Civilian collaborator suggestions

[daranz]

A lot of people don't like the new spawntimes for the civvie collaborator on insurgent maps. The common suggestion is to return to the old spawntimes, with shorter spawtimes for getting shot and longer spawntimes for getting captured.

Now, what I'm suggesting is the complete opposite - give the collaborator a longer spawn time for getting shot and a shorter one for getting captured. This would discourage civvies from running into enemy fire rather than allowing themselves to be captured. Avoiding capture would still be a priority, due to the fact that nobody likes to die, and good team players try to avoid giving the enemy intel points. The spawn penalty for coalition troops should remain, encouraging both sides to avoid shooting civilian and getting shot as a civilian. Given the choice between death and capture, a player would be face with a tough decision - either try to get himself killed and sit out the long spawn or get captured and lose IP.

My second suggestion re the civilian is to give him another weapon, which would be a simple animation of the civilian raising his arms. Many times I've been in situations where I was cowering behind cover as a civilian, trying to avoid getting shot while the enemy forces poured large quantities of fire in my direction. One thing you can do in such situations is to try to type out something to the other team in global. However, a simpler solution would be to equip a "surrender" weapon, thereby clearly showing the enemy that you're a civilian. This would also offset the problem of kits not drawing at longer distances - as far as I know, arms still draw, and arms raised high above head would be quite easy to distinguish.

[SleepyHe4d]

Agreed except for that last part, in that situation you might as well just get shot dead otherwise you'd be giving the enemy intel.

Actually I just thought of something that never occurred to me before. Just make all the insurgent kits the same with dying. All of them give intel from being knifed. A collab and regular insurgent would have the same chance of giving info upon capture wouldn't they?

[Kontrollturm]

I hate the new spawntime -.- You spawn and go throw a city. Suddently a striker appears. You get closer and take your stones out. The gunner look 1s at you and start to fire ... 2min waiting watching TV. respawning at main. Only car with gun. Friend inside. Just wanted to told him, that i need to join first --> he tked me -.- dunno why. 2min waiting --> again TV. Now i spawn into the city. Walking ... Enemy appears. Im standing in the middle of the street(alone) "piong, piong, dead" 2min TV again. I hat 13 deadth in one round and they knifed me ONE time!!! that means i was watching TV 26 min -.- PLZ CHANGE THAT!!!

[Rudd]

I disagree with the OP, too many civilians were getting knifed in 0.7

although I do agree that the current spawntime is too harsh, 45 seconds would be better

the main thing imo is that penalties for killing collaborators were taken away

if you kill an unarmed collaborator you should get a huge intel penalty, or even the old 3 - death. I'm not saying this because of the ROE, but IRL there's such a huge crapstorm over what could be civilian casualties (or at least the appearance of them) and this aspect of modern warfare isn't reflected ingame imo

[Scot]

^^What Rudd said.

[Durandal]

I disagree with the OP, too many civilians were getting knifed in 0.7

although I do agree that the current spawntime is too harsh, 45 seconds would be better

the main thing imo is that penalties for killing collaborators were taken away

if you kill an unarmed collaborator you should get a huge intel penalty, or even the old 3 - death. I'm not saying this because of the ROE, but IRL there's such a huge crapstorm over what could be civilian casualties (or at least the appearance of them) and this aspect of modern warfare isn't reflected ingame imo

Spot on

[daranz]

Personally, I always found myself trying to get myself killed rather than allowing myself to be captured. With the new spawntimes I just avoid the enemy altogether. But, I guess you're right.

Also, I'm pretty sure you still get an intel penalty for killing a civvie.

[White Rock]

I have an idea.

Why not REMOVE the intel penalty the USA get when shooting civilians? Change the spawn time to 45 seconds and then any incentive to get shot voluntarly is removed.

Would you jump out in front of a tank if you knew they do not lose intel from your death? This way we can have aggressive but not suicidal civvies!


That, and remove the rock is the winning combination in my book.

[Billy_Crook_Foot]

I think the "arms above the head" idea has merit.

I can envisage an impromptu mexican wave by half a dozen collaborators right before they are collectively shredded by a trigger happy APC.

[Truism]

Split Collaborator and Civilian into two seperate classes. Collaborator keeps the stupidly long spawn time for all deaths (and even longer for arrests), but gets a pistol in slot 2 with nominal ammo reserves (keeps all other equipment). Punishment for shooting them is removed. Killing him yields 5 intel points, or 10 for an arrest. Can call in Mortar Strikes.

Civilian gets what the Collaborator gets at the moment, but there is a 2 ticket penalty and a -40 intel loss (as well as everything else that happens at the moment) for illegally killing him. He has standard Insurgent respawn times for normal deaths, and longer for arrests. Arresting him yeilds 5 intelligence points. He represents the largely unaligned Civilian population (the bulk of the population of the city insurgency maps) who is hostile to armed action inside the city which which disrupts his life, and was caused by Coalition forces. He wants to see the Coalition out so the war stops, nothing more. He is not an Insurgent per se. Cannot call in mortar strikes, but uses the mobile phone for contact reports (or spotting) representing that what civilians know is common knowledge to the Insurgents who recruit from that base.

The two kits have the same skin.

The intel loss for killing a civilian represents the local population's backlash, and is needed because the intel system is totally retarded at the moment - Coalition forces will normally know where all three Caches are all the time.

By seperating the two classes, we get around the long running "But they are an enemy, I should be within my rights to kill them" thing. I went over it in another thread. Killing a civilian is illegal and causes worlds of trouble for conventional forces when they do it in cold blood. Mogadishu (Ramiel) is just one example of how badly it can screw an operation.

[Psyko]

For the record: I always use the search function, to lower the chance that my suggestions may be resuggestions. but generally, my suggestions are few and far between, and i only post them when i find them to be particularly different. Im using an existing thread to try and lower the clutter of the allready enormous amounts of suggestions and opinions in this forum subsection.

In the instance of insurgency, is it possible to have; when you select a weapon in the list...that being killed can give the enemy a bad score?
(when the enemy shoots you, can you have a weapon called "Unarmed" where when they kill you, they get punished?)

This could simulate the enemy groups taking advantage of rules of engagement. and the coalition troops would be forced to either drive on past, or instigate a capture.
This could mean that insurgents could willingly and individually be somewhat safe wherever they are, whenever they want, and force coalition troops to slow the pace of battle and use recon in certain circumstances.
the difficulty is, that everyone could effectivly be a temporary civilian/collaborator class whenever they want to. the enemy could still hide behind the unarmed, and if they shoot, coalition troops would have to retreat or engage them, forcing the coalition troops to willingly sacrifice score for outcome in some cases.

The suggestion is nothing got to do with area of effect, but assigning a weapon slot to be called "unarmed"(or whatever), and when that weapon is out, if the user is killed(shot/blown up/run over) the killer would recieve a penalty.

obviously, to avoid exploitation, there would have to be rules involved, and i can think of a few, but first things first. is it possible, is it worth while, would the outcome be benificial to gameplay, does it suit the mod, or would it really be a hinderance that would get in the way?

cheers,

-Psyko

[[uBp]Irish]

interesting thing I read in the a book called "Heroes Among Us".

Here's an excerpt i think is pretty relavent to this discussion:

"I was looking down the alleyway and one of the LCpl's ran up and said "Gunny, there's a lady out here that comes out of the building with a baby, and everytime she goes back into the building, an RPG comes out. Their aim keeps getting closer and closer". Sure enough, she walked out with a baby in her hands, walked back into the building, and an RPG came back out. We had a sniper, and the next times she came out we got her. The marines ran down and picked up her baby. We never received another RPG round from that place." (Chuck Larson, Heroes Among Us, pg 170, Penguin Group)

So the insurgents were using this woman as a spotter... she didn't have a weapon (like the collaborator), but was doing the same thing as collaborators do in game, helping out and spotting the enemy.

Now in this example, if we saw a collaborator spotting for the insurgents, some of us wouldn't hesitate to shoot him on the spot. We'd get a negative score, and he'd have a long *** timer, but we'd be penalized for "shooting an innocent" (well..not really innocent).

If this was a perfect world with a perfect modable code, I would say it depends on the situation in which the collaborator was helping the enemy, or if it was just a wild killing by a stupid coalition soldier. However, PR is not a perfect modable code game, so we have to work with it. I think the Civilian/Collaborator issue should be relooked at, because it's not fair to have a 2 min long spawn time, but also, if there is no penalty to killing them, than what's the point of being a civilian. On this issue, i'm not really sure what to do, but I thought that paragraph might give a new thought to the Civilian/Collaborator issue.

[hiberNative]

i would think it would be pretty hard hiding an ak47 ;P
maybe if the civilians had makarovs, but how would that work? if he pulls the makarov he's a target? can he put it away and go neutral or is he painted until he dies? how would that work if he runs around the corner and his neutral clone friend runs up and gets killed, reducing the other teams score.

i don't think it's a good idea. might not be possible, either.

[daranz]

On the other hand, I've seen videos of convoys in Iraq with kids tossing rocks a the passing trucks, cracking windshields and such, with the soldiers in the trucks being unable to do anything, cause after all, it's just kids with rocks.

Everyone in PR seems to want to make civilians' lives even harder, but even in real life, ROE can get in the way of removing annoyances.

[Dude388]

obviously, to avoid exploitation, there would have to be rules involved, and i can think of a few, but first things first. is it possible, is it worth while, would the outcome be benificial to gameplay, does it suit the mod, or would it really be a hinderance that would get in the way?

cheers,

-Psyko

The only thing I can think of to counter the possible exploitation of your idea is as follows:

A civilian "equips" the unarmed weapon slot, and then hold Q to bring up the regular COMMO-ROSE. As we all know some slots change the COMMO-ROSE options (medic bag, field dressing, mines, etc.) so with this "weapon" equiped there would be an "I AM UNARMED!" vocal that sounds out that all infantry on both teams can hear in the area can hear.

Once this is called out, the penalty will be instigated to any collation player that shoots the civilian during a 2 minute time. During this two minute time, the player is unable to switch out of the unarmed weapon slots for those two minutes and will be susceptible to an arrest by the collation.

Once the two minutes wear off, the penalties return to normal, also the Civilian must wait another 30 seconds before they can use the "call out" again. However they now have access to their other equipment the moment the "callout" is over.

[Psyko]

i am of the opinion that the civilian class is not doing so hot in game, and there might be more efficient ways of harnessing the civilian's abilities.

edit:hope that comment doesnt bug anyone, its just my feelings.

[Rudd]

I'm pretty sure that the weapon choice cannot affect the kill penalities/spawntimes

but the animation would help blufor understand its a civi

"I was looking down the alleyway and one of the LCpl's ran up and said "Gunny, there's a lady out here that comes out of the building with a baby, and everytime she goes back into the building, an RPG comes out. Their aim keeps getting closer and closer". Sure enough, she walked out with a baby in her hands, walked back into the building, and an RPG came back out. We had a sniper, and the next times she came out we got her. The marines ran down and picked up her baby. We never received another RPG round from that place." (Chuck Larson, Heroes Among Us, pg 170, Penguin Group)

wouldn't he be investigated for admitting that? a few warning shots would have put her out of harms way.

[[uBp]Irish]

wouldn't he be investigated for admitting that? a few warning shots would have put her out of harms way.

I doubt he would since they could argue it was done for saving the lives of fellow marines.

The guy that was recalling the story was a Plt. Sgt in the Marines, and ended up getting the Navy Cross for his efforts. This all happened after they had found out Jessica Lynch's Support Convoy got hit, and his group engaged some insurgents.

[Dude388]

I'm pretty sure that the weapon choice cannot affect the kill penalities/spawntimes

but the animation would help blufor understand its a civie

If your referring to my suggestion, the weapon itself isn't the thing that activates the penalty...it's the callout.

The point behind the weapon is that it's required to use the callout. This makes it so the player can't have another usable item out, use the callout, then feel free to throw rocks, use FDS, etc. without worrying about being shot.

Though if that's flawed for some reason (personally I can't see one right now), another way is to make the callout automatically equip the FDs ONLY (this way they can still heal if needed, but nothing else).

[GreedoNeverShot]

This is stupid. You are forgetting the US people shoot any member of the enemy team! Collaborators would still have high spawn times and nobody would play the kit.

If you increase the US penalties, then the civilians will run into bullets.

My suggestion is, the kit is so screwed up now, just get rid of it and make the SL call in the mortars. Nobody plays the kit anyway...