johnnymo Posted March 24, 1999 Share Posted March 24, 1999 Will friendly-fire casualties will be limited to off-board artillery fire, or can bad spotting result in "jumpy" squads/AFVs mistakenly firing on their comrades? To rephrase, will spotting logic allow units to mistake friendly units for enemy units, and fire on them as a result? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Big Time Software Posted March 25, 1999 Share Posted March 25, 1999 Good question! We have looked into this quite a bit. What we are thinking of doing is having a slightly random "oops" factor for all units. The "oops" will depend on how good the unit is and the current visibility level. So a bright, sunny day with vets will likely produce no friendly fire casualties. However, a night battle with green guys will likely result in more than you would like. I was just reading some 1st person accounts of such incidents. In one a green, jittery sentry on night duty shot and killed a 4 man friendly patrol coming back into the line. Totally flipped and didn't follow any procedures. Apparently men like this were quietly transferred to another outfit without labeling the guy. Kinda a second chance thing. Though I bet that sentry had some pretty deep mental wounds for the rest of his life... Steve Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moon Posted March 25, 1999 Share Posted March 25, 1999 Serious statistics for fratricide are hard to find... for obvious reasons I guess... Back in the Army I read a German analysis for the US friendly fire casualties during Operation Desert Storm... Fratricide was estimated at almost 25% if I remember correctly (including artillery, small arms fire and basically anything else that can kill you on the battlefield). 25%! Obviously during WWII with less automatic weapons this number should be lower... but still... geez! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Big Time Software Posted March 25, 1999 Share Posted March 25, 1999 The reason for the high percentage is that generally the Coalition Forces were the only ones shooting at the Coalition Forces Seriously, think about all the lead and stuff that was expended. How much more stuff did the Coalition toss towards Iraq vs. how much came in? I'd love to see that ratio! Now add to this the fact that the Iraqis couldn't hit the broad side of a barn. What you come up with is that the Coalition forces fired just as much as you would expect, but the Iraqis didn't cause hardly any casualties. If they had, the NUMBER of friendly fire cases probably would have been the same, but the percentage would be MUCH lower because of the higher number caused by the enemy. Hence the seemingly high friendly fire number. Make sense? Oh, and the percentage of non-combat deaths was HUGE as well, for the same reason. Remember that ferry that capsized off of Israel? Killed more than that Scud attack, which was the largest single cause for US casualties (IIRC). Because the Iraqis caused hardly any casualties ALL casualty figures are going to be messed up. Steve [This message has been edited by Big Time Software (edited 03-25-99).] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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