“The animals retain their appetites and instincts, and are capable of exhibiting emotional feeling. The sensory faculties, sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell, remain unimpaired… And yet, notwithstanding this apparent absence of physiological symptoms, I could perceive a very decided alteration in the animal’s character and behaviour… Instead of, as before, being actively interested in their surroundings, and curiously prying into all that came within the field of their observation, they remained apathetic, or dull, or dozed off to sleep, responding only to the sensations or impressions of the moment…While not actually deprived of intelligence, they had lost, to all appearance, the faculty of attentive and intelligent observation” (Ferrier, 1876, pp. 231–232).
Today I will explain why the PFC friendly fires, why the friendly firer is usually in a select squad and role, how it’s linked to the frontal cortex, and a hypothesis on the Unga ball and how to invoke flexibility in the Unga’s brain. My purpose is simple, finding that I’ve been banned from the discord for half a fortnite because I advertised my up and coming SS13 server, “Crystal Keep, a ballad from the world of the Stone Swords 13,” I found that I have had time to go back to my scholarly roots. Back in times when I was a promising medical student with A’s in difficult premed classes and spending my freetime working out, bothering CM staff, playing league of legends, and developing my “Encino Moth” character. Now that I’m older, changed my pathway from medicine to art, play league of legends less, possibly got brain damage from long covid, and got temporary psychosis from attempting to recuperate it with psilocybin (brain damage recuperation is still a very theoretical field of study); all while gaining 40 pounds (somehow most of it being muscle), I spend my time praying there’ll be a fix both to my ailments and my brush with the reality of my mortality. That is why I’m here. Also, I have to note, there’s no tab option in this forum, so I’m going to double space for paragraphs.
So, first thing you have to know. The brain views the material world as a set of values. Some things are more valuable than others. We don’t necessarily view things as their material form. We ascribe value and discernibility to what we see. This is a field of study itself regarding technology, I won’t get into it, the point here is that players view some objects as important, others not, and depending on their objective, these perceptions change. For the player, who is a marine, this means that they have a gun, and, they click on xeno and bullet flies out and kills them. It should be that simple, but the issue is this. Some players are better than others, and some players shoot the wrong thing more than others, and, most importantly, some players aren’t even shooting when they could. This isn’t even accounting xeno players, but you can imagine they have the same issue.
Why is this? Well, it starts with the frontal cortex. Specifically, the article “Insights into Human Behavior from Lesions to the Prefrontal Cortex.” To sum it up, damage to the frontal cortex leads to impulsivity and difficulty in selective attention, among a few other things, but these are the relevant ones. What this means is that the prefrontal cortex is what decides what you decide and how quickly. Now, imagine that scientists slice the prefrontal cortex off a chimp, this is vitally important to the understanding of Private First Class (PFC) behavior. What you get is a chimp who, when given multiple targets to choose will choose all of them at alarming speeds. On the other hand, a chimpanzee with an intact frontal cortex will actually choose slower, but they’ll discriminate between targets and choose correctly. The reason for this is because when a brain has to select objects they have to correct for objects that aren’t valued, observed by Edward Ort in, " Frontal cortex differentiates between free and imposed target selection in multiple-target search."
Essentially, if you’re given an objective and you meet the objective, you don’t have to correct as opposed to being given an objective and not finding it. What is the objective? Whatever value that’s been ascribed to your perception. For a marine, it’s the xeno. But, it can also be another marine. Both are players, and it’s possible to shoot one another in friendly fire but it’s generally considered incorrect and a detriment to the overall game to do such a thing. So, why does it happen in the first place? It boils down to essentially three problems. One, it takes more energy to stop and not shoot an ally, two, PFCs may value the death of a xeno more than an ally sacrificed along the way, three, they have suppressed their frontal cortex or have less use for one reason or another, and simply shoot.
Furthermore, the role of how this plays into squad selection can also be observed through anecdotal observations by many players that can be explained succinctly as of 2019 to 2024. Alpha is usually composed of newer players, Bravo is composed of reclusive players, Charlie is composed of a smaller select base of players who roleplay more (larpers), and Delta is composed of the bulk mass of players who aren’t new. Likewise, Alpha and Delta both are observed to have the bulk mass of friendly fire, significantly over Charlie and Bravo.
Through observations, I have noted behaviors regarding these squads and their friendly fire behavior. First and foremost, Alpha players usually tend towards shooting in any general direction there’s xenos and getting caught out in compromising positions. In my experience, when I play here, I’ve noted that players higher up in the game’s hierarchy (higher rank) have paid less attention to my behavior, even ignoring me not wearing a helmet when I play squad leader, the squad’s most responsible position. Many players here are new, and they ask for direction, they also tend towards listening to orders though being very clumsy about it, and full of “heart” as many players have put it. Generally, youthful, kind players, with potential.
Delta, is similar, however there’s more experienced players and the behaviors exhibited are actually deliberate, they don’t follow orders deliberately, they also tend towards shooting at xenos regardless of the friendly fire. I can only make observations on anecdotes because I am in poor standing with anyone who would provide me data due to what seems to be personal reasons, but these players are observed to be the bulk of friendly fire incidents, as well as violent emotional outbursts. I personally notice that many of the staff members and whitelist holders in CM tend to have arisen from Delta, but that may be a correlation.
Charlie and Bravo, however, have the opposite problem of Alpha and Delta. From my observations, Charlie has had the second least friendly fire incidents, and they’re usually tasked with more complex tasks, such as setting up comms and following orders correctly. Bravo, however, is the smallest squad, and is usually of a completely different issue of friendly fire. They don’t fire. Both Charlie and Bravo are witnessed to stare at a player being dragged into the abyss by a xeno without reacting quick enough, but most of these incidents are heavily skewed towards Bravo. What reason this is for, I can’t make assumptions, but Bravo is usually the last bastion of combat, they usually create the field operating base where the ship lands, far from the front line, and either they don’t shoot because they don’t see enough combat, or they stay in Bravo because they don’t shoot effectively.
Therefore, here’s my hypothesis and conclusion of this essay. Firstly, friendly fire is entirely a prefrontal cortex issue, a bulk of friendly fire incidents are related to newer players learning the game. However, past that, there seems to be a connection of the prefrontal cortex function and friendly fire past being new. I hypothesize that players who have more incidents of friendly fire have two reasons for doing so. Either they suppress or have less function of the prefrontal cortex, or, a possible culprit, they choose to shoot and commit friendly fire deliberately to achieve shooting a xeno. Furthermore, the purpose of this essay is to give observation to friendly fire and a possible culprit to the action. For strengthening the frontal cortex I hypothesize that more opportunities to strengthen the frontal cortex through complex orders might be a greater good to the long term health of the game, as its clear that players such as those in Delta may be deliberately shooting allies just to “win” against xenomorphs, all the while it’s also important to crack down on player behavior where possible by in game training or restructuring of value incentives in game. If the game becomes about “winning” then players will forego playing correctly to just win. This can be summarized in the constant conflict of LRP and HRP, low and high roleplay standards, and with that, my final proposition is that the game should be more geared towards the original intent of these types of top down games, being story generators, and that the pvp aspect should take the back seat, whilst players be given more complex tasks with greater rewards. This was once the original intent of CM13, and the plot got lost for a more pvp oriented, easier pathway, objective, and perhaps we should go in the direction that led to the success of CM in the first place.
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Edit: By the way yes, this is a serious observation and not meant for Acid Goop, even if it has some humor sprinkled in.
