Same here, custom missions which were heavy but playable before are now pretty much unplayable (until alot of ai start dying that is). Nothing in the mission changed, only updates the game from 1.32 to 1.34.

Personally think it is good those vehicles have their radars removed. They should keep their RWR to detect radar locks/missile launches though.

Definatly agree with the problem you spotted, but would be really unhappy with this kind of solution. It would probably create very weird situations in which you can pick off enemy infantry while they just stand around. While you actually want to have the ai to take cover and scan for the enemy(you) and return (inaccurate) fire as suppression after they found your rough location. Getting more accurate if you shoot again and they can pinpoint you more accurately.

^^ Would not give the same functionality as an integrated vehicle. In addition it would require quite a bit of fiddling and code writing to get (for example) a mortar fixed in the correct position on a pick-up truck.

Given the majority of players hardly no any coding at all (including me only being able to adjust downloaded pieces of code ;p) it would be best to makes vehicles such as these availlable in the editor. This way everybody can use them without hassle, deliberatly described vehicles which would require minimum effort from BIS while adding very useful common (non-addon) content which IMHO this game desperatly needs.

It basically seems to happens at random. To reproduce, just place a whole bunch of enemy men (without anti-tank weapons, and no pilots obviously) and place yourself in a tank without ammo (simply to give your ai time to talk about what they are spotting). Drive around the enemy infantry and you will regulary have your ai saying they are spotting a pilot.

Uploaded a demo mission. 3 helos at ~ 2,4 km. One at ~ 1,6 km.

First notice the laser range finder does not give a distance reading on the helicopters while it does give a reading on any terrain features at much longer distances.

About the helicopters taking damage:

Shoot the mohawk anywhere, including the engine section with APFSDS rounds and it will simply hold the hover in 50% of the cases. APFSDS Can take 3 rounds to take the helicopter down. (Would be logical if you hit it in the cargo section, but not in vital parts)

Shoot any helicopter with HE shells; They will receive damage, almost Always resulting in a stuck tail roter and the helicopter to either jump around until it flies into a mountain or it will slowly decend and crash/ditch. Though it seems around 1/10 helicopters hit by an HE shell are able to continue their hover.

At shorter ranges there is no problem, the helicopter will get shred to pieces by an HE shell as would happen in real life. In the game the HE shell seems to become less damaging at longer ranges which would only be realistic at armored targets due to reduced armor penetration. HE damage should remain thesame though and as such the helicopter (being a soft target) would receive the same damage from HE shells at any distance.

^^ Totally agree with you there. I tested this problem as I noticed the APFSDS passing through a mh-9 seemingly without doing damage. Later realized it went trough non-vital parts and it was ok. But while testing I noticed this sudden reduction in damage on air vehicles at longer ranges of all ammo types. an APFSDS in a vital part, or an HE round detonating anywhere on an aircraft should destroy it.

Ahh misunderstood you I guess, have no real world helo experience myself though. But think I understand you now. Completely agree that it should not happen unless you are having some relevant backwards airspeed. Changing my vote as well :).

Sounds like you're running into some realism there ;). Increasing cyclic or collective increases torgue generated by the main rotor, you will have to use the tail rotor to counter this.

Also seems to affect objects at long ranges more than at close ranges I think.

Most metals heat up and cool down faster than other materials, making them hotter during the day under the bright sun, but colder than the environment at night. So they should actually be darker.

I don't think there is a big problem with small explosions hurting inf around the vehicle. But one vehicle exploding should not destroy a tank standing next to it for example.

Can't seem to remove this issue or edit it. But it seems I have been having just bad luck. approaching the body from another side (opposite of where the weapon was dropped) gives normal access to of the bodies inventory.

This issue can be removed or marked closed.

Any news concerning a fix for this issue? Have not seen anything related to this in the various development threads so far while its status is assigned here.

What kind of bullets are you talking about? pistol rounds? .50 rounds? 125mm APFSDS rounds?

Once you set your viewdistance above 2km the AA vehicles lock/spot/engagement range does not increase anymore, while those of other units do increase further.

Think this ticket can be closed again as one better describing the current problem exists.

It is located here:

http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=14484

Though I find it shocking this ticket has been there since september 2013 and has never even been acknowledged or assigned to be looked at. It's a shame this problem still exists, it really breaks up games involving AA vehicles and air units.

Not sure how you would define the difference, so I'll try to explain it in a more detailed manner.

It is related to the original issue though it is a bit different now. The original ticket here stated aerial units not showing up on AA vehicle radars. They do now though. So technically that issue would be solved. But the actual symptoms of the issue persist. Some settings in this radar system cause the AI to act as if there is no radar.

The reason seems to be that while the radar does detect air targets, it does not identify them as friendly or enemy until they are within a range of 2 km (Again, this max range is independent of view distance, using a small view distance will make it smaller, but even using maximum view distance will not enlarge this range.)

The resulting behavior of the AI means they will only engange the target when it is within 2km (which is within visual range as well, so it appears they have no radar at all).

Again, this makes these vehicles useless against air units with ATGM as they will identify friend or foe and engange from 5 km out (also while out of visual range).

Surprisingly, AA infantry with manpads will engage air targets beyond 2 km when spotted visually.

While I am no programmer I can imagine the original issue is technically fixed, but the fix did not solve the problem as the radars parameters cause it to be useless against air targets. I would expect this could be solved by some simple parameter changes for the radar scripts.

EDIT: Let me know if you need more info, or a demo mission.

Still running into this problem with the latest stable build despite it says it is resolved here (Other people have the same problem as it is a major headache in mp.) This problem is definatly not resolved as is stated.

AA armor does have radar, but it will only identify friend or foe when an air vehicle comes within 2 km (This is the maximum range, whatever the viewdistance settings). AI in these vehicles will therefore never fire beyond this range even while being shot at. And appear to act as if they do not have radar at all.

The result is they are almost useless against ATGM armed air vehicles as they will engage them from up to 5 km out.

This in my, and others among me, experience causes huge problems and realism issues whenever air units and AA armor are used. It is a major problem in some multiplayer games, especially CTI games in which such balancing is very important.

Hope to see some recognition for this problem, thanks!

Partly agree with the reporter as with the responders here. AI does get hampered by vegetation (though not the normal grass it seems.) and they will indeed shoot some rounds through bushes hoping they will hit you.

Though I very much agree the AI accuracy and spotting abilities through vegetation are way to good. It seems that even the most tiny part of you visible through the leaves will be instantly spotted by AI and can be expected to result in a bullet in the face. This is visible in other situations as well, hiding in a building only works if you are 100% conceiled, if you stick out 1% enemy AI is going to spot and shoot you.

Your solution 2 is desperatly needed in my opinion.

It is the only way to achieve vehicles with different radar parameters. And have for example long and short range AA vehicles.

Another parameter which would be great would we which vehicles class it could spot and lock. So some radars would only lock air vehicles, others only armor, and some armor and light vehicles.

^^ Well this is already implemented in some way, but not functional. At long range the radar will not identify friend from foe, but this can simply be ignored as using your targeting key (whatever button you assigned it of course) will target ONLY enemy vehicles, even when the radar is still not assigning a color. In addition, the radar will also magically know if the vehicle is manned or not. (Not to mention that stationary ground targets are alot harder to detect with aircraft mounted radars.

Just to add to this problem, the Tigris and Cheetah are unable to lock air targets beyond 2km even if the view distance is larger than this. Seems logical for its guns, but the missiles should have no problems.

^^True, although there are exceptions among some missiles. Most western laser guided missiles home in on the reflected laserlight off the target. Which the smoke obviously can obscure and hamper. Some eastern (Russian mostly) laser guided missiles are laser "riding", meaning they look back at the launching aircraft to see if they are still in the laser. (You can see this sometimes in youtube videos where you see the missile spiralling around an invisible axis, which is the lasers centerline.

Ontopic: The problem of the ineffective anti-air vehicles still exist and there have been numerous tickets here describing it in various manners. Though they keep being marked reviewed and given a severity and priority of none, does this mean BIS simply doesn't care and will do nothing about it?

^^ The issue is not the ability of the player spotting air targets visually, that is fine (although you will need to IFF manually beyond 2km as the radar will not do it). But AI does not launch missiles beyond 2 km, whatever happens and whatever the viewdistance is set to. They will NOT launch missiles if you are 2 km out or more! So it is perfectly possible to set hover your helo 2,1 km away from AA vehicles and pick them of one by one without them reacting.

I agree ground vehicles are very easily spotted as well though, even a stationary quadbike is hard to miss on the radar. Countermeasures for vehicles in real life against ATGM are fairly inefficient though, smoke doesnt matter for IR missiles, only makes LGB's end up a bit further from their targets.

Just tested this issue myself as i was suspecting something was wrong with the anti-air vehicles. I've experimented with various view distances. The Cheetah and Tigris cannot lock on to, or even spot targets further away then 2km (this seems locked for all view distances). Even when I am commander in the vehicle and can clearly see it flying, it is impossible to spot it, let alone make it a target and fire a missile.

on the other side, when playing as the helo pilot, I have no problems spotting, locking and destroying the anti-air vehicle from 5km away.

This imbalance and unrealistic feature breaks the air part for this game. In real life these self propelled AA vehicles are very high threats for helos. in ArmA 3 they are target practise. Vehicle mounted AA should AT LEAST be able to use their missiles with the same range as their targets do.

Completely agree with this except for the 3-4 missiles to kill heavy armor. They could damage the tracks but not kill it. Though for balance reasons they might to be able to kill it, but maybe it closer to 8-10 missiles.

It might also be nice, if possible, to make it dependent on continuous target lock, as it is a laser guided weapon, not an active fire and forget missile.