Things OPF2 needs to have.

[RJL]

To be the definative military simulator, the engine should support a few things or at the very least have the capability for modders to code or script these features:

1. Trees that can be cut down by sustained gunfire, branches broken off individually, burned to the ground with the flames spreading to other foliage, like in farcry 2.

2. Deformable terrain from bomb blasts, tank shells, etc, offering dynamic cover to infantry.

3. Buildings that can be blown apart sequentially and have the debris act as physics objects.

4. Areas or buildings that can be blown up and send all kinds of physics objects and pieces flying in every direction as deadly scrapnel, like in crysis.

5. Night combat with flares as a means of gaining light.

6. Entrenchments, bunkers, personal foxhole digging even.

7. Being able to steady weapons on objects or buildings, especially being able to deploy bipods on them for LMGs or sniper rifles.

8. Barbed wire and tank traps that present real obstacles unless dealt with by explosives or wire cutters (something that would be present on any full scale battlefield).

9. Big gun artillery support that fires shells in real time with real ballistics, across the map to the desired location, being effected by dynamic wind and some natural inaccuracy.

10. The ability to climb trees for observation, or establish a sniper platform in them to shoot from.

11. Cave networks, tunnels, at least for modding support.

12. The ability to set traps on doors, vehicles, other objects, trip mines, etc.

13. Highly moddable AI that allows for players to customize the AI to function effectively using totally different weapons and tactics in totally different environments.

14. Infantry hitboxes that matter. Hitting a helmet at the sides from a distance might ricochet the bullet, hurting but not killing or incapacitating. Hitting bodyarmor ballistic plates will stop rifle rounds, the softer stop stopping them at long ranges. Being able to aim for the gaps in the armor, etc.

[Fozzy Bear]

Dude good job. I love the idea you pointed out using flares to illuminate you enemy at night.

Dang you brought up so many good ideas I don't even know which one to start with. =[

[DaShnipa]

Very interesting ideas dude, but one must consider how far technology and graphics engines themselves have progressed. And for a game to allow deformable terrain, fire propagation, real artillery ballistics etc all require massive amounts of computing power. One of them alone is fine, but 2 or more of these ideas I think would cause serious issues. Especially if the artillery shells were to deform the terrain themselves. For a PC I would say go for it, but it would alienate 1/2 of the people planning to play this game on PC because of hardware restrictions. As for consoles well considering the lack of vram on the PS3 and the storage medium of the 360, and the sheer lack of computing power in general my opinion stuff like this would take, well its out of the question.

As for the barbed wire and deployable weapons those are great ideas, and I too would like to see those options in game.
Buildings already have a destruction system, not like crysis though, as sections of the buildings are destroyed, same goes for props and civ vehicles and even military stuff too If im not mistaken.
Climbing trees is a neat Idea, however I dont really know how practical it would be.

I dunno, just my 2 cents, great ideas tho.

[RJL]

Incorporating dynamic terrain deformation, foliage destruction, and leaving of permanent physics debris would be an improtant part of OPF2's goal of creating a persistant environment that represents the effect war has on an area over the course of a campaign.
Company of Heroes is a game that impressed me by having a terrain mesh that was dynamically deformable based on explosions, and there was no limit to how much it could get banged up or scorched.
This made for some incredibly immersive multiplayer experiences where battles could rage over certain territory for half an hour and would be totally transformed by the end of the gain into a wasteland.


15. Full bullet penetration modeling through buildings, walls, doors, shutters, foliage, players, vehicles, and even mounts of dirt being used for cover, etc.
Bullet penetration and differing ballistics of infantry weapons are a huge part of combat, and the steel buildings you see in most games don't accurately represent valid tactics - Because a wood structure won't protect you from being rifle caliber bullets at close range, but might protect you at long range after the bullet has lost the kinetic energy to penetrate. But it certainly won't protect you at long range from getting turned into swiss cheese by a heavy machine gun, or protect you from a sniper's bullet if he knows you're just on the edge of a window corner.
Stone walls or masonry buildings aren't guaranted to protect you from all bullets either. A machine gun will still rip them apart at range, and a 50 caliber sniper rifle will go right through it all. The spalling of the stone as the bullet exits the other side of the wall would also create shrapnel which could injure you.
The holes could be simply represented by hit textures, but the bullet's path could be calculated to run through objects based on the velocity and mass and angle of the projectile at the time it hits versus the mass and material type of the object hit. Then the type of object and it's thickness would determine whether the bullet ricochets away, bounces off, penetrates but doesn't go through, or goes through - In the case of the later the bullet is calculated to lose a certain amount of velocity and based on that, which would effect it's kinetic killing force.

16. Wind dynamically changing, represented on the HUD, which effects bullet and projectile pathing (especially important for sniping or artillery fire).
Also dynamically effecting the flow of covering smoke, or the smoke from a burning vehicle.

17. Advanced vehicle armor and internal component modeling, like World War 2 Online uses but more advanced. Not a simplistic armor modeling that only represents each side of the vehicle as having a hitpoint threshold. That won't result in realistic armored tactics.
The only game I've ever seen that results in realistic tank tactics, with it's ups and downs, is World War 2 Online (also known as Battleground Europe).
Basically what World War 2 Online does is model the surface of the vehicle in armor plates with unique thickness and material values. Then it represents important physical objects inside the tank such as ammo, fuel, drivetrain, crew, gun mechanisms, etc. The way to actually kill vehicles is not by beating on them to do X damage against one side and everyone weapon does Y damage, but by having your bullet first penetrate the armor and then having enough energy or explosive power to damage the internal components of the tank. Sometimes you just disable a tank by destroying it's main gun, it's tracks, or it's drive train. Sometimes you just kill the crew of the vehicle and the armored hulk remains relatively intact but nonoperational. Sometimes you hit the fuel, ignite it, and the tank brews up killing everyone inside and leaving behind a big flaming wreckage. Other times you hit the ammo magazine, resulting in a catastrophic explosion that blows the turret off the tank and destroyes everything inside.
Each bullet has it's own ballistics profile of velocity, mass, and armor penetration capability, which is tracked in real time as the bullet falls and arcs according to gravity, and loses kinetic force at range as it loses velocity. Once a projectile strikes an armored vehicle, the current state of the bullet (it's velocity and angle) are compared against the location on the vehicle it hit, and the angle of the armor compared with the angle of the bullet. This combination of how much penetrating power the bullet has left and it's angle of striking is used to determine whether it goes through the armor plate, and then after it passes through the armor plate that information is used to determine how much energy the projectile has left as it continues on it's course inside the tank to damage internal components. Armor spalling is also calculated which causes deadly internal shrapnel to the crew. It's possible to kill or seriously injure the crew without even penetrating the tank if you can hit the armor plate hard enough to cause it to crack internally and spread shrapnel everywhere (although this might not be as much a danger on modern tanks).
Each armor plate also has a threshold of sustained kinetic damage (measured in joules) that it can take before failing - Allowing for sustained hits of sufficiently high velocity and mass projectiles to pound through heavier armor - But if you're too far away or using too low a caliber of weapon, you won't be able to do much in terms of threshold destruction.
Under such a system, high velocity armor piercing ammo can actually pass right through a tank, in one side and out the other, but not hit any vital components - Especially against light armored vehicles that don't offer much resistance for the shell to stop, or have a lot of armor to cause spalling dmage. This is where the tactical use of HE, or APHE comes into play, because it allows you to do much greater damage to lighter vehicles and remove any chance of them getting lucky to avoid critical damage from AP rounds.
(Think of the modern different between an APHE round designed to penetrate and then explode inside a vehicle, versus the sabot round which is designed to have maximum armor penetration in a narrow spear which relies on disabling the vehicle by taking out vital internal components).

[Apache-Cobra]

Great list. If I had to choose any, it would be 2, 3, and 14. To add to 14... tanks shouldnt have hitpoints like in ArmA. You wont be able to blow up a tank if you shoot 10 magazines of caliber .50 at it. If a bullet can't penetrate the armor, it can't penetrate the armor. If it can, then let the tank blow up/get disabled etc.

[K1RK H4MM3T]

7. Being able to steady weapons on objects or buildings, especially being able to deploy bipods on them for LMGs or sniper rifles.

I definitely want this. In pretty much every FPS the LMGs have bipods, but you can't use them.

[Nikolai553]

all these suggestions SHOULD be in the game I agree 100% and especially usable and mobile bipods

but the game should without a doubt include destructible buildings and terrain

[Longjocks]

RJL, you have posted these (appropriately) in the wishlist thread. Generic wishlists don't need a thread of their own so I am closing this one.