Civilians

[gmangnall]

If doing CAS missions it would be great to have unarmed civilians who we should NOT be shooting.

[Gunfreak]

Should definitely be a neutral and 3rd faction ability.

[Northstar98]

+1

19 hours ago, Gunfreak said:

Should definitely be a neutral and 3rd faction ability.

We've got a non-combative neutral/3rd faction (comprising of all unassigned countries), but the real panacea IMO is to have something like C:MO where you can add sides/coalitions completely at will (including civilians).

Edited October 24, 2023 by Northstar98

[sirrah]

Fully agree that we need more unarmed units. Preferably a few civilian men/women models, but if too difficult or against ED's policy, at least a few infantry units without weapons (those could go as civilians through the 'eye' of a FLIR pod).

Would be a tremendous way forward to at least have the current static deck as movable AI units.

 

I, and probably many before me, also asked for this in the past. Let's hope your wish does catch the eyes of ED devs

 

[MiG21bisFishbedL]

This is kind of an important and needed feature if you want to simulate COIN operations.

[gmangnall]

There are civilian vehicles - so I don't think it's against ED policy and we have static deck crew who are unarmed...........but cannot walk/move.

[sirrah]

4 hours ago, gmangnall said:

There are civilian vehicles - so I don't think it's against ED policy and we have static deck crew who are unarmed...........but cannot walk/move.

But they can't be killed (and iirc ED has no intention on creating dead crew member models, for reasons I can understand).

[Willie Nelson]

I would assume that placing a lot of extra people, regardless of their status does reduce performance in the same way as civillian traffic. I am sure that's at least a consideration for ED. But yes as multi threading and core game performance improvements come along, that would be great. 

[Zius]

21 hours ago, Willie Nelson said:

I would assume that placing a lot of extra people, regardless of their status does reduce performance in the same way as civillian traffic. I am sure that's at least a consideration for ED. But yes as multi threading and core game performance improvements come along, that would be great. 

A lot of extra people would not be required in my opinion.

But putting some people (civilians who should not be harmed) around a target would make a mission more interesting, more complicated and more realistic.

[Tank50us]

One possible option is to have them as part of the map (like the traffic), and when something happens (like an explosion or a tank driving up), they are animated to duck into the nearest building, and after a bit of time, they come back out.

[Branli]

I agree, there should be civilians (preferred animated idle / walking civilians) , or add some static props like a market which you can add in the mission editor. It really fits to have markets like in the Syria / Persian Gulf / Sinai maps. If it is against ED's policy to have civilians, at least have them non-destructible so its harder to spot enemies / insurgents because they are in a crowd. 

[twistking]

i really doubt that the lack of civilians is a policy thing. when the DCS cows (tm) were introduced, wags himself said in an interview, that ED want to explore the possibility of having more lively maps with autogen content and he even mentioned civilians.
there are many ways to introduce civilians without risking backlash. killing civilians could result in hardcoded penalties, maybe even a "game over". civilians could be immortal or they could be made to automatically flee and despawn instead of having a death animation. airliners are a bit more challenging, because they would need to be destructable i think. hardcoded penalties would still be possible. from a brand perspective the important aspect is, that DCS does not actively support warcrimes and certain acts.
if unmodded vanilla would give you a "mission failed" or other penalty for "unwanted" behaviour, i don't think there would be any public outcry. fake footage for fake new can always be done with mods and ED has no possibility to stop that, but they can distance themselfes from such content by having the unmodded game forcing certain acts to be seen only in a specific context.

my guess is, that civilian autogen is just a lot of work: it must look realistic, be map/situation-aware, mp-compatible, performance friendly, etc. ...

[gmangnall]

I was just abvout to say something similar. ED could code civilians as friendly fire so killing them is the same as a frag.....I don't think that's neccessary as I don't think it's a policy thing...but if it were that would be a neat solution.

Im also not thinking of hudnreds or random civilians. I am talking about small nubmers say 10-100 with one or two bad guys so you had to use low yield weapons when they are not near civilians.

[diveplane]

now that really would bring the sim alive more civilians walking on the streets.. 

[gmangnall]

Civilians on the street isn't about adding emersion. Every mission I see you just kill everything you see. The idea is to have to ID targets who might be in close proximity so you can't use a 2000lb bomb. You might need a 250lb bomb or a rocket.

[Tank50us]

9 hours ago, gmangnall said:

Civilians on the street isn't about adding emersion. Every mission I see you just kill everything you see. The idea is to have to ID targets who might be in close proximity so you can't use a 2000lb bomb. You might need a 250lb bomb or a rocket.

This is especially the case for missions where you're doing COIN ops. After all, the baddies like to hide amongst the civilians, so a good operation would be have a 'spotter' aircraft (Gazelle, Huey, Kiowa when it arrives, CA units, Bronco, etc) actually look for the bad guys in direct the airstrike in a way that avoids collateral damage. How well the group does can then be measured by how many civilians are still alive and unharmed.

Also, if I'm not mistaken... isn't this what the APKWS rockets were built for?

[MAXsenna]

On 11/8/2023 at 1:32 AM, diveplane said:

now that really would bring the sim alive more civilians walking on the streets.. 

I wanna blow off hats down the strip.