Insurgent Body Recovering

[terenz]

As most people probably know, it is very difficult to make any kill/death ratio over battles in the middle east. Simply because the natives religion and culture "wants" people to collect their deads whenever possible. This happens ALL the time. Now a days, when US/UK soldiers team up with the Iraqi National Guard, once a fight quiets down, the ING's will go make the killcount and investigate. This is because most of them, believe their death is already "pre-planned" and they dont have much fear. So, we always come to realize, that most bodies have been removed and droven/dragged away, and thats even when lets say, an Apache has leveled a compound.

So my idea is, that Insurgent SLs and/or collaborators, could collect the deads. Thats DEAD people, not wounded. Collect them, drop them off at a cache and/or a technical. In return, a slight bonus from the commanders or a bonus of will, loyalty or w/e. The bonus could come in MANY forms, I dont think they should be that significant, but definetly significant enough to be worth the risc, as they do take a big risc in the real battlefield. If, the collaborators would get this feature, they should be "marked" as posing a threat to the opposing forces, and thereby killable.

I think this could be one of the bigger featurs of the insurgent team, to make it more realistic and thereby more exciting. I definetly think this is worth to think about.

Problems: I dont think coding will be much of a problem, although animation and modelling a character dragging/carrying someone else could be it. "Finetuning" the bonus from this act is very important, the coalition farming a cache could end up being their death with imballance.

My ideas to the forms that the bonuses could take:
- A slight reducing of the squads respawning time, a few seconds?
- Spawning of an upgraded regular insurgent kit, lets say with a hand grenade or a better rifle?
- A slight intel deduct for the opposing team?
- Removal of the points given for the kill the body represents?
- Reduced blurring/disorientation when partially wounded for the SL/collaborator. (This would come because of greater loyalty/will.

Hope it gives something to think about.

Another thing just came to my mind. Would be cool if an insurgent, killing atleast two hostiles and himself with a single handgrenade/RPG could get extra points, in form of martyrdom

[Celestial1]

Seems like an interesting idea... but what does it help in gameplay? You'd have guys running around dragging bodies, but it doesn't actually contribute to good gameplay.

Problems: I dont think coding will be much of a problem, although animation and modelling a character dragging/carrying someone else could be it.

For one, it's not a good idea to mention that you don't think coding will be much of a problem, especially if you don't have experience with editting or have basic grasps of the system. How would you program a button that understands that it needs to (1) Trigger an event, which is to begin 'picking up the body' (2) Check if it can be done 'is there a body around?' (3) Make the player start an animation* (4) Remove the old body from the ground (5) Trigger extra events such as allowing the civilian to be killed, etc. Then, you also need to have that button know when it is 'on' (as in, you are dragging someone) or 'off' (when you aren't), so that when you press it again it knows to 'drop the body'. Which is another thing: The game needs to check where it is dropping the body, what to do with the 'body' model (make it disappear? spawn a new corpse on the 'area' where it is dropped, etc) and what bonuses to apply.

*: The biggest problem is from third person. The game cannot simply 'attach' a ragdoll to a player. The body would function just like all other things the person can hold in-game. By this, I mean, just like the player can move his rifle up and down, the body could be moved up and down. this would make it very awkward looking when an insurgent is carrying a body that looks like it is possessed by a spirit and is trying to fly away like a ghost.

(Note: I do not claim to truly know anything about the engine, I just understand some of the concepts due to having fiddled with other editting in games and having experience in other technology. I am just making educated assumptions about how things work; I am no more right on the subject than you are, but just pointing out that you shouldn't assume right out that 'yeah this should totally be done cause it's definitely possible', there's always something you don't know!)

But again, the biggest thing is: How does this contribute to gameplay? The Collaborator itself is meant to be bait for ambushes, as well as being able to observe the coalition directly without putting himself in harms way. That is his function, and therefore he contributes to gameplay-how does picking up bodies and moving them directly contribute to gameplay?

[MrSh@vid]

Unfortunately i believe Dragging players is hardcoded and not possible.

[Celestial1]

Unfortunately i believe Dragging players is hardcoded and not possible.

In regards to dragging wounded players, yes, definitely.

However, this is in regards to dragging 'dead' players (the corpses) and dropping them off at a location. (In my post, I describe what I believe would be done. I'm not sure that you can trigger the event at all to recognize a corpse's location and which one you are picking etc, which is the next biggest issue besides step #3) Which hasn't truly been addressed before as far as I know.

[terenz]

Celestial, I understand your point. That was definetly not what I was emplying. Ive worked with lots of coders, and IMO, lots of coders eventhough they are high skilled, limit themselves by being lazy and stuff. Sometimes you have to convince them its possible and theyll eventually find out it wasnt that bad. So what i was saying was, that I truely believe its possible to do, not that its easy.

What you said with having a ragdoll on a back of a player is exactly what I was pointing out, thats got to be one of the harder.

As for gameplay, I understand your concern, but I think itll work. The general PR player is quite mature regardless of the age. I think people will refrain from running around carelessly getting bodies. Thats also why the finetuning of the bonus is important. It shouldnt be worth it, running over a big cross section in fallujah, , knowing theres enemies, but definetly be worth it taking a little risc.

Anyway, I hope well find a way to make this work in all aspects.

[SkaterCrush]

I mean it could work, using the medic rescuciate (god I'm not gonna even try to spell it), but its all about a time of work/payoff sort of ratio. I mean it would be really cool, but it would take up a lot of the devs work and it wouldn't make a big impact, and from my point of view, if I was the Taliban commander I wouldn't tell my guys to do it because it would be a waste of manpower...

[Celestial1]

Celestial, I understand your point. That was definetly not what I was emplying. Ive worked with lots of coders, and IMO, lots of coders eventhough they are high skilled, limit themselves by being lazy and stuff. Sometimes you have to convince them its possible and theyll eventually find out it wasnt that bad. So what i was saying was, that I truely believe its possible to do, not that its easy.

What you said with having a ragdoll on a back of a player is exactly what I was pointing out, thats got to be one of the harder.

Well, in all honesty the coders of PR are not limited by necessarily being lazy, but limited even moreso due to the iffy nature of the BF2 engine. I'm not sure that the engine could actually trigger corpse-specific events. I've never heard of any mod doing so, nor of anyone attempting to do so. But I'd hazard to guess that it just isn't possible with the engine; they didn't implement any type of 'corpse functionality' in the original BF2; once corpses are down, they can't be moved (by shooting, explosions, etc) and it seems like it just 'spawns' a permanent corpse into the game. If you can figure out a way to make dragging the corpses be more beneficial to gameplay than just the 'bonus' the team gets, then it would be a much more welcome suggestion.

I'm glad to know that you understand what you are saying, often times a player will say 'I think it would be easy' when they don't quite understand the situation.


But again, the big thing is making it work for gameplay. There's the incentive of getting the bonus, yeah, but why are they picking up the corpses? For something that doesn't occur in the game anyway; the teams don't go in after a round and count the bodies, so I fail to see how it would change gameplay other than just having insurgent pull around corpses when the fight is over. There doesn't seem to be any gameplay mechanics introduced or enhanced with it.

[terenz]

I agree with the statement that it wouldnt make a larger impact on the gameplay. But for some reason, RL insurgents find this very important, in some sense, it should be to the devs aswell. Ofcourse with anything thats in the game, theres a balance between realism and gameplay. Keep it as real as possible, while making it enjoyable to play. Im still not convinced that this feature has been explored completely. Oh and for the record, I have ABSOLUTELY NO IMPRESSION that the devs and people associated with the creation of PR are lazy, the product speaks for itself.

[smart_boy00]

neat idea but I don't see it helping the cause.

[Garmax]

i guess deaths for the insurgents could cause tickets.. unless there's some way to retreive their body.. but thats the same thing as having a medic?

and idk how that would help much in gameplay