Stone-throwing Mobs/Crowds etc

[Weeble]

I was trying to create a "Bloody Sunday" scenario when I found out that the various flavours of stone throwers all cause too many casualties to allow the Paras to have "Weapons Off".

I intented to have the 'Paras to advance vs Civs, Hostile Crowds ...eventually Mobs.

These were bought as 'captured' units from Somalia and PLO Sept 2005.

I assumed tht the 'Crowd-thrown Stone' was not improved by time.

(Pass me that 2007 rock, I'll kill that tank for sure!...?)


My original idea was to give the Paras "All weapons OFF" and try to advance vs pistol fire in the crowd and snipers (bad snipers) at a distance. Get the Objectives without "Civilian" damage ( and of course take out the actual "Hostile" units. ) ie take objectves without killing crowd.

The UK 'Paras were bought off-the-shelf as a platoon

All of the crowd were stone throwers.

(No innocent bystanders)

Can anyone give me a hint\help?


Why are 'Stone Throwers' so effective?

[PlasmaKrab]

One thing to remember:

Casualties are not deaths. That means that one guy drawn off one section by the game engine is just out of order long enough for the game to end, i.e. wounded, immobilized, stunned, you name it.
Admittedly a crowd-control policeman in riot gear should fall out that easily either.

Have you tried reducing drastically the ROF of your stone-throwers? I know that the ROF rating itself doesn't count for much, but if you have something really low like 2 or 3 that should reduce their stone-lugging eagerness. Same if you reduce their experience as well, which should be pretty logical in your setting, wouldn't it?
Then you would have to compromise between them pebbling your soldiers like mad and running off at first sight of an enemy.

Actually (you'd have to check this too) I fear that only actual shooting of the enemy units (here your angry mobs) will have them retreating. Have you tried pushing them off by sheer contact with your Paras? My thought is that they won't budge until at close quarters (whence they will suffer heavy casualties due to the Paras' close-combat bonus), and since the stones are so deadly these days your paras may even end up surredering, which would be ironically ridiculous.

Other solution would be: interlace your stone-throwing mobs with unarmed crowds, here again so as to have less stones thrown at a time.

What are the actual parameters of your stone-throwers and stone-throwing weapon, by the way?

[DRG]

The weapon itself " Thrown stones " has no HE kill. It has no value for any of the typical weapon slots. All it has is a range of one. By that standard it should not be causing any casualties at all

"armed mobs" of stone throwers should never have been put in the OOB's in the first place. This type of thing is not what the game was designed for but people have an infinite capacity for " creativity" even if it's misplaced. Stone throwing mobs was one of those little things that some OOB designers added to the game that really doesn't thrill me at all but by the time I found out about it the "damage" was done.

WHY they are causing casualties at all is a mystery that I *may* look into when all the other mysteries that are more important to the game have been solved. NO weapon should have zero's for all it's prime information and what I suspect is the problem is there are minimums for some of these values hard coded and that is why something that should have no effect is creating casualties and changing a hard coded value like that could potentially screw up lot's of other things. I noted there were 2 4 and 6 man "stone throwers" try only having a few of the two man ones and reduce the ROF in the editor under the "Fire control" section to 1 and see if that helps

Don

[Weeble]

I've just retried with Indirect/suppressive fire in hexes adjacent to the unarmed crowds (hand grenades), followed by advance into the crowd caused "Tank Panic" in 25% leaving only the 'hostile' stone throwers at point-blank. Ensuing melee predictably one-sided

I used Somali angry crowds and PLO civilians , UN civilians and civil engineers (all set as 'captured') in UK vs UK.

The data on stone-throwers gives range 1 and all the rest as zero. Ammo loads 6, 12 & 24 as HE.

Don't see why 'zero' damage/pen rocks still cause so many casualties though.

This exercise require strict "weapons-off" discipline. Stirling SMGs caused 'collateral damage' to unarmed civs in same hex as target. SLR & GPMG seemed sufficiently accurate!

[PlasmaKrab]

Wether such "non-lethal" weapons at large should be included in the game is something that can be debated for a long time. However, everyone can agree that the game engine wasn't designed for that kind of engagement.

Now that's not the type of obstacle that will prevent some from trying!
I don't know if weapons with zero HEK screw up something in the game, I have been testing some and it went alright as far as I can tell. At any rate, the fact that non-killing weapons (or at least intended to be so) made casualties can be apprehended by assuming, as I think is the principle in the game, that a casualty can be as well some guy with his guts torn out by a mortar shell or someone temporarily knocked down and left behind by his team or playing dead.

[Mobhack]

There are no "non lethal" weapons in the game - thrown stones break bones and put troops out of action for the length of a scenario.

HE fire will cause casualties - whether warhead size is 0 or not, the code will assign a small chance in any case, and target supression etc can contribute to HE casualties as well.

"casualty" != dead trooper. It covers injured, stunned/shocked, run-aways and others not available during an hour or 2 of battle, e.g those carying injured to the rear etc. it therefore can be considered to cover morale damage as well as physical injuries.

A "Bloody Sunday" type scenario just is not really in this game engine's remit. A scenario with SAS in hiding in a police station waiting for an attack by a Provo ASU would be (just) - though the scale would really be too small for the game engine, such a small-scale micro-action would be better handled in one of the 3D "squad level" RTS games available from other manufacturers where 1 basic unit=1 man that concentrate on SWAT(paramilitary police) or similar low-level (below the platoon level) tactics. Those 3-D squad-level game engines may also cover "arresting" the opposition, baton rounds, CS gas, snatch teams and so on (I would hope a "SWAT" or counter-terrorist type game engine would allow that, and not just blasting away at the criminals with lethal weaponry ! )

The MBT game engine is for "open battle" between 2 military forces in an open war situation. Ie both sides "weapons free".


Cheers
Andy

[Listy]

I had a similar senario, and problem, only set in Iraq.

The senario:
A road Patrol was ordered to a town to rescue a group of Contractors surounded by an angry mob(tm). The Rvoer's where ment to drive up to the mob pick up the contractors and their guards, then get attacked by an Armed mob (Patent applied for).
However as the rover's drove through the mob, they'd get assualted and destroyed by the unamred mobs.

The soloution:
Despite the -25 Morale and EXp the mobs still ahd EXP and morale ratiings, so I went through and set everything to 1 morale and 0 EXP. Now when they attacked they fled from the vehicles, and acted just like a mob would when 6 land rover's of armed squadies show up (Of course they all peged it of to the mosque to get bombed up, but still..).

I think there IS a palce for skirmish games like this in SPMBT. these Qucik seanrio's that laow us to kill 20-30 minuets at work are brilliant... Not that I'd instal a game on my Work PC.. or surf this forum from there..

[DRG]

PlasmaKrab said:(or at least intended to be so) made casualties can be apprehended by assuming, as I think is the principle in the game, that a casualty can be as well some guy with his guts torn out by a mortar shell or someone temporarily knocked down and left behind by his team or playing dead.

Changing the message "Men killed" to "Casualties" was THE first change I made with a Hex editor when we first started playing around making Sp2WW2 out of SP2 back in 1998. THE first change... and for that very reason. There are many more "casualties" than there are fatalities and a guy hit in the face with a rock thrown by a 12 year old at a small protest takes him out of action just the same as that rock being kicked up by the explosion of an mortar nearby in a full fledged battle

So the issue wasn't that there were casualties produced but that too many were being produced but if anyone is in doubt a causualty is not neccessarily a "kill"

Don