3.0 - Urban Operations

[daskal]

I have a couple of question regarding Civilians and Urban operations in the upcoming 3.0:

Role of the civilians? - will they be just critters walking around spawning and disappearing (like in e.g. GTA) - or will they be rather permanent and interacting on the map? In fact my real question is whether they will have some sort of AI? Because that would effect CPU usage I assume and pose a limit to where and how many civilians we can place.

Troops? - can any improvement on their "AI" and movement be expected in urban areas.

I've been building a Basrah map since quite a qhile, and I hope to prepare the biggest and most detailed city ever made in SB... so I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that it is going to work just fine with the new civilian add-on as well.

[Ssnake]

Civilians in SB Pro PE 3.0 serve a primary role of breathing some life into the towns. They will walk around, then diasppear and eventually reappear in a different place. The just as important role is to provide hotspots and movement that are NOT valid targets and therefore reward the application of proper target identification before squeezing the trigger in a "hotspot! shoot it already!!!" reflex.

A secondary role is to provide cues to the player due to the composition of civilians (like, the absence of women and children in street scene).

A tertiary role is to provide a backdrop against which irregular combatants are hard to identify, simply because you can add identically looking enemy civilians into the population and eventually arm them (and then make them discard their weapon, to walk away from the scene as "law abiding, innocent citizens"). Aso you can turn them into suicide bombers, although the bomb effect is too larget at the moment to be realistic.

Will they talk and chat, or even engage in meaningful conversation with you? No, and not anytime soon. Steel Beasts is a vehicle-centric simulation - how much of a conversation would you strike up with a 65t MBT?

Will they seek cover and flee a combat scene? Will they flock to supply trucks from a humanitarian aid organization?

Not yet, but one day they will.

[Ssnake]

I should also point out that large cities are taxing on the hardware, and with the new engine and shadows and potentially hundreds of pedestrians and cars things haven't made a turn for the better. I can but recommend to limit your ambitions for the moment, or to accept that you may experience very, very low frame rates.

Just because you can do a lot more now doesn't mean that you should attempt to do everything, and on a grand scale.

[cata]

Wow suicide bomber that’s new! All be it a 150lb semtex back pack. I also read there is an option to set speed right? Like the child running in one of the screen shots.

[Gibsonm]

Yes they are good for "pattern of life" stuff and I think rudimentary ROE training.

[Ssnake]

...and we'll be working on that "rudimentary" bit in coming years.

(It's not necessarily going to be more entertaining/fun, though).

[Toyguy]

I should also point out that large cities are taxing on the hardware, and with the new engine and shadows and potentially hundreds of pedestrians and cars things haven't made a turn for the better. I can but recommend to limit your ambitions for the moment, or to accept that you may experience very, very low frame rates.

Now that Ssnake has broken the ice a bit about this capability, I hope it's OK to talk about it.

You'll be able to have both Spawn and Drain regions and assign those to civilian prototype groups you've constructed which will then travel from the Spawn to the Drain. As you might expect, you can set numbers of civilians, types of civilians and frequency of spawning, among other things. Due to the potential performance load, I expect that the Spawn Start If... and Spawn End If... functions will be very important, allowing designers to only generate civilians if someone/something is around to see them.

[Gibsonm]

Also you can turn them into suicide bombers, although the bomb effect is too larget at the moment to be realistic.

Yes they are good for "pattern of life" stuff and I think rudimentary ROE training.

So you can end up with things scripted such as:

Blue ROE: "Do not park AFV within 200m of culturally sensitive site".

Green:

1. Draw custom region (call custom region "no go zone" or some such) with boundary of 200m around site.

2. Have civilians walk around "no go zone"

3. Have civilians scripted to "explode if ... Blue AFV in no go zone".

If Blue commander does what he is told and observes ROE, all good.

If Blue commander parks AFV next to culturally sensitive site (i.e. goes into "no go zone"), then:

a. Civilian explodes.

b. Civilian exploding maybe an event that triggers insurgent attack or some such.

All because the guy ignored the ROE.

[cata]

Could someone confirm the civis speed can be scripted at waypoints or when spawned? If so then you will be able to have civis running to and fro once rounds start flying by using spawn if…commands. For the first few minutes of any contact it could look quite chaotic.