Mistilteinn said:
RC1138 said:
But anecdotes aside, I'm curious about something. Since there've been a number of games that involve the US being invaded by "Evil Nation X", would women be given more options in terms of front line combat if such a scenario were to occur? I don't have any real knowledge about how the military works, but I'd assume they would, given that we'd want to have more people fighting the invaders in order to get them out sooner/more efficiently. But, numbers don't exactly win a war, either, as history as shown, so I don't know...
Probably not. Well depends. If the situation got to that point, where manpower (literally in this supposition) was so low that that option would be on the table, then Special Operation troops would have fallen by the way-side LONG before. Special Operation troops are very, very hard to have an maintain. It's something video games have somewhat... desensitized the average person to. Believe it or not, there are very, very few people in the world, much less one nation's military, that are true Special Operations troopers (Operator's, as the colloquial calls them). They are EXTREMELY expensive and time consuming to train, as they tend to require multiple and unrelated language proficiencies (Russian and German, no common thread between the two. Chinese and Spanish, ect.) Extremely high physical standards, different from a regular soldiers (regular soldiers train for quick extreme bursts, 3 days of combat, a 20 mile march at a very quick pack, small things like that). Special Operations troops typically train for LONG and slow (although not slow by any degree, slower than "norm"). The British SAS's selection final exam is a perfect example. It's a 40 mile hill march in about 20 hours. Totally different skill set and training. Simply put, a soldier from a mechanized unit cannot jump right into a Special Operations troop, nor would a Navy Seal be able to function all that well in a Mechanized Infantry company.
The combat skills are totally different too. Special Operations troops are for lightning strikes, quick and deadly. Most "Operators" rarely carry more than 130 rounds of ammunition (as an MP whose spent alot of time downrange I am keenly aware of their equipment and loadouts). If they get in a firefight that lasts more than 10 minutes, their dead. An infantry man should be able to fight on his full combat load for a day and a half minimum.
The equipment tends to be VERY different. I never had a laptop that keyed me in to a statalite uplink to control a Reaper drone to drop AtG missiles on a target. I had a radio and a map. SFO's do. Well they don't control them, but they can paint "direct" much more closely. We don't carry SOFLAMS. They cost, each about $15k. They are not handing that to a SSG in an MP battalion nor a 2nd LT in an Infantry Platoon. So SFO's cost significantly more to equip and train.
With that in mind, in a situation where the proverbial shit has hit the fan, SFO's go by the wayside. At that point you're happy to just have a stable chain of command and Infantry fighting units. So yes, you may see women in regular infantry, but not in an SFO, because there would be no SFO to speak of. And even still, still unlikely. If things have gotten to that point, surrender starts becoming an option. There is a fine line for officers to dance between fighting on, and leading to slaughter. At that point, the line starts to be very clear.
Sylocat said:
Since you're using realism as the defense, tell me... what's your stance on regen health?
I don't like "health" in most games. My all time favorite title was the original Ghost Recon. God I played that game like a religion. In that game basically a single shot anywhere killed you and if it didn't, it would permanently lower your fighting capacity (give your character a limp, or a reduce accuracy things like that) That said for most games that doesn't work and is obviously not useful in COD or MOH and similar titles. Personally, my favorite health system of all time is Killing Floor's. Health doesn't regen on it's own but you have, as do your teammates, essentially health kits that you can use on yourself or others that constantly regen. So yes, you have "unlimited" health, but you actually have to DO something to be healed and you cannot heal and shot.
