Crunchies!

[Cpl Steiner]

I am half way through reading the splendid "Ambush Alley" about the USMC in Iraq and in one incident an AMTRAC driver was confronted by two RPG-armed Fadeyeen in the middle of the road ahead. Unable to do anything else he gunned the engine at the nearest Iraqi and ran him over before he could reload.

In light of this, will it be possible to run over enemy soldiers using armoured vehicles in CM:SF?

[Sequoia]

I would think most enemy infantry would have sense enough to get out of your way.

[Cpl Steiner]

Except it did actually happen.

[Sergei]

It will be modelled or won't, dunno, but I think that would be the sort of unusual incident that isn't a top priority for a programmer with a full plate. I believe incidents where drivers accidentally injure friendly infantry are more common, and even those I doubt are worth much effort.

[flamingknives]

Certainly it is the sort of thing that the BFC guys have left out before, being too uncommon in standard practice to be worth putting in.

[Cpl Steiner]

I can understand it being left out before because each soldier displayed in-game was actually an abstraction of 3 or 4 soldiers in roughly that place on the map.

However, each soldier model in CM:SF is an individual combatant, in a specific place down to within a few feet. Bullets are tracked individually and everything is more precise.

In such a situation I think it should be possible to run down enemy troops, or even unfortunate friendly troops that get in the way. Although in most circumstances the soldier would be able to get out of the way, in some he might not have the chance, such as when in a narrow street enclosed by walls on both sides or just not looking the right way in the confusion of battle.

[Sequoia]

I think we'll have to wait for Combat Mission-Chariot Lords and even then there is much debate as to whether Chariots actually ran down infantry.

[flamingknives]

It wasn't that specifically that was ruled out, just similarly uncommon events.

Even with the individual modelling, the vehicle collision may be too uncommon to put in.

[Sequoia]

Besides then you'd have nastiness like purposely running over wounded enemy. I don't think Battlefront would go for it (though we may have shooting at wounded enemy).

[John Kettler]

I believe such things should be in the game because they occur in real life and form significant constraints at game scale. Back when he was a Bradley CFV commander, my brother's unit had a case in which a couple of guys at NTC were unseen by some other Bradley driver at night and got run over in their sleeping bags. Sheltering behind an AFV in a MOUT situation may work great--until the tank or what have you detects a threat and slams into reverse!

Also, if the intent is to fully exercise all the features in the modern war version before descoping for WW II, then it is important to put in this capability, for it was used in real life then. The Tigerfibel, for example, explicitly instructed tank crews to use expensive MG ammo only when they couldn't simply run down and crush enemy infantry.

This capability is one of the major reasons infantry feared tanks, even when dug in. No one wants to be squashed like a bug, let alone by a roaring clattering implacable lead spewing steel monster. And to an infantryman, even a light tank is a monster. That is why "tank proofing" infantry requires meticulous training, coupled with desensitization drills and pointing out of tank vulnerabilities. For example, I've seen French Foreign Legion training footage in which the recruit is required to lie prone on the pavement, facedown, until just before the tank, in this case an AMX-13 moving at a good clip, is almost upon him. He must reach out and touch the track before rolling to the outside to avoid being squashed. You can see see something similar in the wartime German training films in which men in foxholes and trenches are shown hunkered down as tanks roll right over their positions, and Russian sources have described even nastier drills in which the tanks are fairly close and you have, say, ten minutes to dig your hole before they drive right through your fighting position.

Infantry and AFVs don't play well together to begin with, let alone under fire and when the AFVs are being malevolently directed.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Cpl Steiner]

Originally posted by Sequoia:

Besides then you'd have nastiness like purposely running over wounded enemy.

I bet that happens in real life too. War is nasty. Tempers run high when people are trying to kill you, and sympathy for a wounded foe is probably one of the first things to be thrown out of the window once the shooting starts.

I am all for realism in wargames, regardless of how it offends some people's sensibilities. However I appreciate that allowing the player to do absolutely anything in a wargame can reduce realism. Perhaps you should be able to run over wounded enemy but you don't get any extra points for killing them that way. In the campaign game you could even punish some units for needless slaugher by giving them a morale hit due to subconscious psychological factors (flashbacks and the like).

War is hell, as the saying goes!

[Sequoia]

I don't know, being able to run over the enemy makes the game more arcade like and thus less realistic to me. It reminds me of when I played with my Marx toy soldiers when I was a kid.

[Splinty]

U.S. Army basic training used to have similar training. We were required to hunker down in a foxhole with an empty LAW and after the tank had rolled over pop up and simulate shooting it in the rear.

[rudel.dietrich]

Actualy we have lied to you guys all these months

We are not working on a fictional war in Syria

Instead of have been working on CM:GTA

Or Combat Mission: Grand Theft Auto

You play the role of a corrupt US army officer trying to set up his own criminal enterprise in the crumbling society that is Iraq crica 2008

He is just a simple man who has put in his two tours and if trying to 'grab a piece of the pie' before he retires.

You have the ability to carjack over 75 unique civilain and military vehicles!

Over 120 unique missions and a engaging story with full voice acting!

The game also fully models three Iraqi cities with the surround countryside in between

And yes, you can fully run over as many people as you want !

I mean, whos going to stop you? The Iraqi police are all on your payroll

The game combines the fun of the beloved GTA series with hard biting political commentary

CM:GTA is soon to be released in a store near you!

[Cpl Steiner]

I am fairly thick skinned so I can take a little sarcasm but I am not really sure why so many posters seem to be dismissing this out of hand.

1:1 representation means when you see a soldier standing a few feet from a vehicle the game is really representing a soldier standing a few feet from a vehicle. There is nothing abstract about it. If the vehicle and the soldier suddenly occupy the same physical space then only one of two things can happen - either the soldier gets squashed or he somehow mergers with the vehicle without being harmed, like something out of the Philadelphia Experiment or the X Files.

Surely this needs to be addressed in some way? Either the game abstracts soldier positions or it doesn't.

[flamingknives]

It is not, AFAICT, the abstraction that's the problem. The game has got to detect the collision. The game has got to resolve what happens. The game has to start including all sorts of algorithms that dictate; when and where the TacAI would run an enemy over, how the other side reacts both before and after, how the same side responds to a friendly vehicle accident and how all sorts of vehicles and infantry spot each other and what they do.

All this for something that will not happen in more than 0.1% of battles.

Why bother?

[Sergei]

Cpl Steiner, what you don't seem to recognise is that nothing comes free. Charles has to program the damn thing, and I have no idea what things will be in the game but based on Steve's comments during the last year everything cannot be included, ever. Then it is a matter of is feature X worth the time needed to write it into code, if that means that feature Y which is much more important will be left out.

In the case of your suggestion, I can see problems arising with AI and animations - you would expect the little soldier to try to dodge an approaching vehicle. How would this be done and visualized? It suddenly becomes a lot of work over a feature that would have no practical value. Yes, it would have no practical value. If you can find any source indicating that during OIF even 1/1000 of Iraqi infantry casualties was caused by US vehicles running over them, I'll be surprised.

But who knows, maybe it is already in the game. It was already there in CMAK, not in the sense that infantry would be crushed but they ran or crawled out of the way and lose morale - handy for getting infantry out of foxholes.

D'oh, flamystiletto said basically the same. :mad:

[Cpl Steiner]

Sergei,

As you rightly point out, the instances of vehicles actually running over enemy soldiers is very rare because the little buggers thankfully get out of the way most of the time.

The fact that the threat of being run over influences enemy behaviour is in and of itself an important thing to simulate.

Fair enough, if you don't want the men crushed then the AI must make them run out of the way but you can't simply pretend that tanks running over people has no significance at all.

[stikkypixie]

I think most of the stuff gets blown up before it gets close enough to run over things.

[Sergei]

Originally posted by stikkypixie:

I think most of the stuff gets blown up before it gets close enough to run over things.

Or, the things get mown down by the stuff...

[Fly Pusher]

Originally posted by rudel.dietrich:

Actualy we have lied to you guys all these months

We are not working on a fictional war in Syria

Instead of have been working on CM:GTA

Or Combat Mission: Grand Theft Auto

You play the role of a corrupt US army officer trying to set up his own criminal enterprise in the crumbling society that is Iraq crica 2008

He is just a simple man who has put in his two tours and if trying to 'grab a piece of the pie' before he retires.

You have the ability to carjack over 75 unique civilain and military vehicles!

Over 120 unique missions and a engaging story with full voice acting!

The game also fully models three Iraqi cities with the surround countryside in between

And yes, you can fully run over as many people as you want !

I mean, whos going to stop you? The Iraqi police are all on your payroll

The game combines the fun of the beloved GTA series with hard biting political commentary

CM:GTA is soon to be released in a store near you!

This would neatly explain why Steve was always arguing that the SPEED of the Stryker was such a critical factor in the numerous Bradley v. Stryker threads.

It all starts making sense....

[Caesar]

Can't see this happening.

Just imagine how much animation work would be required - that alone will eliminate it. Then they introduce all the AI work required to get the vehicles to do this at the right time without overdoing it and getting themselves blown up. Yes I agree that there are events like this in real life but consider the Iraq war (and aftermath if you like) - what percentage of the dead and wounded (both sides) were the result of a vehicle deliberately running them down. Seems like far too much work to do for the benefits.

[c3k]

Agreed. The work|benefit ratio seems to fall too low on my threshold.

Most (almost all) able-bodied men are able, and in fact do, get out of the way of vehicles. The wounded, frankly, don't matter to me. If they're wounded, and out of the fight, I don't care how else the game treats WIA after that. (Yes, if it takes another soldier out to provide first aid, that should be in.)

If tanks roll across fields of WIA, that will not affect the tactical outcome in the CM world. Therefore, I don't want it in. (I also don't want to give an option for cretins to attempt that sort of behavior on purpose.)

Thanks,

Ken

[Broompatrol]

If the stryker hits a Syrian on a bike does he fly over the top or get trapped in the wheels? Can a bicycle frame cause an immobilization? Does the frame material matter (aluminum, chrome moly, scandium, magnesium, carbon fiber, titanium)? Can an IED be attached to a bicyle? Can an RPG be fired from a tandem?

When all is said and done does he crunch, squish, or pop? :eek:

[MikeyD]

"...wartime German training films in which men in foxholes and trenches are shown hunkered down as tanks roll right over their positions".

I recall seeing news footage of U.S. troops going through this exact training in Gulf War I.

This board is always mentioning the superiority of the Abrams and the lethality of the Javelin. But if you find your troops in a small CMSF scenario with neither at hand and a Syrian tank suddenly appears, then you - for that particular scenario - are pretty much screwed . What's to stop 'em from simply driving up to your position and squishing you outright?