Overhaul to Collaborator<->Insurgency Gameplay

[Psyrus]

[Preamble]

The collaborator kit - A fun, blufor griefing tool... or an integral part of the insurgents' arsenal?

To be honest, I have no idea. I've used it and seen it used since its introduction in in 0.6 as the "civilian", a moniker that has stuck with me to this day. It has had various modifications over the years, both improving its usefulness and creating a very unique style of gameplay for those who choose to engage the kit in an unconventional way. How many multiplayer, first person shooters, have an entire class dedicated to *not* shooting?

The collaborator RoE and punishments therein are an excellent facet of the Insurgency gamemode, in my opinion. It began with that +10 and -10 tickets for arrests & kills of civilians back in the day, which I quite enjoyed... but the current intel/spawntime/kit incentives are fine too. What I have found is that with four hour round times, and especially in 0.9 and beyond, intel has been appearing rather quickly despite my getting martyred repeatedly. This may be because other collaborators/insurgents are getting arrested unbeknownst to me, or it could be (and I have my suspicions) that there is a slight flaw in the collaborator-killed intel code that is not functioning as intended.

In short, the following is an idea that came to me during yet another insurgency round that felt like we were simply 'losing gracefully' rather than playing to win. On that same round an APC had already killed a few collaborators and thus said 'screw it' and proceded to kill two of us until he had over -1400 TW points.

[Proposal]

The current insurgent cache implementation is static at 7 caches [70 Ins tickets], with 10 insurgent tickets removed at each cache destruction. The intel system will remain unchanged in this proposal.

My proposal stems from a programming PoV:
I suggest the insurgents begin with 65 tickets [This could be reduced to 61 if 65 proved to be too many]. The caches being destroyed will continue to decrement the insurgent tickets by 10 each time, until the last (7th) cache is destroyed at which point they will have <0 tickets and the game will end.

The primary difference stems from the collaborator: Killing collaborators will result in +1 insurgent ticket being added (for each kill outside the RoE). Thus, if 6 collaborators are killed outside the RoE (henceforth OoRoE), the insurgents will have 71 tickets, which will lead to a total of 8 caches being played that round.

The end result is that a brazen blufor team that indiscriminately mows down civilians because both caches are up and no new intel can be gathered will face a whole new cache to attack.

I would suggest an 81 ticket cap for the insurgents, as any more would probably be out of hand. If the blufor are killing more than 16 civilians in a round, then new caches are the least of their worries.

I assume (perhaps incorrectly) that the text on cache destruction and Insurgency instructions "Intel reports that there are X caches in the area" can be tailored with the use of ceil() functions in python.

[Pros]

• Creates new incentives for the insurgents to play as collaborators
• Adds additional penalties to OoRoE kills, thus hopefully encouraging the blufor to act more carefully
• Can extend gameplay for the insurgents, giving them more of a fighting chance
• Mixes up insurgency a little - it's a new facet, something fresh

[Cons]

• There are times where the blufor run out of tickets due to careless deaths. This would make games like those where careless deaths + careless trigger fingers result in an assured loss for the blufor.
• Complicates the insurgency cache code by a fair margin (not that I know the current incarnation, but from a rough guess...)

[Short Summary]

• Insurgents begin with 65 [or 61] tickets
• Killing a collaborator outside the RoE results in +1 insurgent ticket
• At 71/81 tickets, the insurgents get another cache to fight over
• Improves/Alters gameplay by making blufor more cautious and incentivising the civilian kit heavily

[Killer2354]

Hmm, I quite like this idea tbh. It sounds like it would somewhat fix the ROE problems. I had an idea to add to this, but I completely scrapped the idea.

[rushn]

interesting solution

but I feel like it puts the Blu For at a disadvantage because of carelessness

[maarit]

i would like more that there should be some fake intel revealed to the BLUFOR when some amount of civies are killed.
KILL 5 CIVILIANS...FAKE CACHE becomes visible on maps.
good opportunity to ins set ambushes and stuff...and it would make playing as insurgent more interesting.

[Rhino]

Ye, I've myself been thinking of linking civi death to tickets for some time and I like what your suggesting

One thing however is punishment for players that kill civis will need to be much stronger and possibly a way to stop a player from killing more civis, if someone is just doing it for fun, ie, the player himself is killed after killing X amount of civis and has super huge re-spawn time.

[40mmrain]

I agree with adding some changes to the civi class for insurgents.

I would also favour having an insurgent combat medic, and taking the medic gear away from the civi. If the civi plays medic he usually just ends up feeding intel to the other team by dying a lot and not being able to shoot back. Of course thats just a suggestion of my own.

[spiked_rye]

i would like more that there should be some fake intel revealed to the BLUFOR when some amount of civies are killed.

I like that, alot! Would it be possible for the fake intel to have a rally point, so INS can spawn like they could at a real cashe?

One thing however is punishment for players that kill civis will need to be much stronger and possibly a way to stop a player from killing more civis, if someone is just doing it for fun, ie, the player himself is killed after killing X amount of civis and has super huge re-spawn time.

Could you have the long spawn time and stop them from picking up a limited kit for a 5 min period so they're stuck as a rifleman?

[MaSSive]

Ye, I've myself been thinking of linking civi death to tickets for some time and I like what your suggesting

One thing however is punishment for players that kill civis will need to be much stronger and possibly a way to stop a player from killing more civis, if someone is just doing it for fun, ie, the player himself is killed after killing X amount of civis and has super huge re-spawn time.

^Exactly what I thought of it. I like the idea of punishing the whole team ( blufor ) but in same time individual that breaks RoE has to be punished severely. Not just score but large respawn time, score in deep minus, and plus one death for every X civis killed. On top of that kit restriction, but not only by request / in any way he cant get limited kit until round ends.

I hope seeing this implemented in next version along with unknown cache fix.

[maarit]

I like that, alot! Would it be possible for the fake intel to have a rally point, so INS can spawn like they could at a real cashe?

yeah,it would be good if insurgents could have spawnpoint on falsecache.
its like when blufor kills innocent civis, people start to spread lies and lure blufor to the trap.

this were the suggestion if you want check it out...
https://www.realitymod.com/forum/f18-pr ... intel.html

but really this topic suggestion is good ...but just like others said,the punishment should be much more.

[Slightchance]

Good idea. I've had problems about the collaborator/civilian kit too. The punishments and incentives seemed just a little off to me for a long time. This suggestion could help that quite a bit.

[mockingbird0901]

Good sugestion. I like it

[Mikemonster]

Good idea.

[Stoickk]

I like the motivation behind this suggestion, but I see a potential flaw. Past a certain point (the point where an additional cache spawns and becomes a requirement for BluFor victory) killing Collaborators will become irrelevant again. I say this because once the Insurgent team reaches the ticket cap, it no longer matters how many Collaborators are killed, as the Insurgents receive no further benefit.

As an alternate proposal, I would like to expand on an idea I saw in another thread. If I can find the thread, I will be happy to link to it and credit the idea's original author. I think that part of the answer does lie in the Intel system. Currently, once a cache is known, it is known, and stays that way until destroyed. I propose that for each Collaborator killed, BluFor should lose 20-25 Intel points. Below a certain threshold (I can not specify a number, as I do not know how it is currently coded), perhaps -50% of the amount of intel required to reveal a cache in the first place, the known cache despawns. This would simulate the Insurgent team successfully defending the cache and moving it to another location. Possibly, a ticket penalty could be instituted for BluFor in this situation as well, however I am not sure if this will be necessary.

As for individual penalties for players, as stated, the current punishments are not significant enough to impact BluFor players. Even the long respawn times and heavy score penalties are not incentive enough not to shoot Collaborators outside of RoE. This has been demonstrated time and time again. Players either rack up a long respawn time and use that to go take a break, or just disconnect and reconnect to avoid the timer. Rather than forcing a hard coded and unrealistic method into the system to punish the players, I suggest something a bit different. Add a message at the top, similar to vanilla BF2, every time a BluFor player kills a Collaborator outside of RoE. Something along the lines of, "1337N1NJ4 has killed an unarmed civilian!" This should be broadcast to both teams. With the heavy penalty to the BluFor team for that Collaborator's death, let the team decide whether it was unintentional (such as a mortar strike) or unacceptable, and if necessary what actions to take against that player. Peer justice just might be more effective in this case. Leave the rest of the penalties (spawn times, score penalties, etc.) in place, though.

As always, I welcome thoughts, constructive criticism, etc.

[Psyrus]

I like the motivation behind this suggestion, but I see a potential flaw. Past a certain point (the point where an additional cache spawns and becomes a requirement for BluFor victory) killing Collaborators will become irrelevant again. I say this because once the Insurgent team reaches the ticket cap, it no longer matters how many Collaborators are killed, as the Insurgents receive no further benefit.

The cache despawn system you detailed sounds interesting. Your feedback is certainly appreciated... and I'd love to see the thread you're talking about

As for individual penalties for players, as stated, the current punishments are not significant enough to impact BluFor players.
As always, I welcome thoughts, constructive criticism, etc.

Drop a line in here
https://www.realitymod.com/forum/f10-pr ... layer.html

[Stealthgato]

Great, then there will be even more ********* collaborators.

Eg: Shooting at insurgents with an APC then out of nowhere a civi pops up from behind a hill into the tracers and gets killed on purpose, or shooting at insurgents and a round hits a civi, then he stays 10 minutes without healing just to get martyr death.

[Stoickk]

@Psyrus

Web Cole makes a reference to it Here in his Insurgency Breakdown and Alteration thread. In his thread, he references thinking that he saw Rudd post something about a cache despawn timer. After extensive searching though, the only thing I can find is actually an old post of mine where I suggested the same type of thing, located here, bottom paragraph.

@Stealthgato

My suggestion to you would be: be more careful. Seriously. Insurgency is about limited warfare, not spray and pray. If you can not engage your target without hitting a Collaborator, then don't engage. If you do, then be prepared for the consequences.

[Stealthgato]

@Stealthgato

My suggestion to you would be: be more careful. Seriously. Insurgency is about limited warfare, not spray and pray. If you can not engage your target without hitting a Collaborator, then don't engage. If you do, then be prepared for the consequences.

Oh, there's an RPG shooting at my APC but there's a "civilian" standing right in front of him when he's reloading, but it's ok, give me -100 score and long spawn time to take out the RPG and the "civilian" (which is standing right next to and aiding an insurgent engaging BLUFOR, but is still not a valid target - so realistic).

Fact is the "civilians" primary goal in pubs in PR is to do whatever they can (including jumping into incoming mortars and tracers on purpose) so they can die as martyrs. All possible realism on "civilians" fails due to this, and as I said - punishing all "civilian" kills in the same harsh way is not acceptable.

[maarit]

would be there any help increase the spawntime after dying as civilian?

[Psyrus]

Oh, there's an RPG shooting at my APC but there's a "civilian" standing right in front of him when he's reloading, but it's ok, give me -100 score and long spawn time to take out the RPG and the "civilian" (which is standing right next to and aiding an insurgent engaging BLUFOR, but is still not a valid target - so realistic).

So make a suggestion to solve that issue if it pisses you off so much? RoE killable if within 10m of an armed insurgent for >10s or the like... however you feel would solve this 'problem'.

Simply click [this link].

[Stoickk]

Oh, there's an RPG shooting at my APC but there's a "civilian" standing right in front of him when he's reloading, but it's ok, give me -100 score and long spawn time to take out the RPG and the "civilian" (which is standing right next to and aiding an insurgent engaging BLUFOR, but is still not a valid target - so realistic).

Fact is the "civilians" primary goal in pubs in PR is to do whatever they can (including jumping into incoming mortars and tracers on purpose) so they can die as martyrs. All possible realism on "civilians" fails due to this, and as I said - punishing all "civilian" kills in the same harsh way is not acceptable.

Teamwork and Limited Warfare. If you can not engage the RPG threat successfully with your APC without killing the Collaborator as well, then request Sniper or Marksman support from your supporting infantry squad. Problem solved. For all you know, that civilian is being held against his will, and/or his family is being threatened to ensure his collaboration. There is plenty of realism there. As for Insurgents willing to die and martyr themselves for their cause, yeah, we never hear about that on the news do we? Just because you don't like the fact that someone else is playing a religious zealot that is bent on the destruction of the BluFor mission, even if that means political destruction of that mission by sacrificing himself as a martyr, that doesn't mean that it is not realistic.

The fact of the matter is that the current punishment system is not sufficient to enforce the current Rules of Engagement. Period. If it were, this discussion would not keep popping up. As it stands, even the spawn timer and intel penalties are largely irrelevant, especially for competent APC/IFV/Armor crews, as they can kill enough insurgents to offset the penalties. This enables them to kill Collaborators at will with impunity. The intel penalties and gains for Collaborator kills and arrests need to be increased sharply. I recommend an increase to +/-25 Intel points for each Arrest/Kill out of RoE. The current system simply does not enforce the RoE.