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Just curious is there anyone here who is or has been a soldier?
Failing that is there any Police, or even avid paintballers?

Just curious what you would think would be important for a game depicting realistic combat?

namegoeshere wrote:Just curious is there anyone here who is or has been a soldier?
Failing that is there any Police, or even avid paintballers?

Just curious what you would think would be important for a game depicting realistic combat?

Screaming, crying, and bleeding. Oh, and exhaustion, both mental and physical.

Stress, unmanageable stress that only 15% of us can actually think lucidly through.

sA

gakloads of stress, alot of things that will stick in your mind no matter how much therapy you have (flashbacks, nightmares etc etc)
all in all, fethed up emotions.

im in the military, i know there are quite a few others aswell on dakka, 2 of which are currently out in the sandbox.

Ridiculous amounts of pointless, fruitless paperwork, forms and bureaucracy.

Getting all kinds of cool toys to shoot at the enemy, only to have a CNN reporter attached to your platoon thus makeing it very hard to do without Biasd media smearing your name through the mud.

jp400 wrote:Getting all kinds of cool toys to shoot at the enemy, only to have a CNN reporter attached to your platoon thus makeing it very hard to do without Biasd media smearing your name through the mud.

If you are worried that the CNN reporter might drag your "good name" through the mud then maybe, just maybe you shouldn't be one of the guys with a gun. Ever. If you think having the light shone upon your actions is a bad thing, perhaps a career in an organization with less pride in itself then the US military, with it's history of heroes might be a poor fit. Try Black water ( or whatever name those craven turds now call themselves). If your actions make you look bad on CNN, recognize the Al Jazerra and other less freindly agencies will make the results of poor fire control look much much worse.

If you don't recognize that you are fighting a publicity war, then you are going to lose quickly.

ever tried to work under bad conditions while being shot at? its not the best thing in the world.

now imagine having a snooping fething journo in the way all the time and questioning every action you make.
this may cause mistakes to be made.

efarrer wrote:

jp400 wrote:Getting all kinds of cool toys to shoot at the enemy, only to have a CNN reporter attached to your platoon thus makeing it very hard to do without Biasd media smearing your name through the mud.

If you are worried that the CNN reporter might drag your "good name" through the mud then maybe, just maybe you shouldn't be one of the guys with a gun. Ever. If you think having the light shone upon your actions is a bad thing, perhaps a career in an organization with less pride in itself then the US military, with it's history of heroes might be a poor fit. Try Black water ( or whatever name those craven turds now call themselves). If your actions make you look bad on CNN, recognize the Al Jazerra and other less freindly agencies will make the results of poor fire control look much much worse.

If you don't recognize that you are fighting a publicity war, then you are going to lose quickly.

Obvious troll is obvious.

JD21290 wrote:ever tried to work under bad conditions while being shot at? its not the best thing in the world.

now imagine having a snooping fething journo in the way all the time and questioning every action you make.
this may cause mistakes to be made.

If it had been someone interested at all in reporting events as oppossed to generating news, I'd a been less inclinded to agree with JD. However, it seems that JD was, sadly enough when reflected upon, DAMN straight on target. Not pretty, but not false either. Good call JD.

grizgrin wrote:

efarrer wrote:

jp400 wrote:Getting all kinds of cool toys to shoot at the enemy, only to have a CNN reporter attached to your platoon thus makeing it very hard to do without Biasd media smearing your name through the mud.

If you are worried that the CNN reporter might drag your "good name" through the mud then maybe, just maybe you shouldn't be one of the guys with a gun. Ever. If you think having the light shone upon your actions is a bad thing, perhaps a career in an organization with less pride in itself then the US military, with it's history of heroes might be a poor fit. Try Black water ( or whatever name those craven turds now call themselves). If your actions make you look bad on CNN, recognize the Al Jazerra and other less freindly agencies will make the results of poor fire control look much much worse.

If you don't recognize that you are fighting a publicity war, then you are going to lose quickly.

Obvious troll is obvious.

Whatever.

I'd say something more but getting moderated isn't worth it.

I'm a former Marine with two tours to Iraq and an Army cavalry scout, here's my tips for a realistic game.

If a game could somehow work in a mechanic where the player only vaguely knows what the objective is, or it changes halfway through the game would be good way to get realism into it.

Another way would be to make it hard to distinguish between your enemies models and random models or even your own models on the table top would be another way to make it pretty realistic.

Oh, here's a good one for simulating the stress of combat, you could have very detailed hit modifiers and charts and the whole time your tying to figure out what you need to roll to hit and wound someone is screaming in your ear or blowing an air horn into it, therefore making it hard to tell if you actually hit anything.

Oh and the combat should only last for one or two turns, while the other 8-12 turns revolves around your models trying to stay awake during guard duty, bumming alcohol from the locals, trying to sleep with air force chicks, and playing xbox or watching bootleg movies.

efarrer wrote:

jp400 wrote:Getting all kinds of cool toys to shoot at the enemy, only to have a CNN reporter attached to your platoon thus makeing it very hard to do without Biasd media smearing your name through the mud.

If you are worried that the CNN reporter might drag your "good name" through the mud then maybe, just maybe you shouldn't be one of the guys with a gun. Ever. If you think having the light shone upon your actions is a bad thing, perhaps a career in an organization with less pride in itself then the US military, with it's history of heroes might be a poor fit. Try Black water ( or whatever name those craven turds now call themselves). If your actions make you look bad on CNN, recognize the Al Jazerra and other less freindly agencies will make the results of poor fire control look much much worse.

If you don't recognize that you are fighting a publicity war, then you are going to lose quickly.

Thanks all for your input

Hmmm... unfortunately everyone screams at the idea of their guardsmen running away, apparently in the future moral is perfect.
But it is something I would personally like to include in a game.
Also the possibility of friendly fire or units getting the wrong order.

Shouting at people while they play sounds fun. But only for the shouter

I can't think of a way to make missions change part way through though, I think it would be too frustrating.

As a soldier, in combat how much do you actually know? Are you shooting at specific enemy, or shooting in their vague direction? Do you know if they know where you are? Do you think your commanders (or whoever is making decisions) knows where the enemy are? Do you know the layout of where you are, or not?

How much do you make decisions yourself and how much do you relly on orders you recieve/

Former infantryman in the 42nd RQR.

Boredom, long periods of nothing happening, then all hell breaking loose for a few minutes, then clean up, back to beginning.

As a soldier, in combat how much do you actually know?

How much do I know about the current mission? Depends on your command, if you have a good LT then he'll try to fill you in on every aspect of the mission, then you generally have a pretty good idea of what's going on. A bad LT can leave you pretty in the dark as I've heard at least one LT brief his men by saying "we're going to get the bad guys."

Generally you have a good idea of "where" the enemy is, but you add in a lot of random factors like night, bad maps, bad map reading, communications going down then you can get really turned around esp. in places like sadr city where the streets are tighter than mordheim. Very rarely did i actually "see" an enemy, most times you see their muzzle flashes and shoot at them.

The enemy always know where you are, we drive around in huge trucks, tanks, helicopters and all sorts of other noisy vehicles, also they have people just watching our movements and reporting them.

Because of SAT images we always pretty much knew the layout of the land, sometime though you have to translate what you see in the SAT images, you might see a cluster of buildings but it's hard to gauge the height of them or the depth of a ravine.

The commanders like to think they know where the enemy is, and sometimes they do but more often they don't. I can't count how many times I've raided the houses of suspected IED makers to find it occupied by an old couple.

The very minutiae of details are made by the individual, most decision like what street we're gonna go down, what building we're gonna hide in that sort of thing starts at about the platoon level, with LTs making a lot of tactical decisions, but all stratigic decisions are made by people not actually on the battlefield

Hope this helps.

Daggermaw wrote:I'm a former Marine with two tours to Iraq and an Army cavalry scout, here's my tips for a realistic game.

If a game could somehow work in a mechanic where the player only vaguely knows what the objective is, or it changes halfway through the game would be good way to get realism into it.

Another way would be to make it hard to distinguish between your enemies models and random models or even your own models on the table top would be another way to make it pretty realistic.

Oh, here's a good one for simulating the stress of combat, you could have very detailed hit modifiers and charts and the whole time your tying to figure out what you need to roll to hit and wound someone is screaming in your ear or blowing an air horn into it, therefore making it hard to tell if you actually hit anything.

Oh and the combat should only last for one or two turns, while the other 8-12 turns revolves around your models trying to stay awake during guard duty, bumming alcohol from the locals, trying to sleep with air force chicks, and playing xbox or watching bootleg movies.

After the game's over, you have to play another game on a 4+, even if you don't want to.

After the game's over, you have to play another game on a 4+, even if you don't want to.

Genius I love it. It could be the "you've been extended" roll.

Actually it could be more accurate by making it after the 1st game it's +2, after the second it's +3 and so on, by the time you're actually finished playing, you're totally sick of the game.

I paintball, I don't think I'd ever join the military because IMO no nation, god or leader is worth getting shot and killed for.

If it had been someone interested at all in reporting events as oppossed to generating news, I'd a been less inclinded to agree with JD. However, it seems that JD was, sadly enough when reflected upon, DAMN straight on target. Not pretty, but not false either. Good call JD.

i only say that since a friend of mine was discharge from the army thanks to a journo that thought he knew better.
when your told to do something by a CO for your own safety (and the rest of the unit's) then you do it without question.
a journo was shot in the leg by an enemy soldie after he refused to move back, instead he started shouting, and as a result he got shot. (he is fine though, shame)
the CO was then discharged for not keeping command over his unit or anyone else who was put with the unit.





thousandth son, true enough, but the money is worth it, ok, there are loads of better jobs in the world, but i decided to take stupid options at school and as a result i paid for it

I paintball, I don't think I'd ever join the military because IMO no nation, god or leader is worth getting shot and killed for.

And that attitude right there is why America is falling apart.

I think this country is worth the sacrifice.

I don't think we should criticize soldiers in a thread about members who are soldiers. I'm grateful people are willing to do it, I really think the decision to go to war or not is in the hands of politicians/ voters, soldiers have to follow orders once they are given or people would get killed.
Anyway I am grateful some people are willing to risk their lives for others.

I'd be happy to hear about the tactical stuff of paintball too though.

When you say 'stress' (screaming crying etc), do you think that amounts to people up and running away? Or hunkering down doing nothing? Or doing their stuff badly/ not following orders correctly?

Are most combats over in an hour or two? Or are there plenty of combats that go on for longer?

How much friendly communication goes on? Every minute? Every 5,10, 20minutes? Less?

Thanks again for info

When you say 'stress' (screaming crying etc), do you think that amounts to people up and running away? Or hunkering down doing nothing? Or doing their stuff badly/ not following orders correctly?

I've neer personally seen anyone of us "route" and I believe that because of our superior training it might be a thing of the past.(But we also aren't fighting space demons and such) If you look at wars throughout history most wars are fought by people who have little to no training and are just given a weapon and told go kill the enemy. These people also were watching their comrades die of horrific wounds on the battlefield. Currently in Iraq if a Marine or soldier is wounded and doesn't die instantly there's something like a 95% chance that you'll survive your wounds.

I have seen Iraqis run from the field, but then again I don't think it's from losing a moral check. i think it has more to do with the fact that they're guerillas and it makes sound tactical sense to route when faced by overwhelming numbers with superior weapons.

The stress of combat comes usually later, when your trying to sleep and you're keyed up.

Are most combats over in an hour or two? Or are there plenty of combats that go on for longer?

Most combat is over in less than an hour fire fights are usually very brief, but on occasion can become extended affairs. For the current war do a search for the Battle of Najaf (which I was involed in) there the fighting lasted for a solid three days or so. There were lulls in the fighting where we would trade pot shots or something but we were "in the field" for 3 straight days. That fight led into a three week battle that was small skirmishes in and around the city througout Aug of '04

How much friendly communication goes on? Every minute? Every 5,10, 20minutes? Less?

That all depends on what's going on. A small presense patrol doesn't warrant much comms between platoons and higher. Once the bullets start flying though it's a whole different affair. Sometimes there's so much comms being sent people are stepping all over the comms, making it hard to figure out what's going on. So it's not even a matter of time but constant communication.

For a pretty acurate representation of the current war give the HBO series Generation Kill a look.