My play group has been been playing custom missions using the Prarie Fire dlc. Weāve noticed that when shooting the VC or NVA AI, it take like 5-8 round to take them down. They are not wearing any plate armor, unless they somehow wove it into their clothing. I double checked in the editor that their uniforms or vests donāt contain armor or protection. Itās baffling to me.
Has anybody else experienced this difficulty? If you can carry a limited amount of ammo and it takes half a mag to take one guy down, itās a big disconcerting when youāre faced with a reinforced platoon.
Last bit of Prairie Fire I messed with, I think 1-2 good torso hits seemed to drop the enemy. It was more of an issue of getting good hits, versus enemy toughness for me.
What firearm where you using, I can possibly see that with something like a suppressed 9mm sub gun. Shouldnāt happen with an M-16 or similar.
It was the basic M-16. So Iām befuddled like that. Weāre using PF as part of a general mod pack. I need to do more testing with the other mods off and with different rifles, such as the M-14 to see if anything is different. Thanks for your feedback.
edit: and i can see when it might take maybe 3 hits for the guy to go down, but when youāre getting to your 6th shot, itās likeā¦wtf.
Yeah, I second that. Iāve found the damage balance to be extremely good in PF; often a single 5.56 out of an M16 making a good hit on center torso seems to kill, and double-taps definitely do the trick in my experience.
Could it be another mod in your modpack affecting the damage or armor values? What about the āextended armorā option in difficulty settings (perhaps server side, so it doesnāt manifest in SP?)?
I am such a bad shot that the ā5-6ā rounds sounds pretty reasonable to me. If I see a target drop with rounds remaining in my clip, Iām pretty stoked.
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We use a lot of mods and creator DLC (CUP, RHS, GM, Sahara, etc). All the AI go down with 1-2 well placed shots. Itās just the PF AI. But if you guys arenāt experiencing it, it must not be a DLC thing and just a mod incompatibility thing, which is fine, as it confirmed my hypothesis.
Oh, come on. When you were playing with us, you were fine. Donāt kick yourself. 
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Just checked PF, got a few 300m torso hits with the XM177 and they were 1 shot stops.
If they go down and youāre still standing you did something right.
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I just went into the editor to test this under controlled conditions. I loaded up Cam Lao Nam and placed a group of local VC (Local Cadre, Guerilla Group 1) on the runway at a range of exactly 100 meters, disabled their AI Move and Target functions so theyād stay still, rotated them various directions and carefully shot them with an XM177 with iron sights.
Of the first 10, 8/10 went down with one aimed shot to the chest, from different angles (front, side, oblique). The other two of them took two rounds, although Iām ninety percent sure the first ricocheted off a piece of equipment like his rifle receiver. The second that took two rounds was likely imperfect shot placement on my part.
For the remaining 6, I picked up the pace with aimed fire a little bit more quickly to simulate a firefight. Nearly all of them took 3 rounds to neutralize, mostly due to very close misses observed by the dust of the bullet impact. I was going to try the M16 next (my normal pick), but decided not to since it āshouldā only perform better than the XM177.
So thatās my observation based on running PF and vanilla. YMMV, as always.
ETA: Similar results with the M16 @ 100M, 1 shot stops to the chest, and even trying leg and pelvis shots, two did the trick. Maximum was three rounds if hit in arm, leg, leg.
Now I want to do some PF coop again! 
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Thank you for your testing, sir. Always a good excuse to fire up ARMA and get some trigger time.
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I went in and checked myself. The standard M16 works fine when absolutely no other mods/dlcs are going. I also tried it with the GM and Western Sahara going and it worked fine. When I added 3rd party mods and stuff, it got all jacked up. So itās a problem with us, and not the DLC. Good to confirm Jenrickās and Warpigās results.
I tried it with all the DLC/CDLCās, CUP, and CWRIII since I had that modset handy, and no changes- same results. Are you using any ACE or Project Injury Reaction or anything like that?
No ACE, but we use a revive script for human players, but it doesnāt affect the AI in other DLCs. Iām not the admin, so Iām not sure of all the backend/hidden stuff going on.
Guess Iāll just have to make missions with more ammo
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The ability to get clean unambiguous hits in ARMA and other FPSās really does give the weapons a significant increase in lethality compared to reality. In the abstract I agree that a high thoracic hit with a rifle should be considered immediately disabling if not immediately lethal. In reality it doesnāt always work out that way.
Thereās a reason multiple round engagements, even at CQB ranges where you should have a high degree of combat accuracy and terminal ballistic effectiveness, are the norm in training. Training with folks who have served in the various conflicts in high-level direct action capacities there was very little expectation of having a one stop shot of a threat with a rifle unless it was a solid head shot. There is also the same expectation for rounds coming from the enemy. History is rife with accounts of soldiers taking rifle rounds to what should have been lethal locations and surviving.
Physiology obviously plays a factor, but a mentally committed adversary is the biggest issue. The PF teams represented this, with men carrying their wounded comrades for kilometers engaged in a running fire fight, after having been shot multiple times. The human body is capable of sustaining tremendous abuse and injury expect in a few areas, and the majority of those areas are well armored against short term lethal injury.
Having every enemy solider taking 5-6 rounds to the sternum or aortic arches is not realistic. Having every enemy drop from 1 round anywhere in the torso isnāt either. However without a much more granular system of morale and disablement in place in FPS titles, you end up with either super strong enemies that are cohesive and still fighting against massive amounts of firepower, or enemies which drop like flies forcing overwhelming numbers to provide a āchallengeā to the player.
I personally would find having an enemy formation that requires āheavierā firepower to take down to be far more consistent with the ābarely keep from being overrunā nature of the SOG teams. Itās not a fair fight, itās a desperate battle to prevent from being dragged down.
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ā¦ and few granades
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Well put. Especially considering the miss percentage in a firefight IRL, and even in ARMA. My testing was done standing, but at 100M standing still with no fatigue-induced shaking, it was reasonably easy to make first round lethal hits with a little concentration. When I did it more rapidly, but still on a static range, it increased to 3 shots per kill. In Arma itās very easy to barely miss, and in the chaos of a firefight, hard to tell whether you hit or not until the AI ragdolls, so more is better.
In an actual mission, Iād bet it takes me an average of 6 (or more), since Iām moving, shooting, moving, and firing pretty rapidly to get rounds on that guy before he can ākillā me (in ARMA). This is especially fun in PF due to the way the weapons āfeelā and the amount of ammo most players carry.
In real life, Iād probably mag-dump in a panic and be lucky to do any good.
I really like Project Injury Reaction (PIR), if you havenāt checked it out itās worth trying. It adds actual reactions to being hit, with animations and consequences, and an optional medical system similar to ACE (but incompatible). AI will fall down, get back up, run away, drop weapons, etc all depending on how theyāre hit, as well as drag/treat wounded on their own. The only problem Iāve found a minor hit to the framerate when using the mod, so itās no good for large missions, and I donāt know how well it works with other AI mods.
(Excuse the AI language in the video, NSFW. Iād be cussing too if someone was shooting me thoughā¦)
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New update released todayā¦ check out the featuresā¦
Arma 3 Creator DLC: S.O.G. Prairie Fire - Update 1.2 Trailer - YouTube
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Dang it!!! I worked from home most of last week, constantly checking twitter and stram for the update. The day i go into the the office is the day its released. 
killing me.