Its probably a mistake coming to a mongolian basket weaving forum for advice but here goes.
I am a game designer and im trying to work out how important cover should be in my modern, firearms focused game.
How easy is it to find cover in a city, the burbs, the woods, the desert? How effective is this cover?
Is properly using cover a skill, or can any old joe get behind a rock and have a reasonable chance of not getting whacked?
Does a particularly good shooter have an increased probability of getting a shot on target than a regular shooter, assuming the same target in the same cover?
What are the best ways to negate cover? Movement, indirect fire, what else?
Please feel free to add anything you want to the discussion. Imagine teams of 1-10 operators in an urban firefight and tell me what factors i need to consider to realistically simulate this event.
Nice try ATF. I am not giving away my strategies that easily.
Landon Walker
to be fair though, atf was off some some nice quints
Owen Jones
This is now a hostage negotiation. Give us your strategies or we will kill your pupper
Alexander Sanchez
>I am a game designer and im trying to work out how important cover should be in my modern, firearms focused game. Sounds like VERY rhetorical question. Obviously cover is essential in all-out combat. In a perfectly controlled situations, you have not only solid, protective and masking cover, but also a good distance between you and your foes. Things have gone terribly wrong if you can already see your enemies' eyeballs.
The effectivity (?) of cover is quite straight forward as well, and you only need to think and go check out various environments yourself to do some smart conclusions. If I had to make rough approximation of available cover types, they'd be:
-visual cover, only masks your presence (makes you harder to spot) -physical cover, actually protects you from direct and / or indirect fire
Both of these would come in "weak" and "strong" variants, and both elements could be found in a single type of cover. For example, thick vegetation innawoods would offer good visual cover, but poor physical cover, while a well dug foxhole / trench / sniper or MG nest would not only hide your ass but also protect your skin from ballistic threats.
All these factors are further affected by your personal gear, such as camo and body armor. Obviously choosing the best type of cover matters a lot, and the best cover shields you from all sides, grants you a good visibility, plus a safe way out if SHTF. Exposing your silhouette to the enemy's vision is the biggest mistake you can do.
There's a plenty of urban and bush combat tactics vids and documentary online. Just start digging.
If you can’t see them they can’t shoot you. No matter what.
Ayden Smith
>If you can’t see them they can’t shoot you. False and naive assumption. If you are considered a lethal threat and your average position is exposed, most armed forces will perform suppressing fire, or even attempt to destroy your cover with heavier fire power. Your typical civilian structures and brush won't stand a chance against rifle rounds or a grenade blast.
Jason Baker
>How easy is it to find cover in a city, the burbs, the woods, the desert? Not as easy as most video games, where it seems intentionally placed, lots of nice waist level logs and walls on the run up to that MG nest eh?. You're best off looking on google maps or just visiting different areas and looking at the cover available. >How effective is this cover? That depends on what it is, but most things are less bullet resistant than video games made out. Hiding behind a car will get you killed against most rifles. >Is properly using cover a skill, or can any old joe get behind a rock and have a reasonable chance of not getting whacked? It's a learned skill. Obviously everyone has the instinct to hide instead of stand in the open, but using it effectively in a team is a learned skill. >Does a particularly good shooter have an increased probability of getting a shot on target than a regular shooter, assuming the same target in the same cover? Yes if he can aim better. >What are the best ways to negate cover? Movement, indirect fire, what else? Indirect fire, destroying the cover, flanking.
Zachary Myers
As said you should do a field trip and look at the available cover. I'd also like to add that suppressive fire can play a role in negating cover: if you don't have a way out of your cover then suppressive fire will keep you pinned down in your position while the enemy maneuvers around and flanks you. Also consider that there's a difference between cover and concealment. Cover does protect you while concealment hides you. Of course cover can (and will most of the time I guess) conceal you too. But consider something like bushes: they offer no protection whatsoever from enemy fire, but they can be used to hide pretty effectively.
Lucas Sanchez
You should science this shit by buying a rifle and a handgun, a shit ton of ammo, and shooting stuff to find out what will stop the bullets and what won’t.
Alexander Martinez
Here's a good video of a guy experimenting at shooting a car
>how important should cover be That depends entirely on what kind of game you want to make
>please spoonfeed me Fuck off and Google that shit. Check YouTube and get the Field Manual
Xavier Powell
you designing the "ready or not?"
if no, i don't even bother to give you my tactics.
Jace Adams
who in the fuck is the lucky cunt?
Jonathan Watson
Realistically, cover is pretty much the defining aspect of any gunfight. Modeling it realistically is more important than, say, modeling the difference between an M4 and an AK47.
The main things games get wrong are ease of movement, lethality, and effective range. Almost all effective shooting is done while stationary, and reloading at anything faster than a slow walk isn't worth the effort.
When people come under fire, they don't stop, look around, figure out who's shooting them, and calmly shoot back. They immediately sprint to get behind something. Since it sounds like you're designing a tactics game, that's probably how I would model things: any unit that takes fire automatically moves into cover, no option to interrupt or do anything else until it's safe. Maybe allow a 'run' move where they ignore this rule until they reach the destination, but while running don't reveal the map (you can't look around much while sprinting). This is sort of the principle behind bounding fire.
Adrian Morgan
op is a sucker who ask alot but not giving any info for what he really wants.
we shouldn't bother to give him advice until we know what he really wants to hear.
hell, i bet he wants us to say "don't worry about cover, cuz in my game, we can do 360 degree no scope and bunny hupping"
Bentley Foster
>what is an obvious joke answer Jow Forumssg yourself
Gabriel Peterson
The guy above you is on point, sorry for being vague. Its actually a pen and paper game, not a video game. Im trying to see what player skills need to be modelled and figuring out how granular i should make the cover mechanics.
Hudson Ramirez
Depends on what kind of game you're making. 3rd person camera and corner peeking with it will be abused even if you try an MGS balance of making them stick to that wall to see around it. First person players tend to believe "if I can't see you, you can't hit me" when it comes to cover" Despite often the POV tends to be lower down in the neck or chest rather than true eye level.
Cover mechanics slows the game down. For example an old Quake 1 deathmatch where there is no crouching and the game runs at a blistering pace.
Add a crouch and you get the basics of everything HalfLife onward. Often paired with "stealth" by reducing the sound of footsteps. See Counterstrike.
Leaning will slow gameplay down to a crawl. No respawn/waves will turn it into a snorefest for versus, but GOLD for simulation. See Swat 4.
If anything, it will be your damage model that determines everything else. Does your character lose functionality/movement speed if they have one of their limbs damaged? Do they have to apply first aid or is it instantly healed through sitting out of the line of fire until the strawberry jam disappears from the screen? Is revival or incapacitation in the game?
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Most cover is ineffective. Metal doors? Indoor walls? Car doors?
Concealment works because ammunition is limited and wanting to avoid civilian casualties. Depending on the makeup of the teams and their opponents it puts the LE team at a disadvantage.
Jose Reed
>visual cover, only masks your presence (makes you harder to spot That's concealment, not cover.
You find hard things and get behind them... What's wrong with you?
Josiah Diaz
Most things have already been said, but to make good cover use an important part of a linear game, you should avoid constantly boxing players in with physical barriers and produce large open maps where the player can't really go outside the path you have in mind because there isn't enough cover there and the enemy is all over.
Also, in the abscence of hard objects, you'll have to use the hills themselves as cover, so that means you definitely need magnification on your optics here to shoot the enemy with enough hill between you. Thats a minimum of like 4x. So have magnified optics available for the player.
If you want a stealth section, you should put it in the woods.
Josiah Davis
Well a big thing most rookies do is step out of cover to fire from corners when they don't need to. It is better to take a step back from cover to fire, as it exposes you less. The front of the gun shouldn't be sticking around the corner, it should be at the edge of the corner.
Benjamin Myers
Always know the difference between cover and concealment.
Adrian Carter
Difference between cover and concealment. That cover can degrade per direct shots taken. Returning fire under high stress and putting your body in danger is a learned skill that very few people possess.
To negate cover, keeping their heads down while flanking. 1v1 may be pre-shooting the corner. Shooting through the cover (cars are not good cover, for example unless behind the engine block, or masonry blocks that would be destroyed after constant fire). etc etc.
Josiah Adams
For pen and paper I'd use a skill check, preferably allowing for degrees of success or failure. You could handle cover and concealment separately, though I'd make it the same skill. For example if playing GURPS I'd use soldier. There's a difference between taking cover and being able to fight from cover. When taking cover, cover would provide damage reduction, concealment would either increase the target's save or hurt the shooter's chance to hit. Give different cover and concealment different base values. Every degree of success increases the value and every degree of failure decreases. This represents better understanding of where to posistion your body and which parts of the cover are most effective. As already mentioned cars may slow a bullet and mess with expansion/fragmentation, but only the engine block can really stop anything. (This could also optionally allow non-tactical skills to be used for certain types of cover. Maybe a mechanic knows where to hide when taking cover behind a car. Maybe an architect knows which parts of building are strongest.) When shooting from cover characters will have to expose themselves to do anything but fire blindly. Generally the more exposed the easier it is to shoot. For ease of use pick some graduations for exposure. Say 50%, 25%, 10%. 50% provides no penalty, but you only get half the cover bonus. 25% carries a light penalty to shooting with 75% of the cover bonus. 10% gives a heavy penalty but you've still got 90% or the cover protecting you. The above should give you a rough idea of a cover mechanic. Adjust to suit the system. Let us know how it works.
