Arma 3 + ACE body armor performance as of 9-25-2022

Just so there's a record of it somewhere else, I recently went over the ammo and armor on the ACE feature request thread. I will repost it here for posterity, since Steam hopefully will be around for years to come.

About ACE3

You do have to use new ACE, as vanilla and all other versions of ACE, other medical systems (I'm not talking about KAT extension), and PIR that I've tried, as well as even using bCombat, Dagger's ammo, or ZluskeN Modified Loadouts, will currently produce bogus hit & injury detection.

If you notice massive issues compared to what I describe in this guide and, for instance, have headshots registering on chest plates, then start eliminating mods to narrow down what's causing it. Another good test is to unload a mag in someone's leg and then put a tourniquet on it, which should allow them to survive.

Ammo influence on armor

Real life body armor penetration characteristics of rounds:

• AP (often TU) > EPR (often steel) > FMJ & Ball > HP > Frangible

Some hollow point rounds are behaving like AP rounds in Arma 3 + ACE.

Also, EPR doesn't seem differentiated from ball.

.300 AAC blackout now appears to have extra penetration ability over 45 ACP, which is good, but this should be applied to 7.62 rounds including SD & SS versions, too. The whole point of blackout, after all, was for a similar pointy subsonic round (as opposed to blunt 45) meant for short barrels with the tradeoff that the supersonics would be inferior to 7.62 that use rifle powder on long barrels.

Blackout, unfortunately, seems to be continuing to have significant muzzle velocity increases (though correctly already less than .308) with high barrel length past 9", which does not quite occur because it's a pistol powder... hence the reason it was created for use in SMGs. 7.62x51, in contrast, should indeed benefit from additional length up to about 20", as it already does in ACE. Ditto 5.56x45, as ACE seems to accurately reflect its optimal length of 16".

Armor performance

The following is current Arma 3 + ACE ballistic protection for reference. When I say good/bad, I mean with respect to the NIJ equivalent and performance relative to adjacent armors, not the Arma 3 armor level naming that's obviously weird:

• level I (raven vest) ≈ is there NIJ level Ia? More for stabs, shrapnel, frags, and ricochets, as it stopped a knife and birdshot, but not M712 Mauser pistol rounds.
  
  
• level II (gendarmerie vest) ≈ NIJ level I maybe, stopped M712 Mauser pistol rounds, but not subsonic 9mm.
  
  
• level III (carrier lite) ≈ NIJ level IIa, blunt 45 ACP (good) & sharp 7.62x51 SD (bad) both stopped, but pointblank 45 AP & Super and subsonic .300 AAC blackout penetrates (good).
  
  
• level IV (carrier rig) ≈ NIJ level II or IIIa, most pistol rounds stopped, 45 Super stopped while 45 AP penetrates, pointblank 6.5x39 >50% chance of penetrating, fails at all .300 AAC (good).
  
  
• level V (carrier special rig) ≈ NIJ level IIIa to barely full III, hard to say due to EPR vs ball issue, but most 5.56 out of any length barrel, 6.5x39 caseless out of 16" barrel, and all R1 45 (ACP, AP, Super) stopped. Stops some SS .300 AAC and other .300 AAC doesn't. 6.5x39 caseless out of 20" barrel also usually penetrates.
  
  
• Maxed armor in mods (SSU PGU or Optre) ≈ US level IV+ that stops .338 Lapua and 50 Beowulf or Magnum, but fails @ 50BMG.

Mitigation

Without further armor performance changes, you can wear at least slightly armored under clothing to supplement the stock plate carriers.

Considering maxing out mod armor gets you level IV+ plates already, I'm uncertain if boosting ACE's treatment of body armor is warranted, though it is odd that there doesn't seem to be any body armor I can find that is in the sweet spot of obviously minimally full III or IV all by itself.

Future body armor mods might be able to do something between stock Carrier Special and those max mods.

In that case, future ACE improvements on this subject might be better spent on tweaking ammo handling itself than armor. Besides barrel optimizations & diminishing returns and the bullet type tweaks, existing ACE compatible barrel and bullet characteristics could be used to influence not just dispersion (as previously suggested by me) but in calculating penetration of armor since it is an approximation of bullet rotation rate (from twist ratio and barrel length), aerodynamics (from BC), cross-sectional density, available mass, and thus effectively 'pointiness' and ability to drill into the armor. That might be especially useful in differentiating bullet types, such as varying bullet performances from each in addition to frangible vs hollow point vs ball/FMJ vs EPR vs AP. For instance, high velocity 45 ACP should not penetrate as well as pointy 308 or 300blk subsonics with the same velocity and rotation rate.

[Reticuli]

Latest mods list and profile settings:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qM3qHyykputsj26Bslip7vLkFlb20FyK/view?usp=sharing

[Reticuli]

How would I do that?
I've slightly tweaked the combination of mods and I've achieved something interesting: Even maxed-out mods aren't as extreme as before, and the carrier special is about barely full level 4. I still think smaller rounds could potentially do more damage and cause people to stay down more, but it's not that bad. Small ball rounds and especially AP rounds do require shot placement or multiple hits for takedown, which is actually accurate. Just assume all the enemy is on meth, or something.

[[Éire] Gambit]

think you can export your addon settings as a .txt file?

[Reticuli]

Ok. BTW, this combination still loads ACE Arsenal and its load/save stuff fast enough. Some of the sci fi and super duper ammo dumps into the available options really bog things down... including crazy amounts of useless cloths sometimes. So all those that clog up the menus I've gotten rid of. I wish there was some way to save and/or share all my option settings. 156 mods does nearly halve my framerates, but it's worth it.

[[Éire] Gambit]

no being genuine I actually Like alot of the mods you're running

[Reticuli]

Not sure if that's sarcastic or not. IMO, it's way too many unrealistic subsonic mags, crazy SCAR hyper velocity mags, and mega capacity mags, but there's basically no way to lose the bad stuff while still keeping the good stuff. So, in my modded Arma 3, guns & mags always seem too lightweight and never need manual cycling or unjamming unless they overheat. Also means there's not much point to the 300blk guns, but even just ACE adds 308 M14 SD mags I think from its ace_common.pbo. Stock Arma 3 also has those goofy 150 round 5.56 double drums that magically never jam. Oh well. My ACE medical is highly tweaked, though, and I give a big overheat penalty to rapid fire and suppressors.

[[Éire] Gambit]

Looking at your modlist i see you got great taste lmao

[[Éire] Gambit]

Great find, thanks for the link

[Reticuli]

This has proven to be a useful armor mod of late:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2849354160

[Reticuli]

Thanks for your support.