10 year old Soldiers

Problem with online games is people will teamkill for the hell of it, and imagine of a serial killer got hold of one of these bots, and went killing lots friendlys or the enemy did, Millitary can't monitor every bot!.

Lets say for sake of argument thet actualy did this absurd idea then I think they would at least recruit the best possible talent and have strict rules of conduct. The people would also accept such a war fighting method if it was effective and saved their own soldiers lives. I also think virtual soldiers will be more effective because they will most likely have very good weopons and especialy the airborne units would leave enemies in ruins and the gamers would enjoy it very much.

It would be even cooler if it was virtual soldier vs virtual soldier and noone dies its just who kills the other guys bot army first! Giant game of world wide mechwars and us beer drinking potheads will own you all!

I was actually writing a short story on this sort of thing a while back, although like all my fiction projects it never got very far. But what I intended to write about was where the popularity of the high school football team is replaced by a team of students who pilot these killbots.

Anyhow my online expirience tells me the following.

TKers are a pain in the ass, especially if you can't get them kicked from the server. Therefore a military officer with a shutoff switch would have to moniter everything. Maybe have a sergeant or someone that's actually in the military would command and keep an eye on a squad of about ten players or something like that. The numbers would probably balance pretty well, and there would be a command structure. Another possibility is disable the firing of weapons at a friendly with a proper IFF code. Although that would make it difficult to assist a friend who's in close quarters with an enemy, and I've noticed a lot of TKers use explosives anyhow so the splash damage would probably be a way around the IFF transmissions.

Next thing I've noticed from online play is that you need a very clearly defined command struture, and some discipline. Even though I suggested having a military officer leading a squad of players, there'd be a lot of whiny players who would slow down the process or flatout disobey. Because I've found that a lot of players refuse to work on a team. They'll either setup camp with a sniper rifle somewhere nice, or charge right into an enemy base with a big machine gun. You might notice how in the battlefield games the only one's who go medic are those who like healing themselves. Not much cooperation. So you'd probably need players to be assigned to squads that they'd be with for extended amounts of time so that they'd learn some teamwork.

Require driving tests for any players wanting to drive. Plain and simple, no matter how old people are they seem to loose all driving ability when online. It's incredible how many times I've been ran over by friendlies, or how many times I've seen jeeps go flying off of cliffs, or the countless tanks that some guy drives into the water. Don't even get me started on aircraft. So yeah, drivers tests for all.

Overall I'd say it'd be a decent idea assuming you could get production rates down to the point where you could afford a kill loss ratio of about 1 to 20 or something. Although keep in mind that ratio would probably go up to say 1 to 100 if you exclude all the various accidents that happen, such as the grenade hitting the wall above the window you tried throwing it through. But overall if you could lower the production costs on killbots, enforce driving tests, and have a military person per squad with administrative control over the killbots under his command, it could work. It'd just need a lot of fine tuning, just like a real army.

Yeah, and before you are allowed to play you should have to shoot your own mother to prove your "tough enough"... Oh wait that's how it works in Africa, in real life. It's cute that you guys are reveling in other peoples nightmares. We might as well take another page from the African genocide manual and start mutilating males that could become "NMEs" (that's also cute that you can't actually refer to them by their real names, would this be Afgans, or Iraqis, maybe Iranians or North Koreans?), an arm here a leg there. Anyone (and everyone) aged 12(ish)-55(ish) should do, that'll take the fight out of them. Round them up hack them off, make sure no one can resist us. That would be more of a "hack and slash" video game, we could call them orcs...

I think there is much better, more productive, and more peaceful uses we can put the internet to. Check this comic out, it shows both humanitarian and military uses of the same subject www.e-sheep.com...

Whargoul, you don't fight wars with bananas and tickles.

You slaughter and maim until the enemy gives up. That's what war is, has been, and always will be. I'm proposing that war is fought without the loss of Co-alition lives.

Besides, I'm not talking about killing civilians here.

The last thing we need is to have one of our own citizens going soft.

You're going soft.

Don't go soft.


But yeah, that spider comic was cool.




[edit on 27-12-2006 by Unrealised]

[edit on 27-12-2006 by Unrealised]

Originally posted by SportyMB

Originally posted by WyrdeOne
I don't know if they ever made a movie about this concept, but there was a book, entitled Ender's Game.

One the best books I've ever read. It's also on the USMC Commandant's Reading List. Yeah, it's a sci-fi book, but it digs deep into leadership, military structure, etc... even dabs a bit into politics.

There's also two more books...all three make up the Ender's Saga or something like that.

EXCELLENT series.

Also FYI - child soldiers are not uncommon in the world, ie:

www.child-soldiers.org...
www.hrw.org...
www.amnesty.org...
www.childsoldiers.org...

Facts About Child Soldiers

* Today, as many as 300,000 children under the age of 18 serve in government forces or armed rebel groups. Some are as young as eight years old.
* The participation of child soldiers has been reported in 33 on-going or recent armed conflicts in almost every region of the world. View the list of countries where child soldiers are being used.
* Child soldiers are used by armed opposition forces, although many are used by government armies.
* Children are uniquely vulnerable to military recruitment because of their emotional and physical immaturity. They are easily manipulated and can be drawn into violence that they are too young to resist or understand.
* Technological advances in weaponry and the proliferation of small arms have contributed to the increased use of child soldiers. Lightweight automatic weapons are simple to operate, often easily accessible, and can be used by children as easily as adults.
* Children are most likely to become child soldiers if they are poor, separated from their families, displaced from their homes, living in a combat zone or have limited access to education. Orphans and refugees are particularly vulnerable to recruitment.
* Many children join armed groups because of economic or social pressure, or because children believe that the group will offer food or security. Others are forcibly recruited, "press-ganged" or abducted by armed groups.
* Both girls and boys are used as child soldiers. In case studies in El Salvador, Ethiopia, and Uganda, almost a third of the child soldiers were reported to be girls. Girls may be raped, or in some cases, given to military commanders as "wives."
* Once recruited, child soldiers may serve as porters or cooks, guards, messengers or spies. Many are pressed into combat, where they may be forced to the front lines or sent into minefields ahead of older troops. Some children have been used for suicide missions.
* Children are sometimes forced to commit atrocities against their own family or neighbors. Such practices help ensure that the child is "stigmatized" and unable to return to his or her home community.
* Few peace treaties recognize the existence of child soldiers, or make provisions for their rehabilitation and reintegration into society. Many former child soldiers do not have access to the educational programs, vocational training, family reunification, or even food and shelter that they need to successfully rejoin civilian society. As a result, many end up on the street, become involved in crime, or are drawn back into armed conflict.

I don't think this discussion has anything to do with how "hard" or "soft" I am, I thought this was a discussion about using children to wage war?

That's disgusting and cowardly.

Cowards hide behind children. Cowards hide behind the frontline sitting it out in the back watching it on TV, playing it as a game and romanticising about the valor of it all. REMF

The question is what's more cowardly, the man who orders others into front line combat or the man who fights from a television? War isn't pretty, it never was, and real war never will be. But if somebody gave my country a chance to be able to defend itself without putting our men in women in uniform in harm's way I'd take it in a heartbeat.

Originally posted by Unrealised
Cool.

Let's hope this happens. I can see what you mean by costs and such. No food for soldiers to worry about. No uniforms. No stress leave and no tiredness.

It basically is win-win.

As for security, well, I'm no computer code geek, but there are some brainiacs out there who, I'm sure, could handle that problem no hassles.

Another problem is ethics.

Imagine if the public found out that their kids were responsible for the robotic-death of hundreds, maybe thousands of NME troops?

You wouldn't hear the end of it.

As for the pay-per-kill Idea, I think it's perfect. The gamers will think it's just some cool incentive to play the game. He he heeeeee!

Now, what happens when the gamers get bored?

Release Kill-Bot 2.

ahhhh think about it you are retarded because 10 year olds get bit by bugs and cry what happens when they get hit with a rpg-7

I see a problem with this. You get some hard core gamer like myself controlling a multi milion dollar wepon and have hundreds of thousands of those wepons out and about on the "game". Eventualy I am going to get bored of slaugtering baddies and start hunting down civilians and other bots too.

Im not evil or anything but in video games I sure am. If the game is alowing me to wholesale slaughter doesens/hundreds/thousands of innocent people I am going to do it cause I can't do that in real life.

Then I am going to come across another gamer and my instinct for gaming is going to scream COMPETITION ELIMINATE HIM. and bingo millions of dollars down the toilet.

Believe me I have played online games enough to know that this is exactly what is going to happen. If something moves that I can shoot you better believe I am going to pump some serious rounds into it. And if that translates into a family of six comming back from a mosque getting gunned down that wouldent be a good thing. Especialy if I didnt know that I just took out a real family.

And worse yet what if you had all sorts of munitions to work with not just machine guns... What if you could call in a carpet bombing from a remote controlled aircraft? An Evil gamer like me would revil at the chance to flatten an entire city.

Listen in real life I couldent harm a bunny rabbit but in a game all the rules go out the window. And letting a bunch of people like me at the controlls of something that would shoot real bullets would not be a good thing.

Sorry this is a good thought I want to expand on this idea more. I am sure there are always ways of figuring out how to keep someone as evil at gaming as I am to not terrify the public. Perhaps a sensor on the bot itself that would detect if the person you are aiming at actualy was armed or not and it wouldent fire at the person if they were not armed. yet on your screen SPLAT! and ponts or something gets deducted from your score or something.

There is a strange glitch in this thread I asked the mods to look into it. I can't belive that Alien255 would post that same post that often. I don't know.

But I am bumping this post up just to try and keep this idea going.

EDIT ah seems to be fixed now. Thanks mods!



[edit on 29-12-2006 by whatukno]

Originally posted by alien255
ahhhh think about it you are retarded

because 10 year olds get bit by bugs and cry what happens when they get hit with a rpg-7

Dude, if you have read the topic, you might have noticed that we're not talking about sending ACTUAL TEN YEAR OLDS into battle, nay, we are not even saying that ONLY ten year olds will fight/play.

The topic is about a game that can be played from the comfort of your own home that controls remote controlled battle machines in any country around the globe to wage war on any given enemy.

It is not I that is retarded.

[edit on 30-12-2006 by Unrealised]

whatukno, you hit the head on the nail with the whole "not being able to fire at un-armed opponents" deal.

The same would go for trying to shoot at other bots.

The programming would not allow it.

It is getting simpler by the minute, it seems.

As for carpet bombings and such, well, I guess it all depends what you can do in the game.

I'm enjoying this thread, too.

Of course another poster also pointed out that Evil gamers like myself if faced with the rigiditiy of a game that would not let you kill civilians would use HE munitions to create splash damage. Or ricchoshets (SP) to eliminate those troublesome Non Combatants, or simply running over them.

Course this could be largly eliminated by the actual military evacuating civs before the gamers go in. Would probably be a lot easier than to program all that code into the game.

ALLIES PA SPEAKER: "Attention Civilian population in 24 hours a group of armored fighting machines will be aproaching your city Evacuate now as they may (and probably will) open fire on anything that moves. This is your only warning" (translated of course into the native language of the people living there)

Of course there would have to be an objective. Some big boss to hunt down and capture (yea right) or kill (preferably to componant atoms) and rewards. Perhaps a gamer if they do well and arn't evil, could have their machine upgraded with cooler weponry. Gamers love customisations.

Also a live feed would be cool you probably wouldent have to have a graphics overlay of what the machine was seing cause a live picture would be awesome! Ya go along and shoot an enemy combatant in the leggs he goes down in agony your machine goes over and attaches a C4 pack to his head and runs away turning just in time to see the explosive go off GOO!

Originally posted by whatukno


Also a live feed would be cool you probably wouldent have to have a graphics overlay of what the machine was seing cause a live picture would be awesome! Ya go along and shoot an enemy combatant in the leggs he goes down in agony your machine goes over and attaches a C4 pack to his head and runs away turning just in time to see the explosive go off GOO!

That's basically what I said earlier on. The gamers THINK the graphics are just Ultra-Real, when in fact they're just plain old real.

Originally posted by Unrealised

How about this. We don't even bother with 3D graphics. We can just wait for a console to become powerful enough graphics wise that people will think it's just life-like graphics, and yet it'll be direct camera-feed totally unchanged.

Mwuhahaha!

YEARGH!

[edit on 30-12-2006 by Unrealised]

I wouldn't try tricking the gamers. A conspiracy like that would get difficult to coverup, and if you don't tell them it's real they'll whine about how unrealistic it is or how bad the AI is, or stuff like that.

But to elaborate on the idea of using such methods in actual practice the civilain issue would be rather tricky. I'd restrict the usage of these killbots to areas where it's mostly just enemy military in the area, otherwise we'd see the death of nearly every civilain in that area. Also evacuating the civilains sounds nice except for the fact that the enemy would then know where we were going to strike, therefore we'd have no element of suprise. And as much of a fun battle that'd make, it would be cost prohibitive to alert the enemy to our next target. So we'd essentially be attacking military bases with these killbots, and there's only so many of those.

Therefore I think one of the biggest problems would be that we'd run out of missions very quickly, otherwise we'd have to put a lot of civilains at risk.

Never, should children have their, childhood lost.

Increasingly children serve as combatants or as cooks, informants, porters, bodyguards, sentries, and spies. Many child soldiers belong to organized military units, wear uniforms, and receive explicit training, their lethality enhanced by the widespread availability of lightweight assault weapons. Other children participate in relatively unstructured but politically motivated acts of violence, such as throwing stones or planting bombs.

The use of children in armed conflict is global in scope-a far greater problem than suggested by the scant attention it has received. Child soldiers are found from Central America to the Great Lakes region of Central Africa, and from Belfast in the north to Angola in the south.

A soldier at seven

The worst sin towards our fellow creatures
is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them;
that is the essence of inhumanity.

--From The Devil's Disciple by George Bernard Shaw
Street Children = Community Children

[edit on 30-12-2006 by ADVISOR]