[R-DEV]Mats391 PR:BF2 Lead Developer



Join Date: Aug 2010 Posts: 6,357 Germany Germany Location: Muenster Blog Entries: 5

Vehicle damage system update

One of the featured changes in the upcoming v1.5.5 update is a complete overhaul of the vehicle damage system. In the past, this was very unforgiving for armor crews as it often left your vehicle unable to move after a single hit. This is due to how the current system decides the chance of disabling and what gets disabled. Right now it checks whether to disable parts of the vehicle at two values vehicle health point (HP) values: 50% and 25%.



For example the chances for disabling an APC are: When dropping below 50%: 80% chance to disable tracks/wheels

When dropping below 25%: 90% chance to disable tracks/wheels 50% chance to disable gun

With that, the focus was on disabling the tracks/wheel often leaving the vehicle unable to retreat. That usually was a death sentence for the crew and vehicle. These numbers were not randomly chosen, but put into place to allow infantry to fight these vehicles effectively without making them die on the first AT hit. However there is another issue with this. Since the disabling can only happen when crossing those 2 HP values, dealing too few damage has no chance of making an impact. This is very obvious on the ATGM vs tank front armor. A full HP tank can take an ATGM to the front and not worry about getting disabled by it.



With those problems in mind we set out to rewrite the entire damage system and change the way disabling gets checked. Now checking for disabling happens on every significant damage taken and is based on the previous HP and the damage taken. The base chance to disable is based on this formula:





In addition to that we also added a modifier to the chance of disabling the tracks/wheels. These now have a 75% lower chance of getting disabled than the turret.





Note: Dropping from 100% to 50% results in same chance as dropping from 50% to 25%.

With that an ATGM to the front of a tank already add a real risk of disabling turret, tracks or both as well as increasing the chance to get disabled when taking further damage.



We also changed how the turret disabling works. In the past we disabled the entire turret making no weapon usable and disabling movement of the turret. This also had a side effect of the players still seeing themselves shoot locally, while the server did not register any shot. The new way is based on [R-DEV]Alon's work of modifying weapon overheat values from the server side. With that we now selectively disable weapons for the gunner. In the current implementation the coax and smoke launcher will stay active while every other weapons gets disabled. We also upgraded the HUD to display when your weapon is disabled. The name of the disabled weapons will then turn red.





At last there have been some other changes and fixes to the code. Most notably the disabling of ATGM on Bradley has been removed as it would have required significant work to update for only one or two vehicles using it. This feature may come back at some point.

Another change is to the upside-down check done on choppers. This is now more forgiving as it will no longer instantly disable the main rotor (main rotor can't get disabled anymore on choppers), but instead damage the chopper while it is upside-down until it dies or the damage disabling kicks in.



We hope these changes will make the usage of these assets more enjoyable. Please provide us with feedback when v1.5.5 comes out and let us know how you like the new system.



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- The Project Reality Team One of the featured changes in the upcoming v1.5.5 update is a complete overhaul of the vehicle damage system. In the past, this was very unforgiving for armor crews as it often left your vehicle unable to move after a single hit. This is due to how the current system decides the chance of disabling and what gets disabled. Right now it checks whether to disable parts of the vehicle at two values vehicle health point (HP) values: 50% and 25%.For example the chances for disabling an APC are:With that, the focus was on disabling the tracks/wheel often leaving the vehicle unable to retreat. That usually was a death sentence for the crew and vehicle. These numbers were not randomly chosen, but put into place to allow infantry to fight these vehicles effectively without making them die on the first AT hit. However there is another issue with this. Since the disabling can only happen when crossing those 2 HP values, dealing too few damage has no chance of making an impact. This is very obvious on the ATGM vs tank front armor. A full HP tank can take an ATGM to the front and not worry about getting disabled by it.With those problems in mind we set out to rewrite the entire damage system and change the way disabling gets checked. Now checking for disabling happens on every significant damage taken and is based on the previous HP and the damage taken. The base chance to disable is based on this formula:In addition to that we also added a modifier to the chance of disabling the tracks/wheels. These now have a 75% lower chance of getting disabled than the turret.With that an ATGM to the front of a tank already add a real risk of disabling turret, tracks or both as well as increasing the chance to get disabled when taking further damage.We also changed how the turret disabling works. In the past we disabled the entire turret making no weapon usable and disabling movement of the turret. This also had a side effect of the players still seeing themselves shoot locally, while the server did not register any shot. The new way is based on's work of modifying weapon overheat values from the server side. With that we now selectively disable weapons for the gunner. In the current implementation the coax and smoke launcher will stay active while every other weapons gets disabled. We also upgraded the HUD to display when your weapon is disabled. The name of the disabled weapons will then turn red.At last there have been some other changes and fixes to the code. Most notably the disabling of ATGM on Bradley has been removed as it would have required significant work to update for only one or two vehicles using it. This feature may come back at some point.Another change is to the upside-down check done on choppers. This is now more forgiving as it will no longer instantly disable the main rotor (main rotor can't get disabled anymore on choppers), but instead damage the chopper while it is upside-down until it dies or the damage disabling kicks in.We hope these changes will make the usage of these assets more enjoyable. Please provide us with feedback when v1.5.5 comes out and let us know how you like the new system.The Project Reality Team develops this modification completely free of charge for its community to download and play. If you would like to show your support, please consider donating to our team. These funds go directly towards website expenses, including bandwidth, hosting, domain registration, and maintenance. We never use donation funds to directly pay team members.For more information, please feel free to join us on our public forums to discuss this and other news. Also, be sure to connect to Project Reality through social media to stay informed and receive up to the minute updates, the occasional leaked bit of information, and more! See you on the battlefield!