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[mainiac]

The Soviets were thoroughly brutal taskmasters, but they still recognized perfectly well that pissing lives into the wind wasn't going to win any battles.  There's a difference between incompetence and outright bloodlust.

Yeah, if the AI could internalize this fact, it would make a far more realistic game then all the suggestions on the cracked list combined.

[RedKing]

How many more times are people going to take the opening scene of Enemy at the Gates as primary source history?  For God's sake, the whole "every other man gets a rifle, and we'll shoot you if you turn around" is how the Czarist armies fought in WW1.  At Stalingrad, yeah, they made plenty of dangerous boat crossings, but learned quick to sneak in by more covered means.  And after the first couple of months, there were so many dead Germans and Russians who didn't need their guns anymore, that many soldiers carried two or three longarms in case of jams.

The Soviets were thoroughly brutal taskmasters, but they still recognized perfectly well that pissing lives into the wind wasn't going to win any battles.  There's a difference between incompetence and outright bloodlust.

Dude, I didn't say that CoD was a shining model of historical accuracy. Just that I love that mission because it's so anti-heroic. You spend the first half of the mission as *bait*, running from rock to rock to draw fire so your sniper buddy can take out the gunners. Then when you promptly make it to the top of that hill and feel like everything's going to be alright, a mortar round kills him and knocks you to your feet as you're thinking "OHSHITOHSHITOHSHITGOTTOGETOUTTAHEREEEEE".

And yes, the Soviets weren't necessary that cavalier. Stalin, on the other hand....
A lot of the carnage on the Eastern Front wasn't so much due to the Soviets throwing people into the meatgrinder so much as the troops themselves just having colossal babushka-sized balls and refusing to back down. Propaganda and the treatment of the Nazis for occupied Ukraine probably helped in that regard, as did a genuine sense of nationalist pride and a certain Slavic tendency towards sacrifice. But there was a lot of just "Fuck it...I'll be tortured and killed if I'm captured, I'll starve or be shot if I flee. I'm just going to stay here and take as many of those Alemanskii bastards with me as I can."

mainiac:
Here ya go.

[Aqizzar]

Yeah, sorry, I didn't mean to say you were presenting it as an historical treatise, I was complaining about the people who made Call of Duty doing that.

Echoing mainiac, I can't think of a single RTS I've ever seen where the units actually had a sense of self-preservation.  At most, you could order your own troops to retreat when wounded, but even that they would do with a nod and a shrug.  It's not like self-preservation instinct isn't possible to code - I've been playing Half-Life 2 lately, and it's unnerving just how good the headcrabs and better soldiers are at retreating when wounded and staying out of sight.

[Mindmaker]

How about the Total War series?
Try sending an army of peasants against a trained enemy. They often won't even close to melee range.
The moral system isn't half bad. Meh, you still could do better, but it's a start.

[RedKing]

Close Combat had some of that. If a unit's morale dropped too low, or their circumstances were dire enough, they'd either freeze up, or panic and run like hell (and usually get killed) or if the enemy were close enough, they'd panic and surrender. They'd also seek cover as best they could, although the non-isometric 2D map made it damn hard to figure out where cover was.

[Cthulhu]

mainiac:
Here ya go.

And thus began a long and annoying trend of Call of Duty games shoehorning a dramatic speech from a Russian guy into every game it'll fit in.

[DJ]

Am I only one that thinks it'd be pretty cool to have Public Opinion as a resource in an RTS?

[thobal]

Am I only one that thinks it'd be pretty cool to have Public Opinion as a resource in an RTS?

Coincidentally, I'm working on a similar system right now. And that is all I'm going to say about it.

[Johnfalcon99977]

You intrigue my curiosity.

[redacted123]

-

[forsaken1111]

Am I only one that thinks it'd be pretty cool to have Public Opinion as a resource in an RTS?

How would it allocate points for not killing civilians though? You'd get those points straight off.

You either get them and lose points per civilian killed or you only get points at the end.

[breadbocks]

There wouldn't be a reward for not killing civies. The meter would start low and only ever get lower.

[olemars]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRf8ro1q6kI

[Jackrabbit]

How about the Total War series?
Try sending an army of peasants against a trained enemy. They often won't even close to melee range.
The moral system isn't half bad. Meh, you still could do better, but it's a start.

I don't know, units have a habit of loitering in firing range until they've taken 40% casualties before they start running. And I didn't even fucking tell them to. Goddamn Pratoreans.

[Virex]

Am I only one that thinks it'd be pretty cool to have Public Opinion as a resource in an RTS?

How would it allocate points for not killing civilians though? You'd get those points straight off.

When was anyone ever decorated for not killing civilians?