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Well, I can't exactly say civilian ROE changes haven't been suggested before, but I would like to start by saying that though I've alluded to this suggestion in previous related threads, there has never been any discussion or much response in relationship to them. Add to that the fact that using the search function has not revealed any matches, I'll begin.

The civilian/collaborator class has been an extreme in PR for a few builds. Going from the extremely notable cannon fodder of 0.75 to the extremely rare and punishing kit of 0.8-0.86. So, I'd like to suggest completely revamping the ROEs to a playable middle ground where the civilian is played properly, if played at all.

My ROE would be as follows:


1. Civilians will never be allowed to be shot. Shooting a civilian will never be allowable within the ROEs of the coalition, under any circumstance (IE, no slugshots, either).
2. Coalition will receive an updated punishment system, including:

• Every time they kill a civilian, their name is displayed in the top left in a similar fashion to the "Player_name destroyed his own cache and is a traitor"
• Any civilian kill ups your respawn by 60 seconds.
• Your second consecutive civilian kill within a life leads to a court martial (with the added spawn time of both kills)
• After the third kill in a game, player's score is reset (like in 0.85), and another court martial.

3. If a civilian is killed within 3 meters of any insurgent, then the civilian will be punished with an extra 120 seconds.
4. Civilians are no longer able to be arrested on a whim. The only time an arrest will be allowable is within 180 seconds of:

• Pulling out their rocks/cellphone.
• Being within 10 meters of an insurgent
• Being within 10 meters of a weapons cache.

5. Civilians arrested "legally" will receive another 60 seconds on their respawn.
6. Coalition troops will loose one intelligence point for false arrests, but will only be punished with an extra 30 seconds to their spawn time.
7. Civilian normal respawn time will be reduced to 30 seconds.



That's pretty much it. Now, to back it up before people start denouncing the entire suggestion over iddy-biddy points. Most of it can be tweaked, but overall it should stay the same. Anyways, here's my explanation for each point:

#1: Pretty much summed up, shooting any unarmed civilian is never justified, and should never go unpunished.
#2: Slightly more direct punishments than previously, including the text message. The first kill's punishment is relatively light and not too apparent, but it's a slightly more lenient punishment.
#3: Duh, no more human shield problems. No, you'll still be punished for shoting them, but they'll be punished a whole lot more.
#4: Civilians are never a direct threat to you, but if it is perceived that they are doing suspicious activities or may indirectly be a threat to you (rocks/cellphones), then you'll have the opportunity to catch them and arrest them.
#5: Punishment for being caught on the civilian's part, meaning they'll no longer be giving free intel like supposedly in 0.75.
#6: Not really severe, in all honesty, but this represents the Coalition loosing civilian trust, as well as being reprimanded for doing so.
#7: Without the problems of human shields being formed subsiding due to my previous points, civilians no longer need to be punished for using the kit.

Please post your comments/feedback of this, and remember that this is just a rough outline and any point can be changed if it's seen as beneficial to the overall suggestion, but I believe this will be a huge improvement in gameplay already..

There's a reason that the so-called civilian is on the opposing side, because it is the enemy. The "civilian" misnomer should never have been applied to that class to begin with. He is no longer a civilian, he is a an unarmed combatant supporting the insurgents.

This revamp doesn't help situations where a collaborator is killed out of sight of the shooter (grenades etc) where they should not be punished.

My changes to ROE is part of civi/collab revamp in my suggestion below, if we have a single collaborator class (called the civi for short) the ROE would be:

If civi is shot outside of ROE the shooter is auto-killed with a 2 minute respawn, civi has a 30 second spawn. If the civi is shot within ROE they get a 10 minute respawn, if arrested it is 2 minutes.
If a civi is within 30m of a cache or insurgent they are valid for ROE. This gets rid of the human shield **** as if they are 30m away they can easily be arrested, and covers the healing insurgents and all other behavior that the current system punishes.
If a civi is in a vehicle, or was in one in the last 30 seconds they are valid for ROE.

Shotguns would still be used for arresting at a distance.

No action taken by the civi (rocks, binocs, phone etc) would trigger ROE.

Due to the ROE this will only punish BluFor who simply shoot everything they see as the civi will most often be within ROE if near combat.

[R-DEV]Eddie Baker wrote:There's a reason that the so-called civilian is on the opposing side, because it is the enemy. The "civilian" misnomer should never have been applied to that class to begin with. He is no longer a civilian, he is a an unarmed combatant supporting the insurgents.

Then what's the deal with not being able to shoot him in the first place. If he is truly aiding and abetting the enemy to the very extent of his abilities, the only thing separating him from the insurgent next to him is that he is not holding a weapon, and that is no reason for a magic "get out of jail free" card.

As far as "collaborator vs civilian" goes: He is a collaborator, but blufor is not supposed to know that.

The suggestion sounds okay. I'd allow the breaching shotgun under arrest conditions though, as it's simulating a less lethal weapon and beanbags would probably not be a big problem when there is enough reason to arrest the civilian. And i'd certainly allow shooting civilians in vehicles, otherwise they can run people over, there's nothing to stop them really. Bombcars make that even more dangerous.

Anyway, something really needs to be done with the kit. The best thing would really be bots... Meh.

I totally support McLuv's suggestion.

[R-DEV]Eddie Baker wrote:There's a reason that the so-called civilian is on the opposing side, because it is the enemy. The "civilian" misnomer should never have been applied to that class to begin with. He is no longer a civilian, he is a an unarmed combatant supporting the insurgents.

So are collaborators always so easily marked in the world that any Blufor guy can go, "Hey, that guys a collaborator, not an innocent civilian" because of a sixth sense? It's not always obvious.

i really like mcluvs ideas.
but im not sure what happens during a "court martial", does the player die? does he get teleported back to base?
what happens when its a vehicle gunner, are you just going to leave the vehicle without a gunner in the middle of enemy territory?

are 3 meters really a big enough area around an insurgent to be allowed to kill them? i mean imagine you are firing a tankshell at a building full of insurgents, and 5 meters away is a civilian who gets hit, is that your fault? he was clearly right next to those insurgents probably helping them.

what happens if with one shot you kill 3 civilians outside the ROE?
it can happen, especially with tanks/apcs.
perhaps the answer to the last one is that if you kill 3 civilians within 5 seconds, its considered as one "incident" which only counts as the first step (no court martial)

edit:
also 10 meters from a cache is hard, since you don't know where the cache is, you only have an approximate area. maybe make it something like 50 meters, so you can arrest any shifty looking people near the area.

Civilians are, most of the time, useless.

On Al Basrah once, I was the gunner in a warrior and I was watching our six whilst we were heading back for repairs. Next thing I know we stopped and my driver is telling me, "WTF, theres a million civis infront of us." I turned around and there were nothing but civis covering the bridge. They started to surround us and throw rocks, so my driver pulled back and I mowed down 8 civis with no punishments.

Useless.

If people don't care they are useless, yes...

Interesting.. Reflected suggestion and presented well. Big thumb.
Crit is maybe too many rules. Still alot better then current collaborator, flawed mechanism in my mind.

Another thing I was pondering. You leave tons of loopholes that mean if a civvi does something (or hasn't done something) out of your line of sight, you're screwed. How well do you honestly think you'll remember these in the field?

MrScruff wrote:Civilians are, most of the time, useless.

On Al Basrah once, I was the gunner in a warrior and I was watching our six whilst we were heading back for repairs. Next thing I know we stopped and my driver is telling me, "WTF, theres a million civis infront of us." I turned around and there were nothing but civis covering the bridge. They started to surround us and throw rocks, so my driver pulled back and I mowed down 8 civis with no punishments.

Useless.

you could have run them over....

you must have had an uberspawn time

[R-DEV]Eddie Baker wrote:There's a reason that the so-called civilian is on the opposing side, because it is the enemy. The "civilian" misnomer should never have been applied to that class to begin with. He is no longer a civilian, he is a an unarmed combatant supporting the insurgents.

Well, whether or not he's an unarmed combatant, does that ever mean he should be "fair game" to be shot? He hasn't changed much from the 0.75 days in his kit. He can now request mortars strikes, yes, but he's actually less collaborative in the fact that he can no longer spot enemy troops. He needs a commander to request mortars, and then he needs to be the SL, and I've seen insurgent commanders rise up to the opportunity of dropping mortars about all of 4 games, tops.

I honestly thought that insurgency was way better back in 0.75 for the civilian. Yes, he's had a name change and can now request a mortar strike, but his underlying role hasn't really changed. Except now he's punished no matter what he does, and the Coalition have nothing to worry about. Though, I do think there should be differentiation between a complete collaborator that can help the insurgents more directly, and a simple civilian that has nly limited opportunities to do so.

In all honesty, I modelled this in my mind as well with snoggum's collaborator/civilian distinction in mind (https://www.realitymod.com/forum/f18-pr ... llaborator). I'd keep these ROEs for the civilian, and the collaborator's would be similar, except that they could be arrested at any time and shot even if they have had a molotov in hand within 3 minutes.

The main thing is, that while the collaborator is technically helping the enemy, there's nothing always apparent about that fact, and he still is unarmed. If we were to distinguish them, then at least there'd be improvement in both sections.

Anyways, why are people complaining about them being killed by your own grenades? Even if they are sticking around insurgents, they'll be punished for that occasion, but you will too. Make sure there aren't any civilians within the vicinity before you fire grenades, HEAT or HE rounds into a building.

MrScruff wrote:Civilians are, most of the time, useless.

On Al Basrah once, I was the gunner in a warrior and I was watching our six whilst we were heading back for repairs. Next thing I know we stopped and my driver is telling me, "WTF, theres a million civis infront of us." I turned around and there were nothing but civis covering the bridge. They started to surround us and throw rocks, so my driver pulled back and I mowed down 8 civis with no punishments.

Useless.

The punishment is invisible, you lost some intel and your next respawn (if you have one) is longer. That's why people feel free to shoot them.

snooggums wrote:The punishment is invisible, you lost some intel and your next respawn (if you have one) is longer. That's why people feel free to shoot them.

don't you still get that message telling you you've shot a civilian?

McLuv wrote: Anyways, why are people complaining about them being killed by your own grenades? Even if they are sticking around insurgents, they'll be punished for that occasion, but you will too. Make sure there aren't any civilians within the vicinity before you fire grenades, HEAT or HE rounds into a building.

if you are sitting in an apc and see a building with 3 rpgs, you open up since letting them take aim is usually fatal. now if when i open up on that building hit a collaborator that is sitting around inside, then i shouldn't get punished should I?

wookimonsta wrote:don't you still get that message telling you you've shot a civilian?

Don't know, but a message won't change behavior if there is no accompanying punishment.