Gaming and Real World Combat Tactics

bartholen_v1legacy

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I think the comparison to an instruction manual is the best one, and even that's a little shaky. There's a fundamental and massive difference between knowing how things like checking sightlines, teamwork, breaching rooms, checking corners etc. are supposed to be done compared to actually doing them in real life. In those scenarios ignoring the slightest factor can prove fatal, but there's also the added pressure of all the other factors: not knowing what you'll be facing, potential booby-traps, every single sound around you and so on.

TL;DR: military shooters can teach you bits of theory, but nothing of the execution.
 

Avnger

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Arnoxthe1 said:
Wow. More people not reading the OP. That's real great.
We read the OP. It's just kind of nonsense. You've had why explained by multiple people including those with actual military experience.
 

Avnger

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Arnoxthe1 said:
Avnger said:
We read the OP. It's just kind of nonsense.
Clearing corners? Right. That's actually total video game nonsense. Yep.
This is also something you could pick up from reading military-based fiction or nonfiction. One could also pick up the idea from watching movies or TV shows. Hell, you could learn the concept from listening to any veteran share their experiences with you. I learned a lot about B-17 bombers, daylight strategic bombing campaigns, and being a POW from just listening to my grandfather tell stories of his time in WW 2. If he had been in the infantry, I'm sure I'd have learned about different ideas instead. However, none of that would have been the equivalent of having real training.

You're acting like a child believing that they learned how to be a doctor because they played with a stethoscope on their stuffed animal. Listen to the professionals telling you that you are clueless mate. There's nothing bad about admitting you were wrong; you just have to act like an adult to accept it and move on.
 

Gethsemani_v1legacy

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Arnoxthe1 said:
Avnger said:
We read the OP. It's just kind of nonsense.
Clearing corners? Right. That's actually total video game nonsense. Yep.
A friend of mine also learned that from watching Discovery documentaries about SWAT. As both I and Addendum have said before, knowing that you should clear the corner when entering a room (because you played SWAT 4 or watched a documentary) tells you nothing about how that is done in real life, nor does it present a realistic understanding of all the problems with it in real life.

And that's really what it all comes down to, that whatever theoretical understanding you might have of corner clearing, fire and maneuver or the importance of concealment in a modern firefight because you played a computer game is just that: Theoretical understanding. In real life these things have to be practiced like crazy while supervised by experienced training staff because there are countless hurdles in real life that aren't there in even the most realistic game.
 

Arnoxthe1

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Well, there it is again, thinking that I said games make you an effective IRL combatant. I didn't say anything of the sort but whatever. It doesn't matter.
 

Phoenixmgs_v1legacy

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I think games can definitely help. For example, I feel that because of racing games, I know how to get out of skids and slides driving in the snow because you have to know what to do instinctively and racing games will instill that into you. Trying to think what to do when you slide/skid from reading about it (as it's literally a question on the driving test) is only going to result in you spinning out. However, guns are different because games don't give you the feel of shooting guns near anything like a driving game does for driving. Shooters don't even really teach you how to grip a gun. If you were in a real life shootout somehow, I think a gamer would be much better than average person (with no gun experience) with regards on how to move around the combat zone with regards to moving around corners and having the instincts to "slice the pie".
 

dscross

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Cosmic Carnage for the Sega 32X showed me how to fight aliens in space with armour. Now I can hit them comfortably and their armour comes off. They fall down, once beaten, in slow motion. The camera then zooms in on me and I look pixelated. I'm so glad i played it to learn some real world tactics.
 

Kerg3927

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I don't know about combat tactics, but as far as being a "murder simulator," I think there may be some truth to that. When you're talking about a guy walking into a school and shooting people, it's not about tactics, IMO. I think the biggest obstacle to overcome is your own instinct to not kill another human being, especially when you are not fearing for your own life, i.e. in a fight or flight scenario.

As I understand it, being able point a gun at another human being and pull the trigger, and then do it again, and again is no easy task for most people. There are cultural right vs. wrong thoughts to overcome, as well as evolutionary factors in our brains that deter us from killing our own species. But as with anything, the more you practice it, the more it becomes reflex and the less you think about it. A person who plays a lot of shooters can probably somewhat reflexively jump into "game mode" in his mind and start aiming and shooting more easily than someone who has never played video games.

Don't get me wrong... I certainly don't think video games should be censored, and I don't think video games are a significant causation factor in mass shootings. But I do think it's possible that they could help a would-be murderer be more successful, just by training that person's reflexes through repetition and desensitizing him to the act of committing murder.
 

Addendum_Forthcoming

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Phoenixmgs said:
I think games can definitely help. For example, I feel that because of racing games, I know how to get out of skids and slides driving in the snow because you have to know what to do instinctively and racing games will instill that into you. Trying to think what to do when you slide/skid from reading about it (as it's literally a question on the driving test) is only going to result in you spinning out. However, guns are different because games don't give you the feel of shooting guns near anything like a driving game does for driving. Shooters don't even really teach you how to grip a gun. If you were in a real life shootout somehow, I think a gamer would be much better than average person (with no gun experience) with regards on how to move around the combat zone with regards to moving around corners and having the instincts to "slice the pie".
Not really....

Frankly I'd like to see a gamer pick up and fire a M3 Carl Gustav and not vomit from the rush you get. Much less be near the receiving end of its package and still have their wits even if appearing nominally fine as the dust clears. I've never fired one personally, but I have used others like it. The force is so much it just ripples through your body. The force is so much that multiple militaries are querying whether it gives operators and nearby squad members brain damage through repeated use. The exit pressure actually hits you as it bounces off the ground.

And trained operators and loader are meant to (theoretically) be able to fire and load up to 5 per minute last I remember reading. That's a whole lot of cumulative damage that is hitting you and everyone around you. It's actually tiring in a sense.

And that's nothing to say of what you might be actually hit by in a hypothetical engagement in return.

The thing is, weapons like these ... from mortar fire, to grenades, to IEDs, to the ever growing use of such weapons at ever more intimate exposure in terms of total uptake (they're now talking the possibility of up to every infantry platoon in a hypothetical theatre of conflict having at least one if not more) ... tell me, what sort of video game is going to prepare a gamer for something so basic and commonplace as that?

I think video games can give pretension and pretension only.
 

Gethsemani_v1legacy

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Arnoxthe1 said:
Well, there it is again, thinking that I said games make you an effective IRL combatant. I didn't say anything of the sort but whatever. It doesn't matter.
Look, I get what you are saying. But it is the same as me saying that watching House gave me a basic idea about hospital routines and diagnosis procedure. Sure, in a sense House does get the basics of hospitals and doctors right, but it is so basic that it is entirely worthless if you ever end up working in a real hospital or decide to go to med school.

Which means that it is functionally useless knowledge, as you will never have any serious use for it short of making small talk ("clearing corners is real effective in CoD:WW2, innit?"). That you know that clearing corners is a thing because you learned to do it in a shooter doesn't really mean anything, just as it doesn't mean anything that someone knows the very basics of an ER after watching ER or knows the basics of profiling after watching CSI. It is the kind of basic superficial knowledge that we pick up from all kinds of places all the time, but is ultimately of no use if we ever wound up in that situation and doesn't let us talk to the professionals of the field in any meaningful fashion.

Your OP states flat out that "It is through these games that you can learn some combat tactics and good habits" and your final paragraph suggests that public shooters would be more effective if they did 200 hours of Arma or Insurgency to learn what it is all about. Me and Addendum have just been repeatedly stating that that is not the case. That whatever superficial understanding of combat you might glean from a computer game is next to worthless if you end up with a gun in a firefight in real life, because actually doing those things in real life is a whole other skill set then doing them in any game.

Addendum really said it best in his last post: I think video games can give pretension and pretension only.
 

Phoenixmgs_v1legacy

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Addendum_Forthcoming said:
Phoenixmgs said:
I think games can definitely help. For example, I feel that because of racing games, I know how to get out of skids and slides driving in the snow because you have to know what to do instinctively and racing games will instill that into you. Trying to think what to do when you slide/skid from reading about it (as it's literally a question on the driving test) is only going to result in you spinning out. However, guns are different because games don't give you the feel of shooting guns near anything like a driving game does for driving. Shooters don't even really teach you how to grip a gun. If you were in a real life shootout somehow, I think a gamer would be much better than average person (with no gun experience) with regards on how to move around the combat zone with regards to moving around corners and having the instincts to "slice the pie".
Not really....

Frankly I'd like to see a gamer pick up and fire a M3 Carl Gustav and not vomit from the rush you get. Much less be near the receiving end of its package and still have their wits even if appearing nominally fine as the dust clears. I've never fired one personally, but I have used others like it. The force is so much it just ripples through your body. The force is so much that multiple militaries are querying whether it gives operators and nearby squad members brain damage through repeated use. The exit pressure actually hits you as it bounces off the ground.

And trained operators and loader are meant to (theoretically) be able to fire and load up to 5 per minute last I remember reading. That's a whole lot of cumulative damage that is hitting you and everyone around you. It's actually tiring in a sense.

And that's nothing to say of what you might be actually hit by in a hypothetical engagement in return.

The thing is, weapons like these ... from mortar fire, to grenades, to IEDs, to the ever growing use of such weapons at ever more intimate exposure in terms of total uptake (they're now talking the possibility of up to every infantry platoon in a hypothetical theatre of conflict having at least one if not more) ... tell me, what sort of video game is going to prepare a gamer for something so basic and commonplace as that?

I think video games can give pretension and pretension only.
I said that shooters don't train you or even give you the experience of shooting a gun vs a driving game giving you the feeling of a car's backend sliding out. A gamer wouldn't even know how to grip a gun properly. However, I think a gamer would acquire skills on at least how to move around a combat zone like instinctively "slicing the pie" that would definitely give them some advantage over someone without any gun or shooter game experience.
 

sXeth

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Phoenixmgs said:
I said that shooters don't train you or even give you the experience of shooting a gun vs a driving game giving you the feeling of a car's backend sliding out. A gamer wouldn't even know how to grip a gun properly. However, I think a gamer would acquire skills on at least how to move around a combat zone like instinctively "slicing the pie" that would definitely give them some advantage over someone without any gun or shooter game experience.
Going out on a limb, I'm betting that even if you took one of the more simmy racing games and comboed it with a fancy steering wheel control, its not going to even vaguely compare with the forces involved turning an actual car and braking, and the thing you're actually sitting on shifting with you shifting along with it.
 

Phoenixmgs_v1legacy

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Seth Carter said:
Phoenixmgs said:
I said that shooters don't train you or even give you the experience of shooting a gun vs a driving game giving you the feeling of a car's backend sliding out. A gamer wouldn't even know how to grip a gun properly. However, I think a gamer would acquire skills on at least how to move around a combat zone like instinctively "slicing the pie" that would definitely give them some advantage over someone without any gun or shooter game experience.
Going out on a limb, I'm betting that even if you took one of the more simmy racing games and comboed it with a fancy steering wheel control, its not going to even vaguely compare with the forces involved turning an actual car and braking, and the thing you're actually sitting on shifting with you shifting along with it.
I never really even used a racing wheel besides for this shitty one that came with GT3 (through some offer or something) and quickly ditched it for a controller. Outside of GT3, I never played a racing sim nor would I claim you would need to. Because whether you're playing a racing sim or an arcade racer all about that drifting, both will convey that sense of your backend sliding out and having to get out of the skid. It's just one of those things where you either have the instincts or you'll skid out if you have to "think" about what you're supposed to do. Just this past winter, I pulled out of a skid doing 60 on the highway in snow because some guy came into my lane and I had to weave between 2 cars to avoid the initial hit, then skidded due to the quick maneuvering. Maybe video games helped, maybe they didn't. However, driving games are far better at conveying actual driving vs a shooter conveying actually shooting a gun. When I took Drivers Ed, we did use simulators as well as actual driving (obviously), but those simulators were pretty shitty compared to an actual video game. Lastly, GT Academy is an actual thing where gamers become actual racers. I think there's definitely something there especially if the simulation gives proper feedback like a racing game unlike a shooter.
 

Addendum_Forthcoming

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Phoenixmgs said:
I said that shooters don't train you or even give you the experience of shooting a gun vs a driving game giving you the feeling of a car's backend sliding out. A gamer wouldn't even know how to grip a gun properly. However, I think a gamer would acquire skills on at least how to move around a combat zone like instinctively "slicing the pie" that would definitely give them some advantage over someone without any gun or shooter game experience.
How?

Also, no.

I used to do amateur motorcycle racing (250s). Suck at motorcycle racing games. Also a videogame is not going to teach you something as basic as countersteering ... how to properly grip a motorbike with your knees. The appropriate technique to using your brakes. Just how much you can feather tap the rear brake to bring you closer into a corner without altering the angle of incidence you are taking (without crashing from braking too hard while leaning into a tight corner), how the two different brakes operate differently uphill and down, and how to use the throttle to autocorrect as you leave a corner.

Learning countersteering (and way way more) is often the difference between a rider and a corpse.

Try explaining this to someone, and then try programming this into a game... haven't found a videogame yet do it ... yet this is basic survival stuff you have to learn as a rider.


I have had to adopt this stuff to avoid getting hit by debris caused by an exploding truck tire once, to cars that blithely just enter your lane, oncoming or otherwise.

You don't learn this stuff, you will inevitably wish you had. I still practice this stuff when on clear road conditions just to condition myself for when I need to use it. Sure it looks reckless to people behind me to see this motorbike suddenly jag into the merged lane at speed ... but that is purely chalked up to their ignorance of me practicing something that will keep me alive out there.

I'd rather look reckless than be reckless by letting these skills rust.

So you know ... to use your example of aracing game analogy, I posit a purely motorist example of where videogames get the very basics wrong, or don't evenbother trying to replicate them.
 

Phoenixmgs_v1legacy

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Addendum_Forthcoming said:
Phoenixmgs said:
I said that shooters don't train you or even give you the experience of shooting a gun vs a driving game giving you the feeling of a car's backend sliding out. A gamer wouldn't even know how to grip a gun properly. However, I think a gamer would acquire skills on at least how to move around a combat zone like instinctively "slicing the pie" that would definitely give them some advantage over someone without any gun or shooter game experience.
How?

Also, no.

I used to do amateur motorcycle racing (250s). Suck at motorcycle racing games. Also a videogame is not going to teach you something as basic as countersteering ... how to properly grip a motorbike with your knees. The appropriate technique to using your brakes. Just how much you can feather tap the rear brake to bring you closer into a corner without altering the angle of incidence you are taking (without crashing from braking too hard while leaning into a tight corner), how the two different brakes operate differently uphill and down, and how to use the throttle to autocorrect as you leave a corner.

Learning countersteering (and way way more) is often the difference between a rider and a corpse.

Try explaining this to someone, and then try programming this into a game... haven't found a videogame yet do it ... yet this is basic survival stuff you have to learn as a rider.


I have had to adopt this stuff to avoid getting hit by debris caused by an exploding truck tire once, to cars that blithely just enter your lane, oncoming or otherwise.

You don't learn this stuff, you will inevitably wish you had. I still practice this stuff when on clear road conditions just to condition myself for when I need to use it. Sure it looks reckless to people behind me to see this motorbike suddenly jag into the merged lane at speed ... but that is purely chalked up to their ignorance of me practicing something that will keep me alive out there.

I'd rather look reckless than be reckless by letting these skills rust.

So you know ... to use your example of aracing game analogy, I posit a purely motorist example of where videogames get the very basics wrong, or don't evenbother trying to replicate them.
What you are going on about? I said I THINK racing games MAY have helped with getting out of a skid in real life. That's one single aspect of driving, I didn't say they taught me to be a professional racer. Video games can give you certain skills that apply to real life. Sure a shooter doesn't train you to shoot a gun (because the game isn't simulating the shooting of an actual gun) but other things you do in the game can translate. People are trained on simulators for certain things because of the high cost of getting in real practice. Sure, there probably isn't a video game simulator up to par with a legit real simulator but to say video games impart no skills to the player is just as wrong.
 

Addendum_Forthcoming

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Phoenixmgs said:
What you are going on about? I said I THINK racing games MAY have helped with getting out of a skid in real life. That's one single aspect of driving, I didn't say they taught me to be a professional racer. Video games can give you certain skills that apply to real life. Sure a shooter doesn't train you to shoot a gun (because the game isn't simulating the shooting of an actual gun) but other things you do in the game can translate. People are trained on simulators for certain things because of the high cost of getting in real practice. Sure, there probably isn't a video game simulator up to par with a legit real simulator but to say video games impart no skills to the player is just as wrong.
They can impart the pretension of knowledge, but I'm not going to pretend that means they're qualified to mean that skills have been learnt. It's going to take the same amount of time to teach a person who has never ridden a motorbike or played games with motorcycle elements or premise... as it is a person who has never ridden a motorbike, but has played MotoGP or whatever motorcycle games.

This is what I call the 'sterility of video games' ... I have no doubt a suitably realistic simulator could reinforce skills ... but they cannot impart skills on their own. Just like the pilot flight training centre in Sydney... those simulators are meaningless without instructors and hours in the air.

No one is going to trust a pilot using a simulator and simulator only. Nor that they have the suitable knowledge basis to fly international commercial passenger... that is reserved solely for instructors who watch them like hawks and teach from experience. Videogames can't teach skills on their own... they can merely impart the pretension of knowledge *at best*.

They're maybe an avenue of demonstration ... but purely simulated demonstration alone does not mean skill. For a video 'game' to teach skills, you need instructors. You need theory, and you need holistic experience. But I doubt anyone would wang to play that 'game'. Because it starts to look no different than conventional job training.

If anything I reckon videogames alone probably makes you worse. In the same way in a survival situation I'm not going to trust someone that cites a survival horror game as a source of 'knowledge', as opposed to someone who recognizes their unfamiliarity with the natural world and is willing to simply do as instructed and ask questions where pertinent. Because pretension of knowledge is often deadlier than simply recognizing the full scope of the challenge, reconciling with that without hubris, and then thinking of what needs to be done. Because I've yet to play a videogame that has instructed players about finding out how to get true north (like on topographical maps) from magnetic north. Survival game or no.

Which is kind of fucking important to learn...

Plenty of places still that will kill you in a day from exposure. Get stuck in it and if you're being thrown off a kilometre for every 35 you travel, you're gonna die. You are going to walk past whatever you were looking for and once it gets to that point, you're already lost. I've been to places, crossed them (partly) on foot... where it's red sand and 100s of kilometres later still red sand and shifting dunes underfoot...

Knowing exactly how much my altering leg height and how much my natural gait affects total direction and distance travelled, I know precisely when to recheck my bearings in order to find a place without missing it. Because I have experience doing such things. Particularly important at night.



Not exactly 'feature rich' is it? It's gorgeous, but it's a mongrel to navigateeven a small section on foot without electronic aids. Popular with modern explorers given simply the difficulty of navigation. Basically the only thing you have is a collection of North-South orientated very long sand dunes and a whole lot of nothing else beyond a few outposts and trails. Oddly abstracted in 'survival' video games I have played, either. Reality has a habit of transforming pretensions of knowledge into a death sentence.

Basic orienteering is something you can program into a video game... still haven't seen it done. That might be because I've never found those games that have, but I have played a fair number of survival games ... well a few.

That most 'open world' games are simply not large enough for it to matter as much as it would navigating a large section of terrain in reality. Yet are deadly serious matters when taking the actual reality of surviving on this planet we inhabit.

Not sure why you're getting annoyed. You used a racing game analogy, I posited my own experience with motorbikes and motorbike racing games. Gave a direct example and how they get the basics wrong, and how they don't even teach you basic things= you need to keep safe on the roads. I know fuck all about cars ... well that's not true, I can drive one, just not as well as I should so I usually stick to my bike whenever I need private transport where feasible. I know enough about motorbikes to know videogames do not do anyone justice inthose regards...

Can you tell me a video game you think actually gave you skills? Because I feel like any example of any genre you're just going to say is somehow incorrect for nebulous reasons.
 

sXeth

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Addendum_Forthcoming said:
That most 'open world' games are simply not large enough for it to matter as much as it would navigating a large section of terrain in reality. Yet are deadly serious matters when taking the actual reality of surviving on this planet we inhabit.
While not really mimicking reality, it was one of the interesting points of No Mans Sky that they sort of captured that idea. You did have a compass, and the marker for your ship. But otherwise if you hit a desolate planet, you could be strolling for real time hours through indistinct terrain while your oxygen/antihazard (which I guess would correspond to water for a desert) depleted out bit by bit.

Didn't make for much interesting gameplay, but did capture the sense of an unexplored uncaring wilderness a bit more then many survival games do.

Though in general, survival games with an emphasis on the actual survival are pretty slim. Its usually an hour or two of survival, followed by "Build giant space castle" or "Build regular castle to fight other peoples castles", or "Try and solve the game using a wiki before your character expires from the unwinnable survival scenario"
 

Addendum_Forthcoming

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Seth Carter said:
While not really mimicking reality, it was one of the interesting points of No Mans Sky that they sort of captured that idea. You did have a compass, and the marker for your ship. But otherwise if you hit a desolate planet, you could be strolling for real time hours through indistinct terrain while your oxygen/antihazard (which I guess would correspond to water for a desert) depleted out bit by bit.

Didn't make for much interesting gameplay, but did capture the sense of an unexplored uncaring wilderness a bit more then many survival games do.
Right, but did it impart any skills? See the thing is, on this planet ... without electronic aids ... you need to calaculate TN from magnetic north in order to usea compass and map. You need to understand how your gait or how you navigated obstacles will change how much you need to adjust your bearings by...

If you don't, you'll just walk past whatever you were aiming to locate in the first place.

That's kind of the crux of my issue. I had plenty of water. I knew where bores were. That desert actually has natural springs given it's connected to the Great Artesian Basin. Probably the largest reservoir of underground water in the world. The Simpson Desert is both dry and wet. It's a pretty magical place.

Harsh, stunningly beautiful, but almost fae in its whimsical qualities. Very popular place (at least in terms of modern day exploration) that likely holds more than a few mysteries even now as to what is actually there, and what might lay beneath the surface if you scratch hard enough.

But something as basic as charting a course to explore parts of it on foot?

Never seen a videogame do orienteering. A couple of degrees here and there, and that's the difference between finding your destination or becoming utterly lost. You don't have the benefit of a cursor on a map showing you where you are. I remember trailing the old Goulburn roads that signalled parts of the passage of some of colonial Australia's first attempts to settle far inland, circa early 19th century. Historic stretch of trail that includes skirting Queen's Gap.

You don't plan your trip properly... you'll end up having to free climb a series of waterfalls that carved the valley if you fail to plot your course through the outskirts of the abandoned marble quarry and use the trucking access to continue onwards correctly. Unless you feel like swimming in 8' deep cold water to try your luck attempting to scale the rockface to the south. Regardless of what you do, you will add about a third of a day or more to your voyage if you try to double back and through the quarry at that point. More over highly increase your likelihood of being struck by a snake as you move through the waist high grass trees, and end up with a thousand stinging cuts from said brush for your efforts. And once you commit to scaling Queen's Gap, you're kind of stuck by the time you traverse the loose shale range side of the Gap.

Found myself back on track, but I exponentially increased my own personal risk in the process for no reason.

Knowing which forks to take on the old extension of Mares Forest Rd so you don't end up staring into the eyes of an angry pastoralist wondering why you're trespassing on their property... Telling them you're doing a written piece on the state and preservation of Australian history doesn't fly so well. They won't shoot you, but it's probably best to assume people don't want you trespassing (at least on their property) ... minor, non-malicious criminality for the sake of history and preservation of the past seems fair and I doubt the government will complain about me walking part of the coach roads in order to oversee how it has held up for over one and a half centuries.

The point is... something as basic as wandering the old trails to Goulburn that explorers and settlers took requires skills I've never seen in a game.