Possibility of civilians in CMSF 2?

[silverstars]

After playing a couple of quick battles of CMSF the other day, I started thinking about my almost-constant tactic of "lay a hail of gunfire on any question mark you see." And then I thought about how plausible this tactic is in a real urban setting, and that even if I just limit my attacks to small arms fire(which would circumvent any building damage caveats in game if I am not mistaken) I would have my head on a pole for endangering civilians in the real world. And in a world where warfare is becoming more centered on hearts and minds of the local populace, and more battles being found in cities then rolling fields, I am starting to think that to not have something visible in the way of civilians in the battleground is leading to tactics that no longer relate to reality of warfare today.

Now I remember the whole argument given by Battlefront that the resources to develop a full-fledged civilian simulator are way too large for a small return. And granted, I would not expect something along the lines of Grand theft Auto in terms of random locals milling about their daily lives. But as of now the Urban Density being abstractly modeled for hiding uncons doesn't give me any reason to hold back fire on anything. I mean it makes it harder for you to "Find" a taxi or a spy, but if you just get one little question mark on your radar, why hold back? Have a platoon Target Light down the middle of main street and spray everything to kingdom come.

So my idea was something along the lines of a 3rd non-playable side, that just had units of civilians to be placed only by the scanario designer. Give them a conscript morale or something even more shaky. And any casualties you inflict has a negative modifier for your score, for either side or in certain situations, just for BLUFOR. That way as your men inch forward into the Hamlet of wherever and start seeing question marks pop up in buildings, you don't automatically assume that they are OPFOR, and you might choose to hold fire until you can get a positive ID. Also, The player would ease up on blasting every building to rubble when you start seeing civilians fleeing in terror out of buildings when the HE rounds start landing. And don't forget this would allow people to setup actual hostage situations/POW rescue missions in a lot more realistic fashion.

Now, I wouldn't expect something like this to be in any of the WWII games. Civilian impact was more often then not far from the minds of most company commanders, at least compared to today. But maybe when the next Modern setting shows up, something along these lines might happen. I know that the wish list for this series makes Santa's List look like a Post-it, But I think that a more tangible civilian presence would make gameplay hew more close to the real world, much like buddy-aid has made people actually babysit their troops and not send them into one Pickett's Charge after another.

If nothing else, it's something to talk about while we wait for CM:N.

[JonS]

Another - perhaps simpler? - method would be to link it to the Civilian Density setting. The higher the density, the more civilians are presumed to be in the area, obviously. Then each 'shot' has the potential to kill or injure a civilian, weighted for the type of fire (large calibre HE is more likely to inflict cas, etc), and the target location (esp weighting up for firing at or hits on buildings). You could also weight it for training - higher training levels would reduce the risk of civ cas.

That way there'd be no explicit 'civilian' units to worry about, mucking up engine calcs, etc. It would, though, do nothing for your proposed hostage scens.

Or sumfink.

[handihoc]

I certainly agree it would make a great addition. I suggested something similar a while ago, along the lines of an icon indicating when civs are id'd or stongly suspected of being in a building/location. It could apply whether or not enemy forces are in the same building.

Something along these lines would definitely add an extra element of tension to the game, and wouldn't require actual civilian modelling so, as far as I'm aware, wouldn't add too much to the calcs. I guess your hostage/pow scenario would require modelling, but even that could be something static and quite basic.

[Destraex1]

they all live in the mosque. Just don't hit it

[c3k]

The other side of this is the underlying assumption of civilians out and about during a battle. During a peacekeeping/occupation role, with patrols moving about in a city, and combat due to ambushes, sure, your idea about civilians is justifiable. Not so much during combat operations; except for a few surprise situations, most civilians will either be hiding in dugouts under the kitchen floor, trenches in the back yard, or will have fled prior to the fight.

In WWII, civilian casualties were an object (if enemy) or simply accepted (French, Dutch, etc., during 1944).

I do not mean that civilians don't die. They do, often in large numbers. However, during active combat operations, are there any cases of Blue forces being excoriated by the press (that being the only way it would affect victory conditions)?

The press reporting on Blue is the only way this works. (Have you ever heard or seen of Red press reporting negatively on Red forces? Or any press report having an effect on Red forces?)

To me, ignoring occupation issues, which are more regarded by the press as the military acting as police, the only time bad press had an operational effect on a Blue combat mission may have been Isreal in Lebanon; the bad press for civilian casualties may have forced Isreal to abandon it's aerial bombardment phase sooner than they wanted. That led to their ground attack. We all know how that worked out.

Any other combat operation examples???

Regards,

Ken

[handihoc]

I have seen footage (admittedly much of it 're-enactions') of Brit and US inf clearing buildings occupied by terrified civilians.

It's true that any civilians that haven't fled are likely to be hunkered down indoors, but you still have the problem of occupying/clearing that building without inflicting needless casualties on non-combatants - plus the possibility of enemy combatants placing themselves deliberately in the same location.

Then there's the issue of calling in an airstrike in support of infantry where enemy combatants are believed to be hidden, only to later discover (as I'm sure we've all seen on the news from time to time) that you've bombed a wedding party or family gathering.

There's also some excellent but shocking examples in Generation Kill of villages being observed by the Marines recce force and confirmed as a non-threat, only to be bombed out of existence by some incompetent higher up. I would guess that that kind of thing happens more often than we get to know about in our armchairs back home.

[Dietrich]

I do not mean that civilians don't die. They do, often in large numbers. However, during active combat operations, are there any cases of Blue forces being excoriated by the press (that being the only way it would affect victory conditions)?

The press reporting on Blue is the only way this works. (Have you ever heard or seen of Red press reporting negatively on Red forces? Or any press report having an effect on Red forces?)

To me, ignoring occupation issues, which are more regarded by the press as the military acting as police, the only time bad press had an operational effect on a Blue combat mission may have been Isreal in Lebanon; the bad press for civilian casualties may have forced Isreal to abandon it's aerial bombardment phase sooner than they wanted. That led to their ground attack. We all know how that worked out.

Getting torn a new one by the press and by the brass isn't the only reason -- or even the primary reason -- why Blue (no matter which war) should strive to not inflict civilian casualties. Civilians whose friends and loved ones get turned into Swiss cheese by machine guns, disfigured by grenades, or atomized by JDAMs have a disturbing tendency to arm themselves and conduct ruthless guerilla warfare on Blue and to feel unsettlingly little compuction about, well, torturing captured Blue soldiers.

Sure, we hear about the five Marines getting killed by an IED blast one day, seven British soldiers being seriously wounded by a mortar attack the next, and we hear about journalists and such who get kidnapped and held for ransom, but would it be reasonable to think that insurgents would not like to do horrific things to captured soldiers from the forces they are already locked in guerilla warfare with?

To put it in the context of CMSF: If I were a soldier or a Marine, I'd rather face an entire company of Syrian troops than a dozen AK- and knife-wielding insurgents who know the land and can sneak around (my NVGs notwithstanding). But, sad to say, if I were a soldier or a Marine in CMSF, I would already have earned the bloodthirsty wrath of the insurgent.

[Rustman]

I have seen footage (admittedly much of it 're-enactions') of Brit and US inf clearing buildings occupied by terrified civilians.

It's true that any civilians that haven't fled are likely to be hunkered down indoors, but you still have the problem of occupying/clearing that building without inflicting needless casualties on non-combatants - plus the possibility of enemy combatants placing themselves deliberately in the same location.

Then there's the issue of calling in an airstrike in support of infantry where enemy combatants are believed to be hidden, only to later discover (as I'm sure we've all seen on the news from time to time) that you've bombed a wedding party or family gathering.

There's also some excellent but shocking examples in Generation Kill of villages being observed by the Marines recce force and confirmed as a non-threat, only to be bombed out of existence by some incompetent higher up. I would guess that that kind of thing happens more often than we get to know about in our armchairs back home.

To be honest, you'd be suprised how bold civilians on the battlefield can actually be. I've seen a dude ride a pedal bike right through the middle of one of our fire fights. Literally within seconds of the last round being fired I've seen civilians flood out into the battlefield to see what is going on. It's a pain in the arse constantly having to check-fire your mortars because the civilians won't stay inside their house where they'd be safe (well...safer, anyway) and they wander right into the area you are trying to blow up.

[Battlefront.com]

Civilians in wargames has been largely ignored for one or both of two reasons:

1. They're damned difficult to simulate realistically.

2. It makes wargamers feel "icky".

The second reason is the most obvious. Almost all wargamers like to play wargames because of the military tactics and hardware involved. They want clean fights and don't tend to like things that make those fights dirty. That includes friendly fire, though most of you Combat Mission types have responded very well to that since we introduced it into CMBO.

The real bugaboo is the first reason. Civilians are not even remotely similar to military units in terms of their behavior. Rustman's first hand experience, even though briefly stated, clearly shows that. This means we'd have to code completely different AI, at all levels, to get civilians to behave in ways that are realistic for a given situation.

Civilians also tend to operate without centralized command even at a very low level. A family of 4 may have one of the parents "commanding" the family "unit", but for the most part civilians act independently of each other. This means each civilian would have to have its own dedicated processes for decision making (AI) and movement (pathfinding). Compare this to military units where AI and pathfinding is rarely done at the individual level, but instead done at a group level (up to 7 men in CM terms). This is bad enough, but it gets worse...

In COIN OPS in a populated area would have require perhaps 10 to 100 times as many civilians as military units. A fight between two enemy forces of reinforced company size might involve 500 men in about 100 or so units requiring AI and pathfinding. If there is even a small civilian population for such a fight, say 2000 individuals, the number of "units" would grow from 100 to something like 2000. A 20 fold increase in hardware demands for just AI and pathfinding. And that's just the beginning...

Each "unit" in the game increases the chances of an engagement of some sort. Against enemy units it would be shooting, most likely, but with civilians would be NOT shooting. From the hardware's standpoint the calculations for this are roughly the same. Now we have to ask the poor hardware to handle cross checking and determining results not based on 50 units from one side bumping into 50 units on the other side, but rather 50 units on one side bumping into 50 units of one type and 1900 of another type. Same on the other side. The means at any given time there can be potential "conflicts" between nearly 4000 units.

Then you have to figure all of the CPU and graphics power that is required to animate the civilians, VRAM needed to store enough textures to make the civilians believable, voices, etc.

For a military client we could dedicate a "node", or several, for a networked game to handle the processing of civilians. This would still be a big burden on the system, and of course would require all kinds of development resources to make it happen, but in theory it can be done. It's just not practical for a commercial product.

In short... it's a NIGHTMARE for not only us to develop, but for the average home computer to even attempt to handle. Which is why civilians will remain abstract for the life of CMx2 and whatever else we make for commercial purposes.

Steve

[MikeyD]

Several patches ago I did a 3rd party scenario involving unarmed rioters (with militants mixed in) attacking a peacekeeping outpost. I used hoards of 'spies' as civilian rioters. It worked pretty well for awhile but then spotting protocols for spies got changed in a later patch. Deep-sixed my scenario since most of the 'forces' could no longer be seen!

And yes, during scenario play things did tend to turn "icky" as my desperate Blue forces shot down anyone they saw approaching.

[handihoc]

Steve, your point is well-accepted in terms of the difficulties of actually modelling civilian behaviour, animation and AI. But what about something along the lines of what I suggested above, where civilians remain abstracted but we can be made aware of their presence in buildings by the simple use of icons.

It would put a different slant on tactics. I, for one, would find that kind of extra element very challenging without getting into anything 'icky'.

[Sequoia]

I'm one of those guys who prefer NOT to have civilians in a tactical wargame as I prefer to keep it clean, so Steve is not just making guys like me up. I realise it may be more realistic at times but I want to be "playing" a wargame not simulating everything a real war entails.

[MarkEzra]

I continue to lobby for inclusion of Female "spies" in the WW2 Setting. The French underground contained many heroic woman at all levels of "unconventional warfare". By using them as spies (unarmed) the game can celebrate Woman's contribution in warfare as well as continuing BFC well known fidelity to historical accuracy.

[Smaragdadler]

This is my post about Civilian Density setting as repost:

But the idea is not bad. Intense of deformed terrain and damaged structures is factored with Civillian Population Density (the mission parameter) as standard. Add additional 'human meta mission parameters' like political home climate, press presence and orientation...

Damage of "Preserve" objectives is added on top - if occuring.

There could be even different standart 'value' for all terrain tiles and buildings types. Even for trees.

Then put a more elaborate medical supply system on top of it, call it something like "Übergrogrealitätsmodus" and give it to us as a surprise in the NATO-modul.

--> connect it with the campaign-engine to allow for political background calculations. (To much 'kabooom-pengpeng' and players looses his political mandat on homefront).

--> when you have made a perfect QB-system in CMx2:Normandy, you can make a random campaign engine for CMSF 2. (!)

How about something like this + handihoc idea about mis-spotting as a additional difficult level?

[Sequoia]

I continue to lobby for inclusion of Female "spies" in the WW2 Setting. The French underground contained many heroic woman at all levels of "unconventional warfare". By using them as spies (unarmed) the game can celebrate Woman's contribution in warfare as well as continuing BFC well known fidelity to historical accuracy.

Now you're just trying to get Alizee into the game aren't you?

[Rocky Balboa]

Yep .... I like Handihocs idea of making it abstract enough to avoid the complexities that Steve mentioned. Make the NonComs an icon that can be spotted but is stationary and doesn't move. if fire enters in or passes through that action area then there is a possibility of NonCom casualties. This would allow the scenario designer to include them or not.

Another addition would be to give a NonCom icon a random chance (or preassigned by scenario designer) to convert to a red sniper or ied trigger man. At that point they behave according to the AI script for those units.

[Battlefront.com]

MarkEzra,

I continue to lobby for inclusion of Female "spies" in the WW2 Setting.

Complete with black berets, trench coats, and white socks? "Listen very carefully... I will only say this one time"

Whenever we look at spending time on something we look at the "bang for the buck" that comes from it. Making civilians a tiny bit less abstract is not a bad thing in theory, but we think it isn't a good place for us to divert attention towards. Having an icon popup in semi-random locations, representing the presence of civilians, is not a bad idea. However, I can already see people having problems with it. "I want to fight from this building, so I want to move the civilians out". "Why don't they ever move?". "Hey, why aren't they ever seen in the streets? You need to put them there!". So on and so forth.

Sometimes we're just better off with a gross abstraction than a more refined one. This is such a case, in our opinions. The overall effect of civilians can be simulated right now, without any additional features, so the functionality is there if the scenario designer chooses to tap into it. We don't have any plans to do anything additional for civilian simulation in the near future. There are plenty of other more important things, overall, to spend our time on.

Steve

[Rocky Balboa]

MarkEzra,

Complete with black berets, trench coats, and white socks? Steve

Since were talking about abstraction how about just black berets and white socks but no trench coats?

[GSX]

I'm one of those guys who prefer NOT to have civilians in a tactical wargame as I prefer to keep it clean, so Steve is not just making guys like me up. I realise it may be more realistic at times but I want to be "playing" a wargame not simulating everything a real war entails.

I also have no desire to play wargames loaded down with civvies. The clue is in the 'games' element. I just personally think it wouldnt be fun at all to include them, does your AI then aid them when they get blown up?

[Alan8325]

A little bit less abstracted civilians would be good. They don't need to have all of their activities simulated, at least not at first. I would be satisfied with seeing them do nothing but just walk, run and stand around randomly. Standing would be "abstract" for talking to friends, fixing their car, buying at a market, eating, drinking, talking on the cell phone and basically everything that would be a nightmare to actually show. Once the shooting starts everyone would run into random buildings and disappear. You don't even have to show civilians inside buildings since building interiors are already abstracted anyway.

With this added, you have visual evidence of civilian casualties and you can add civilian casualty conditions to scenarios in addition to the preserve objectives for buildings.

[silverstars]

Ah, its nice to post something late at night and wake up to find a discussion.....

Just thought I'd mention that when I thought of the idea of having civilian units in game, I in no way imagined trying to model EVERY civilian in the area. I was thinking of say 1-2 units(say 4-8 civvies per unit) in a village, 3-4 for a town, and maybe 6-7 in an urban area. In other words, just put in enough civvies to make you want to check your fire, but not so many as to bathe your display in question marks, and/or bog the system into the ground. And again, make it something that the scenario designer can put in if they want, so that not every scenario has to be set up with civs in it.

[handihoc]

If nothing else, could we just have Rustman's random dude on a pedal bike from time to time?

[JonS]

Making civilians a tiny bit less abstract is not a bad thing in theory, ...

The thing is that currently, they are so abstract they effectively don't exist. As I understand the original post, the requirement is to have something act as a brake on turning cities (and other locations) into free-fire-zones, making players come up with other solutions to tactical problems. The current PRESERVE obj does that to a certain extent, but the way it works is so coarse as to make it very nearly irrelevant.

Yes, civ AI would be hard. Yes, having immobile civs hanging about would be annoying. So don't do that.

Instead abstract the civs such that they're never actually present, but that any application of fire may cause civ cas, and factor that into the end-game results.

[Rocky Balboa]

Instead abstract the civs such that they're never actually present, but that any application of fire may cause civ cas, and factor that into the end-game results.

Jon S,

While I understand that your suggestion/solution would be much easier for BF to implement. To be honest, I would personally rather keep things as they are now than have to assault a ville where I know that I could inflict NonCom casualties but I have no way of controlling whether I do or not. Under your solution I would just say "f-it, I don't know if there are civvies there or not so just Rock and Roll". At that point its just kind of up to the roll of the dice .....

If you and others would be annoyed by having static NonComs in the way then IMO its better just to keep the status quo.

[Smaragdadler]

Why has it to be 'all-or-nothing'. Make it as a top difficult level as I sad.