Hard Light Productions Forums
Hosted Projects - FS2 Required => Blue Planet => Topic started by: General Battuta on January 12, 2009, 09:52:34 pm
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Some random thoughts on Blue Planet, that most literary of FS2 campaigns. (Disclosure: I'm not on the dev team in any capacity except as a voice acting coordinator.) The intentionality I ascribe here is to the text, not to Darius -- I don't necessarily think he thought of all this, but nonetheless the text presents it.
I always thought it was interesting how the allied capital ships in Blue Planet served as a proxy family to Sam.
The Orestes is angular, authoritative, and -- for most of the campaign's narrative -- quite distant. In this way it echoes Sam's relationship with his father. The Orestes plays a very paternal role. Sam's desperate sacrifice and rush to save the Orestes and his own father are, I think, Sam's way of telling his dad that he has the ability to save something he cares about.
The Temeraire is more feminine in its hull design, and it spends a great portion of the campaign close to Sam, actively helping and advising him. It's the ship that I imagine most BP players feel is their home-away-from-home. Although the Orestes is larger and stronger, the Temeraire is more welcoming and somehow more protective. Sam, in turn, protects the Temeraire time and again, each time recalling and reliving his past failings with regard to his own mother. The dead mother and the ship are very much linked, and the player's meant to feel that.
It's an interesting note that the Temeraire comes charging to the Orestes' side when the Sathanas threatens the male ship. It's a nice twist on the usual gender roles. Throughout 'Universal Truth' the two vessels act as partners.
The Sanctuary? The most alien of the ships, yes, but also the one closest to Sam. After all, it has Eriana on board. Sam finds it in the mist, a ship full of people who should be dead. It's clear what this beautiful old relic is meant to represent -- reclamation of the love Sam lost. (And it's no surprise that the next mission requires Sam to bring the Temeraire and Sanctuary together, reuniting his dead mother and his dead wife -- followed shortly thereafter by a harrowing passage in which he must protect both of them from the very Shivans that once killed them.)
As for Sam's two wingmates, they display an easy platonic affection for their commander, much like the bond between siblings. I don't think this point needs much developing. Mina Taylor's a younger-sister type, whereas Corey's attitude is more like the bookish older brother.
The family metaphor explains a lot about Blue Planet. There's a certain warmth and informality about the Sol Expeditionary Force in Blue Planet. On the one hand, it's completely explicable by the circumstances the group is under: a small cadre of elite officers and crew cut off from their homes. Military discipline is maintained, and the command briefings are delivered with the same cool detachment we'd expect from Petrarch.
But it's also easy to see an unusual kind of affection pervading Blue Planet, something not present in most FS2 campaigns. Wingmen express a little more emotion than usual. Imminent death is met with desperate bravado; rescues are met with gratitude. Reunions are celebrated. The atmosphere is subtly more familial than that of, say, Inferno, or ST:R, or the Procyon Insurgency. And it does make a difference to the player's emotional response.
Blue Planet is, overtly, a family saga -- the tale of the Beis and their special destiny. But that saga isn't present merely in the superficial narrative. It's reflected in the tools of FS2 storytelling, the great ships and their actions. When the end comes, and the Expeditionary Force family finds itself betrayed by the GTVA, it's no surprise that most of the family decides to stay together.
Which leaves me curious -- did the Temeraire and Orestes both defect? Or have the two metaphorical parents been torn apart again? The end of Blue Planet saw Sam reunited with his love (literally, in Eriana, and metaphorically in the Sanctuary), his father (the Orestes) and his mother (the Temeraire.) Did Journey's End break that unity?
I guess we'll have to wait and find out.
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Well, the Orestes did proceed to roast the
MAN-SWORD UEFg Renjian, so it probably didn't defect, though Sam's dad did hop onto a flying coffin Hermes escape pod and fly off.
Metaphorically doesn't matter as much anymore, as the family was repaired literally. Besides, if his dad isn't on the Orestes, Sam wouldn't care about it so much, if at all. He probably wouldn't have responded as strongly to the vision, and would not be so compelled to do something to save the Orestes from the Lucifer.
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Yeah, and it's also possible neither of them defected. But a lot of the crew did, judging by the final debriefing.
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I'm going to guess that unless there was Mutiny aboard Orestes after destroying the UEF ship, it stayed under GTVA command.
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Well, you can't expect many thousand individuals to make the same decision. Usually, the only opinions that really matter are those of the leaders.
I guess it happened many, many times during the NTF rebellion - what if your commander chose to defect when you wanted to remain loyal to the GTVA?
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I guess it happened many, many times during the NTF rebellion - what if your commander chose to defect when you wanted to remain loyal to the GTVA?
You either go along with it since there's nothing you can do, or grab your rifle and scream "BANZAI!!!" while lunging at the reactor core.
Some campaigns that seem to feature entire crews of 10,000 spontaneously making a compound decision always strike me as pretty unrealistic and always shatter that sense of immersion that I got when I was playing BP. If it's done well it really makes it seem good but when not done well, ship defections always seem to spoil it for me.
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I agree, but we do not know what happens inside a ship. What if people who don't want to defect are threatened by the others? Whoever plans to defect should take the initiative and find weapons to point at someone else's head.
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Those who want to defect but their leader doesn't tend to have three options: mutiny, desert, or hand their resignation in and brave a court-martial.
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There is of course the option of refusing to follow the unethical orders.
Depending on the commanding officers you would then either be restricted to your quaters or put into the brig, untill you can be put before the authorities, resulting in anything between an unhonorable discharge from the military up to being executed (rather unlikely though I would guess).
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There is of course the option of refusing to follow the unethical orders.
Depending on the commanding officers you would then either be restricted to your quaters or put into the brig, untill you can be put before the authorities, resulting in anything between an unhonorable discharge from the military up to being executed (rather unlikely though I would guess).
Execution is VERY end of the line, a breathing pilot is much more useful than one floating in space.....not breathing
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But a pilot refusing to fight isn't that much more usefull than a dead pilot...
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But a pilot refusing to fight isn't that much more usefull than a dead pilot...
I suppose, but most CO's prefer to keep their pilots, regardless of motives, alive.
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Well, it just depends how 'ruthless' the said faction is.
The GTVA would likely not execute their pilots for resigning.
Something like the Galactic Empire (SW) likely would.
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Only if Darth Vader was on it though. :P
It's sort of ironic in a way that old Anakin would to anything to save someone - even an expendable clone trooper but being as Vader losing the Falcon warrants a Force choke sentence.
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Only if Darth Vader was on it though. :P
It's sort of ironic in a way that old Anakin would to anything to save someone - even an expendable clone trooper but being as Vader losing the Falcon warrants a Force choke sentence.
He's not killing them. He's just showing them the power of the dark side. By choking them to death.
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He just removed the incompetent subordinates, so a more competent one could take his place. If he turns out to be as bad, just repeat the treatment. Sooner or later some competent person will fill the spot (or you run out of candidates :P rather unlikely though, considering the size of the Imperium and their ability to clone).
Apart from that, force choking them is surely also quite motivating for the other crew members to do their best and follow orders to the letter.
Which is one of the reasons why one or a few disobedient pilots might be made into examples by draconic punishment in order to keep the others in line.
Of course something like that could easily turn out exactly opposit of the intended effect, makeing some pilots defect instead of resigning.
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Ah yes. The classic method of execution "pour encourager les autres" (Lit. Trans: "for to encourage the others"). It doesn't really work, in the long term.
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Ah yes. The classic method of execution "pour encourager les autres" (Lit. Trans: "for to encourage the others"). It doesn't really work, in the long term.
It's "to encourage the others".
I suppose, but most CO's prefer to keep their pilots, regardless of motives, alive.
A pilot that may defect and/or fail missions on purpose for the benefit of the other side is dangerous. If you capture a pilot who's not willing to fight for the cause then, well, you better not have it in your squadrons.
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A pilot that may defect and/or fail missions on purpose for the benefit of the other side is dangerous. If you capture a pilot who's not willing to fight for the cause then, well, you better not have it in your squadrons.
Well, duh.
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Unless you put a self-destruction device on his fighter and force him to follow your orders.
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Mobius, I studied French for two years in high school. "encourager" is an infinitive form verb. By itself it is "to encourage". "pour" is for. Therefore, my assessment of the literal translation is correct.
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Literal translations are confusing and oftentimes make no sense.
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Literal translations are confusing and oftentimes make no sense.
This is especially true for most Eastern European languages, with gender-based (I don't know the proper term) words etc.
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Just to say, plenty of Western European languages have gender based nouns too. But this is way off topic :doubt:
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Unless you put a self-destruction device on his fighter and force him to follow your orders.
And exection because of a war tibunal sentence is one thing, just blowing a pilot up quite another.
If that comes out, you are more likely to get a full mutiny on board of the carrier than if you'd just had the pilot up for charches and executed in the first place.
And in case of a full mutiny you're very likely to having to have to pull the ship back for repair and recrewing (additionally resulting in a bigger chance to leak the news to the civil population) or if the mutiny is succesfull, the whole carrier goes over to the enemy faction.
I think the best solution would be, putting the pilot in the brig and send him back home at the first opportunity to let the high-ups dead with the problem.
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I wonder what to make of War in Heaven in this regard.
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Everyone that Laporte sees as family goes away, goes mad or dies :(
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Regarding mutinies on board warships, in 1944 the British Royal Navy commissioned a document (“Guide to Mutiny in the Royal Navy 1944") that was sent to flag officers and captains of the fleet. With victory in Europe, the RN was deploying major assets, including several fleet carriers, to the pacific theatre to help in the war against Japan. There was concern in the admiralty that, with the threat to the home nation removed and four years of war weariness and casualties, the crews of RN warships would be more liable to mutiny as they were sent around the world for yet more conflict. Needless the say the document was top secret and kept away from all but senior officers.
The document makes interesting reading and looks at several levels of mutiny. In the case of one or two persons, they would be placed under close arrest, and tried by a courts martial panel. In situations where several of the crew mutinied, then groups of loyal senior enlisted personnel and officers would form patrols of the ship and contain the group in a particular non-vital compartment or section, such as a mess deck. Ring leaders would be identified and removed from the group. In all cases the CO would be expected to address the crew to attempt to resolve their grievance (which would be identified as external or internal).
In severe situations, where the number of mutineers threatened control of the ship, the loyal elements would arm themselves and establish defensive “citadels” in the vital areas, such as the bridge and ship control centre (engine room). The CO again would attempt to defuse the situation and address grievances to return the crew to their duties, but would signal other fleet assets for assistance.
In all cases, once control was re-established, the ship would be returned to a base and the crew split up and reassigned to other more stable vessels. Ring leaders and identified trouble makers would be discharged after courts martial.
There is a single line hidden away, too, regarding use of force: “Lethal force must only be used as a last resort”
Interestingly, the document assumes that all mutiny would be by ratings, not officers. Officers were assumed to be loyal at all times by their very nature. In FS2, it appears that mutiny takes place regularly in the Officer Corps as well as among enlisted personnel. In the situation that a group of officers wished to defect with their ship, would everyone else follow? It’s a big question for a 17 year old who has been trained to assume their officers are always right. I think the key would lay with the senior non commissioned officers.
Edit: Typos
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I think WiH has a lot of Noemi coming to terms with herself - she didn't want find she wanted to see from Uncle Manuel, she isn't Kassim. Simms fascinates her because she engages with Noemi's 'killer' side. And Ken... I don't know. And then there are people at the sides that make think - the Bengals, the GEFs, the Elders... WiH is more about the people you meet, how they affect someone, and so on...
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Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. But I like the metaphors you found.
For me in WiH:
Kassim: Noemi's innocence without Noemi's sin. Much like we all have a good childhood friend, similar and the same at the early stage of our life. Yet eventually growing apart as childhood friends often do, showing that while growing up the actions we take have consequences on how we develop throughout our life. While being so different from eachother, Kassim and Noemi have one thing in common: neither has choice. Kassim can't keep killing; Noemi can't stop killing.
Manuel: The uncle, a hand on Noemi's shoulder. A hand which slowly slips away as Noemi starts to leave the nest. He slowly has to let go facing that Noemi has her own destiny; Noemi has to accept she is changing and has less and less to do with her uncle. Both are driven apart, much like Noemi is driven away from her family values.
Simms: The funnel for Noemi. Noemi's rage is unguided, a shot in the dark (or rather, a lot of dakka in the dark). Simms warrior-like spirit seems to form a funnel for Noemi, a mentor to teach Noemi how to put that rage to good use. She is the only one who seems to metaphorically hold Noemi's hand in this war and most likely the only one Noemi allows to hold her hand. Noemi helped Simms back in the saddle when things got grim which seems to have bonded the two, to the point of seemingly having some level of romantic feelings for eachother. These two individuals seem to have found their other half in eachother and it remains to be seen if this love is platonic or a true romance.
Wargods: Friends, those on who she can trust. Unlike her Solarian brothers and sisters, she has more in common with this bunch. Yet it seems as if Noemi is seperate from them to an extent, with the exception of Simms to whom she is close.
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Everyone that Laporte sees as family goes away, goes mad or dies :(
Much like what I understand happens in real large-scale wars, when there aren't the resources or circumstances that allow pilots to be rotated off the line every thirty days. I read an interesting statistic a few years ago that went something along the lines of a unit being projected to fall to 10% effectiveness by the hundredth day of combat mark. Or from another perspective, 90% psychological, and physical casualties.
I daresay this must've happened to a few Federal squadrons. And those pilots that Wargod talks about who were present during INDRA II.
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Everyone that Laporte sees as family goes away, goes mad or dies :(
Much like what I understand happens in real large-scale wars, when there aren't the resources or circumstances that allow pilots to be rotated off the line every thirty days. I read an interesting statistic a few years ago that went something along the lines of a unit being projected to fall to 10% effectiveness by the hundredth day of combat mark. Or from another perspective, 90% psychological, and physical casualties.
I daresay this must've happened to a few Federal squadrons. And those pilots that Wargod talks about who were present during INDRA II.
Indeed, that kind of data was the direct inspiration.
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Yeah. Battuta, have you read 'War' by Sebastian Junger? If you're interested in that kinda stuff I'd really recommend a read of it if you haven't already. Quite a lot of interesting stuff about soldier psychology, like a correlation between what one feels about their ability to control his/her fate and the occurrence of psychological casualties within a unit. Or put differently, Israeli Logistics Corps Officers report consistently higher levels of fear and psychological issues than Israeli Infantry Officers, who by contrast report surprisingly low levels of fear and far fewer psychological issues in relation to the rest of the defence force.
Or something to that effect. :P Either way, interesting reading to anyone who's interested.
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Much like what I understand happens in real large-scale wars, when there aren't the resources or circumstances that allow pilots to be rotated off the line every thirty days. I read an interesting statistic a few years ago that went something along the lines of a unit being projected to fall to 10% effectiveness by the hundredth day of combat mark. Or from another perspective, 90% psychological, and physical casualties.
That sounds like infantry data to me. :P It correlates nicely with data that came out of ETO on infantry in WW2 anyways.
Though something similar can happen to pilots, it usually takes longer. 18 months at Rabaul; Shinanakute wa kae****e moraenai.
The wonder is the Jovian and outer planets fleet still exists as a meaningful entity.
For the curious, the Japanese translates as roughly "They won't let you go home unless you die."
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The wonder is the Jovian and outer planets fleet still exists as a meaningful entity.
The Jovians are pretty hardcore. The Earth guys went the deepest down the Ubuntu direction, the Martians have a sort of post-Red Faction rough-and-tumble libertarian ethos, and the Jovians are a little militant, a lot neocapitalist and extraordinarily pragmatic.
I don't know if this actually made it into R1, but the Jovian culture was really shaped during the early days of habitat growth on the Galilean moons, where incidents like habitat breaches meant you had to rapidly and decisively consign small numbers of people to death in order to save larger numbers of people. They stand up to the day-to-day stresses of life on a combat spacecraft well.
Also it's worth pointing out that Steele's big attack on Jupiter came eighteen months after the war opened! Wonder if he's been doing some reading. ;7
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That sounds like infantry data to me. :P It correlates nicely with data that came out of ETO on infantry in WW2 anyways.
Though something similar can happen to pilots, it usually takes longer. 18 months at Rabaul; Shinanakute wa kae****e moraenai.
The wonder is the Jovian and outer planets fleet still exists as a meaningful entity.
For the curious, the Japanese translates as roughly "They won't let you go home unless you die."
Ah, you've got me there. :P If I recall, that data actually was from the ETO in WWII, assuming that the unit had been in combat for every single one of those one hundred days.
Although there are distinguishing factors between the way this data applies to pilots, I watched an interview a few years ago in which an RAF Spitfire pilot who flew during the BoB (Bob Doe I think it was) said he once flew something like seven sorties in one day at the height of the battle. Of course he didn't do this for the entire time, but with the Federal squadrons fighting on the defensive, I would certainly expect at least a few squadrons, perhaps stationed on Karunas to follow a similar operational tempo.
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The Orestes is angular, authoritative, and -- for most of the campaign's narrative -- quite distant. The Orestes plays a very paternal role.
The Temeraire is more feminine in its hull design, and it spends a great portion of the campaign close to Sam, actively helping and advising him. It's the ship that I imagine most BP players feel is their home-away-from-home.
Strange. He's totally right.
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Sweet mama's fold... I felt exactly the same way during AoA.
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Really nice literary analysis.
When I first saw the Orestes I think:" Whoah, what a ship, this ship's able to grill many shivans of course."
But I can't get really familiar with it, then I first saw the Temeraire when she was engaging that Demon-Destroyer (better said: Simply scratching that Demon), there I think:"Whoah, beautiful ship, I think I love it."
The Titan-Destroyers are really beautiful. I was really frightened when the Imperieuse shows up and destroyed the Katana and the Altan Orde (and Yangtze)....
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The Titan-Destroyers are really beautiful. I was really frightened when the Imperieuse shows up and destroyed the Indus....
You mean the Katana and Altan Orde (and Yangtze).
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The Titan-Destroyers are really beautiful. I was really frightened when the Imperieuse shows up and destroyed the Indus....
You mean the Katana and Altan Orde (and Yangtze).
WHY YOU FORGET KYOTO AND INSUPERABLE :mad:
THEY FIRED THEIR SIGNAL LASERS AT THE IMPERIEUSE'S SENSORS SO YOU COULD LIVE :mad:
ALSO PRETENDED TO SURRENDER AND TRIED TO RAM HER :mad:
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Sorry, fixed that.
@ General Battuta
SORRY! :shaking:
Long time since I played Delenda Est because performance problems, when I have Antipodes 6 downloaded i replay that mission.
In Memory of the Kyoto and Insperable. They fight to the last in their finest hour, to save the lifes of the Wargods...
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ALSO PRETENDED TO SURRENDER AND TRIED TO RAM HER :mad:
Isn't it a war crime to pretend to surrender?
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Who cares?
"In love and war, everything is allowed."
- Napoleon Bonaparte
And afterwards nobody will remember 'cause history is written by the victors... if you win :nervous:
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And if you lose it hardly matters, since stuff are gonna be pinned on you anyway!
And you'll have to account for all the other atrocities you committed, so what's one more to the list?
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ALSO PRETENDED TO SURRENDER AND TRIED TO RAM HER :mad:
Isn't it a war crime to pretend to surrender?
I'd say it's a far bigger crime to not do everything in the book and then some to save your mates, especially when you have the power to do so. And besides, they'll only see the consequences if they get caught.
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ALSO PRETENDED TO SURRENDER AND TRIED TO RAM HER :mad:
Isn't it a war crime to pretend to surrender?
I'm not even sure it is today and who knows what kind of rules the UEF has down the road. I'm pretty sure they aren't using the 100% same genf convention we have in place today.
Besides the GTVA bombarded civilian population centers with nuklear weapons and blew up plenty of civilian ships and stations. Compared to all that a pretended surrender is a very minor thing.
If they would have succeded (probably meaning taking out the Imperieuse beams), Byrne would probably have raged a bit about such dishonorable tactics, but that's pretty much the worst they would have incured (their comrades anyway, since they would have been dead from the ramming or course), since they were not under Byrnes command. The other two Admirals would probably have given them postumous promotions and medals.
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Yeah, I do realise that in the scheme of things it's not very important.
I'd say it's a far bigger crime to not do everything in the book and then some to save your mates, especially when you have the power to do so. And besides, they'll only see the consequences if they get caught.
True. It's just that it bugged me a bit before. :nervous:
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ALSO PRETENDED TO SURRENDER AND TRIED TO RAM HER :mad:
Isn't it a war crime to pretend to surrender?
Yeah, but it's an ugly war.
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ALSO PRETENDED TO SURRENDER AND TRIED TO RAM HER :mad:
Isn't it a war crime to pretend to surrender?
Yeah, but it's an ugly war.
All war is ugly. Anyone who says otherwise hasn't experienced it or has never talked to anyone who has experienced it.
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ALSO PRETENDED TO SURRENDER AND TRIED TO RAM HER :mad:
Isn't it a war crime to pretend to surrender?
The thing about pretending to surrender isn't that it's a war crime as much as you've now ****ed over the next few thousand guys who try to surrender on both sides. It's essentially mass-murder by fiat.
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ALSO PRETENDED TO SURRENDER AND TRIED TO RAM HER :mad:
Isn't it a war crime to pretend to surrender?
The thing about pretending to surrender isn't that it's a war crime as much as you've now ****ed over the next few thousand guys who try to surrender on both sides. It's essentially mass-murder by fiat.
Yeah it's not exactly a wise move. Rather like painting red crosses on your troop transports.
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Well given the situation, any action was better than inaction.