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Stealth Theory - Phantom - 01-06-2014 Hey comrades, I decided to hypothesize about stealth and Arma so I was freewriting on some word doc and will paste it here. It's the theory of what I came up with about stealth and Arma and how it goes. Feel free to post your opinions, insights, critics, and such about what you think on how mechanics of stealth currently work. Regarding stealth in Arma, I pretty much came to this for mission designs. Iâll address stealth kills as the very first thing to address since, it doesnât work and missions designed around it wonât work. Stealth Kills: Donât even bother. The likelihood of you scoring a stealth kill without being detected is very low and even lower in Arma 3 than Arma 2. You might get away with one guy in Arma 2 since you can one shot kill a guy with a silence weapon. In Arma 3, because of AI body armor, even a 7.62 round isnât going to kill a guy in one, but more like 2. Since you fired 2 instead of 1, you can get spotted easier (I find stealth better in 2 than 3 for this purpose, but if mission is designed by evasion instead of stealth kills, it wouldnât matter unless oneâs AI have greater x-ray vision). Basically, I can ungroup the AI so they wonât be automatically in the same group and know that something is wrong. During a patrol, if I drop the AI, the AI who donât even have line of sight with the patrol on top of the tower are now alerted. They donât know where I am, but they know a shooter with silence weapon is around. On default, AIs are on AWARE mode. When theyâre alerted, they switch to COMBAT/DANGER mode. I check for COMBAT/DANGER mode to raise alarms. Now I guess we can say that silence weapons are still loud and people will still hear them and be alerted. Thatâs possible, but funny thing is, I decide to shoot light bulbs instead of people for the next test. Thereâs a guard patrolling and the other patrol I drop would be farther away than the 4 lights up on the tower. Of course, thereâs always a chance I would alert someone from shooting light bulbs (I did one time but itâs not as common as shooting patrols). For the most part, I was pretty successful. I took down 4 lights and the AI doesnât even have a clue that Iâm firing silence weapon at light bulbs. None of them were alerted. Reason why is Iâm not sure, but I will guess that if you shoot another AI and drop them, grouped or not, another AI will detect his death somehow even without line of sight. Maybe itâs the radius. I would be more successful in Stealth Kills without alerting farther off guards if theyâre really really far off and isolated. The question would be how far, but then, why would it be that far. Overall, it would be pretty much stealth killing in an almost isolated town if I design a mission that way. In such case, since the density is so low, you can might as well sneak pass them even easier. Ironically, I find that you have better luck stealth killing a lightbulb than a human. So Iâd go with, your bullets more well spent on a light bulb than a person if the mission have some sort of alarm system. DETECTION SYSTEM: If you use the trigger âDETECTED BY <insert side here>â, youâll pretty much be detected in an instant. Even if the enemies did not see you. For example if I remember correctly on my Black Hole mission on Namalsk. There were times I remember that the NACs without NV Goggles spotted us and the question I have is âno oneâs alerted, no one saw us, and how are we spottedâ. I think the âDETECTED BYâ trigger is kind of broken sometimes. The moment someone is alerted, the alarm is pretty much off, even if you silence them before anything is leaked its already too late even if you put a timeout timer. Another method I can think of checking of enemiesâ behavior. I name certain guards and check if their behaviors are COMBAT. If they are, I put a hint that a guard is alerted and you pretty much have to silent him before another guard is alerted (usually its already too late since once you attempt stealth kill, you end up alerting more people <check back on the stealth kill section>). Basically this method works with a trigger with condition Code: (behaviour unitname == ""COMBAT"" && alive unitname && alive alarm) to make sure the unit is aware and alive. I then put a timeout timer before Code: deletevehicle alarm to trigger the alarm. If heâs dead, the alarm wonât trigger. I also add a trigger to make sure that if enemy fire their guns, alarm are off. I find the second method better, but the problem is, stealth kill doesnât work (unless itâs a light bulb you killed). Design Choice: Overall, I think the best approach for a stealth mission is one where you donât shoot any soldiers at all (except light bulbs I guess since I find that the chance of you getting caught from shooting lights is much lower than shooting people). In this case, the design must not have a soldier guarding the objective at all, but have them all patrolling around, but possible to all be avoided through hiding and maneuvering. If thereâs an alarm system and it has to have stealth kill involved, most likely it wonât work out since youâll get detected trying. So if thereâs an alarm, the best approach would be a mission where you donât shoot people (unless the objective was keep sneaking until you get to a tank to steal and then the reinforcements canât handle the tank then the alarm goes off but youâre already in a tank for example). If thereâs no alarm, you can pretty much pick enemies off from afar with an MK17 SD or something as they run around like headless chicken without NV Goggles (pretty much forget stealth and camp on a hill picking enemies off). Long story short, no shooting. - So then whatâs the point of having guns? If the mission is basically some civilian and just silenced pistols or smaller arms. Either emergencies or taking out light bulbs. If you have optics and TWS and such, then so you can scan a wider radius. Design Choice #2: Another approach I can think of would be blending in with the sound of two warring sidesâ firefight. In this case scenario, it would be ok to shoot. Silence weapon or not, it doesnât matter too much as long as you try to keep a low profile and only shoot when must. Scenarios I can think of this would be escape a town under battle between 2 clashing sides (but thatâs more of an escape mission than a stealth mission). One side occupy the town youâre trapped in, the other is attacking. You use the attackerâs as an advantage in the midst of chaos you escape. Well, everyone is your enemy pretty much. Another scenario I can think of would be stealing a cache in a town in the middle of 2 clashing factions. I might consider it more of snatch and grab. I donât know if I can call it stealth (well I guess if you have some silence weapon sneaking under the covers and chaos of firefights that might work). Another scenario I also thought of for this design choice would be 2 warring factions and you must eliminate both of their generals and then escape through the midst of chaos or activate a bomb to blow the whole place up and leave. Summary of Design Choices: Design Choice #1 I would say would be the ideal Stealth Stealth scenario I guess. As long as no stealth kills are necessary and it is not necessary to shoot anyone but simply trying to avoid everyone as you sneak through all of them since stealth kills donât work and alarm systems are presented. Thereâs the more move slow and try to keep quiet. Design Choice #2 I would say would not be the typical stealth mission where you avoid shooting all the time. I think #2 has more options of approach on either letting the enemy duke it all out or rush in snatch and grab. I guess options of approach can vary since its already in the heat of battle and youâre just using the chaos to cover yourself. Iâm not sure if this would be called âStealthâ, but youâre pretty much using chaos as your cloak instead of dead silence. Re: Stealth Theory - Variable - 01-06-2014 (01-06-2014, 05:13 AM)Phantom link Wrote:Design Choice #2: Another approach I can think of would be blending in with the sound of two warring sidesâ firefight. In this case scenario, it would be ok to shoot. Silence weapon or not, it doesnât matter too much as long as you try to keep a low profile and only shoot when must.This is an awesome idea! Another possible scenario during a fight between two other factions would be to get in, snatch a civilian and extract him to safety. Regarding the rest - I always felt there's no point in silencers in the RV engine games. Well, except for looking tacticool. Re: Stealth Theory - Outlawz7 - 01-06-2014 Well you could have enemies in A3 without headgear and vests, I think civilians (who carry only the uniform) can be easily dropped by one shot. knowsAbout pretty much explains it, though some comments are from OFP era. Quote:With Resistance (1.91): No matter what class of unit the target is and no matter what the skill/class of the enemy AI, the magic 'knowsAbout' number is 0.105. Re: Stealth Theory - Lightspeed - 02-12-2014 hi Phantom yes stealth is a bitch - the only way I could ever manage a stealth mission of sorts was by not firing a weapon and remaining out of sight, hopefully all the way to objective and back out. Detected is BS because they can detect you from 100 meters walking away from you - I think its hearing you. However, just because you're 'detected' does not mean they actually turn and shoot you. So it's a strange call. anyway, back to my missions of stealth - basically, I set a trigger that if your team fired a weapon then they were detected and mission could fail. it was a function or logic - something like that. I can dig it up I think. but that's just another possible approach to a stealth mission for what its worth. L. Re: Stealth Theory - doveman - 02-28-2014 Hey Phantom, I'd be interested if you could try this mod and see if it makes any difference to being able to quickly kill enemies in less shots without raising the alarm. http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?167591-Tier1-Silencer-Fix The idea is that it in real-life, suppressed weapons don't actually affect the velocity and damage of the ammo but in ArmA they do, so this mod corrects that by removing the damage penalty from these weapons, so it might make it practical to have stealth missions where we can actually shoot people. If it doesn't though, I like your other ideas. I guess you have to think about what purpose people serve in the mission, as if it's just a matter of sneaking to somewhere undetected and no shooting, then it's great for SP or 2-player co-op missions but for multiple player co-op the extra people aren't really helping at all by being there but maybe you could find ways to make them essential, such as needing them to watch for patrols from a rooftop and radioing the guys on the ground when it's safe to proceed, stuff like that. If you're trying to accommodate say 5-6 extra people besides those on the ground, then maybe you could have 2 people on each rooftop covering different areas to guide the guys on the ground as they entered that section of town. You'd probably want to have it so the guys have to get back out after retrieving the PoW/package, otherwise the guys on the roofs would only be doing something for a short part of the mission but having them have to guide the ground guys out again would double the amount of time they're involved and maybe you could have it so that the entry route becomes unusable as the exit route, so that the roof guys have to reposition to guide the ground guys out via a different route. You could even not give the guys on the ground nightvision so that they have to really rely on instructions from the rooftop guys if you wanted to really test our teamwork! Re: Stealth Theory - Phantom - 02-28-2014 Nice idea, but it'd take some extra work at the moment to get the ideas out so I'll save for later or something that might do. I guess stealth is more complicated matter in Arma. You shoot a guy even if you drop him with a silence weapon in 1 shot you still may have a chance to alert the whole area around there (unless the area is heavily dispersed up). Well, I guess in those splinter cell walkthroughs I watch, if people do stealth walkthrough, they go more sneaking pass than dropping anyways. I find making a quick mission for Arma 3 takes longer than Arma 2 too (redoing loadouts) Re: Stealth Theory - doveman - 02-28-2014 (02-28-2014, 09:33 PM)Phantom link Wrote:Nice idea, but it'd take some extra work at the moment to get the ideas out so I'll save for later or something that might do. I guess stealth is more complicated matter in Arma. You shoot a guy even if you drop him with a silence weapon in 1 shot you still may have a chance to alert the whole area around there (unless the area is heavily dispersed up). Yeah, I thought I'd just throw the idea out there but I realise it's a lot of work even making simple missions. I remember playing some stealth missions on ArmA2 and it had the same problem, where you could quietly kill one but the others nearby would still become aware and come and kill you, which wasn't much fun! Re: Stealth Theory - doveman - 02-28-2014 I just read that TMR does much the same thing as that Tier1 mod I linked to: http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=21785 "Realistic Suppressors: Suppressors do not reduce damage or muzzle velocity. Suppressors have specific threadings and cannot screw on to weapons just because they share a caliber (optional). Suppressors very slightly increase the cyclic rate of weapons due to increased back-pressure." Re: Stealth Theory - Phantom - 03-01-2014 Yeah, I originally play with TMR even on the stealth mission I worked on. Again the problem is dropping a guy and the whole camp knows about you. I guess the camp is a bit too small. I'll make the post a bit quick since I'm more limited on time. Another problem I can see with stealth mission sometimes, on local server, I can lay on the floor in dark night and have enemies walk pass by me undetected. I'll be still as a bush (back in Arma 2). On CiA's dedicated server, they'll see as I'm still... I think I have another idea. Place some cars with no gas, maybe check if you're in the back of the car (hiding in cars), setCaptive true, and make the "hide in the car" effect. Get out and setCaptive false, just another idea I thought of. More stealth of, no stealth kills, just sneak. Re: Stealth Theory - Alwarren - 03-01-2014 (03-01-2014, 12:19 AM)Phantom link Wrote:Yeah, I originally play with TMR even on the stealth mission I worked on. Again the problem is dropping a guy and the whole camp knows about you. I guess the camp is a bit too small. If the guy is in a group, all group members will immediately know. I made a video explaining it, and also a ticket on the issue tracker: [url= Re: Stealth Theory - doveman - 03-01-2014 (03-01-2014, 02:52 AM)Alwarren link Wrote:If the guy is in a group, all group members will immediately know. Could you post a link to the ticket please? I'd like to vote for it as this is rather bad! Re: Stealth Theory - Phantom - 03-01-2014 It was my mission and the soldier is a single soldier :o . But the guys in the towers heard or something. Re: Stealth Theory - Alwarren - 03-01-2014 (03-01-2014, 03:15 AM)doveman link Wrote:Could you post a link to the ticket please? I'd like to vote for it as this is rather bad! There you go: http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=10143 And I really wonder what imbeciles voted it down... Re: Stealth Theory - doveman - 03-01-2014 (03-01-2014, 01:17 PM)Alwarren link Wrote:There you go: Thanks, voted. I guess some people who only play PvP might not care if the AI is derped and have other things they're more interested in seeing fixed ??? Re: Stealth Theory - Phantom - 03-19-2014 I sometimes wonder, if its just exclusive sneak sneak don't be detected. Is it better for 2 player coop mission for MPMissions or if I have a whole series of them, a 2 player coop campaign for a campaign folder. Just curious. Depending on which server, you can't lay low and have AI walk right pass you. If I host a listen server and lay prone in the darkness and enemy AI walk across me, they won't know that I'm there. On CiA server, if you do that, you'll still be spotted. |