Bodies

[Cpl Steiner]

Hi everyone,

I have been play-testing a new scenario in which rival tribal militia squabble over who gets to loot the bodies and vehicles of a wrecked Syrian Army convoy. Part of the reason for doing the scenario was to have a map that was reminiscent of the "Highway of Death" of the first Gulf War, as it would capture a mood of bleak desolation which I haven't seen in any other scenario so far.

Anyway, whilst placing wrecked and burning vehicles along the central road of the map which is to be the objective for both sides, I realised that what it was missing was bodies. There is no way to put corpses in the game as a scenario "flavour" object.

I know this sounds kind of sick but I think it would be a useful feature to have in the game for when you want to represent the wreckage of a recent battle as the focus of a scenario. If we could have an "OK" or "Dead" status for foot units just like we do with vehicle units, it would give us the option to represent such situations. Other uses would be for things like US forces securing crash sites or rescuing ambushed units etc.

What do people think of this idea? Does anyone think it would be in poor taste?

[medlinke]

That might be a bit too graphic to simulate.

I'm all for tires, barrels, etc. But littering the battlefield with corpses goes a step too far in my opinion. I'm all for realism, but I also appreciate the sanitized casualty representation in the game. No arms, legs, or heads laying around, etc.

That's just my opinion though.

[Field Marshal Blücher]

Well, if it's just dead bodies, as they appear in the game already, I would actually like that for scenarios. But I agree with medlinke in that I think that having severed body parts all over the place would not be cool.

[Splinty]

If the bodies were shown as a generic corpse a-la CMx1, I think it's a good idea, keep it within the bounds of taste is all.

[SlowMotion]

I would rather have a small number of civilian vehicles that could be placed on the map. Like a bus, truck, van etc. Now cities in scenarios look like ghost towns.

[medlinke]

I can totally get behind generic trash to grunge up the towns a bit!

Generic casualties I could get behind as well. Not necessarily the charred remains or more gruesome aspects of war though.

Actually what'd be awesome is if there was a way to integrate Google Sketchup with CMx2 somehow so that you could create your own 3d objects for use in the game.

[Cpl Steiner]

Hi,

Thanks for your responses. Just so everyone knows what I meant, I just wanted the option of picking a unit from the roster and placing them on the map as a "red" casualty, just as they would appear after becoming a casualty in-game. That way I could place a burning BMP and a bunch of dead Syrian soldiers next to it. It's only what you would see during a typical game so I don't think we should get too hung up about severed body parts etc.

[MarkEzra]

I did a recent video that describes a car bombing and it's sad and costly aftermath. As the author and director I can tell you it's a message Video...but then that's what I think about wargaming in general...life lessons abound in our hobby.

Frankly I like your idea...I think it speaks to the common place horror that exist so casually in the world.

Here's a way of getting your bodies and vehicle destruction, too:

"bake" the scen so the first turn has car bombs exploding on the road. You'll want to dismount all the vehicle drivers and infantry first so they won't vanish. Good luck on the scen and I truly hope the message will prove of value.

[LongLeftFlank]

Burnt out wrecks of cars, trucks and buses have been high on my list for new flavour objects for some time now.

I'm agnostic on corpses, although they would have a wide application for scenarios set on battlefields already in progress.

To suit the tastes of the more ghoulish, if BFC provided a generic "clean" corpse set, I'm sure someone in the mod community could use textures and alpha channels to portray varying states of decay, dismemberment and charring. And then of course there will be a need for vulture flavour objects (recall the opening scene of "Patton").

[hoolaman]

I think the idea to set a foot unit to "Dead" is a good one.

Cpl Steiner is not talking about a "pile-o-skulls" flavour object, just some realistic dead squads for storytelling purposes.

[Paper Tiger]

Weird. I found myself wishing for the same thing yesterday too. I am in the middle of playtesting a scenario that starts immediately after a lethal ambush which has killed two platoons of infantry, their vehicles and three tanks. I have the burning wrecks strewn along the road but was wishing that I could put the squads in with their status as 'Dead' to complete the picture. Unfortunately(!), this mission is part of a campaign so I can't take recourse to Mark's suggestion.

Since the game already shows dead soldiers, of course it's not in bad taste. However, flavour objects of arms, limbs etc... THAT would be gross.

[theFightingSeabee]

I agree. But burned out cars, buildings, blast marks, buildings on fire, etc would be cool. Buildings never seem to catch fire.

[Paper Tiger]

Broken and burning buildings are something that I would LOVE to see put back into CMx2 too. I guess this will come with the Normandy game. I can't imagine a WW2 game of this level without them.

[LongLeftFlank]

In the current game, I suppose you could simulate a burning building by putting a burning vehicle of a type you aren't otherwise using in it (place the unit in there before placing the building), then mod all the vehicle's textures to transparent. Haven't tried it though.

[Thomm]

Good idea, no doubt!

Best regards,

Thomm

[Thomm]

Cpl Steiner,

I made an "official" entry representing your idea in the beta database with full credits given to you and a link to this thread!

This way, hopefully this idea will not get lost!

Best regards,

Thomm

[Cpl Steiner]

Cpl Steiner,

I made an "official" entry representing your idea in the beta database with full credits given to you and a link to this thread!

This way, hopefully this idea will not get lost!

Best regards,

Thomm

Thanks very much!

[cool breeze]

It might even be tactically important. go to the dead platoon to get ammo.

[Combatintman]

More applicable in COIN campaigns as well - insurgents relieving bodies of weapons and ammunition - would count up if the missions were designed right,

[19Kyle72]

Wow. I'm actually pretty amazed at the fact that "ready made" corpses, such as the ones that are created in the midst of playing a mission, aren't already available for mission designers to insert wherever they deem necessary or desirable. I can't imagine how much more convincing a scenario would be to do a rescue mission of vehicle X or aircraft X (oops! I forgot, NO aircraft representations of ANY kind for us dreamers of what should be there by default) and there not be corpses to litter about the wreckage. In my opinion, it'd be wise to also include units of various degrees of injuries.

In terms of the "degree of carnage" said corpses should be available in, it doesn't bother me one way or another. I'm actually surprised by some of the strong reactions against gore here, especially after you've seen hundreds (if not thousands or tens of thousands) of opponents pinned down, crying in desperation at their truly terrible plight. Seriously, what's visual gore going to "take away" when we witness that kind of horror every single time we load up a game and it lasts from the start to the finish?

It's ludicrous to pretend that this has anything to do with "standards of tastes" when we're busy blowing away men grovelling face down crying in sheer terror at their impending fate.

I've told a lot of people over the years of my playing CM titles, if you want a great motivator to not start a war, watch a CM game being played. When I play this game, my heart's constantly in my throat due to my attempts at preserving every single unit I can, and while I'm doing my best to wipe out the enemy, it's nearly impossible for me to not have a genuinely sympathetic response towards them too.

My father was in the military for 25 years, and I sat on the knee of many a WWII, Korean War or Vietnam vet and listened to their war stories at the basement bar of the armory, on their backyard decks or at shoreline BBQs. I thought that I knew what war was about, and had no idea that these guys were speaking VOLUMES to each other without ever uttering a sound about any of the horrific details.

Those horrors were laid bare to me from one of my childhood friends who was part of the invasion of Iraq, and there's really no way for me to truly comprehend it. It's an almost pointless exercise anyway, for the only way anybody can ever truly understand something is to LIVE it. But the horror, from the smells, body parts/human tissue sticking to the sides of buildings, skin hanging from overhead cables/lines... Not to mention the painful and debilitating side effects of something as "simple" as not bathing one's own body for several months, or having to withstand the intense concussive shocks that rattle one's body just by being within a 100 m. of one's own artillery when it's firing... It's not hard to see why our brothers and sisters crack up after they've been exposed to such severe and completely unnatural pressures.

I was so stunned and concerned about what I was now being told that for a while there I hunted book shops for first hand accounts from soldiers whose stories weren't censored by (1) society's "taboo" about not talking about the whole reality of war and (2) editor/publisher. The multi-era titles that I did dig up dovetailed together in confirming the gruesome details of what I was told; the only difference was the technology behind it. In spite of all of this nose-to-the-page research, I can't get my mind around it, and hopefully never will.

I gained permission from my friend to share some of these stories with my father, and it was amazing to me how he just opened up to me regarding war stories he was told when I wasn't around. "Do you remember So-And-So? Well, remember that story about...? Here's the stuff you weren't told about... And here's a story you've never heard at all..." I'm still dumbfounded by it all. The silence surrounding this topic doesn't serve anyone, especially our vets who have to walk around with all of this stuff bottled up inside of them.

Seriously, the CM series makes my heart sink with just as much intensity as it makes my mind think. It does ALL of this already without having to depict the unimaginable gore that's involved in real life. But let's not fool ourselves into thinking that we're playing a tasteful game about a tasteless subject. CM was the first title that depicted to some degree the sheer terror that the participants feel, and to show how it affects their capabilities to stay alive. That's horror too, and it shakes me more than the buckets of gore I've seen in first person shooters.

Putting the carnage in would serve to deepen the level of the SIMULATION, but it's NOT necessary to elevate the effectiveness of how deeply the CM series impacts one's psychological senses. No war game has ever shaken me as profoundly as CM.

And that's an achievement that's difficult to measure or reflect with words. Believe it or not, this series has impacted me almost as rofoundly as my friend's all too heavy words. I'm grateful that I don't have to walk around in his boots, and I'll be forever grateful to him for having the courage to open up and for rightfully eradicating my (harmful) misunderstanding of what's whitewashed for the masses.

[LongLeftFlank]

Well said. And welcome to the forum.

[bodkin]

It's a fine line to tread for game developers, do they represent human death as comical moment for the enjoyment of the player or graphic simulation of what the real effects of weapons have on the human body.

Most games in my experience go for the former, even when limbs are flying through the air in a pink mist it usually has a cartoonish humour about it. This kind of representation would not suit a game such as CMSF. So the alternative is to show decapitation, and dismemberment in a realistic way. However this sort of shocking violence would possibly reduce the gaming enjoyment of alot of players who play for the tactical challenge and the admiration of the technology and weaponary involved. In that context I fell CMSF should stick to their simplified version of casualties.

However - back on topic - bodies could be added to editor for broader scenario realism.

[Paper Tiger]

Sorry mate. Those sentiments don't carry any weight with me I'm afraid. For me it really is just a game and adding gore to it will just detract from my enjoyment. I don't expect my chess pieces to emit blood curdling screams when I'm playing chess either.

Back to the topic - if they could be 'buddy aided' for some extra ammo, that would definitely help as well.

[bodkin]

Sorry mate. Those sentiments don't carry any weight with me I'm afraid. For me it really is just a game and adding gore to it will just detract from my enjoyment. I don't expect my chess pieces to emit blood curdling screams when I'm playing chess either.

Back to the topic - if they could be 'buddy aided' for some extra ammo, that would definitely help as well.

PT, I think that's what I was trying to say, I obviously didn't make my post clear enough.

[Topo]

Agree with Paper Tiger, no need for gore IMHO.

Saluti.