Ace3: Units too hard to kill with new medical system

[Aphex123]

Mods:

• Arma 3: 1.96.146114
• CBA: 3.13
• ACE3: 3.13

Description:
Units are too hard to kill with newest medical changes.
Body armor does not allow LARGE wounds to chest that are needed to kill when Fatal Damage Source is set to Only large hits to vital organs.
Leg and arm damage does not carry enough trauma weight so it can be very hard to kill when Fatal Damage Source is set to Sum of trauma.

Steps to reproduce:
1:

• Set Fatal Damage Source to Only large hits to vital organs.
• Shoot unit in body armor.
• ACE medical interact with unit to see no LARGE wounds on chest.

2:

• Set Fatal Damage Source to Sum of trauma.
• Shoot unit in arms and legs multiple times.
• ACE medical interact with unit to see many wounds but no death.

Expected behavior:
When shooting a unit in body armor there should be a chance of LARGE wounds, especially after multiple hits.
Multiple large wounds to arms and legs should kill unit.

Where did the issue occur?

• Editor (Singleplayer)

Log Files:

• https://pastebin.com/DaW8hY3X

Screenshots:
After firing 10 rounds into back armor of Blufor unit with 6.5mm rifle round at point blank range.
https://i.gyazo.com/6721ce2a087da72170c3a79f292f6350.png

[mharis001]

What are the values of the fatalInjuriesPlayer, fatalInjuriesAI, AIUnconsciousness, and cardiacArrestTime settings?

[Aphex123]

fatalInjuriesPlayer = Always
fatalInjuriesAI = Always
AIUnconsciousness = true
cardiacArrestTime = 30 seconds

Additional and maybe i should add to OP.
When FatalDamageSource is set to SumofTrauma then criticaldamagethreshold seems to have no effect. Even when criticaldamagethreshold is set to 25 (max). There is no noticeable difference in number of hits to legs needed to kill as i believe is not intended.

[kymckay]

We could tweak
https://github.com/acemod/ACE3/blob/c7f58c183245fe7e25f639621602fb4bf85e2661/addons/medical_damage/functions/fnc_woundsHandlerSQF.sqf#L99
which is used to scale wound size based on incoming damage

Edit: Although that only changes the wound sizing, whereas this is about lethal damage - which is based directly on the incoming damage

https://github.com/acemod/ACE3/blob/c7f58c183245fe7e25f639621602fb4bf85e2661/addons/medical_damage/functions/fnc_woundsHandlerSQF.sqf#L124

[kymckay]

@Aphex123 It would be good to clarify because you mention two separate systems here, is the issue that:

1. Units aren't bleeding out fast enough - which is tied into wound sizing received
2. Units aren't taking fatal damage (immediate death on being shot) - which is not tied into wound sizing

[Aphex123]

@SilentSpike Ill address OnlyLargeHitsToVitalOrgans and SumOfTrauma seperatly as it looks like they use two different systems and problems.

OnlyLargeHitsToVitalOrgans:
With a vest equipped, no shots are passing through the vest and causing LARGE wounds. There are only small to medium wounds that cause bleeding. This doesn't seem right to me. There should be a small chance of a round causing LARGE wounds. And medium wounds should also have a chance of stopping the heart through concussive forces.

From speaking to some that know coding better than me it looks like damage to chest must pass a certain threshold before going to a random check for heart failure. But with a vest no damage is high enough to go onto this random check. A point blank rifle round should pass this damage threshold. This is from others looking at determineIfFatal function so forgive if wrong.

SumOfTrauma
From the name of this setting it would seem that enough wounds over the whole body regardless of bleeding would cause death. But in testing a unit took 60+ rounds to arms and legs without dying. Arm and leg damage should count more towards the sum.

It looks like the intent of the new medical system is to make bleeding out and cardiac arrest the new standard way of dying but i dont believe that is within the scope of arma. If a unit receives enough damage that they will be passed out or tied to a medic for life support the rest of mission than they should just die. Maybe make a unit lose blood immediately upon hit and put it in addon settings.

[severgun]

It looks like the intent of the new medical system is to make bleeding out and cardiac arrest the new standard way of dying but i dont believe that is within the scope of arma.

So may be just blood loss should be increased/multiplied by every hit?

[kymckay]

From your response it seems to me like this feedback is concerning lethal damage - and you're right, the difference between sum of trauma and organ damage basically comes down to lethal damage as a result of multiple damage events versus a single damage event.

The sum of trauma behaviour you describe sounds unintended as it should serve to fill the role of killing the unit when bloodloss alone isn't enough and they're sustaining lots of damage (as you expected). If the setting to tweak that isn't working as expected then that would be the priority here because fixing it allows that to be tweaked to your liking and then for us it's a case of finding a good default.

We can also look at tweaking the threshold for lethal damage of a single damage event to the chest. The problematic thing here is that different equipment seems to produce quite different engine damage values (especially when you start mixing in addon units and weapons).

I should make clear, that wound size isn't related to lethal damage at all. Both are based on the incoming engine damage, but there is no cause and effect as far as the code goes (I could tweak the numbers to always produce large wounds, but you'd still see the same lethal damage behaviour because it's a separate evaluation).

There's also no chance element in wound sizing (beyond built in variation from engine damage) unless you receive many wounds from a single damage event - where successive wounds have the chance to become increasingly worse:
https://github.com/acemod/ACE3/blob/c7f58c183245fe7e25f639621602fb4bf85e2661/addons/medical_damage/functions/fnc_woundsHandlerSQF.sqf#L102

If there are issues with the wound sizing, I'd suggest making a separate issue for that to keep feedback for the two systems from mixing.

[Bummeri]

I am confused, Is SumOfTrauma supposed to kill if you get multiple small hits to hands and legs? Or is it supposed to kill if you get multiple small hits to torso and head? Or is it supposed to kill if you get multiple small hits anywhere?

[Aphex123]

@SilentSpike

If the setting to tweak that isn't working as expected then that would be the priority here because fixing it allows that to be tweaked to your liking and then for us it's a case of finding a good default.

After reading the description of criticalDamageThreshold it seems that setting just affects when a unit goes unconscious. There seems to be no setting to adjust how much trauma is needed to kill. That was a misread on my part.

We can also look at tweaking the threshold for lethal damage of a single damage event to the chest.

I think making that on a slider in addon options would be very good.

(I could tweak the numbers to always produce large wounds, but you'd still see the same lethal damage behaviour because it's a separate evaluation).

Interesting, the setting does say OnlyLargeHitsToVitalOrgans so that is why i thought it just considered LARGE wounds.


I believe the solution is to make a slider for SumOfTrauma that is needed to kill, and another slider to adjust lethal damage threshold. Maybe another for BloodLossOnHit or some other.
Perhaps it would be possible to create a small chance that damage to chest might get multiplied to simulate a plate failure. I know its (impossible?) to decrease a plates effectiveness over hits so this might be a work around.
Anyway more settings would be good all around. Thank you for your response

[Steve161st]

Sum Of Trauma seems to have an odd effect on AI. When we use this setting, it seems the AI never pass out through pain when hit in the limbs. (Players still seem to behave relatively normally.) With this setting turned on, putting an entire 5.56x45 30 round magazine into an AI's knee leaves them bleeding but functional.
Changing this setting to Only Large Hits to Vital Organs and leaving all other settings the same, AI pass out from pain within 2-5 shots to the knee cap - so a much more expected result.
(Both settings tend to result in players losing consciousness in 3-6 shots to the kneecap.)

So I think this does suggest that the Sum of Trauma is not working as expect.

[JinougaF]

Sum Of Trauma seems to have an odd effect on AI. When we use this setting, it seems the AI never pass out through pain when hit in the limbs. (Players still seem to behave relatively normally.) With this setting turned on, putting an entire 5.56x45 30 round magazine into an AI's knee leaves them bleeding but functional.
Changing this setting to Only Large Hits to Vital Organs and leaving all other settings the same, AI pass out from pain within 2-5 shots to the knee cap - so a much more expected result.
(Both settings tend to result in players losing consciousness in 3-6 shots to the kneecap.)

So I think this does suggest that the Sum of Trauma is not working as expect.

so basicly the only way to directly kill AI is shot in head or torso? By directly kill i mean they will not entering the unconsciousness stage but directly go to die stage and leave a body without ragdoll pshysic there.

[Ivanowicz]

@Steve161st That is quite bizarre. I was doing some testing in editor and got the exact opposite results - terminators on "Only Large Hits to Vital Organs", and relatively normal on "Sum of Trauma". Though, that's another reason for explanation of those settings - I don't think anybody aside from the devs knows what they do.

Another thing I just realised while double checking - it seems that it is RHS that does not work well with new medical system - 5.56 and 5.45 can not penetrate pretty much any standard armored vests, so you're left playing a zombie game, since headshots are the only reliable way of killing anyone (shooting the vests only leaves lots of bruises and really small avulsions). The vanilla weapons seem fine. Is that issue something that falls under ACE compatibility modules, or on RHS side?

[AdlofHilder]

@Ivanowicz

Another thing I just realised while double checking - it seems that it is RHS that does not work well with new medical system - 5.56 and 5.45 can not penetrate pretty much any standard armoured vests, so you're left playing a zombie game, since headshots are the only reliable way of killing anyone (shooting the vests only leaves lots of bruises and _really_ small avulsions). The vanilla weapons seem fine. Is that issue something that falls under ACE compatibility modules, or on RHS side?

I have been testing weapons on variations of armoured vests for hours tonight - I can confirm the weapons all suffer from the same problem modded or not -- There seems to be an issue instead with the way that some rigs are blocking almost all damage rather than the weapons being the issue -- If your interested I have an example in #7539

[jonpas]

Requires evaluation if it still happens after some other changes (damage assignment to hitpoints).

[Ebolavector]

Still have the same problem here. And no action at all for the "DamageThreshold" sliders. 0.01 in the sliders has exactly the same effects than 25. 3/4 5.56 hits on the torso to kill or go unconscious with a body armor depending on the unconscious state parameter with a vest...