Hold them Hostage!

[TheFishlord]

This game is getting more immersive all the time!

OK, so I'm at Mokuba with my trusty Springfield, PKM, and M79 - I took out the RPG sniper, now I'm getting ready to open up. A guard walks my direction, and I sight the wires on his head...He looks up, gasps, and stops. Puts his hands up, holds still, and starts saying "Come on man. Think this through, you don't want to do this." And a lot of the stuff that they say when you piss them off in town e.g. "Argh you STUPID FUUU..." "Mother f@#$ER!" "AAAAH GOD DAM IT!" but their friends still don't hear it.

Being the naive soul I was, having just arrived in the country, I stayed aimed at him but lowered the sights, and he promptly yelled for his mates and blew me away.

But I experimented with this some more. Since they hold still, it's useful to hold one guard out of two in one place while the other walks away and you machete the hostage. Once I did this while assaulting the diamond east of Shwasana, the guy was very cooperative. He even lowered his gun, turned around and yelled back "Everything's good man, I don't see anybody".

For some screenies I snuck up on some dude in the middle of nowhere...

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Try it! It's surprisingly fun to torment them at gunpoint.

There are, I think, four levels of AI alertness

1. Calm
2. Did you hear something?/ normal patrol
3. He's out there, let's go search
4. KILL HIM

This will only w@&k if they are at levels two and three - at one, they will jump up and start shouting, at four, they'll shoot. It also has to be at relatively close range.

[spaceboy]

What a great find TheFishlord,  I've never heard of that happening outside of town.  I can't wait to try.  Thanks so much for posting this great new info.

[PZ]

Outstanding new information TheFishLord, this is just the kind of thing we prize highly in our boards - good job!   :-X :-X

[RedRaven]

thats really interesting, what difficulty are you playing at ?
wonder how much AI changes at different difficulties.

[Ricamundo]

Not only LOD, but at what level of REP are you? I wonder if that factors in as well. I've never seen a merc do this BTW, they just start shooting. great find tho. :-X

[Hacko]

That is a great find. I never get that close to the mercs to see this, I usually am shooting them way before I get this close. :)

[Art Blade]

Indeed, a truly amazing find, TheFishlord  :-X :-X

Just as Hacko I never get that close outside a cease fire zone -- either I'm too frightened to get shot (that's my "shoot first, never ask" or "shoot first, shoot all" routine) or I'm already on murderous frenzy mode ;D

Man, I want to try that myself!!

Oh, and I think you are right about how you classified different levels of alertness.

Congrats on a job well done :)

[TheFishlord]

Not only LOD, but at what level of REP are you? I wonder if that factors in as well. I've never seen a merc do this BTW, they just start shooting. great find tho. :-X

I'm on Infamous now (that's all I play on) but I believe I saw it once in Hardcore as well. This character is currently at Reputation Level 1, this was the first mission outside of the tutorial I did. I don't think rep makes a difference - but maybe they will hold still from longer away, or closer (if you bump into them they'll shoot)?

[Art Blade]

I managed to do this myself now :) LOD easy, REP 1.

I got near a locked safehouse in south Leboa. I saw two mercs (alert level 1) with their backs turned on me. I shot one, and snuck up and around the second so he'd see me. The ba$t@rd opened fire shouting "there he is!" and around the corner Mr Thirdguy flew by and opened fire too.

Reload savegame

Shot Mr One and Mr Thirdguy with my 6P9 and snuck up and around the second so he'd see me. The coward raised both arms and started to negotiate peace... LOL I kept my gun trained on him so I could hear him out, but after like one minute, he had it coming, aimed at me but ate my bullet. Safehouse, here I come.

[PZ]

Cool, this another layer of game play immersion... can't wait to try it!   :-X

[Cerpin Daiyokai]

Just to add further confirmation...I was able to take a hostage on normal LOD with reputation rank 2.

I came across a lone merc patrolling a road on foot. I kept my gun on him and slowly walked up beside him. When he noticed me he put his hands up and started backing away. I saw a sniper tower in the corner of my vision so I kept tryig to force him backwards to get out of the sniper's vision. He wasn't cooperating as much as I wanted so I eventually shot him with my silenced Mak. ::)

[Art Blade]

hahaha, keep 'em company  ;D

[Art Blade]

Oops:

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Unless you're sure you want to reply, please consider starting a new topic.

I'm quite sure. Because it's so old, some of our new members would probably never have known this (unless they follow the links of the funny tactics and tips topic) :)

I was just again having some fun in Sefapane, I love that town for two reasons:
1) Loads of flammables and ammo crates
2) Cease fire zone without mercs respawning.

What I haven't done until now is play this trick "hold them hostage" on a merc in Sefapane. It does not w@&k as long as there are other mercs in town that might increase the merc's confidence you're playing with -- confident mercs usually get fed up with you quickly and eventually will shoot at you.

Not this time. I killed everyone in town, yet the message "you safely escaped" just wouldn't pop up -- there must have been one extremely well hidden merc left which I couldn't find to save my life. Ok, silly expression in this case ;) Well, I left town so I could walk in again, my weapon lowered, thus encouraging the merc to show his face.

Then I found him and decided to intimidate him a little :) I walked him up and down the street, he never even so much as blinked  :) Was quite fun for a while. I wanted to make him walk into a fire, but unfortunately there wasn't any, that lucky ba$t@rd  ;D

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[PZ]

Interestingly I did something quite similar with the sniper in Mosate Selao this morning.  I was at a high enough reputation level that he kept backing away from me down the road toward the eastern GP.  Once I was out of sight of the mercs in town, i capped him with the 6P9 and as he died, my weapon went back into the non-threatening mode.  It was kind of cool off-ing a merc without the town making a fuss about it.  ;D

[Art Blade]

Hehe, very nice :) I still haven't managed to do that -- kill a town merc without starting a global war  ;D

[mmosu]

smart move resurrecting this thread Art - I hadn't run across this one yet  :-X

[Art Blade]

cheers, mmosu :)

By the way, there are 18 mercs in Sefapane waiting for you to have some fun together  ;D

[RedRaven]

Had a merc back away in Pala, but it was on one of the main streets, one with UFLL building on i think, he took 4-5 steps back, hands up and muttering platitudes, then he turned round and held his shot gun again and just carried on walking. Not wanting to push my luck ended up legging it to the bus stop and leaving town.

[fragger]

Don't be fooled by his outward demeanor, Red, you definitely had him rattled. He does have a reputation to uphold among his peers, after all, hence the tough-guy attitude. I'm sure he was actually s**tting bricks in the actual presence of the psycho-merc himself, he just had to show his mates how cool he could be ;D

[Art Blade]

Those guys have a lethal addiction to forehead bullet piercings, too  ;D

[wexer9]

I'm going to have to try this the next time I play FC2!

Very cool! :)

[wexer9]

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I managed to take a hostage outside of a ceasefire zone. This particular incident occurred at the guard post near the North Railyard. I was checking out the guard post while crouched, then I decided to stand up. This caused two of the guards to see me, so I hid behind a pile of wood. One of the guards came close but didn't quite see me.

"It must have been nothing," he said.

But he still decided to come a little closer to my hiding place, and saw me, Mac-10 pointed at his head. He realized he was being held hostage. He never screamed or went for his gun, so eventually I shot him.

As Stephen King would say, "No great loss." ;)

[Art Blade]

if you've uploaded a pic, there will be a "BBC embed" code right below the "rating" option. Check for "[ smg id=1909]" (there must be no gap after "[" to make it w@&k, I needed to insert a gap so you could identify it, else it would have been showing the pic). Copy that code, and paste it into your post. Like this

[smg id=1909]

if you want to resize it a little, like I do, insert "size=400" and maybe "allign=center" as in

[ smg id=1909 align=center width=400]

which looks like that:

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Quote my post to see the actual code :)

[Art Blade]

Good story, and nice! LOL, what a nerve  ;D ;D ;D :-X

[wexer9]

Thanks for the tutorial and the compliment! :)