bad idea, would be a nice stopgap solution.

I'd still prefer crew modeled in the first place :-D

[Azure Lion]

I like this idea.

Not a bad idea, would be a nice stopgap solution.

I'd still prefer crew modeled in the first place :-D

Zombie crew, or rodent crew? I vote for the rodent crew myself. :c:

[Major duck]

Could you find some time to script-in "AFV crews"?

So that

1) if an AFV is hit, appropriate number of "infantry" (or even "leather" civilian) models spawn next to it and try to crawl away

2) if an AFV's crew dies (upon colliding with a house, being exposed to enemy fire or whatever) but AFV survives, it could be re-crewed with such crew spawned from dead vehicle (i.e. not only by bulky ambulances which cannot be manually driven around)

3) in the vehicle context menu, there would be an "evacuate" command and when used before the vehicle would be destroyed, it's crew wouldn't be "counted as dead" in the statistics (eg. losing AFV+crew would be worse than losing AFV minus the crew)

It would add the benefits of

1) having to deal with "movement around dead tanks " (similar as around dead IFVs) "even after they're dead"

2) for the those of us obsessed with preserving/saving lives of the "soldiers" under their command, it would enable one more try to mount a rescue mission even after the AFV itself would be destroyed - and thus often left alone by the advancing force

Not a bad idea, would be a nice stopgap solution.

I'd still prefer crew modeled in the first place :-D

That would also make Kingtigers wish about standing on top of your vehicle (which is about 1,5m higher then the top of the highest TC position feasible ingame today which he and others use irl i diddent as much because sitting as a Artillery observer in the turret basket in a centurion tank which can go backwards at any time you tend to sit most of the time and hold on to your tripod with your thermal/laser/designator/Rangefinder but having the ability to put a guy in the turret basket having him close buy and wired into the intercom so the Platoon/Squadron commander can just pop up and tell him to shoot at something with planes/Arty/Mortars makes it very much more effective and also a lot more dangerous for the guy sitting outside the turret