Hard Light Productions Forums
Hosted Projects - FS2 Required => Blue Planet => Topic started by: General Battuta on March 11, 2013, 09:49:47 am
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I read this article (http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/09/living/higher-call-military-chivalry/index.html?hpt=hp_c1) and got very choked up
As Stigler's fighter rose to meet the [American] bomber, he decided to attack it from behind. He climbed behind the sputtering bomber, squinted into his gun sight and placed his hand on the trigger. He was about to fire when he hesitated. Stigler was baffled. No one in the bomber fired at him.
He looked closer at the tail gunner. He was still, his white fleece collar soaked with blood. Stigler craned his neck to examine the rest of the bomber. Its skin had been peeled away by shells, its guns knocked out. He could see men huddled inside the plane tending the wounds of other crewmen.
Then he nudged his plane alongside the bomber's wings and locked eyes with the pilot whose eyes were wide with shock and horror.
Stigler pressed his hand over the rosary he kept in his flight jacket. He eased his index finger off the trigger. He couldn't shoot. It would be murder.
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Unfortunately, it's people that are noble like this that are most likely to be killed first in a war. For every case like this, there are probably hundreds where the plane was simply shot down. We may hope for a world in which combat is honourable, but from the medieval days when "chivalry" meant to slaughter entire towns but keep nobility alive because they could pay you ransom, to modern asymmetrical warfare where not shooting a child with a bomb could be a fatal decision, honourable things like that are an exception. An exception that one should still try to make the norm whenever possible. Avoiding war completely should - IMO - always be the more important thing.
But in the context of a work of fiction, it is a more interesting thing to ponder. BP, or at the very least BP:WiH is not a power fantasy of a victorious and noble hero in a romanticised war like many other game stories tend to be, so what role does chivalry play for the decisions the player does here? It is hard, because it all depends on how immersed you feel. Whatever you do, you will never really kill someone in this game. You will never really make a family lose their child/parent. It is also hard to feel the kinship and comradery with an enemy that is in the end only virtual, but it is also hard to feel the pure terror that would maybe drive you to do the horrible things you may have to do in war situations.
We are also conditioned to act differently in games than IRL. Often games unrealistically favour honourable decisions to teach good behaviour, or on the other hand, they may have next to no repercussions for bad behaviour in the case of cathartic power fantasies. So, our way of thinking tends to be different for a game world to begin with.
So in the end, what did you feel when commiting atrocities here? Was it "because it's just a game", did you do it because you thought it'd be naïve not to, maybe because of a genuine hatred for your enemy, or did you try everything you could to keep up your own moral code even inside the game? And what consequences do you think your actions had for the game world, and would you have done the same in a real world?
Also, the way they portray the warrior code in this article as something that is there to protect both the defeated and the victor is very interesting. I think it was in this forum, where I said that I could both understand the Feyadeen, but am also sort of afraid of them because of what they may become after the war ends whichever way it ends. On the one hand, you may sacrifice your ultimate goal if you do not commit atrocities in wars, on the other hand, you may really - as cliché as it may sound - lose yourself and lose what you wanted to protect just by doing what was necessary to win the war. A war like the 30 years war for example left a whole generation traumatized and twisted, and even if it had ended wit one side clearly victorious, it'd still just make the small difference of catholic or protestant families that had suffered through this. Without compassion for your fellow man and even your enemy, you may win the war, but be left with a world that was not worth winning the war for.
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Shouldn't that be in GenDisc.
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Nope, as Nyarlathotep's excellent post evinces.
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so what, just because there's an excellent post in it means it belongs to BP and nowhere else ? Way to go on your high horse, dude.
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This is why I spared the Carthage.
Thread is now BP-related.
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so what, just because there's an excellent post in it means it belongs to BP and nowhere else ? Way to go on your high horse, dude.
Au contraire, it is because it is an excellent post on the very topics that BP is so often concerned with.
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This is why I spared the Carthage, ordered my wingmen to kill the fellow UEF pilots and so on.
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I spared the Carthage and the GEFs, but I killed the UEF pilots myself because having my wingmen do it would just be self-deception.
The fact that BP is just a game motivates me to be as honorable as I can, since naivety in this case has no actual consequences.
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I spared the Carthage and the GEFs, but I killed the UEF pilots myself because having my wingmen do it would just be self-deception.
The fact that BP is just a game motivates me to be as honorable as I can, since naivety in this case has no actual consequences.
Amen.
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As someone who went to war, I can tell you that every decision & action you make is a best guess.
One can read that WWII story and say "Wow that was chivalrous!", but WW2 was a long time ago. If that had happened yesterday I'm willing to be the German pilot would have been severely punished for not killing yet another bomber crew responsible for the deaths of hundreds of German citizens. I'm also certain that the German pilot kept his mouth shut about sparing an American aircrew when he returned home for his debrief. On the obverse, it's just as likely the American pilot returned to duty to continue his bombing runs until the end of the conflict, killing hundreds, if not thousands of Germans.
Jumping into the BP verse (and like real life), Laporte's actions are deemed as being "good" only by those on her side. However, if the UEF loses, her head will be on the chopping block as one of their elite pilots. I doubt the GTVA is just going to parole their prisoners at the end of the war and let them go back to their lives. Remember all of the escape pods she tagged from trying to escape the logistics ships? I'd call that a war crime.
In WWII, most German prisoners were kept for an additional 2 years by the US after the war. The Russians kept them until 1950ish. Given that Laporte is a Fedayeen, she'll probably never see the light of day again, like most Waffen SS troops.
On that note, I spared the Carthage in the game. Why? Because it was a s**tload of GTVA advanced tech and a semi-worthwhile space-frame that could be used for anything. Not to mention high ranking prisoners that could be interrogated and prove useful later. It was a decision purely about the acquisition & denial of resources to the enemy - "Saving lives" wasn't a thought. Those people put on the uniform, they made the choice, even if they were conscripts.
The warrior in me has a very hard time sympathizing with the enemy in the here and now. I would not spare them, and I would expect no less from them to me; that's the price of carrying the sword in anger. Maybe old age will soften that one day, but I can't predict the future.
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This is why I spared the Carthage, ordered my wingmen to kill the fellow UEF pilots and so on.
i spared the carthage but dammit i've been itching for an excuse to shoot feds since the end of aoa, i'm not about to pass that sort of opportunity up
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Isn't this how mutually beneficial patterns in iterated games are formed? Like in WWI where opposing trenches would often intentionally shell in similar patterns every night and troops would not fire on each other?
(One side tats, so the other side tats, etc.)
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On the obverse, it's just as likely the American pilot returned to duty to continue his bombing runs until the end of the conflict, killing hundreds, if not thousands of Germans.
That's another excellent point to make. You may spare someone because you think of it as the right thing to do, but the live you save may cost you, and innocent people as well, even more later on.
On that note, I spared the Carthage in the game. Why? Because it was a s**tload of GTVA advanced tech and a semi-worthwhile space-frame that could be used for anything. Not to mention high ranking prisoners that could be interrogated and prove useful later. It was a decision purely about the acquisition & denial of resources to the enemy - "Saving lives" wasn't a thought. Those people put on the uniform, they made the choice, even if they were conscripts.
That was excactly my reasoning. I was in full-on cynical "no-mercy" mode at that point, but I was not out for revenge, and the Carthage seemed like a valuable asset. I guess another thought about the matter is: You can be without mercy, but also still trying to avoid unecessary cruelty. There is a difference between killing helpless people in cold blood to achieve victory in a war, and killing them out of rage/revenge/sadism etc.
This leads to another thing, that is probably one of the biggest thoughts about behaviour in basically any situation: Do you do something because you feel like it out of intuition, anger, compassion, etc. Or maybe you do something because you want to achieve a clearly defined goal. Or maybe you do something because you have a certain set of principles that you apply to a situation, no matter how the consequences may be or how you feel about it.
This is why I spared the Carthage, ordered my wingmen to kill the fellow UEF pilots and so on.
Now this is especially interesting, because ordering someone to do your dirty work is something extremely common. The ones that do the deed can claim they were just following orders, and the ones giving orders don't actually have to do the deed themselves. So, in a way no one is truly absolved of their crime, but both parties feel better commiting it. Others may have thought different at that point, and would have thought something like: "If someone has to do it, I will do it myself, so no one else will get tangled up in this", thinking that killing them yourself is the more moral choice. (Only where not killing them at all is not a choice, of course)
Now, I think this derails the discussion a bit, towards more of a general "ethics in games" line of thought, but I also had a few more thoughts about moral behaviour in games.
Inside this game universe of course there is the problem, that if you want to advance in the game, you may have to do such things. There is no alternative that allows you to completely spare those virtual people and the story will have you hooked, so you really want to know what happens next. So in a way, to act "moral" you'd have to abandon your game, rejecting both the choice to kill or to order to kill someone, at the price of never being able to finish a great game.
That's bull**** in a way of course, in the end you can always say "oh, those aren't real people, just some 1s and 0s", and especially with a story as suspenseful as in BP, you probably won't be able to resist trying to know what will happen, and how it will happen. But if you were truly and completely disturbed by the thought of doing horrible things yourself - even inside a game - you'd actually have to do it.
I don't think anyone would do this in BP, but it is at least imagineable. It's like walking out on a movie in the theatre out of protest. But even there, you may only witness outrageously bad acts or horrible quality in directing or something, you may never have to pull a trigger yourself. Games do take it one step beyond in that respect. I think with other games, this has probably happened before, and not just angry parents returning the cool game their children want to play, but honestly people abandoning and/or returning a game they could not finish, because of something conflicting with their moral principles. It probably isn't a common thing, but I'd say it does happen from time to time.
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I agree with Matth, this should have been in gen disc as it has no relation to BP. Otherwise you could have posted this in Diaspora, Wings of Dawn or any other project's board and presented same argument, but it doesn't make the topic any more relevant to the board in question.
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On the obverse, it's just as likely the American pilot returned to duty to continue his bombing runs until the end of the conflict, killing hundreds, if not thousands of Germans.
That's another excellent point to make. You may spare someone because you think of it as the right thing to do, but the live you save may cost you, and innocent people as well, even more later on.
I think this boils down to a more basic moral question--whether it's right to preemptively kill an innocent who you know will kill in the future. It's also further complicated by the fact that the German pilot is guilty of the same sin.
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I agree with Matth, this should have been in gen disc as it has no relation to BP. Otherwise you could have posted this in Diaspora, Wings of Dawn or any other project's board and presented same argument, but it doesn't make the topic any more relevant to the board in question.
Nope, this article is about the very heart of the things BP2 concerns itself with. And this thread has been really amazing at teasing out the ambiguity and conflict herein.
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The german pilot's attitude would have been sneered at by WiH act 3 Laporte. Ants, why should we bother that they bleed.
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Nope, this article is about the very heart of the things BP2 concerns itself with. And this thread has been really amazing at teasing out the ambiguity and conflict herein.
You could do that with almost every topic of conversation related to war themes.
I don't particularly see a problem with this being discussed on BP's forums and I don't really mind, but the way you started the thread makes it feel that it belongs to Gen Disc.
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Nope, this article is about the very heart of the things BP2 concerns itself with. And this thread has been really amazing at teasing out the ambiguity and conflict herein.
You could do that with almost every topic of conversation related to war themes.
I don't particularly see a problem with this being discussed on BP's forums and I don't really mind, but the way you started the thread makes it feel that it belongs to Gen Disc.
I'm sorry you feel that way. I don't think GenDisc is a good environment to get at what's really interesting about this piece. Please contribute to keeping the quality of this thread high by staying on topic.
The german pilot's attitude would have been sneered at by WiH act 3 Laporte. Ants, why should we bother that they bleed.
I think this is part of what's so interesting about it. It's clearly an irrational move, from the standpoint of a warfighter or an agent invested in the success of one side in a conflict. That bomber and crew are going to do some amount of damage to materiel and lives in the near future, and that damage can be prevented right now at very limited cost.
But he doesn't do it.
Is that refusal itself rational? Is there some long-term societal payoff to a code of chivalry that makes this sacrifice worth it? Maybe the wiggle room available to a fighter to decline acts of extreme or psychologically difficult violence makes them more effective on net. (This is something the UEF certainly seems to have struggled with in this war.) But he didn't really have that wiggle room - standing policy was to punish this kind of softness towards the enemy.
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You're overreading too much. It's way simpler than that and I think it can be formulated into a question: If all we deem important is efficiency through all kinds of channels and scales, with every possible game theory solution calculated throughout all iterations and so on, then why live at all? Why won't we just create robots and suicide ourselves?
The purpose of the war is to guarantee / acquire peace. And peace is a place where you live happy with other human beings and so on. In that place, in that heaven, murder is still murder, human lives are still precious. How could that pilot survive the war and live the rest of his life with that bloodshed in his hands? How many minds have been lost due precisely to these reasons?
Unless you are deeply commited to go down the rabbit hole and decide to stop being human, to forfeit the coming peace, to leave heaven to the others who will profit from your actions, then you will always be fighting with these tensions on your head. To become "Laporteish" (or like "The Operative" in Serenity) is to stop being human.
It's also about the transvaluation of values. One can speculate if such a "person" can become something "overman"-like, but if History is a lesson, the usual psychological result is not pretty.
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That's bull**** in a way of course, in the end you can always say "oh, those aren't real people, just some 1s and 0s", and especially with a story as suspenseful as in BP, you probably won't be able to resist trying to know what will happen, and how it will happen. But if you were truly and completely disturbed by the thought of doing horrible things yourself - even inside a game - you'd actually have to do it.
I don't think anyone would do this in BP, but it is at least imagineable. It's like walking out on a movie in the theatre out of protest. But even there, you may only witness outrageously bad acts or horrible quality in directing or something, you may never have to pull a trigger yourself. Games do take it one step beyond in that respect. I think with other games, this has probably happened before, and not just angry parents returning the cool game their children want to play, but honestly people abandoning and/or returning a game they could not finish, because of something conflicting with their moral principles. It probably isn't a common thing, but I'd say it does happen from time to time.
Yeah, BP2:Act 3 almost got me here, I had to walk away from my PC for approx 4 hours after reading the briefing for "Her Finest Hour", before I could come back and face playing the mission. And I was truly thankful that in the end that there was an option to accept the surrender of Lopez. Damn you BluePlanet devs for making me feel this way about a bunch of ones and zero's!! ;)
Anyway - that's pretty unusual for me since I tend to switch off my moral compass when playing games :nervous:. But, I feel that most games don't give you the freedom/choice to worry about this. You're generally railroaded down the path that the game devs have chosen, so in a way, playing the game it's not quite "committing atrocities yourself", rather it's "committing atrocities that the devs have chosen to commit" (parallels could be drawn here between this and "ordering someone else to do your dirty work"?) And even if you want to make a stand, to make it meaningful you'd need a refund from returning the game (which can be hard to do these days), otherwise you're still "supporting" the game just as much as someone who plays it all the way through. (Assuming that most people don't have the clout, online or otherwise, to write a negative review that would meaningfully affect anything).
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Yeah, BP2:Act 3 almost got me here, I had to walk away from my PC for approx 4 hours after reading the briefing for "Her Finest Hour", before I could come back and face playing the mission. And I was truly thankful that in the end that there was an option to accept the surrender of Lopez. Damn you BluePlanet devs for making me feel this way about a bunch of ones and zero's!! ;)
Her Finest Hour made me feel especially terrible after I read the forums and realized the two corvettes could've been saved if I'd disabled them instead of bombing them, especially since you see them refuse to leave their CO in the face of impending death. It really says something when a game can make me feel genuinely guilty for not putting more effort into saving those ones and zeros.
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You could have saved them by just ignoring them, too. They jump out when Lopez surrenders as long as they still have their engines.
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Yeah, but that's basically surrendering pretty good vessels to the enemy at that point.
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Part of what got me about her finest hour being so great was how my interpretation allowed me to choose the targets that I destroyed because I felt it necessary and those I spared because they were out of the fight. I remember someone being surprised at me because I deliberately targeted the escape pods leaving the Carthage and destroyed fleeing transports but at the same time accepting the surrender of the Carthage and its attendant vessels. For me though the reasoning was simple - the escaping vessels contained crew that could be used to continue the war against the UEF. Those specialists were unlikely to be sent back to GTVA space at such a critical point in the war and everyone that survived could mean the difference between a lost frigate or fighter wing. The surrendering ships on the other hand were no longer going to take a part in the war and therefore their deaths would be meaningless, although remembering the fleeing Jovian forces and the Yangtze not being given a chance to surrender before being cut down made my decision that bit harder.
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Well, the Yangtze might have been given a chance to surrender if the cruisers hadn't faked one to buy time just five minutes earlier (and faking a surrender is a war crime).
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I got the feeling that the Yangtze wasn't going to surrender, no matter what happened.
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The captain of the Yangtze may have chosen to save his crew knowing that the ship was dead in the water and defenceless - we will never know what would have happened and it is not as though the ship posed a threat to the attacking tev ships.
And the Jovians? Serkr team jumps in, the captain knows his ship is doomed and they didn't think to offer terms of surrender? The TEVs have reaped the whirlwind with their actions and should expect no quarter to be given from UEF when the shoe is on the other foot. Total war means that - from both sides so the TEVs should not expect the UEF forces to spare TEV personnel when it means losing possible advantages. It is just a shame that the only Fed forces that are actively looking to hurt the TEVs in this fashion are the Fedayeen and what is left of third fleet.
Total war leaves no room for chivalry - it is a case of killing your enemy before the enemy kills you. The TEVs understand it and the FEDs are finally beginning to understand it just in time to save themselves though probably not in time to save Ubuntu although I hope that it is replaced with something better.
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The captain of the Yangtze may have chosen to save his crew knowing that the ship was dead in the water and defenceless - we will never know what would have happened and it is not as though the ship posed a threat to the attacking tev ships.
Her, and the Yangtze was by her captain's order making best speed towards the Imperieuse.
And the Jovians? Serkr team jumps in, the captain knows his ship is doomed and they didn't think to offer terms of surrender?
By no rule of warfare present or future would Serkr Team be required to request surrender in that situation. It would be utterly unenforceable. But I do agree with your points about total war!
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Her yes I'm still recovering from a marathon journey through the blizzards to get back from Belgium so some of my thought processes are still a bit fuzzy :)
By no rule of warfare present or future would Serkr Team be required to request surrender in that situation.
However if total war had not been enacted then I would have expected (given the repeated demands for surrender during the first battle of Neptune) the TEVs to put a priority on psychological victories such as magnanimous behaviour to defeated foes for the benefit of creating positive examples of TEV benevolence in order to build good relations with the civilian populace. Their actions now are simply to destroy the UEF with no regard for lives lost or damage to their credibility. This gives the moral high ground to the UEF but ultimate victory to the TEVs (at least in the short term). In order to win the UEF will have to fight the TEVs on their own level.
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If Serkr Team had asked for a surrender in that situation it would've gone like this:
*serkr team jumps in*
"Dear Ranvir: we could blow you up. Please surrender!"
"Okay! We surrender! What are you going to do now?"
"Well, I guess there are probably UEF reinforcements on the way to save you, so we can't really board and take prisoners. But how bout you PINKY SWEAR never to shoot a gun again!"
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Or "you have 2 mins to abandon your ship before it is destroyed, If we detect any reinforcements en-route before this then your ship will be destroyed immediately". It at least gives the crew a chance and shows that the Tev crews are not bloodthirsty barbarians whilst giving them plenty of opportunity to take out the target and escape before help arrives.
BTW please give us a chance to take out Serkr team - I would take that over a shot at Steele
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If Serkr Team had asked for a surrender in that situation it would've gone like this:
*serkr team jumps in*
"Dear Ranvir: we could blow you up. Please surrender!"
"Okay! We surrender! What are you going to do now?"
"Well, I guess there are probably UEF reinforcements on the way to save you, so we can't really board and take prisoners. But how bout you PINKY SWEAR never to shoot a gun again!"
Made my day :lol:
And please...leave Serkr alive, I like them so much...or do it like you did with the Carthage, but then again...
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Serkr are deeply involved in Steele's plans, therefore Serkr cannot die until Steele does. And Steele has contingencies for everything, including his contingencies.
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It at least gives the crew a chance
Both sides can do basic math. The Yangtze knew its situation and could have offered surrender on its own. No such attempt was made. It's not solely on the attacker to offer mercy; the defender is expected to recognize when further combat would be futile.
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Well, the Yangtze might have been given a chance to surrender if the cruisers hadn't faked one to buy time just five minutes earlier (and faking a surrender is a war crime).
I doubt the Imperieuse would have accepted the Yangtze's surrender anyway. I doubt the cruiser's "surrender" gave the Imperieuse pause, either. Steele wants to end the war as soon as possible and if it saves even a single day (and more lives down the road) then the Wargods have to die.
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No way to say anything about the cruisers because broadcasting "I surrender" and then setting engines to max makes your intent pretty obvious.
That's why I seriously doubt the Tevs would have accepted the Yangtze's surrender. This is exactly why faking surrender is a war crime: it discourages accepting genuine surrenders.
And given the fact that Laporte spends about a week in the Red Room and nothing especially important happens in that time (that we know of), I don't think processing a captured frigate would have delayed anything. All you need is a transport, a boarding crew, and some fighters to escort it back to the node. Nothing important.
In any case, it's a moot point. Kyrematen wasn't going to surrender either way.
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Kyrematen wasn't going to surrender either way.
Really? 8 thousand wardogs had just died attempting to save the crews of the Yangtze and Indus, the Indus had escaped and there was nothing left to fight for. What captain in their right minds would let the crew under their command die in a fit of bravado? Especially a captain trained in Ubuntu.
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But the big point of the entire Wargods arc is how the Wargods become less and less Ubuntu as time progresses. A more regular Ubuntu CO might have offered a surrender, but Kyrematen? Not really likely.
And even then, as Aesaar has pointed out, it is questionable if Admiral Leinonin had accepted it in any case. The Imperieuse had orders to inflict a killing blow on the Wargods; while having some of them surrender and others flee might have been an acceptable outcome here, it would also lessen the impact somewhat. The message Steele intended to send was probably "These are your best ships. I can wipe them out in a few seconds. Deal with it.", a message that would only come out garbled when a significant part of the Wargods is still alive at the end.
Not to mention that if you accept a surrender, you're obligated to care for them, run SAR, provide boarding crews, that sort of thing, all stuff that takes some time to execute, time that Imperieuse may not have (since she is sitting in a known location with a discharged jump drive).
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A more regular Ubuntu CO might have offered a surrender, but Kyrematen? Not really likely.
Sorry but I don't buy that for a second the as duty to a captain is to the ship and crew. The battle was lost, the Indus had escaped and their sacrifice would accomplish nothing. Kyrematen wasn't stupid and like I said going down fighting would be a simple act of bravado.
I have already said that I accept the reasons for the TEVs destroying the Yangtze and the Jovian forces as total war protocols had been enacted, my point was that now from a UEF standpoint the destruction of defenceless TEV forces is now a valid military strategy because of the total war strategy. From my point of view (getting back on thread) chivalry now has no place in this war. For both sides this war is about survival and in order to survive both sides will have to do thing that some will consider wrong or dishonourable. In this case I would like to see this reflected in possible choices during acts 4-5 especially where it regards revenge attacks on TEV forces.
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What is lacking here is a surrender protocol that might be acceptable to both parties. Something on the order of "You have 30 seconds to get to your escape pods". And in 30 seconds the ship is toasted. But at least some attention would be given to the unnecessary killing of people.
I don't think it would be applicable in Delenda Est though. Time was the essence there, and there wasn't any possibility to risk the gambit with a moral fair play at the time.
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In case of any confusion the Jovian forces that I am referring to are those lost during the retreat from Jupiter not the Katana and Altan Orde
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"You have 30 seconds to get to your escape pods". And in 30 seconds the ship is toasted.
Oh ****, I'd be so dead. Sprinting is not my strong point :D
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"You have 30 seconds to get to your escape pods". And in 30 seconds the ship is toasted.
I'd be dead to... Need to increase bigbaddaboom-time-variable to 3 minutes for fatasses like myself. :lol:
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In case of any confusion the Jovian forces that I am referring to are those lost during the retreat from Jupiter not the Katana and Altan Orde
Those are beyond any kind of "kindness". They were trying to get their subspace engines online and they were about to get so in a few minutes. Sekr might not know with sufficient accuracy their available timing so they have to shoot as fast as possible, and get away as fast as possible.
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And given the fact that Laporte spends about a week in the Red Room and nothing especially important happens in that time (that we know of), I don't think processing a captured frigate would have delayed anything. All you need is a transport, a boarding crew, and some fighters to escort it back to the node. Nothing important.
Steel is a psychologist. The Wargods are heroes and by annihilating them so effortlessly he strikes what is presumably a huge morale blow to the UEF.
We also can't discount the possibility that Steele already knows about Laporte, and that he didn't just risk a battlegroup to kill four Frigates, but to kill her at any cost. MORPHEUS is serious business.
Steele hates bloodshed as much as anybody else. He just isn't afraid of it if it means preventing more bloodshed in the future.
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Steel is a psychologist. The Wargods are heroes and by annihilating them so effortlessly he strikes what is presumably a huge morale blow to the UEF.
I don't disagree with that at all. I'm just saying that even if the Imperieuse had been willing to accept surrender, Leinonin wouldn't have been inclined to after what the cruisers tried to pull.
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We also can't discount the possibility that Steele already knows about Laporte, and that he didn't just risk a battlegroup to kill four Frigates, but to kill her at any cost. MORPHEUS is serious business.
While I guess we can't discount the possibility Steel is aware of Laporte, but I find it highly unlikely as the conversation between Sam and his father at the end of WiH R1 implies that the UEF itself only found out about Noemi recently due to Vicmouth's report.
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Back in Delenda Est? I don't think Laporte was the main target, she was just a pawn back then that just happened to be 3 squares away from the final tile and Steele somehow able to miss. Simms and Captain Sorensen would be considered more valuable targets.
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We also can't discount the possibility that Steele already knows about Laporte, and that he didn't just risk a battlegroup to kill four Frigates, but to kill her at any cost. MORPHEUS is serious business.
While I guess we can't discount the possibility Steel is aware of Laporte, but I find it highly unlikely as the conversation between Sam and his father at the end of WiH R1 implies that the UEF itself only found out about Noemi recently due to Vicmouth's report.
The UEF knew about Laporte long enough for the HoL to use her as a courier to the Fedayeen. Given that Steele had an Elder in his pocket even before that, I think we can safely assume that Laporte's existence if not Vicmouth's entire report was leaked to him.
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"You have 30 seconds to get to your escape pods". And in 30 seconds the ship is toasted.
I'd be dead to... Need to increase bigbaddaboom-time-variable to 3 minutes for fatasses like myself. :lol:
I kind of assumed the escape pod systems in FS ships are mostly automated, so when you order an evacuation all the seats in the command deck get swooshed into the nearest escape pod, Thunderbirds style. Also explains why the door on the Hermes is so ridiculously huge.
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Now there's a thought-provoking article that brought tears to my eyes.
It's a particularly interesting one, given the treatise on war that BP:WiH provides.
I destroyed the GEFs without a second thought in the convoy mission, killed the UEF pilots with basically no hesitation, saved the GEF habitat on the asteroid, and accepted the Carthage's surrender (but mopped the floor with the rest of the GTVA forces on scene, disabling the corvettes). I didn't have so much a problem with Fedayeen actions as beliefs - I questioned their motivations.
I stuck with being a rational actor through most of Tenebra.
- Detonating the GEFs I did without a second thought. Not only were these people terrorists who used violence against civilians, their escape would have thrown off the careful operation. As the only options were allow the escape or kill them, I killed them.
- Killing the UEF pilots was distasteful but necessary. Letting my wingmen do it, however, would just be trying to rationalize avoiding responsibility (particularly as I would have had to issue orders to them to do it). If it had to happen, better to take responsibility.
- In the case of the GEF habitat, taking out MacDuff felt like public service. Taking out the GEF fighters was necessary. Destroying the habitat was not. I had options and exercised them - no need to make thousands of people pay for the actions of their leadership with their lives.
- As for Her Finest Hour... interesting mission, and it let me put my opinions on the war itself into practice. I felt the war was unnecessary, and a military victory by the GTVA would be untenable, even before playing UT (which just reinforced my belief). Therefore, I resolved to play the mission in such a way to make it clear to the GTVA that they would pay dearly for a military solution to reunification. I therefore destroyed the gas miners, disabled and destroyed the corvettes (though I think one ended the mission just disabled and not destroyed), destroyed the cruisers and mopped up the fighters. I accepted the Carthage's surrender, though. When she surrendered, it saved thousands of lives on board, it guaranteed a morale boost among the UEF, it took her out of the war, and it provided possibly quite valuable GTVA technology. There was really no reason not to accept the surrender and every reason to do so, unless you let Laporte be entirely motivated by revenge (I didn't). Meanwhile, the rest of the utter destruction in the mission deprives the GTVA of valuable assets in the war - and let's face it, the UEF is basically fighting a guerilla conflict by this point. The GTVA has the raw military power to crush the UEF in a stand-up fight if they pulled assets from throughout the GTVA. They're playing a PR game, and I played the strategy much like the North Vietnamese and Afghanis have done when facing superpowers - make the cost to your enemy, however slight it actually is, an unacceptable loss in the political and social realm.
In my view, all of my actions were rational responses to the available scenarios.
Now, Sitgler's action was an irrational response if you strip away his emotions and humanity. There was literally no downside from a purely tactical/strategic point of view to wiping that bomber and his crew from existence. And this is why, even in total war situations, the humanity of the actors involved is paramount. It is that very humanity that makes reconciliation after the hostilities possible.
The trouble in BP is that we never see that humanity really come out of Steele. That is what drives my Laporte to invoke pure cost-benefit rationalism and psychology and reject some parts of her own humanity. Not that I see her as beyond redemption - I think the Carthage proves that its possible to retain your humanity and still carry out strategic-level operations sometimes.
Regardless, the BP conflict between the GTVA and UEF is not a total war scenario.
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Remember all of the escape pods she tagged from trying to escape the logistics ships? I'd call that a war crime.
I doubt it. The people in those pods were knowingly violating their own surrender--which is a war crime. Those escape pods were directly endangering the lives of every Federation soldier near the Agincourt. It was also deemed likely that the pods were being used for warfighting purposes rather than mere survival or noncombatant purposes--the fact that it coincided with a fighter launch to attack the Federation fighters supports this conclusion. Laporte was also ordered to do it, and expressed her hope that the pods were empty and not filled with panicked deckhands during the incident, on record.
On that note, I spared the Carthage in the game. Why? Because it was a s**tload of GTVA advanced tech and a semi-worthwhile space-frame that could be used for anything. Not to mention high ranking prisoners that could be interrogated and prove useful later. It was a decision purely about the acquisition & denial of resources to the enemy - "Saving lives" wasn't a thought. Those people put on the uniform, they made the choice, even if they were conscripts.
For you, I suppose--and it's valid reasoning. But especially for Laporte, moral reasoning/ethics were specifically why she spares the Carthage (should the player choose that outcome). She wanted to destroy the Carthage, badly, but she knew that it wasn't necessary--that those 10,000 lives she felt nothing for still mattered in that they were people and their deaths were not at all necessary, even if she would have felt personal satisfaction in doing so.
Putting on a uniform is one thing, but killing a soldier that can no longer fight after she has surrendered--and when there are no unusual circumstances in which the Federation can't take prisoners and would thus have to choose between killing them or letting them fight again--is another. It's the difference that fighting a war without hate makes.
No way to say anything about the cruisers because broadcasting "I surrender" and then setting engines to max makes your intent pretty obvious.
Well, maybe it's just my interpretation, but it seems like the Insuperable (or was it Kyoto?) gets obliterated a few seconds after that line. I'm not sure if the comms officer had time to begin executing the order, or if the light corvette even managed to start accelerating before being skewered by blue beams.
I thought Kyremaiten's refusal to surrender simply came from despair--a kind of honorable suicide or something. She was so devastated by what had just happened--along with the rest of her crew, including Karen and Olefumi--that they kind of wanted to just die at this point; to go down fighting rather than surrender and hope for mercy from the people who just massacred thousands of your friends and comrades in front of your eyes, spending months/years in the enemy's prison camps as POW's.
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- In the case of the GEF habitat, taking out MacDuff felt like public service. Taking out the GEF fighters was necessary. Destroying the habitat was not. I had options and exercised them - no need to make thousands of people pay for the actions of their leadership with their lives.
If your transport gets destroyed, then destroying the habitat becomes your only option to save Earth from an extinction event. Is it still a war crime in this case ?
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- In the case of the GEF habitat, taking out MacDuff felt like public service. Taking out the GEF fighters was necessary. Destroying the habitat was not. I had options and exercised them - no need to make thousands of people pay for the actions of their leadership with their lives.
If your transport gets destroyed, then destroying the habitat becomes your only option to save Earth from an extinction event. Is it still a war crime in this case ?
No, it's a sick necessity. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one. It's horrible, but the alternative is worse.
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does it count as a war crime to keep a bunch of civilians captive in a legitimate military target
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Tu Quoque isn't a good argument, PhantomHoover.
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does it count as a war crime to keep a bunch of civilians captive in a legitimate military target
Does it count as a war crime to have industrial complexes, which are valid military targets, in Luna cities where a lot of civilians could get hurt ?
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Well, maybe it's just my interpretation, but it seems like the Insuperable (or was it Kyoto?) gets obliterated a few seconds after that line. I'm not sure if the comms officer had time to begin executing the order, or if the light corvette even managed to start accelerating before being skewered by blue beams.
I've played Delenta Est about a dozen times, and I only saw that line once. Usually the cruiser gets killed at the same time as its sister ship, and the captain is too busy being at 27k to say it.
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does it count as a war crime to keep a bunch of civilians captive in a legitimate military target
Does it count as a war crime to have industrial complexes, which are valid military targets, in Luna cities where a lot of civilians could get hurt ?
A valid question, though I think there are still some distinctions.
Luna is not terraformed. The domes are the habitats for survival, and you cannot separate the industrial centers from the civilian areas. Hit the dome anywhere, and the whole environment cracks. Since the UEF had good reason to believe that the Tevs would not target Luna domes for their own interests, it's reasonable that they wouldn't just abandon one of their largest colonies for such a remote possibility.
As for Kostadin, the major difference is that they had knowingly and willingly turned their home into a superweapon with every intention to use it. Purposely leaving so little time to stop the extinction event means that taking extra measures to avoid collateral damage might not be possible. Further, the civilians were being forced to comply throughout--they weren't allowed to leave.
But the assassination of the Elder in the middle of legitimate diplomatic actions, and then framing the UEF for faking the whole thing--that's really disgusting to me. Beyond potentially necessary sacrifices, blatantly violating one of the most ancient and vital elements of diplomacy and laws of war out of fear that your relationship with your long-time allies is so bad that your new enemies might be better friends for them. God, I hope the Vasudans finally take a proactive stance in this conflict and counteract the worst parts of the GTA while supporting the UEF and good parts of the GTA--which they're in a unique position to do.
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Does it count as a war crime to have industrial complexes, which are valid military targets, in Luna cities where a lot of civilians could get hurt ?
Where else are they supposed to keep these industrial complexes? The surface of Luna is a vaccum and transporting workers to these complexes if they were not a part of the domes would probably be considered a massive inefficiency when the infrastructure was designed.
More important however is the probability that these domes were built decades before the start of the war, the designers would not have been able to forsee that the citizens of Luna would be under attack by a hostile force that would utilise nuclear weapons whilst conducting assults on government infrastructure. I would hardily consider an understandable lack of forsight to be considered a war crime :rolleyes:
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does it count as a war crime to keep a bunch of civilians captive in a legitimate military target
Does it count as a war crime to have industrial complexes, which are valid military targets, in Luna cities where a lot of civilians could get hurt ?
the 'captive' part is fairly important here -- the people on luna had the option to leave, but didn't; briefing text explicitly calls kostadin cell a prison camp
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MP-Ryan - You say that you never see that humanity come out in Steele, but I strongly, strongly disagree.
"Have you seen Contingency MORPHEUS?"
"No, Sir."
"Pray that you never do. It is a hell from which there is no waking up"
/Paraphrase
Everything Steele does he does because he feels that he is trying to prevent a higher human cost - that no matter what "monstrous" act he performs, he is doing in the name of preventing an even greater tragedy/loss. That's pretty human, if you ask me.
Laporte and the UEF's continued resistance is the spasming of a poisoned, dying body, and would reduce that cost if it ceased.
(Well, except for Shivan/Vishnan shenanigans in the background)
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I ordered my wingmen to kill Ridwan Beta in Nothing is True, solely because I was concentrating on getting rid of the convoy. I would have done it myself if it were more efficient.
If I were packing an anti-subsystem weapon at the time, and the mission had a contingency for it, I would have disabled Ridwan Beta and recommended a capture operation. They could have been dealt with later, and kept alive.
I accepted the Carthage's surrender in Her Finest Hour mainly because it would have taken a really long time to destroy it. That was my decision as a gamer; however, if I were Laporte, I would have made the same decision but for different reasons: as others have said, it's full of useful Tev technology, and personnel to interrogate.
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Just something I was thinking about when playing finest hour.
Given that Calder praises Laporte on a job well done if she does not accept the Carthage's surrender, would Calder be expected to accept the surrender of any GTVA assets or is he to far gone? Given that this man has seen thousands of men and women under his command as well as the civilians he swore to protect slaughtered will the losses get to be much for him?
I could see Byrne or Netreba prioritising the capture of assets over needless distruction but with Calder on the warpath he may now see every Terran target as fair game. Could he end up being a obstacle to a negotiated peace?
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I doubt it. Calder fights out of duty, but he's FURIOUS with the Elders for their mismanagement of the war. If Calder finds out the details of Shambhala and it's nearly as bad as it's implied to be I could see him surrendering to Steele for humanity's sake.
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Just had to interrupt my weekly lurkings. This is the part of the article that gets me the most:
Brown had written a letter of thanks to Stigler, but one day, he showed the extent of his gratitude. He organized a reunion of his surviving crew members, along with their extended families. He invited Stigler as a guest of honor.
During the reunion, a video was played showing all the faces of the people that now lived -- children, grandchildren, relatives -- because of Stigler's act of chivalry. Stigler watched the film from his seat of honor.
"Everybody was crying, not just him," Warner says.
I think hate is closer to love than indifference since it requires a greater understanding of the other. If that German pilot failed to see his 'target' as a bunch of helpless people, that plane would have been destroyed and these families would not be alive today.
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Au contraire, it is because it is an excellent post on the very topics that BP is so often concerned with.
When I read this article back when it was first published, I almost posted here because I thought it might be something BP forumers would find interesting vis-a-vis the morality conflicts presented in BP. I didn't because I wasn't sure it was appropriate, but I'm glad someone else did. :) It's also just a great story.