Caltrops - Motherfucking News

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by Little Crow 03/13/2003, 2:15am PST

Senor Barborito wrote:

Little Crow wrote:

yada yada yada

I wish to God a video of the event had made it onto the 'net - I would just about *KILL* to read your commentary on such a thing and get a chance to see what it is you're seeing that I'm not.

Hell, you never know. CNN or somebody might put up one of those slick graphics of the layout, where the shots came from, etc. But most likely, no. Doubtful at best that Serbs would share that kind of intel with Americans, especially if it reveals a world-class clusterfuck with them standing around with their dicks in their hands while their PM gets perforated...

One of the things that's always interested me is how trained soldiers break down their environment into a series of octree-like lanes of fire, cover, etc. - I would LOVE to see such training put into the introductory level of an FPS. I can't help but think that it could really help. In Counter-Strike (brief aside - did you realize that 12,207 man-years of Counter-Strike are played EVERY GODDAMN MONTH on the public servers alone?) there are small, obstacle-filled 'speedball' levels that entirely focus on this, but it's broken down into a simplistic bricks-and-walls setting so all of the lanes of fire and such are very, very obvious. Making the transition from this to the larger maps is where most people, myself included, seem to fail and it's what seperates the good players from the 'great' ones.

The name of the game, son, is money. I know you know this. Why don't lots of really cool ideas ever make it into games? The appeal's too marginal to be profitable. It sucks. I'm all for capitalism, and making a product that sells and all, great, but who's going to be the one to put his balls on the chopping block to move genres ahead? *shrug* But yeah, a military background would help in certain games, to an extent. I'll get to that in a sec.

Am I understanding that right about CS? 12,000 manyears? As in 24*365*12,000? That's like 100 some odd MILLION collective hours/month? STILL? I thought CS was old news by now. Talk about a fucking gross underestimation, Christ. Can you believe I've never played it once? It's probably better this way. The last thing I need in my life is another addiction...

It would be wonderful if the Army Operations game had included a series of increasingly complex drill levels against increasingly difficult AI opponents that really beats this stuff into your head and slowly forces you to both upgrade your ability to breakdown new environments quickly and categorize everything you see as well as constantly upgrade your stress threshold. It's ability to handle stress and pull this shit off quickly that makes the Spec Ops soldiers (there's been a slew of articles lately reporting the findings on how Spec Ops soldiers have been biologically demonstrated to handle stress hormones better than normal ones) so much better. Gamers who actually care about their game would eat this shit up and it seems like a video game project that would seriously be useful to the military for helping to train their own soldiers.

Here's the problem as I see it: I don't think this thing is a two-way street, exactly. I do understand what you're saying, and hell yes it would be a cool thing to have in a game, aimed at the hardcore "OPFLASH R0XX0RZ" crowd (count me in). Even if all it was was just a trainer, it'd be fuckin sweet. But what I mean is, while I don't doubt that having military experience helps in certain games along the lines of OpFlash or Ghost Recon or what have you, I'm not sure how much playing a game, no matter how slick and well thought out it was in terms of simulating real combat situations, would benefit a soldier-in-training. It's just that the stress you speak of escalating in a game situation is all artificial. It's in no way near the balls-crawling-into-your-stomach, white-knuckle stress and terror of real combat. Life and death is the ultimate. How can a game, no matter how cunning, capture that? "GAME OVER. Oh, well." *F9*

Hmm. Well, let me qualify that a little. There's benefit in this sense: What you said about the increasingly ramped up AI and complex drills? Yes, and yes. That would be beneficial. Also, just a training thing that walks you around various terrains. Urban, jungle, desert, whatever. Like watching a DVD with Director Commentary on: "Look here, you see this? HERE is your optimum line of fire... Observe the naturally-occurring defilade of this dense row of trees... Set up a fatal funnel between these two partially-collapsed buildings... Drive the enemy through here, and your kill zone is a mile wide... Pefect opportunity to flank HERE and HERE, then cut loose with withering enfilade..." Et fucking cetera. Then go through the same terrains, only now populated with enemies of increasing and unpredictable AI. Hells yes, NOW we're getting somewhere. Still no way to simulate real stress, but a great way to learn combat. You hit the nail right on the fucking head here. From what I've learned, and I've stayed alive 37 years through some very hairy shit, is this: survival more times than not is about reaction time and adaptability, much more than about preparedness. You can watch Bruce Lee movies all day, practice kata incessantly, but it FUCKING HURTS when you get punched in the face. And that changes everything. Does that make sense?

LC
I wonder how long until technology becomes sophisticated
enough to test soldiers upon arrival at Boot for these so-called
"stress-genes," then steer the lucky(?) ones toward SpecOps?
Engineering better soldiers? Why not? Oo-rah, or something...