Real Armor Mod Wiki/Implementing RAM

Intro
RAM is a mod that dramatically improves armor penetration realism in Arma 3. RAM exists as a standalone mod available as a prerequisite for 3rd party content (although it is directly integrated into the RHS mod).

Armor penetration mechanics are especially important to armored vehicle warfare because such vehicles are essentially Accurately representing this 'threshold' effect is key to a realistic simulation of armored warfare. Arma's cumulative "hit point" system of damage is especially bad at representing these mechanics.
 * 1) immune to any weapon that does not penetrate their armor...
 * 2) ... but highly vulnerable to any weapon that does.

Pages

 * STANDARD Implementation:
 * Making your mod RAM-compatible? This is your page.


 * RHS Implementation:
 * RHS has a slightly customized implementation.


 * IFA3 Implementation:
 * IFA3 has some extra issues that are discussed here.

Glossary
These are mostly real-world terms to make the armor and penetration discussion clearer. (i.e. unlike some other glossaries on this wiki, these are not official BI property names). Names in 'single quotes' are terms with a specific meaning in RAM.
 * KE:"kinetic energy" penetrator - bullets and sabot.
 * CE:"chemical energy" penetrator - HEAT warheads.
 * 'CE armor':our improvised term for any armor which gives added protection against CE weapons - CE armor is divided into "Composite" and "ERA".
 * 'Composite':the first type of CE armor, it is typically made of a combination of materials.
 * 'ERA':"explosive reactive armor" - the other type of CE armor, it is divided into blocks which are destroyed when hit and can thus (usually) only protect once. (In many cases, it is cheaper and lighter than composites and can be simply bolted over integral armor).
 * RHA: rolled homogenous armor - the standard vehicle armor that all penetration and protection is measured by.
 * TE:thickness equivalent - a coefficient describing the effective thickness of an armor compared to RHA. It is divided into TE-KE / TE-CE. RHA is 1.0/1.0. CE armors are typically (<1)/(>1).
 * RHAe:"RHA equivalent" - how thick a plate of non-RHA armor would be if it were made out of RHA (e.g. a 50mm thick plate of aluminum armor might have an RHAe of 25mm).
 * oblique impact:occurs whenever a penetrator strikes armor at an angle other than the perpendicular (90 degrees).
 * LOS thickness:an oblique impact creates a longer path for the penetrator to travel through, increasing the effective ("line of sight") thickness of the armor.
 * IRL:"in real life" - i.e. values based on real-world data.
 * HE:"high explosive" - any weapon that relies on explosive overpressure and fragmentation to cause damage (they receive no special treatment in RAM).

Basics
RAM corrects broken features in Arma 3 as well as adding new ones. To use it you must customize the following:

Weapon configs
KE Bullets/Shells and any HE (indirectHit) weapon will work without modification. All weapons with HEAT warheads require special config additions.

Vehicle P3D files
All CE armors are represented in the Fire Geometry LOD. ERA blocks are additionally represented in visual LODs. Special materials are applied to CE armor fire geometry.

Vehicle configs
Several changes are required in the vehicle config (including the model.cfg if ERA is being used).

Custom config properties
RAM adds its custom config values to existing Arma 3 config files. Adding arbitrary classes and properties to default configs does not cause any problems in Arma. The additions are utilized by RAM scripts and ignored if RAM is absent.