Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: Son_of_Montfort
And because the unconventional warfare units would have to blend in with civilians, the game would also have to deal with the moral grey-area of killing non-combatants in the face on unconventional warfare...

quote:

One of the strengths of unconventional fighters (Uncon for short) is that they blend with the noncombatants and choose where and when to fight deliberately. This creates a problem for us, as designers, since a direct simulation would require us simulating such things as cultural habits, economic activity, traffic, daily civilian activities, thousands of autonomous “entities” (i.e. people), etc. You don’t have to be a game designer to see that this is actually more work than the military side of the simulation! Even then - due to the vary nature of playing a wargame scenario players will tend to be much more suspicious than in real life, making it unrealistically difficult for Uncons to blend with the crowd; while at the same time the repercussions for unrealistic actions (such as shooting civilians on mere suspicion) cannot be enforced in a realistic way in a game.



The solution we came up with simulates unconventional warfare in a highly abstracted way. Civilians are not represented at all in any direct sense, removing all the years of work it would take to simulate them. Instead, unconventional units are simply hidden from the US player until his units have reason to “suspect” there is a hostile unit, at which point it is spotted and targetable. In game terms, some units have a “stealth rating” that other units lack.



There are five basic types of Uncons in the game: transports (civilian vehicles used as transport), Technicals (civilian vehicles with mounted heavy weapons), Fighters (mercenaries and guerrilla soldiers), Combatants (ad hoc civilians picking up a weapon) and Specialists. Out of those, only Specialists (Spies, IEDs, and VIEDs) are “stealthy”. All of the others are not attempting to remain hidden, since they carry visible weapons and/or unitforms or special clothing, and for them the normal spotting rules apply.



Spies are unarmed informants. They have no weapons and their sole purpose is to be the “eyes and ears” for the Syrian player. IEDs are stationary roadside bombs, varying in both size and type (wire, radio, cell phone), which are detonated by an armed Uncon triggerman. VIEDs are cars packed with explosives, driven by a suicide bomber and usually accompanied by a spy directing the driver and designating targets.



The “stealth” rules apply to all Specialists except for the triggermen, who are armed. By default, Specialists are invisible to the US side at the beginning of a mission. This has nothing to do with line of sight calculations. The Specialist unit could be in plain view of US forces, and would still be invisible to the US player. For them to get spotted a Specialist must do something “suspicious”.



The Syrian player is able to move Specialists as he would any other units, though what is done, how, and where has a direct impact on the “stealth” of the Uncon unit. Think of it this way… as a soldier, would you be suspicious of a civilian crawling behind a wall? How about a taxi driving through the open desert towards your positions? Units engaging in questionable behaviour like this are more likely to be spotted than if they were doing something less suspicious. For example, walking down a road in plain sight would be the most normal thing in the world, and would therefore not lead to a stealth reduction. A car driving along a road at a normal speed would not generally be seen as a threat. However, the closer the Specialists get to US forces, the less likely they will remain hidden. This is a conventional war setting, so any civilians approaching military units would be viewed with heightened suspicion.



After an Uncon surpasses a stealth threshold he becomes identified as a combatant, and therefore immediately visible to the US player as a hostile target for the remainder of the game.



This simple system eliminates all sorts of possible pitfalls and problems in a very elegant way. Players don’t have to cope with decoys, civilian traffic, or noncombatants, which would lead to a lot of micromanagement and distraction for what is effectively a minor side aspect of the game. We don’t have to worry about simulating the ramifications of killing innocent civilians, or programming all sorts of AI behaviour which would have no meaningful impact on the combat side of game. And yet, despite the various abstractions, the Syrian player has direct control of his Uncon forces.



Best of all, the end result is pretty realistic. If all goes well (from the Syrian perspective), the US player will only realize where an IED is when it detonates. On the flip side, blatant unrealistic use of Uncon Specialists will likely result in them getting spotted, and mowed down, before they are able to do anything useful. Due to the abstractions in the system, additional aspects such as civilian population density can be integrated seamlessly and without binding excessive resources during development or during gameplay. This leaves our development resources focused on the main aspect of the game, conventional warfare, while at the same time sufficiently simulating a full spectrum asymmetric warfare environment. Something that no other commercial wargame has done before.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Oleg Mastruko

Well newsflash: this is what modern warfare in Middle East is ALL ABOUT. It's all about getting bogged down in moral grey area land for many months trying to figure out whether the neighborhood granny is actually a suicide bomber or who of the locals with the smiling faces will plant the roadside IED.

quote:

ORIGINAL: WITPgamer

quote:

ORIGINAL: Oleg Mastruko

Well newsflash: this is what modern warfare in Middle East is ALL ABOUT. It's all about getting bogged down in moral grey area land for many months trying to figure out whether the neighborhood granny is actually a suicide bomber or who of the locals with the smiling faces will plant the roadside IED.

Well that demonstrates a very ignorant understanding of a very complex situation, well done.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Neilster
That quote is from Oleg's broader point that dealing with the grey-area of civilians who may be fighters is part of modern, Middle-Eastern war. Can you point out exactly why this is "a very ignorant understanding of a very complex situation"? It seems pretty reasonable to me.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Oleg Mastruko
It's not really about glorious desert blitzkriegs and such. And yes, it's not just bad taste, but also completely unhistoric to try to represent the modern Middle East campaign as civilian-less desert blitzkrieg.

quote:


Well for a start during actual combat operations civilian deaths aren’t a foremost concern to military commanders, thus rendering this whole point invalid.

In a military operation commanders will take whatever actions necessary in order to complete their objectives whilst protecting the lives of their troops, with civilian deaths being a considerably lower priority. Most civilians are also smart enough to remove themselves from combat environments, thus reducing this concern further. Do some reading on the initial invasion of Iraq if you wish to see this, or even review the Israeli conflict in Lebanon last year where the Israelis had far more trouble with AT missiles and SAMs than they did grannys, hence the fact that entire city blocks were leveled in the process.

What is being described above are the security issues that arise after a military operation has been successfully completed, which is a totally different issue to 'modern warfare'. Either way, this whole 'bad taste' argument is rather pathetic considering we all happily sit around playing wargames based on a conflict that killed 22 million civilians alone.

quote:

ORIGINAL: WITPgamer

quote:

ORIGINAL: Neilster
That quote is from Oleg's broader point that dealing with the grey-area of civilians who may be fighters is part of modern, Middle-Eastern war. Can you point out exactly why this is "a very ignorant understanding of a very complex situation"? It seems pretty reasonable to me.

Well for a start during actual combat operations civilian deaths aren’t a foremost concern to military commanders, thus rendering this whole point invalid.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Son_of_Montfort
It is ahistorical to assume that any Blitzkriegs were "civilian-less." While the WWII desert blitzs (if you could call them that) had fewer civilians, the European blitzes resulted in numerous civilian deaths.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Neilster



You can't have "a foremost concern", only "the foremost concern" but no-one was arguing that civilian deaths are the commander's foremost concern. They are, however, a significant concern during combat operations, which is exactly what Oleg was on about.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Oleg Mastruko

This is my reply to both you and WITP gamer (that guy seems to be seriously pissed off if anyone dares touch "his" beloved CMSF )

quote:


But on East Front civilian killing incidents were usually isolated from the actual fighting.

quote:

ORIGINAL: JudgeDredd

Are you saying then that in the ME (currently Iraq) that once the conventional war was over, the war stopped and they then faced security threats?

quote:

If that's the case, then I can't agree with you. I would suggest that the civilian population were taking up arms be they AK47s or RPGs and interdicting the coalition along with the conventional war...and they were not dressed in army uniforms...and I think that's the point...that games do not embrace this "modern" warfare.

quote:

EF gave us bazillions of (relatively) good clean military fights without a civilian to be seen anywhere near the combat.

quote:

ORIGINAL: WITPgamer

quote:

ORIGINAL: Neilster



You can't have "a foremost concern", only "the foremost concern" but no-one was arguing that civilian deaths are the commander's foremost concern. They are, however, a significant concern during combat operations, which is exactly what Oleg was on about.

Oh please, lets not degenerate into scanning each others posts for misplaced words, I have better things to do and basides, your wrong.

I can only take his words at face value as unfortautnely you were not at hand to explain them for him. In his words 'moden warfare' in the middle east is 'ALL ABOUT' getting ' bogged down in moral grey area land for many months trying to figure out whether the neighborhood granny is actually a suicide bomber or who of the locals with the smiling faces will plant the roadside IED'. That is a rediculas statement to make as that describes the security issues after the conflict is over, not the combat operations themsevles. They are two totally seperate issues

quote:

ORIGINAL: GreyFox

quote:

EF gave us bazillions of (relatively) good clean military fights without a civilian to be seen anywhere near the combat.

I can't agree with that. Many thousands of Afghani's have been killed by American and NATO forces there. A few weddings were bombed since the Afghani's tend to shot guns in the air in celebration.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Oleg Mastruko
EF gave us bazillions of (relatively) good clean military fights without a civilian to be seen anywhere near the combat.

quote:


Taste is, admittedly subjective, and dependent on what things you choose to compare. To me it's in bad taste. To you it's not in bad taste. It's an opinion.

quote:

I also don't believe in God...I don't expect religion to fade away anytime soon.

quote:

Here’s one for the game of the year list: Combat Mission: Shock Force is, at this point, a shoo-in for Most Disappointing Game of 2007. Battlefront’s presentation of modern combat is a serious letdown, partly for its design, but largely for the state of its release.

The design is still built around the original Combat Mission’s World War II era warfare. I’m not convinced that this is a good level to present modern combat with the Saggers and Javelins that make warfare an ‘if I can see you, you’re dead’ affair. Firstly, the speed at which armored vehicles are destroyed is a whole other kettle of fish from jockeying for an angle on the side of a tank peering out from the edge of a hedgerow. But in order to present a challenge here, the limiting factor tends to be the number of available HEAT rounds balanced against enemy armor, an equation that will be contrived at best. In modern combat, unprotected armor dies fast unless you’ve taken steps to protect it, steps that usually occur outside the scope of these scenarios and are therefore relegated to abstractions or scenario designer choices. A half-hour or hour-long slice of time has to be carefully and conspicuously jury-rigged so that it’s not a foregone conclusion.....