Vanilla Config Tweaks
This mod is a lightweight collection of tweaks and fixes for vanilla Arma 3 configs – just small but meaningful corrections that make the game behave a bit more like it should.
What does it do?
– Complete suppression radius rebalance: Arma 3’s default suppression system has three flaws: intermediate and full-power rifle rounds suppress identically, erasing much of the tactical difference between a 5.56 mm LMG and a 7.62 mm GPMG; some munitions, like heavy artillery, suppress a smaller area than their lethal radius, defying basic logic; and heavy weapons are severely underpowered, failing to reflect the psychological impact of large-caliber fire or explosions. This mod rebuilds suppression radii completely, basing its changes in the 1980 Ft. Sill "Can It Be Quantified?" suppression report.
- Small Arms: Suppression now scales strictly with projectile energy. Suppression radius of intermediate rifle rounds is nerfed to ~4–5 m, while full power rifle rounds are increased to over 10 m. This creates a tactical distinction between LMGs and GPMGs; a GPMG now creates a significantly larger danger zone than a SAW. With the default suppression radii, an LMG is often just straight up better than a larger GPMG, since you have double the ammo, but the same suppression radius per bullet.
- Heavy Weapons: Large caliber rounds (.50 cal, 20 mm+) have seen massive increases to account for the physical shockwave of the projectile. Especially heavy machine guns are now much more suppressive.
- Explosives: Indirect fire has been corrected to match reality. In vanilla, a 155 mm shell suppresses a 75 m radius, which is actually smaller than the casualty radius of the shell. This mod increases the suppression radius of heavy howitzers to 180 m and buffs other heavy munitions in a similar fashion.
– Adds ACE3 ballistics muzzle velocity variation to BulletBase. Basically, all bullets now have a slight randomness to their muzzle velocity. By default in ACE3, this is really only defined for many long range rounds making them actually more inaccurate than everything else. Now everything is slightly more inaccurate, but the sniping rounds are more accurate in comparison to everything else.
– Aircraft bombs are heavily buffed in indirect damage, as they have a smaller blast radius than 155 mm howitzers, despite IRL having about 10x the explosive filler.
– Rifle grenade indirect damage is nerfed by about 50 %, since by default they have the same indirect damage as hand grenades. IRL, rifle grenades have much less explosive filler than the average hand grenade.
– Nerfs mortar and howitzer shell indirect damage. By default they are very overpowered when compared to basically any other munitions, especially so when playing with the ACE3 Fragmentation system. The 155 mm howitzer shells have a lethal radius of a whopping 136 meters against unarmored humans, which is totally out of balance with any other munitions in the game. Mortars are similarly unbalanced. An 82 mm mortar round has 3x the damage radius of 120 mm tank shells, which is completely unbalanced and unrealistic.
– Increases the weight of the Nightstalker and TWS scopes to better match their real world counterparts
– The weight of some explosives is increased to match what they weigh IRL
– More realistic weight for the map, compass and watch
ACE3 is not a requirement. Feel free to do whatever you want with this.
