Thursday, November 24, 2011

ArmA 2 British Armed Forces - The Awesome Stopping Power of .50 Cal

Don't do this at your virtual battlefield, fellows. Eating and drinking too much impaired my judgement tonight, but I kicked some rebel butt nonetheless. Happy Thanksgiving ... :)


The mission was to block any rebel reinforcements from entering the area of operations five kilometers south. Down there, a reinforced company is searching an insurgent compound suspected of harboring heavy weapons, including two T-55 tanks (leftovers courtesy of the now defunct Takistani Army). We are just a tiny group of lads, half observation post, half blocking force. My vehicle is in one of the extremes of a village, and the tanks the main force is looking for are just in front of me.

I decided to brave the tank's advance, at least for a couple of minutes. The wall in front of my vehicle at least covered the vehicle.

The turrets of the two T-55s as seen from the sights of my heavy machine gun.
The stable platform of the vehicle allowed me to shoot very precisely. My first aim was the tank's main gun (note how the main gun of the lead tank is already blackened, indicating damage).

After some heavy firing, the left track of one of the T-55s is damaged. Mobility kill!
With the tank's main guns damaged, I didn't receive any return fire. Ironically, the only time I was targeted and at risk was when the crew of one of the tanks bailed out. The enemy crew was quickly dispatched.
The second tank suffered some serious hull and main gun damage, but I couldn't see the crew bailing out. I thought it was another mobility kill and that the crew bailed and was hiding somewhere in the bushes.

Completely out of .50 cal ammo, I dismount my team and move towards the tanks to mop up.
As we approached, the second tank bugged out in all haste without firing a shot.
I don't know how well ammo penetration into armor is modeled in ArmA 2, but this was just unexpected for me. I remember reading somewhere about heavy machine gun crews being told during the Cold War that a specific round of heavy machine gun could damage BMP-1s. In ArmA 2, the .50 cal can take out BRDMs and T-34s with relative ease.

Cheers,

8 comments:

Storm Rider said...

To answer your question, tanks are poorly modelled in the Arma series, including old Operation Flashpoint (the original). With enough ammo, you can destroy a tank using the M16.

Anonymous said...

Yes, pure hitpoints.

I think there are some mods that are supposedly capable of faking a 'better' DM, but they still sounded ropey to me.

Anonymous said...

How about you try this with ACE 2 installed and post the results?

Anonymous said...

http://ace.dev-heaven.net/wagn/Vehicle_Damage_System

JC said...

LOL. It's like an arcade shooter! No wonder I survived.

I'm looking into the ACE thing, but I don't want to spend to much time figuring out how to install it. Any hints?

Cheers,

Anonymous said...

try http://www.six-updater.net/

James said...

The six updater or AddonSync2009 is a definite MUST if you want to use ACE. I use SixUpdater now, but found the AddonSync2009 to be the quickest and easiest way of managing ACE.

Personally, I have been amazed time and again with the ACE mod, but it really is a chore to deal with; best bet - just load it up and ignore most updates and enjoy the amazing features and enhancements it offers. It's great for that extra element of "realism" or that added "item", "weapon", "functionality" etc. but I only use it when I require what it offers.
Just my 2cnts

JC said...

Thanks for the tips and comments. Much appreciated.

I'm sure the mod is awesome, but when James mentioned "a chore to deal with" ... Well this is hitting exactly where it hurts. I just don't have enough time to figure out things lately. Real life and work are taking up a lot of time ...

Cheers,