Are peaceful civilians the problem?

[Palantir]

After reading posts about the lack of combat "aggressiveness" & ability of the US forces to see/shoot at the Syrian "enemy" there can be only 1 reason in my opinion- Civilians.

BFC said that to compensate for the overwhelming power of the US & to keep the US player from just flattening everything in sight they would make the Syrian "combatants" blend into the civilian population & un-spotable until that "enemy unit" did something to warrant closer inspection. (Just carrying weapons around does not qualify apparently)

This "can't/don't shoot peaceful civilians" rule seems to have been implemented with a heavy hand and from my take just hasn't been incorporated very well.

Player comments about US soldiers: just standing idly next to "enemy" units, watching an "enemy" unit crawl right thru them and, not being able to see the enemy "shooting at you from 10 feet away" seems to confirm this.

Cleary BF has not been able to define for the Tac A.I. exactly what is an "active" enemy or when they become identifiable.

The enemy unit crawling thru a friendly unit suggests that at the time the A.I. considered the "enemy" unit to be a civilian having taken no seen aggressive action "yet" and therefore not a threat and thus stopping the US forces from reacting to it. Same for standing next to an enemy or shooting at you “unseen,” any previously "enemy" units are now "blended" in with the peaceful civilians and the US "can't shoot civilians" rule pops into effect with wild abandon.

I bet the game concept of militia just popping in & out engaging the US forces then blending quickly into the surrounding peaceful population sounded good at the time but it seems to not be working to put it mildly.

[KG_Jag]

Kerry--that is an interesting observation. I thought that such enemies remained invisible to the player (and not just to some or all of his units) until "spotted". There have been at least two players at GS who have had one or more such experiences in their play of CMSF. You might ask them in a post over there if the enemies (assuming both were playing "blue") were regular, irregular or a combination of the two.

Regardless of the answers, it will still be difficult to explain the game events described by Double Deuce:

"I had a squad walking down the middle of the road when a Syrian sniper crawls out of the ditch alongside of the road (to their front) crawls between the legs of my squad leader, down the road into the ditch on the other side, no one shot at him or even seemed to acknowledge his presence."

Link:

http://www.gamesquad.com/forums/showthread.php?t=69329&page=4