Poll: Military vehicles not realistic enough in games?

[griever0311]

I'll use as prime examples Call of Duty 4, and the Battlefield series, and helos, tanks, and personnel transport in particular. I've always wondered why game developers just can't pull this off; they have no excuse nowadays. Contemporary game engines are complex enough that you can map and track damage to any number of vehicle components or track penetration of vehicle hulls injuring players inside. Is that Soviet tank giving you trouble? Put some C-4 on that fuel cell! Chopper giving you a bad day? Blast his TADS and ruin those guns! Or hell, have your squad's automatic riflemen light the engines up; once he takes a few 200-rounds belts, he's not gonna want to be there, if by some divine miracle he's still in the air after being shot up that bad. And it'd be great if it wasn't done haphazardly or ridiculously. Seriously, I could shoot at an M1113 HMMWV's crew compartment all day with an AK47, and it's not gonna get through. Good luck even shooting the windows out on those things. Bigger trucks? You better have some explosives, but don't hope for it to work like it does in Battlefield: shooting an MBT a couple times with an RPG is gonna get you dead, and even if you scored a mobility kill on the tank, you now have a 70-ton stationary emplacement with more firepower than you could shake a stick at.

My point is, if a game would implement things like that, players would HAVE to play smarter, they'd have to use realistic, well-thought-out tactics to survive, they'd have to protect their vehicles if they didn't want them plugged by anti-air or anti-tank gunners, and you'd no longer have the problem of people rampaging across the map slaughtering indiscriminately.

Just my $.02.

 

[Lord Mountbatten Reborn]

You can never have true realism.

 

[WrongSprite]

That's because those are 2 games in which NOTHING is realistic.

Look to the mil-sims like ARMA, ARMA 2 and Operation Flashpoint 1.

 

[Armored Prayer]

Well, its a good idea.

But I still prefer the simple "rocket kills tank" approach in games.

 

[Davey Woo]

The thing I don't get is games where you can drive a tank, whilst firing and reloading as one person. I'd say you'd need a crew of at least 2 to get a tank functioning smoothly (not going by experience) yet in most games you can do everything on your own.

 

[tsb247]

Operation Flashpoint and more recently ArmA and ArmA 2 will give you the realism that you are speaking of. While still not as true to life as VBS2, they are the closest known examples of realistic vehicles (and warfare for that matter) in gaming.

 

[griever0311]

Hmm, I didn't even think about that when I posted, and that's probably one of the most egregious errors out there.

 

[fix-the-spade]

I think there's an element of gameplay vs realism here.
BF games are geared so that no enemy unit makes for an automatic death sentence should you try to kill it. Even aircraft and Tanks have vulnerabilities and anti-X launchers are scattered around.
CoD is meant for run and gun gameplay more than anything else.

In BF2 how much would it suck if the presence of a tank meant you had to sit and hide waiting for another tank to rock up because nothing your C4, SRAW and landmine toting squad had could put a big enough dent in it?
Three or four co-ordinated players in BF games especially can usually match up to anything the other team can field, which is how it should be. Having to rely on every one of your 31 other team mates will just make for a slow stalemate as everyone hits what they can damage in order.

Or worse, it could make empty servers as playing an infantry unit renders you completely ineffectual.

Incidentally, in BF2 lighting up a gunship with a squad automatic will usually persuade it to back off. Provided you stay hidden from it the steady stream of damage will put it off staying in the area.

For serious anal levels of realism look to Operation Flash Point and Red Orchestra. BF and CoD fit in the skill and gameplay over simulation model.

 

[Hitman 43]

Some are, some aren't.

 

[Kenjitsuka]

You can play warsimlike games like Operation Flashpoint if you want more realism and use welltought tactics to kill vehicles.

In BF2 it would suck, because people don't work together much in that game.
Everyone just runs around and has fun, because that's what most gamers want from wargames; sheer mindless fun.

 

[Lt. Dragunov]

Games will be games I guess.

 

[MR T3D]

i would think that mobility kills would be cool to impliment more often..

 

[Kollega]

Let's say that's good idea. Not great,but good. If you could indeed score a mobility kill on a tank in multiplayer,or throw a grenade inside,or light up a chopper's engines with a few sniper shots,i think it would be good to add dynamic to multiplayer.

 

[Zacharine]

Snip

I shall refer you to this:

http://www.gamechronicles.com/reviews/pc/ironwarriors/t72tc.htm

And dare you to say that again.

Sure, many games have poorly thought out vehicles. They also have unrealistic health-system (medkits insta-heal ftw), unrealistic weapons (my pistol shoots accurately beyond 20m!), no realistic bullet trajectories etc.

The reason for this is simple: Realistic war games will get the average player killed in under 3 minutes. And that is not fun.

Realistic enough seems to be the word of the day and even that is a bit iffy. See how many people got Rage-Quit phenomenon in OP:Flashpoint singleplayer campaing since it has the rifle-bullets-kill-instantly-90%-of-the-time health system.

 

[griever0311]

Oh cool, when you're driving the T-72 does the smoke generator automatically catch on fire when you activate it? Does firing the main gun self-destruct your tank and then auto-load your gunner's arm into the breach? Lol.

But in response to your post, a realistic hit detection system on player's avatars would fix that as well. I see body armor and helmets on character models all the time, but it never does anything except add hit points, or reduce damage. There's still room for first-aid, and evacuation mechanics (armor stops most small arms fire, players could patch themselves up if they take a hit to an extremity, and suffer a penalty until they get worked on by a proper corpsman or medic; still unrealistic, but a step in the right direction). All of this, I believe, would increase immersion by a huge degree. And the fact still stands that a few hits by 5.56mm or the even tinier modern Russian round is NOT likely to put a man on a mission down right away. Unless you're slinging Mark 252.

 

[Zacharine]

Oh cool, when you're driving the T-72 does the smoke generator automatically catch on fire when you activate it? Does firing the main gun self-destruct your tank and then auto-load your gunner's arm into the breach? Lol.

But in response to your post, a realistic hit detection system on player's avatars would fix that as well. I see body armor and helmets on character models all the time, but it never does anything except add hit points, or reduce damage. There's still room for first-aid, and evacuation mechanics (armor stops most small arms fire, players could patch themselves up if they take a hit to an extremity, and suffer a penalty until they get worked on by a proper corpsman or medic; still unrealistic, but a step in the right direction). All of this, I believe, would increase immersion by a huge degree. And the fact still stands that a few hits by 5.56mm or the even tinier modern Russian round is NOT likely to put a man on a mission down right away. Unless you're slinging Mark 252.

OP:Flashpoint. Get hit to the leg, you won't be doing anything but crawling until you get to a medic. Possibly not even after. Getting shot mostly means restarting the mission in that game.

The 5.56 round does more tissue damage than the 7.62 round. When the 5.56mm bullet impacts at high velocity (as happens when shot from a rifle) and yaws in tissue, the bullet fragmentation quickly transfers energy, which results in massive wounding and hydrostatic shock effects. The bullet cavity within soft tissue is also greater than the one caused by 7.62mm

Here is a 7.62 wound cavity. Due to greater speeds, the 5.56 will cause a greater cavity. Either to the gut will be guaranteed to drop you. All the stuff that used to make up the area marked 'permanent cavity' will be blown out of the exit wound right after the bullet, due to the extreme low preassure following it right behind.

 

[Scolar Visari]

Oh cool, when you're driving the T-72 does the smoke generator automatically catch on fire when you activate it? Does firing the main gun self-destruct your tank and then auto-load your gunner's arm into the breach? Lol.

But in response to your post, a realistic hit detection system on player's avatars would fix that as well. I see body armor and helmets on character models all the time, but it never does anything except add hit points, or reduce damage. There's still room for first-aid, and evacuation mechanics (armor stops most small arms fire, players could patch themselves up if they take a hit to an extremity, and suffer a penalty until they get worked on by a proper corpsman or medic; still unrealistic, but a step in the right direction). All of this, I believe, would increase immersion by a huge degree. And the fact still stands that a few hits by 5.56mm or the even tinier modern Russian round is NOT likely to put a man on a mission down right away. Unless you're slinging Mark 252.

OP:Flashpoint. Get hit to the leg, you won't be doing anything but crawling until you get to a medic. Possibly not even after. Getting shot mostly means restarting the mission in that game.

The 5.56 round does more tissue damage than the 7.62 round. When the 5.56mm bullet impacts at high velocity (as happens when shot from a rifle) and yaws in tissue, the bullet fragmentation quickly transfers energy, which results in massive wounding and hydrostatic shock effects. The bullet cavity within soft tissue is also greater than the one caused by 7.62mm

Here is a 7.62 wound cavity. Due to greater speeds, the 5.56 will cause a greater cavity. Either to the gut will be guaranteed to drop you. All the stuff that used to make up the area marked 'permanent cavity' will be blown out of the exit wound right after the bullet, due to the extreme low preassure following it right behind.

God damn man, just god damn. I love both of you soooo much right now. Griever for the Slavshit jokes and you for being one of the few people on here who actually understands ballistics and how bullets behave when they enter the body.

 

[L3m0n_L1m3]

Vehicles aren't realistic at all in games. But that's probably a good thing. Otherwise you'd have to change tires, gas, wash the windshield, check oil pressure, etc.

The only game I like vehicles in is BattleField 2, and that's because the maps are so bloody large.