Infantry

[Paco]

I am not JTAC qualified

 

:-)

 

But being Ranger qualled is pretty cool. My hats off.

[Frogisis]

Something that might be interesting is a special zone or other gizmo that "generates" infantry - In another thread someone was talking about how even little convoys and things would be equipped with rifles and MANPADs and such to ward off aircraft, so it might make seemingly harmless trucks and other supply targets of opportunity more fun and surprising to engage if they had a probability of randomly spawning some riflemen who'd take pot shots at you or even a mini-SAM (Of course this could be done with the mission editor, but in that case there's no reason that logic couldn't be baked right in as something you could toggle).

 

That could dovetail nicely with adding individual pedestrians as civilian traffic, too, if only just to have them walk into view and then run away and be deleted once out of sight - Obviously people aren't going to be out for a stroll down the street in the middle of a battle, but it'd be really cool to see a little figure sprint across the street through your TGP, presumably on his/her way to make sure old so-and-so is still safe. After all, we already have city buses calmly plying their routes past freshly burning tanks, and people driving so sedately you'd think they're out to buy some ear plugs to block out all those annoying explosions.

Edited December 13, 2012 by Frogisis

[Ripcord]

Both. Also I tried a bunker as it looked promising when I saw "Player can drive" in options.

But there is no icon to enter it from map, like with tanks and apc's.

Is there a different way to access it ?

 

No, that is not what I meant. The Armed House is not something that the player can operate. It just functions as a JTAC as an AI unit, so an A-10C can check in with it and work with it as a JTAC.

[Skitter]

Right, I get it.

 

But thanks, I realized I can use it as JFO too.

[Frogisis]

You know, I bet there's actually a lot of fudging you could do with the mission editor to make infantry more useful until they get some official attention.

 

I always ignore it because it feels against the spirit of the whole realistic sim thing, but it might finally be a good reason to use the "immortal" option - Say you place some infantry in a town or a forest, and each little fire team starts off invulnerable, but there's a trigger zone around them set in such a way that every few minutes or so a check is performed that has a small chance of making one of them mortal again as long as opposing units are inside it. If opposing infantry enter that zone to engage them, then both are rendered entirely vulnerable.

 

It'd require a lot of finesse to have it so that they're not all mowed down by waiting tanks as soon as one friendly rifleman strays into the area, as if he'd lured them out like an ice cream man, but I'm sure it could be done with some clever flags and triggers. Maybe make the trigger zone really small and require the whole opposing squad to be inside it to represent them routing the troops from their fortifications or something...

That could be another interesting mechanic: bunkers and RPG troops that "activate" along the route your forces are advancing, representing the camouflaged entrances to underground tunnels or some other fortification, and you would have to get a squad or two close to one of them to "go inside" (be deleted) and then some series of probability triggers would play out to see whether you shut it down along the whole route.

 

As long as they're in the feeble state they currently are, for suspension of disbelief I don't think it's any worse than a lot of the other stuff we currently have ground units doing, or more accurately not doing.

 

Yeah, I'm actually gonna give this a try once I get all this stupid work done...