Spec_Operator wrote:I think punishment needs to be incrased.
If its codable, make civilians legit target IF they have rocks or cell phone selected. Otherwise, punish:
- Global display of the killers name
- 2 civilians within 10 minutes -> death for the soldier
- Longer respawn time for the soldier. 4 minutes for 2 civilians.
As i said, civilians should, if codable, be a legit target if the soldier acts in self defense, means if the civilian did something hostile. But if they are just walking around, they shouldnt be killed.
I'll agree with increasing the punishment, but not the killing of a civilian for hostile actions. The killing of a violent group of ralliers is a sure fire way to get a unit undeployed, and even for an administration to start rethinking their policy towards a certain set of countries.
Throwing a rock at a soldier, aiding enemy movements or healing an enemy combatant are all insufficient reasons to kill someone both in terms of modern morality (from the perspective of the global media and home populations) and from the more important perspective of international conventions of war. Killing a civilian is a war crime, which is in many cases internationally enforcable (in the case of morally upstanding countries) and in most others is investigated and punished within the offender's own military.
I've been holding back on this for a while, and in other threads I've given gameplay reasons for improving the civilian, but I want to talk about the evolution of the PR civilian, and the "Reality" of the "Insurgency". In recent versions, by calling the player a "Civilian" violent acts against the player were clearly discouraged - everyone knows killing a civilian is wrong. But as others pointed out, the civilian is clearly aiding the enemy (for what reasons we are not told - it so happened that civilians used to also help the British on Al Basrah quite often). However reality followed art - civilians are no longer as incredibly and overtly hostile towards Coalition forces, and so presumably the Dev team decided that a clearer definition was needed by 0.8 and so they reframed the issue. No longer were these fuzzies "Civilians" implying a neutral stance and non-participation in combat, they were now "Collaborators". A collaborator throwing a rock is a very different thing to a Civilian throwing a rock - a civilian is pursuing a civil matter (he is rioting for want of a better word, presumably because the Coalition occupation has negative implications for his life, or disagrees with his world view), but a Collaborator throwing a rock is performing an act of war to further the Insurgent's cause (which is admittedly more in line with what rocks are normally thrown for in PR, but who are we to judge these intentions - I can't be the only one who wants the role play back). None of this justifies his longer spawn time than other (more capable) classes, but it does justify a more lenient punishment towards his killers. As mentioned before, there is no way I could possibly argue this is better for gameplay in any way.
The fundamental problem with this reframing is that it assumes that A) There would be no civilians in the AO, which is at odds with the whole point of FISH and these battles in particular when compared to AAS, and B) That no Civilians would take issue with Coalition forces. The first is clearly wrong, but the second is worth talking about. On the most fundamental level, the majority of the "Insurgents" we are fighting against, are factional militias who are drawn from the civilian population. At the most basic level, we are fighting civilians who don't like us, and are armed. It would be naive in the greatest degree to believe that these militias don't receieve extensive support from civilian networks which are the basic reason they are able to operate an even marginally effective insurrection. Whether or not civilians help the insurgents, they CANNOT be targeted with conventional weapons without the Coalition losing the main war they know they need to fight (Hearts, Mind etc.) and without completely losing international support, as well as degrading the moral legitimacy of their campaign that they've worked so hard to build. By reframing the Civilians as Collaborators, the PR Devs ignore the role that Civilians do play in the Insurgency, as well as weakening Insurgent gameplay and the "Fun factor". A political statement could also probably be drawn from it, but I honestly don't think the devs consciously intended one.
While there are overseas fighters in Iraq and Afghanistan, we model them with the imbedded SF class (Cell Leader), and probably some of the Insurgents. At the moment, PR's Insurgency maps are unrealistic in their lack of portrayal of the second war that is going on in Afghanistan and Iraq, the war to damage the efficiency of the local civilian resistance, without alienating the civilian population at large from the Coalition. When a prolonged battle is in progress, this is by arrests and not by killings.
All killings do is turn the entire civilian population against the occupiers, as happened in Somalia, and as also happened in some areas of Iraq and Afghanistan. If this is to be modeled, create an unlock kit that requires a civilian to be shot to death to be unlocked, and only remains unlocked for one round (IDK if this is even codable, but it's the PR equivalent of what I'm talking about). The kit retains the Civilian's restrictions, but is lightly armed, with perhaps a pistol and molotovs.
Perhaps if civilian killings bore some kind of a gameplay consequence for the coalition they would think about killing them freely. However I still prefer my other suggestions in other threads for fixing the insurgency problem.
