Iraqi Insurgents - Civilian Collaborator: Q&A

[M.Warren]

This thread was created as a general Q&A (Questions and Answers) discussion about the Iraqi Insurgent Civilian Collaborator kit and it's functional purposes at the time of the v0.86 patch. Although mostly focused on Q&A, feel free to generally speak about whatever may be on your mind in relation to this kit as well.

Let's start off with an excerpt from the manual.

Insurgency
This mode is the most different from BF2. The coalition team needs to find and destroy insurgent weapons caches while the insurgents try to stop them until the coalition runs out of tickets. The insurgents only lose tickets when a weapons cache is destroyed and thus can not be beaten any other way. There are always 2 weapons caches present on the map. When one of them is destroyed, a new one will be spawned. The coalition troops need to gather intelligence on their location by killing or capturing insurgents. The coalition wins if they destroy 10 weapons caches before they run out of time or tickets. Otherwise the insurgent team wins.

Intelligence & weapons caches
To reveal the approximate location of insurgent weapons caches while playing Insurgency intelligence has to be gathered. The following list shows the amount of intelligence points (IP) gained or lost due to different actions.

• Insurgent killed: 1 IP
• Civilian or insurgent arrested: 10 IP
• Civilian killed (Under penalty conditions): -10 IP

The approximate location of the first cache is shown about 3 minutes into the round. Additional locations will be revealed 3 minutes after enough IP were gained by the coalition. The second location is revealed when reaching 50 IP. The total amount of IP needed to see 10 locations is 450. Once all 2 caches in the world are located no IP will be earned until one of them is destroyed. If there are less than 32 players on the server the IP needed to reveal a cache are halved.

The Civilian Collaborator
The insurgent players can choose a Collaborator kit which does not contain any weapons (except for stones). They can call in mortar strikes with their cellphones when a commander is present (see chapter #6). Civilians take 2 minutes to respawn when they are killed or arrested (temporary spawn time penalties still apply).

If you shoot civilians, you will face several penalties:

• After your next death you will respawn 120
• seconds later per civilian shot (stacks up to 5
• minutes additional delay)
• You will not be able to request any limited kits for 10 minutes
• Your score is reduced to 0 and the kill will not be listed on the scoreboard
• Your team loses 10 intelligence points

You can arrest civilians (and other insurgents) with the restrainer which replaces the knife on insurgency maps. The Shotgun with breaching slugs can also be used to arrest any insurgents. Civilians that suicide are counted as arrested and give bonus IP to the coalition team.

Civilians may be run over with a vehicle or shot while using vehicles, ladders or ropes without any penalty or bonus. There is also no penalty for shooting them if they used a weapon, vehicle or their medical equipment in the last 60 seconds.



Score Penalties:
A player's positive score and teamwork score will be reduced to 0 if he commits
one of the following acts:

• Two punished teamkills in one life
• Shooting a civilian under penalty conditions
• Destroying a weapons cache as insurgent

The total score of a player can never go below 0 but the teamwork score can become negative. Also if you teamkill someone and pick up a limited kit with the name of your victim's kit (within 3 minutes), you die instantly.

Now with that said, there's a few things that come to mind. We're aware of how the interaction with the Civilian Collaborator effects the opposing team's faction, but we're not clear on what happens to the Civilian himself in certain circumstances.



A. What happens to the Civilian Collaborator if he is shot/killed with a lethal weapon while interacting with a Rope (Grappling Hook), a Ladder or after dismounting a vehicle?

1. When the Civilian Collaborator dies does he simply die with no other effects taking place and simply awaits his respawn timer?
   
2. When the Civilian Collaborator dies, does his death award the opposing team 10 Intel Points because he had interacted with an object in a manner to label him "hostile"?
   
3. When the Civilian Collaborator dies does his death award the opposing team 1 Intel Point like any other insurgent kill?

B. Additionally, I had also noticed another change that is very much unlike the last build. After a Civilian Collaborator is Arrested or Killed, the player always accumulates a "Death Count". This was very unlike the last build as when a Civilian Collaborator was killed by gunfire, he wouldn't have a "Death Count" appear on the score board. If the Civilian Collaborator was Arrested, he would have a "Death Count" appear on the score board.

Is the Civilian Collaborator always intended to accumulate a "Death Count" regardless if he's Arrested or Killed?



C. The Civilian Collaborator has been given a new "Hands Up" animation while the player is in his "Unarmed" state and the player activates his alternate fire button (the button you use to aim a rifle or switch back and forth between C4 and the remote).

Is this animation tied to any gameplay dynamics? Or is it simply an animation provided to the player for whatever intent and purposes he manages to utilize it for? As in allowing the Civilian Collaborator to identify himself at long range?

[[R-DEV]Chuc]

Just to quickly answer C. - Its not tied to any code determining spawn times, flagging or whatever, its just a simple animation to visually flag yourself as being a civilian.

[mosinmatt]

The new hands up animation is great! You are shot a lot less from the trigger happy allied forces now.
They also dont play as specialist, so you never need to worry about the shotgun either. Just run away when they chase you, right into a trap. Silly blufor, trick are for insurgents.

[Smuke]

Originally Posted by [R-DEV]Chuc

Just to quickly answer C. - Its not tied to any code determining spawn times, flagging or whatever, its just a simple animation to visually flag yourself as being a civilian.

What button is this?

[[R-MOD]Jigsaw]

Originally Posted by Smuke

What button is this?

[Balfa]

I'm probably missing a really obvious balance problem, but why do Collaborators have a 2 minute respawn?

If they had the standard respawn timer, I'd be much more inclined to use that kit.

[MrSh@vid]

Originally Posted by jigsaw-uk

Haha , couldn't stop laughing.

[Spaz]

Originally Posted by Balfa

I'm probably missing a really obvious balance problem, but why do Collaborators have a 2 minute respawn?

To stop people from using the kit as a shield for other insurgents, when there is a fight a civilian should be running away from it.

[[R-CON]Tim270]

Since when were the Insurgents just Iraqi?

[[uBp]Irish]

Since we've been fighting in places like... Basrah, and Fallujah. As opposed to fighting the "Taliban" that are in Afghanistan like Archer or Korengal.