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Cowering from friendly fire?


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I haven't tested this, but I've been noticing a lot lately that soldiers seem to cower from friendly fire even when not having been shot at in the recent past. And by friendly fire I don't mean another squad shooting over their heads' but from fire within the unit itself (so a fireteam member causing the others to cower). Like I said, I haven't tested this extensively or anything, but if it is indeed the case that within a team soldiers will cower purely from the fire coming from other team members that seems a bit off...? Again, To be clear---I am not talking about friendly fire from other units---it makes sense that that would have the same effect as enemy fire: ducking!

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As far as i know only bullets that impact near a unit will be perceived by the unit all. Passing by tracer rounds do not cause units to cower. Small arms (less than .50 cal and not explosive) friendly fire should not have any effect at all.

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Playing evening battles troops become easily spooked by the sound of their own side's fire. I think its a combination of experience and morale. Low morale green troops tend to soil themselves during a firefight. And at night friendly fire casualties become possible, though its been so long since I played a night battle that I can't recall the last time I saw it happened.

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It certainly depends on the troops' soft factors and current state. Veteran High Morale with >0 leadership don't tend to do it until they're "Broken", IME, but Green, Low Morale troops with negative leadership spend a lot of time with their heads down. Having your shooters in C2 helps reduce it too. While "Cowering" is a somewhat value-laden verb, and the animation has it as curled into a foetal position, I think of it as the times the shooter ducks back into cover between their bursts: inexperienced troops will do that at the wrong times, with low motivation or low morale status troops spending more time "ducking" than they should. That sort of effect would mostly only kick in when the element is actively fighting, even if they're not receiving any incoming; when they aren't shooting at something (and also aren't receiving incoming), there's less reason to duck and lots of reason to keep nervous eyes a-swivelling...

That's my rationalisation, anyway. Still, it might be an unintended consequence. I believe flying bullets do now cause suppression. They may always have.

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noxnoctum,

You may notice at the start of a game that your troops are in the same posture until they engage the enemy.

Once your troops engage the enemy ( light or heavy firefight ) their posture changes, and will 'Cower' or 'Take Cover' ( lack for a better term ) alot depending on such factors as Moral, Motivation, Leadership, C2 & Suppression.

Dont' take the 'Cowering' posture for face-value. Due to the Graphic representation of the game your troops are really just ducking in and out of cover at a moment in time, and not literally in a 'Fetal' position ( not that it's uncommon to see that if troops are in 'Panic or Broken' status ).

I personally would like to see BF change the Graphics look of 'Cowering' alittle depending on 'Troop Status' so players don't get the wrong impression.

Joe

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Dont' take the 'Cowering' posture for face-value. Due to the Graphic representation of the game your troops are really just ducking in and out of cover at a moment in time, and not literally in a 'Fetal' position ( not that it's uncommon to see that if troops are in 'Panic or Broken' status ).

I personally would like to see BF change the Graphics look of 'Cowering' alittle depending on 'Troop Status' so players don't get the wrong impression.

Joe

I think this makes a lot of sense, and I too would like to see the graphics updated to give players a better idea of what is actually going on in any given moment..

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I personally would like to see BF change the Graphics look of 'Cowering' alittle depending on 'Troop Status' so players don't get the wrong impression.

I was just thinking the same thing. Maybe at some future point that animation could be altered a bit to be more realistic. Tricky question though as it would have to be enough different from their normal pose to convey the necessary information quickly and unambiguously to the eye.

BTW, on the subject of animations...I wish that when moving using the Slow command, soldiers wouldn't wiggle their asses so much. It looks weird and isn't an entirely realistic motion, for males at least.

Michael

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Friendlies won't take casualties from small arms fire that is aimed close by, but they will get pinned/suppressed a bit.

Y'know, it's polite to read the thread before commenting. Or even the first post...

Noxnoctum said (it's still up there to be read if you don't believe me):

...Again, To be clear---I am not talking about friendly fire from other units---it makes sense that that would have the same effect as enemy fire: ducking!

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  • 5 months later...

I would love to have friendly fire work exactly as enemy fire. I think it would require a radical revision of tactics towards more realistic approaches. I mean it is problematic to be able to suppress an enemy position shooting through your advancing soldiers

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I would love to have friendly fire work exactly as enemy fire. I think it would require a radical revision of tactics towards more realistic approaches. I mean it is problematic to be able to suppress an enemy position shooting through your advancing soldiers

The problem is the TacAI. It's not quite clever enough to avoid significant friendly fire casualties. So playing against the computer would be even easier, since both sides always use exactly the same rules.

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