I should have probably put this under Fatigue instead, so if someone could change that much appreciated.

You got my vote for this. If you have a big bagback you can carry 2 missiles 2 weapons and all the additional stuff.

Let's not get carried away though, I don't want to be as limited as ArmA 2. I think just adding a bit more weight to just the rockets and the launcher of course. Maybe the guns. But I think the magazines and various other items are a good weight already.

I think everything just needs a little buff in weight, not overly or else you would be severely limited. Something like 25% of the original weight added on, more or less.

Well weight is the one thing. But as this might have impact on the physics i do think instead of weight the size of things should determine what you can pack into your gear. And weight what can be carried. Instead of making things havier you could reduce the max load and additional the space of your gear, like backpacks. With those two indicators you could very well adjust the balance.

I don't think the fatague system is in there yet for weight ether.

@Kumeda, agreed.

A book I have offers a description of a Spetsnaz sniper and spotter during the Afghanistan war. Both of them were carrying (in total) SVD + 400 bullets, PKM + 800 bullets, 2 x APS submachineguns. Add to that unspecified amount of 9mm SMG ammo and grenades, as well as water and possibly food for a couple of days. The book describes them as "walking heavily encumbered like if they were camels".

What we need, is not necessarily weight tuning, but a volume consideration. Right now you can't put a rifle into a vest, but 14 mags is too much. 6 (LBV) or 8 (modular) + 2-4 grenades looks like a good default value. Add to that 2 pistol mags, a personal first aid kit and the vest is full. In the old days, you could have a canteen or two on the belt, but nowadays there are camelbacks anyway. Anything more would require a buttpack or a backpack, maybe cargo pouches on the back of modular vests.

I have an idea about even more milsim inventory system and will be posting it in a separate issue.

This suggestion was processed by our team and will be looked into. We thank you for your feedback.

a) Fatigue is affected by stuff you carry (=it is implemented in game)

b) the weight (in models) is not used when calculating the load of items

c) the parameter you are referring to is called "mass" and it is a combined factor of weight AND size (a light but unwieldy A0 cardbox will have a big mass in game, similarly small, but heavy ball of lead).

d) the capacities of backpacks were calculated after experimentally filling real-life backpacks with real-life magazines, I am very reserved to change them in any drastic way.

If you lay down several painfully obvious examples where we are VERY off the reality, we may consider setting these capacities differently.

Personally, I only have an issue with how you can stuff a vest, regardless of its design and number of pouches, but I've made a separate ticket about it: http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=7586

Since then, I've made the following observations regarding weight system:

1. An uniform can hold only two MX mags, with a little more room left, only for a first aid kit. ACU trousers easily hold six M16 30-rounds mags in their thigh cargo pockets, probably more could go in, but it would be too bulky.

2. While it's true, that excess weight fatigues soldiers sooner, the effect isn't pronounced enough and it could be calibrated more accurately. I made a test, in which I ran (sprint, then jog) 200m with various equipment.

With underwear only, it took 31 seconds to cover the distance (average speed 23km/h).
With 30% load (standard BLUFOR rifleman loadout), it took 42 seconds (17km/h).
With 70% load (rifleman + full carryall backpack + full inventory + NLAW + MX GL with suppressor), it took 44 seconds (16km/h).

The only differences were, how soon I wasn't able to sprint anymore, hence differences in times, and how soon heavy breathing sound effects appeared.

In another experiment, 70% loaded AI was happily jogging at the same speed, as my lightly loaded rifleman, while for real his speed should be limited, with the possibility to limit it even more, if jogging for an extreme distance. Not even jogging the entire Stratis airbase runway up and down (2km) would tire the encumbered soldier (9 minutes, 13.3km/h, no sprint was used).

It looks like increase in load doesn't influence soldiers' speed, nor ability to jog. Only sprint is affected. A guy in underwear has the same jogging capability, as a heavily loaded man. Straight and level runway is easy, but it's the same for walking around hills.

Jogging uphill over 30-40 degrees inclined terrain, with 70% load, is perfectly fine. Breathing sounds and blur are there, but they don't have any tactical impact. You can storm a hill all day long if you like, which is wrong and lessens the strategic importance of holding high terrain. Also currently it makes little to no sense to drop backpacks and not needed launchers, when storming enemy's positions, as you do for real.

Personally I have completed all-night-long marches (with running and jogging stages within them) with weapon, gear and full backpack and inevitably our pace was slowing down to a walk, while at that time I could have run 8km under 40 minutes, without all the gear (average speed at least 12km/h). This is (or used to be) US Rangers standard run, yet in Arma 3 fully loaded soldiers, with bulky NLAW, backpack and all the stuff can run even faster and without further tiring.

I understand certain gameplay-wise limits and design decisions, but currently the weight system doesn't do anything significant to soldiers' movement abilities (you can sprint for so short distance, that you can entirely forget about it) and doesn't force players and mission designers to take soldiers' load into consideration. For example, vehicles would be very useful for hauling the gear around, even the ATVs, but now they are used only as quick means of transport and additional firepower.

3. Weight balance between various items could use more tweaking. Assuming, that 100% load, as indicated by the bar in the lower part of inventory, would be 118kg, like carrying a wounded teammate for a short distance (mate 80kg + his gear 19kg + carrier's gear 19kg). It's supported by the fact, that you can't fill the load bar up to 100% with equipment alone.

Gear means (kg):

• uniform with shoes (3.5),
• helmet (1.5),
• light vest (3.9),
• NVG (0.37),
• rifle with a mag (4),
• 8 rifle mags (3.8) [loaded 30-round 5.56 mag = 0.48kg],
• pistol + 2 mags (1.1)
• two hand grenades (0.8),
• FAK (0.1), and I have researched all these things, based on similar currently existing items.

A comparison of certain Arma 3 items with their real counterparts:

M320 rifle weighs 9.7% or 11.4kg, which is less than Cheytac M200 14kg (both empty and without scope).

The ghillie suit weighs 6.3% or 7.4kg. Real ghillie jacket with standard pants and shoes, like used ingame, weighs about 5.1kg total.

Standard rifleman uniform weighs 5.7% or 6.7kg. By my estimates, two piece uniform + shoes should weigh about 3.5kg.

Loaded NLAW weighs 9.7%, which would give 11.4kg versus real NLAW 19kg (launcher 12.5 + missile 6.5).

Loaded MX without attachments weighs 3.4%, which gives 4kg. Close to SCAR-L 4kg and M4 3kg (both loaded with 30-rounds mag).

ECH helmet weighs 6.3% or 7.4kg! Compare that to PASGT helmet 1.4 - 1.9kg or MICH helmet 1.3 - 1.6kg. No radio gear would be that heavy, not even with NVG fitted.

Carrier Lite weighs 3.4% or 4kg. This indicates, that it isn't fitted with any additional ballistic plates, which alone add about 7 kg.

Katiba weighs 2.3% or 2.7kg. Real Khaybar weighs 3.7kg (both with empty mag).

OPFOR helmet weighs 8.6% or 10kg. Supposedly it contains some crazy electronic package, but that's a serious overkill, with regards to human comfort and ergonomics. Maybe it's Russian computer there? ;) One Russian aviator told me, why Su-27 is so much bigger, than MiG-29 - they had to install fly-by-wire computers in there... :D

EBR weighs 4% or 4.7kg, while the real thing weighs 5.1kg - this is close enough.

Lynx GM6 weighs 13.7% or 16kg. Real one weighs 11.5kg (both with scope and with empty mag).

Just out of curiosity, community addon Colt M4. 2.8% or 3.4kg loaded, real is 3kg loaded. Close.

% were measured from screenshots, real weight in kg was researched. Certain items in Arma 3 are close to their real counterparts, which indicates, that my estimation of 100% load as 118kg could be more or less correct. Caseless ammunition is lighter, than standard brass-enveloped cartridges, available sources for smaller callibre caseless ammunition claim about 50% reduction in weight, as compared to 5.56mm NATO rounds. I think that 6.5mm caseless *could* be calculated as 55-60% weight of 5.56mm NATO (=0.3kg per one 30-rounds mag).

4. About the parameter, that combines mass and size. It's a very good concept, however it works in an unpredictable way inside Arma 3's inventory system. Unwieldy, standard layout M320, is lighter, than it's real counterpart, but compact bullpup Lynx is heavier, than the real one. At the same time, bullpup Katiba is much lighter, than the Khaybar, upon which it was designed. Ghillie suit weights more (=more unwieldy) than a real one, but so the standard uniform, which is supposed to be extremely comfortable. Bulky NLAW is so much lighter, than the real one. And the helmets aren't that much uncomfortable, to make them so heavy.

5. Resistance to fatigue could make a difference between different character classes, like civilians, guerilla, poor army, trained army, special forces etc. It would make sense to choose for example SF operator, because of his abilities related to strength and stamina. In Arma 2 SF guys were just different models with cooler toys, which killed some of the mission design and gameplay possibilities there.

Developer is saying that its good as is but yet issue is assigned?We really need better info as to what is going on with issues posted here.

@wolfstriked We are surveilling this issue. Armapirx's list is a good try to tackle the problem. However, we are still considering the pros and cons of changing masses of items.

@armapirx - good job with the list. As you indicate, the mere transformation of mass into weight is sometimes not so fitting. The nice example is calculating the weight of a helmet from its mass. As you said, it would be too heavy.

The reasoning why helmets have that big mass is that they are too bulky : try to put more than two helmets into a backpack ;)

The same goes otherway around with the rifles: they don't fit to uniform/vest (they are not allowed to be stored there entirely), so their mass corresponds to balance between their shoulder weight, weight (and space) in backpack, and weight in hands. What you see is a compromise of all these differently percieved weights of the same thing...

@Zeloran:

Thank you for information. I much appreciate the work you, and the other developers, are doing. I understand, that the inventory system is still work in progress, and I just want to throw in a bit of feedback and a couple of ideas, to help you out with that.

Maybe there should be two values associated with items? One describing weight (influence on soldier's stamina drain, speed restrictions etc.) and the other one describing the volume of the item (where it can be carried, how much does it influence movement etc.).

I see two solutions to the problem of volume:

1. Classical inventory with grid-filled "areas", similar to Stalker http://tinyurl.com/plb8db7 or High Callibre http://tinyurl.com/pzu7pnw

Backpacks would have config entry with their capacity, for example 15x25 and carryable items would have entry with their size.

There is no need for the actual "grids" to show up in the inventory screen. All the calculations could be performed by a simple subroutine. Upon dragging of item into the backpack, two checks would be performed. The first one, if the backpack is larger than the item, which would be a comparison of two values: backpack capacity and item's size.

If this was passed, the second check would determine, if there is enough free room in the backpack, to hold the item. This would require to have a local variable, which would hold the current value of free space left in the backpack. For example empty 15x25 backpack would write "375" to the variable. Adding of 5x6 item, would call the "375", subtract 30 from it and write it again, to the free space variable, as 345. Arriving at less-than-zero free space value, would reject putting the last item into the backpack, because it's full already.

2. Another approach, would be to limit how many items of certain classes, can be put into a backpack, for example "carryHelmets = 1". This would allow for light helmets, that can't be stacked up in a backpack, just like it is now with the rifles.

I feel like a point was missed here.. Armapirx rightly highlighted that soldiers carrying heavier loads weren't subjected to more restrictive movement, the only thing you had the consider was a reduced sprint time.. I think the focus of the weight system should be on how it affects your movement as infantry.

As it stands now you could juggle mass and weight values all day and the impact on gameplay would still be negligible.

As it stands now, comparing how much load is added to a player when picking up stuff, I've projected that a load of 1.0 means from 175 to 200 kg. Which is way too much.

Just reduce the amount of weight a player can carry to something close to reality, like 80 kg

The problem is more with how fatigue works than with how the inventory works. Backpacks might be a bit too large, but it's mostly the effects of fatigue that don't have a significant enough effect for the player to take them into consideration. You can still run very very fast even when you carry insane amounts of gear and are already very tired, as the normal run is not that much slower than a sprint anyway - And you can ALWAYS use the normal run regardless of fatigue/weight!

Instead of simply adding more weight, why not just ensure that weight is measure correctly. If I carry a rifle, pistol, ammo and maybe some AP mines, I still sometimes can't fit the last of the 3 satchel charges I need to take the tower in domination/I&A. It seems like it would also need to be a configurable thing due to how everyone likes their playstyle in their servers.

1 - Be sure what's is good for players remains valid for Ai. It's weird to have Ai's with full skill and never fatigued when you exhaust your lunges.
2 - fatigue must be a difficulty setting, not cast in stone! Or you will discourage plenty of players with "guardians of realism" considerations.