The possibility/ability to Surrender

[PiPboy]

Games where you can surrdender.

Skyrim - Go to Jail
Oblivion - Go to Jail
Dune Emperor - You loose Territory Temporarily
Universe at War - You Loose Territory
Warhammer 40k Dawn of War 2 - You Loose Territory
GTA 3 \ IV - Go to jail, loose weapons

One of the biggest issues would be how to implement? With so many questions

Is their a raider jail? Or are their only certain factions can you surrender too?
How would one "surrender" is their solely a button dedicated to surrendering?
Or is surrendering a text option that is only done "prior to combat"?
Is it possible to surrender during combat?
What is complications? and does it vary per faction?
What is the effect of Jail on reputation?

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Problem is its pretty difficult to setup and constantly making up rules for various "groups" and "factions" as well as where you go and complications involved. If anything surrendering maybe a quest based option, where you have an option to surrender or gunning it out against innuberable odds in a certain quest and it has branching story line from there. Thats very easy and posible.

[geezer]

And how many from that list of games allowed the enemy to surrender to you? Because I think that would be the most important dynamic with this. Being able to surrender to an enemy is interesting, but being sent to jail is obviously not going to happen in the wasteland. Surrendering is not the same as being arrested by city guards. So I'm not sure all of the above examples would work anyway.

Whether a particular enemy chooses to surrender to you when you catch him by surprise and manage to get a weapon pressed right up against his head (% chance depending on some stat) would depend on his stats and his morale at the time. Stuff like that. If you surrender to an enemy it would depend on their stats whether or not they enslave you until you get the chance to escape or just kill you. Either way I think it is a very interesting dynamic. Of course your slaves should have a % chance of attempting to escape as well depending on their stats.

I think there should basically be two surrender scenarios: when the enemy is sure he is about to die and when you succesfully sneak up behind him and successfully get your gun's muzzle pressed right up against his body, prefereably in his back or behind his head. Again this would all be a matter of die rolls and stats.

[The Tallest]

I like this idea. I was sorely disappointed with Skyrim and it's weak attempt at surrendering.

[madmax]

I think this is a great idea. Human behaviour in conflicts is much more diverse than kill or be killed. It's more a form of game which could lead to death but sometimes you break the will of the enemy instead of breaking them physically.

It should lead to more complex combat behaviours and types of combat losses and therefore more interesting tactical decision makings and an alternative to: you're dead, reload the game. Risk management is also more interesting: can you trust them not to put a bullet in your head if you do surrender.

Gritty realism fans should embrace this.

I support this 100%.

[dmazz]

That would be a pretty good dynamic. And a good storyline.

Surrender as a player and get enslaved and sent to a slave camp. Have people surrender to you and you can enslave them, and sell them for profit.

[Davidbitterbaum]

Let me surrender, but have it so that some characters--especially the meanest--won't accept my surrender and will just kill me anyways after I throw my arms up.

"You want to surrender? Sure. I'ma kill you now!"

[Smejki]

I love the idea of OP. Implement this if possible.

[Lirpakkaa]

Enemies could not only try to surrender, but run away also.


And a lot of enemies might be happy to let the party go if they give their money and equipment (or enough of it) to them - after all they avoid further casualties in that case too, even if they were ultimately winning.

[Roger Wilco]

There have been a number of rpgs, and action games, that allow you to attempt to surrender and/or enemies to surrender to you.

Its been awhile. I seem to remember some of the 80's 1st person RPGs, maybe Might and Magic or Dragon Wars, where you could surrender, or threaten as one of your actions to start each turn and depending on the comparative strength of your opponent they might surrender to you. There have been others more recently too. I believe even like Oblivion or something you could surrender to certain enemies and some enemies would cower down rather than fight you if you got their health low.

I'm not necessarily opposed to it as an option, but I don't really think any of the mechanisms used in games so far has been particularly fun anyway.

[Orko]

It realy shouldn't happen very often.

The main thing i think it would archive humanise the enemy. It's one thing mowing down "target" after "target". But if the target shouts at ayou "I don't want to die" you come to think, maybe just for a little moment, hey that over tehre isn't just some paper taget it's a beeing that want's to live.

That said again it should be something that happens very rarely. And also always has backstabing in it. Also i think it could be somehting to reward "nice" playing party's. With good overall karma.

most games i see you get more stuff, and have it overall easier, when you are the bad evil everything stealing guy. But if you are a good and honest man you get riped off. The good reputation would help end fights faster, and get rewarded for that playstyle.

But again you should always have the option f' that you surrender you get my powerfist smashed down your throat just for the fun of it.

[geezer]

Orko, if you don't like surrendering you can just kill them when they beg for their lives. It should be % based. So obviously not every enemy is going to beg. It depends on their personality. On their stats. Also obviously you don't have to accept being enslaved and trying to escape at some later time instead of dying. I think most of the time people will prefer to just reload on death instead of begging for their lives. Also it might be interesting if whatever stat affected the enemy's predilection for surrendering affected your party members as well. Maybe not though because that does take away some freedom from player decision. Something to consider though.

There have been a number of rpgs, and action games, that allow you to attempt to surrender and/or enemies to surrender to you.

Its been awhile. I seem to remember some of the 80's 1st person RPGs, maybe Might and Magic or Dragon Wars, where you could surrender, or threaten as one of your actions to start each turn and depending on the comparative strength of your opponent they might surrender to you. There have been others more recently too. I believe even like Oblivion or something you could surrender to certain enemies and some enemies would cower down rather than fight you if you got their health low.

You just reminded me that Ultima Underworld had a mechanism where you could intimidate much lower level humanoids into giving you all their stuff once the level difference between you was high enough. I remember doing that with some of those orcs at the first level after coming back up from lower dungeon levels. Can anyone else think of similar game mechanics in specific games? This sort of mechanic also seems like the kind of thing that would be interesting for PnP. It could easily be done with dice rolls. I wonder if Gamma World had something like it.

[CanadianWolvie]

I think there is another interesting potential gain to having an enemy surrender: interrogation and information. You know, on top of their weapons and themselves.

Say you trap a human patrol of whoever in an ambush, the survivors of that onslaught seeing no other way out ask to surrender because they want to live, they give up weapons and the will to fight and become your prisoner, who at this point you get to reveal the location and strength of other patrols and defenses. You then either kill them, send them to do hard labour for the Rangers (maybe they even get to join the Rangers if they show good behaviour) or you let em loose to go spread fear among the enemy.

Because I don't want you think this makes the Rangers into some sort of goody two shoes, I am going to call this the Inglorious Basterds proposal (just look up the youtube video Inglorious Basterds Interrogation) Think about it.

[dmazz]

It would humanise the enemy definitely and add to immersion in combat too. And along this line your enemy should punish those who surrender/run away too quickly. A gang of criminals has a leader and through peer pressure he punishes those who don't toe the line in the group. So there should be cases where a person wants to surrender to you but get's shot at or beaten by the other members of his group, especially the leader. But if you can identify and quickly kill the leader, you make it easier for others to surrender, run away or hide. Saving you precious ammo.

Being able to surrender to an enemy would add alot to role playing aspect and immersion too. Because of course in reality you can't just reload a previous save if you die. So it would be a strong cause and effect dynamic. Too much hubris/arrogance will get you into fights you can't run away from, surrender then becomes your only option if you want to live. Teaching you a lesson in humility and to be more cautious and less bloodthirsty next time. This would be especially the case if your forced to beg for your life, if your surrender is initially not accepted.

I like the interrogation suggestion. This would make combat more interesting since you might need someone alive to pump for information. So your role in combat there would be to get him to surrender so you can interrogate him, not kill him. You might even have to fight to protect him from his ex-allies if he tries to surrender too early. Very cool. Some enemies would be especially difficult to make surrender and so you'd be forced to bring them to an inch of their life, possibly by beating them up unarmed! "Talk! damn it! *punches him*, talk! or I'll kill you!". Maybe the only way to get some npc's to talk would be to find, capture and threaten someone they love. So somone you captured may refuse to talk even to the point of almost dying, but you know he has a son in a town not far off. You might tie him up and then capture his son, then use him to get information from the guy.

[Shepard]

I want people to surrender in this game. It would add so much more when people drop their weapons and surrender meekly, then I'll go randomly executing one guy who killed a party member etc. Adds to the drama IMO.

Also, wouldn't it be great if they could hardcore some important character having different 'surrender' quirks. One would surrender when dropped to below 50% Hp. Others wouldn't etc. I think this is a great idea.

[Bob]

Surrendering to Raiders could mean they hold you and attempt to ransom you to some nearby town. If you have a good reputation with some town maybe they can scrape together the money. If you haven't impressed the local towns as much they'll just leave you to rot with the raiders.

[Celtic927]

I think this idea over complicates without enough reward. What would you DO with a surrendered victim once you had him/her? What does he offer the player. Why would anyone do it. Secondly, the tone of the game is POST-APOC which means 3/4 of your bestiary wouldn't surrender: Robots, Psychos, Fanatics, Monsters, Undead mutants, animals...SO what we're arguing over is really on a small percentage of the human foes to avoid having to fight your own party members??? It just seems like a tedious mechanic that won't occur enough to make it viable in this type of game.

[Xiao]

Very interesting with the surrender mechanic.

It would be interesting if you have surrendered in the past, it will haunt you as some sort of shameful reputation - "Isn't that the guy who begged for his life back in City X?"; and if you surrendered multiple times you'll get called a coward or worse.

Also, I think it'll be more interesting if enemy surrender condition is more dynamic instead of just stat or % based, you might gather information before or during the fight that between 2 guys on the other side have major animosity, so you kill one of them and the other will significantly more likely to surrender to you. Or if 2 guys on the other side are really good friends, if you kill one the other will fight you to the death even if both might have surrendered to you before the kill.

[Shepard]

I think this idea over complicates without enough reward. What would you DO with a surrendered victim once you had him/her? What does he offer the player. Why would anyone do it. Secondly, the tone of the game is POST-APOC which means 3/4 of your bestiary wouldn't surrender: Robots, Psychos, Fanatics, Monsters, Undead mutants, animals...SO what we're arguing over is really on a small percentage of the human foes to avoid having to fight your own party members??? It just seems like a tedious mechanic that won't occur enough to make it viable in this type of game.

And that is why humans make the most interesting opponents.
It makes complete sense. Let those who surrender go. You got their guns and saved some ammo. That's it, really. Nothing complicated except for special scripted bosses who do surrender at low HP. This isn't a bad idea by any stretch of imagination.

[dmazz]

If someone surrendered, you could free them, tie them up and hand them into the police in the next town, mutilate them as punishment, use them as a punching bag for extra unarmed skill points, execute them or sell them as slaves, all after robbing them of course. You would also save health, first aid supplies and lastly time in fighting them. Surrendering should be a sort of reward for tactical skill, since at first enemies will attempt to run away or hide (barricade themselves in some house or room), but by preventing them from doing that you've forced them to surrender. So it would be something to aim for in combat, as it's the best outcome for you. It would also be the more humane thing to do if your playing a 'good guy'.

[CookieEatingHuskarl]

Will I be able to say, eat them?