Blocking frendly fire

[petsild]

Hi,

I accidentally left Free Fire mode on and marked a friend in the squadron after completing the mission.

It happened that George started shooting without hesitation, fortunately I use short gun bursts and so my friend could make an emergency landing.

It was my fault, but I think George should have a moral code and shouldn't have been able to shoot at friendly machines.

[NineLine]

Hey petslid, from the team:

As described in the DCS AH-64D manual, if any enemy or unknown targets are detected, George will filter any friendly or neutral contacts from the Target List by default. However, if no enemy or unknown targets are detected, George will display friendly and neutral targets to ensure the player understands that there are only friendlies in that area, which helps avoid fratricide (friendly fire).

However, although it is rare, it is possible for George to misidentify a friendly as enemy or an enemy as a friendly, just like a real life crewmember. Therefore, the player retains the ability to override George's coalition identification and he can be directed to engage an enemy that he thinks may be friendly. However, this requires the player (as the pilot-in-command of the helicopter), to maintain situational awareness of the battlefield as the final confirmation of target ID.

In addition, if George is ordered to track a target and has been directed to action a weapon, the implied task is that George should engage the target with that weapon. As the pilot-in-command and final authority onboard the aircraft for releasing weapons, selecting a friendly unit for George to track, directing him to action a weapon, and giving him a Weapons Free rules-of-engagement, you are essentially instructing him to engage that target because you believe it is hostile.

[Dragon1-1]

I think it could be tuned a bit, though. The Apache has a quite distinctive appearance, while it's understandable that George could mistake one tank for another, mixing up helos like this really shouldn't happen. Even if he's implicitly ordered to engage, he shouldn't be firing an an obviously friendly target.

[NineLine]

24 minutes ago, Dragon1-1 said:

I think it could be tuned a bit, though. The Apache has a quite distinctive appearance, while it's understandable that George could mistake one tank for another, mixing up helos like this really shouldn't happen. Even if he's implicitly ordered to engage, he shouldn't be firing an an obviously friendly target.

Without a track, you really could not say it was a poor decision or not. If you are seeing issues where it is really bad and do not think it's right or needs tuning, we would require a track to see this. 

[Dragon1-1]

What we needs is a better recording system, because you know that MP tracks, especially big ones, aren't particularly likely to playback correctly.

[petsild]

Okay, in this state of George, it was my fault, but in reality, a gunner who has a better ability to recognize a target than a commander will not shoot at a friendly unit, even though historically in reality such a failure has happened.

Certainly many pilots would like an intelligent revision of the free fire mode.

[ShuRugal]

a "please confirm, target appears friendly" prompt when George is set to Weapons Free and a friendly is selected from the list would be nice.

[NineLine]

18 hours ago, Dragon1-1 said:

What we needs is a better recording system, because you know that MP tracks, especially big ones, aren't particularly likely to playback correctly.

If you are seeing it a lot, it should be something easy to reproduce in single player. The reason I ask for a track as I am not seeing it reported by our Team, Testers or QA. 

2 hours ago, ShuRugal said:

a "please confirm, target appears friendly" prompt when George is set to Weapons Free and a friendly is selected from the list would be nice.

I am not sure that would help the flow of combat very well. And we know that real-world mistakes do happen. 

[Dragon1-1]

6 hours ago, NineLine said:

And we know that real-world mistakes do happen. 

One of the nice things about two-seaters is that the second crewmember, if he's not blindly following orders, might sanity-check the first. One person can make a mistake, two making the same one individually are much less likely. This is why George should be able to second-guess such an order. Also, mistakes are not completely random, if the only helos in the area are friendly, someone suddenly thinking one of them is hostile is quite improbable (it could happen the other way, a hostile is unnoticed because only friendlies are expected).