I appreciate a man who speaks if-then-else. One follow-up - possibly increasing fortitude if another team member begins firing. Kind of a herd mentality aspect?
There is no way to actualize this in a video game. For players, there are no real consequences, moral or physical, and while many games have a morality system (Mass Effect, Dishonored, the Souls games, etc) they are tied to player choices in their responses to friends and foes in the game. A very complex system is found in Baldurs Gate 3, which everyone should play, where choices in the narrative by the player dramatically effect the game, but it is equally valid to save or destroy, depending on what you want to play. In combat, it does have a system resembling fortitude in that there are certain attacks that can cause fear and certain buffs that can improve morale which impact how the enemies fight. Very very good turn based combat system which also has a lot of tactical elements and dynamic AI. In a shooter, its about having fun not being realistic. You want all the enemies to fight.
In an FPS-style game, you may be correct about this being difficult to implement.
But in a real-time strategy game, like Star Craft or Command and Conquer, it’s quite do-able. The Close Combat series had a very realistic and effective system for this.
RTS is generally squad based, and in say the Warhammer 50k RTS series we had leaders on the battlefield as well. Its a big part of the Total War series as well. Rout a squad, send in the cavalry, etc. Full on siege simulator.
Its a matter of what's fun and what you're trying to accomplish. I do think the "leader on the battlefield" element is a false morale element in modern warfare games and shows, and an exaggerated one in historic games and shows. The pre-fight speech and all that. Troops are trained to fight a certain way, and if you break their formation, then you take advantage of the morale chaos. Some leader 100m away isn't going to help them recover their formation. Many games give a bonus to squads with veteran experience over fresh recruits in terms of combat effectiveness and rally capacity, and that makes sense. A squad of Green Berets will be much more effective and self-reliance than a squad of rural militia men. And then what they're fight for is important to the occasion. Defending a homeland is probably the biggest motivator of troops simulated or otherwise, which is why the Hamas conflict persists. Its a war about survival of nations.
Go to WWI where Russian squads who have 1 rifle for every 6 troops and orders for the second line to pick up the weapon of the fallen soldier ahead of you while the officers will shoot anyone who backs up, and you see an entire monarchy collapse over it.
"Ready or Not" (a cooperative SWAT sim-lite game) implements a system like this, although buggy at times. The chance of a suspect surrendering or fighting depends on a moral system. Their buddies getting taken out lowers it, as well as flashbangs and such. If moral drops too low too fast on certain levels, a suspect has a chance of taking his own life. They also have a chance of getting back up after being neutralized if you don't cuff them, or of faking surrender and pulling a pistol or knife. Again this all interfaces with Morale.
Inserting human factor in a game would be at best very difficult at best. Think of your experiences with other members of your unit when you were on active duty. Human behavior is evolutionary with the circumstances, past learning, personal factors and the skill of leaders. Have you ever seen a person who talks big, but freezes or runs away at the first sign of conflict? I remember seeing it somewhere, maybe on a t-shirt, "nothing blew my mind like being shot at for the first time". Everybody reacts differently after a month or two (think combat veteran) than on their first week. Maybe there should be a fortitude score for increasing time in role.
This video was a welcome surprise! I just started building an AI for my game, which I imagine to be just like what you described in this video. I love the idea of a fortitude variable, as I had it split up into “bravery” and “fear” variables. I would love a deeper dive into the mechanics of what constitutes “cover”, what methods could be used to find key patrolling points, and how an AI might decide to find a spot which has good visibility, cover, or value (like near a VIP)!
Also, it would be awesome to see a video on the application process for West Point or other academies.
Awesome topic! I am wondering where you got the stats about how many soldiers fired at the enemy in WW2 versus Vietnam. I have always heard that the figure was abysmally low in Vietnam - that many soldiers fired but few actually shot at the enemy, to the extent that there were something like 100,000 rounds fired for every enemy soldier killed.
I would like to clarify that Starfield as other Bethesda open world games (mainly Fallout) is not just a shooter game but mostly a role playing game. Players develop a character build using skills and abilities, one of those is a melee build. If you include sneaking and stealth into the equation, the combat mechanic would seriously impact the balance in favor of ranged weapons. As a long time fan of both stealthy melee and silenced rifles builds, I assume adding features like this in a game like this, would make it practically impossible to role play :) I had to resort to go from a ninja style into a commando style just because an enemy fled to different room for backup. While chasing him, I happened to suddenly face not just one but three or more alerted enemies. Since sneaking in the game is already not easy, alerted enemies basically made it instantly useless and thus negating any buffs improving melee combat. Instead of just becoming a sitting duck, I had switch to my rifle and return fire from behind a cover. I think people tend to forget about the melee option, imho that is also the reason why enemies are placed in various rooms in specific numbers and with AI that follows certain behavior patterns, some patrolling hallways, some tenting to cooking stations, others just chilling in chairs. So that the player can use their behavior and line of sight to his benefit. Of course it would be great to have the AI more aware, I often wondered that myself. Any idea I came up quickly evaporated once I switched from a rifle to a knife or a sword. If we include starborn powers in the mix, even fully aware AI would get obsolete with gravity powers or super nova. But then you are not playing a sneaky ninja :) Also, the current AI behaves a bit differently inside close quarters such as interiors and outside in exteriors where they tend to stick together and cover each other with ranged firepower.
The “Close Combat” games from Microsoft back in the late 90s (and on into the aughts, but I only ever played the first three) had a pretty good system for this. I don’t know what the underlying logic was, but both friendly and enemy units would get demoralized if they were pinned down, more so if they were taking relatively effective mortar fire, and even more so if the unit started taking casualties. Like in real life, at 50% or more causalities they would usually become combat ineffective and even quit the field. If you could link them up with another friendly unit that was still combat effective, you could get them back into the fight (as I recall).
Interesting that this was the game I thought of, as apparently that “morale model” was a particularly notable feature. Second sentence of the article on the series in Wikipedia:
“Close Combat was developed as a computer game version of the acclaimed Avalon Hill board game Advanced Squad Leader (ASL). The primary consultant for the morale model was Dr. Steven Silver, a specialist in combat-related trauma.”
Borderlands handles the "leaders are tougher" thing by having them be a different class. You have psycho, badass psycho, super badass psycho, and at the highest level they're called ultimate badass lunatics. Then again, calling these leaders isn't really accurate. They're just tougher. True leaders are very few and tend to be named characters.
You should check out the old Avalon Hill board game Squad Leader. It has an entire system of morale and leadership influence on morale and combat effectiveness. I think (although I have never seen pitched close combat myself, even in Afghanistan) that it is a pretty good simulation. However, it is still a board game, not a video game.
I appreciate a man who speaks if-then-else. One follow-up - possibly increasing fortitude if another team member begins firing. Kind of a herd mentality aspect?
yeah, panic fire is a thing.
Bit of a tangent but I would love to see your opinions on “Six Days in Fallujah”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Days_in_Fallujah
Is that out yet?
There is no way to actualize this in a video game. For players, there are no real consequences, moral or physical, and while many games have a morality system (Mass Effect, Dishonored, the Souls games, etc) they are tied to player choices in their responses to friends and foes in the game. A very complex system is found in Baldurs Gate 3, which everyone should play, where choices in the narrative by the player dramatically effect the game, but it is equally valid to save or destroy, depending on what you want to play. In combat, it does have a system resembling fortitude in that there are certain attacks that can cause fear and certain buffs that can improve morale which impact how the enemies fight. Very very good turn based combat system which also has a lot of tactical elements and dynamic AI. In a shooter, its about having fun not being realistic. You want all the enemies to fight.
In an FPS-style game, you may be correct about this being difficult to implement.
But in a real-time strategy game, like Star Craft or Command and Conquer, it’s quite do-able. The Close Combat series had a very realistic and effective system for this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_Combat_(series)
RTS is generally squad based, and in say the Warhammer 50k RTS series we had leaders on the battlefield as well. Its a big part of the Total War series as well. Rout a squad, send in the cavalry, etc. Full on siege simulator.
Its a matter of what's fun and what you're trying to accomplish. I do think the "leader on the battlefield" element is a false morale element in modern warfare games and shows, and an exaggerated one in historic games and shows. The pre-fight speech and all that. Troops are trained to fight a certain way, and if you break their formation, then you take advantage of the morale chaos. Some leader 100m away isn't going to help them recover their formation. Many games give a bonus to squads with veteran experience over fresh recruits in terms of combat effectiveness and rally capacity, and that makes sense. A squad of Green Berets will be much more effective and self-reliance than a squad of rural militia men. And then what they're fight for is important to the occasion. Defending a homeland is probably the biggest motivator of troops simulated or otherwise, which is why the Hamas conflict persists. Its a war about survival of nations.
Go to WWI where Russian squads who have 1 rifle for every 6 troops and orders for the second line to pick up the weapon of the fallen soldier ahead of you while the officers will shoot anyone who backs up, and you see an entire monarchy collapse over it.
"Ready or Not" (a cooperative SWAT sim-lite game) implements a system like this, although buggy at times. The chance of a suspect surrendering or fighting depends on a moral system. Their buddies getting taken out lowers it, as well as flashbangs and such. If moral drops too low too fast on certain levels, a suspect has a chance of taking his own life. They also have a chance of getting back up after being neutralized if you don't cuff them, or of faking surrender and pulling a pistol or knife. Again this all interfaces with Morale.
Okay. Master class on combat simulation in video games. Knock, knock. Hello? Bethesda? Anybody home?
Inserting human factor in a game would be at best very difficult at best. Think of your experiences with other members of your unit when you were on active duty. Human behavior is evolutionary with the circumstances, past learning, personal factors and the skill of leaders. Have you ever seen a person who talks big, but freezes or runs away at the first sign of conflict? I remember seeing it somewhere, maybe on a t-shirt, "nothing blew my mind like being shot at for the first time". Everybody reacts differently after a month or two (think combat veteran) than on their first week. Maybe there should be a fortitude score for increasing time in role.
"Starfield is disappointing. It couldn't get any worse"
Ryan: Hold my beer...
This video was a welcome surprise! I just started building an AI for my game, which I imagine to be just like what you described in this video. I love the idea of a fortitude variable, as I had it split up into “bravery” and “fear” variables. I would love a deeper dive into the mechanics of what constitutes “cover”, what methods could be used to find key patrolling points, and how an AI might decide to find a spot which has good visibility, cover, or value (like near a VIP)!
Also, it would be awesome to see a video on the application process for West Point or other academies.
Keep up the good work!
Awesome topic! I am wondering where you got the stats about how many soldiers fired at the enemy in WW2 versus Vietnam. I have always heard that the figure was abysmally low in Vietnam - that many soldiers fired but few actually shot at the enemy, to the extent that there were something like 100,000 rounds fired for every enemy soldier killed.
I would like to clarify that Starfield as other Bethesda open world games (mainly Fallout) is not just a shooter game but mostly a role playing game. Players develop a character build using skills and abilities, one of those is a melee build. If you include sneaking and stealth into the equation, the combat mechanic would seriously impact the balance in favor of ranged weapons. As a long time fan of both stealthy melee and silenced rifles builds, I assume adding features like this in a game like this, would make it practically impossible to role play :) I had to resort to go from a ninja style into a commando style just because an enemy fled to different room for backup. While chasing him, I happened to suddenly face not just one but three or more alerted enemies. Since sneaking in the game is already not easy, alerted enemies basically made it instantly useless and thus negating any buffs improving melee combat. Instead of just becoming a sitting duck, I had switch to my rifle and return fire from behind a cover. I think people tend to forget about the melee option, imho that is also the reason why enemies are placed in various rooms in specific numbers and with AI that follows certain behavior patterns, some patrolling hallways, some tenting to cooking stations, others just chilling in chairs. So that the player can use their behavior and line of sight to his benefit. Of course it would be great to have the AI more aware, I often wondered that myself. Any idea I came up quickly evaporated once I switched from a rifle to a knife or a sword. If we include starborn powers in the mix, even fully aware AI would get obsolete with gravity powers or super nova. But then you are not playing a sneaky ninja :) Also, the current AI behaves a bit differently inside close quarters such as interiors and outside in exteriors where they tend to stick together and cover each other with ranged firepower.
This was a great change of pace, and a preview of possible future AI development models. Would like more content like this.
Anything above Atari 2600 is over my head.
The “Close Combat” games from Microsoft back in the late 90s (and on into the aughts, but I only ever played the first three) had a pretty good system for this. I don’t know what the underlying logic was, but both friendly and enemy units would get demoralized if they were pinned down, more so if they were taking relatively effective mortar fire, and even more so if the unit started taking casualties. Like in real life, at 50% or more causalities they would usually become combat ineffective and even quit the field. If you could link them up with another friendly unit that was still combat effective, you could get them back into the fight (as I recall).
Interesting that this was the game I thought of, as apparently that “morale model” was a particularly notable feature. Second sentence of the article on the series in Wikipedia:
“Close Combat was developed as a computer game version of the acclaimed Avalon Hill board game Advanced Squad Leader (ASL). The primary consultant for the morale model was Dr. Steven Silver, a specialist in combat-related trauma.”
Borderlands handles the "leaders are tougher" thing by having them be a different class. You have psycho, badass psycho, super badass psycho, and at the highest level they're called ultimate badass lunatics. Then again, calling these leaders isn't really accurate. They're just tougher. True leaders are very few and tend to be named characters.
You should check out the old Avalon Hill board game Squad Leader. It has an entire system of morale and leadership influence on morale and combat effectiveness. I think (although I have never seen pitched close combat myself, even in Afghanistan) that it is a pretty good simulation. However, it is still a board game, not a video game.