Ins, outs, and potential exploits of the "Kill Me" command

For those who don't know, your AI squadmates are programmed to turn on you if you execute a civilian. If you do so while they can't see you, the entire squad command menu usually gets replaced with the single command "kill me"—although this doesn't seem to happen every time.

Enabling the "kill me" command gives your squadmates unlimited ammo in their primary weapon and makes them invulnerable. Therefore, if you only give them a pepperball weapon and no secondary ammo while you bring a gas mask, then they will be unable to kill you or to die themselves.

Unleashing a squad of invulnerable pepperball terminators seems like a good way to trivialize most levels. Even with the score penalty from killing a civilian, this would be a good way to unlock new campaign levels or get SWAT '99 gear—if it could be done reliably. That caveat is where my testing has broken down.

To summarize the ~12 "Kill Me" runs I've tried, I've gotten four different results. I will summarize the process I used each time to the best of my ability, but the varying results means something must be different in some of these runs. I'm open to suggestions or to hearing about other people's results.

Version 1

Process: Tell the squad to hold at the start; find a civ early in the level and kill them; issue the "Kill Me" command.

Result: The squad starts moving through the level to find me. Notably, the squad appears to go in the wrong direction at first, i.e. they do not move directly to me as the last suspect standing will do. Once the squad finds me they follow me around trying to pepperball me into submission. Because this cannot work, we eventually finish the mission as something resembling normal.

Takeaways: This is essentially what we want to happen every time, except without needing to manually move through the level (see Version 2).

Version 2

Process: Same as Version 1, except I remember too late that suspects can still kill me.

Result: :(

Takeaways: For this to work reliably, we need to keep ourselves safe while the squad hunts us down, which should soft-clear the level in the process.

Version 3

Process: Bring a wedge or two; clear as normal until finding a civ; take civ into an isolated room; wedge all doors; execute civ and issue "Kill Me" command.

Result: Squadmates stare at the last door they saw me go through for at least 15 minutes, ALT+F4.

Takeaways: Even if the squad can't see you, they must be able to remember or otherwise understand where you are. Need to trigger command from an unknown location as in Version 1.

Version 4

Process: Same as Version 3, but clear past the first civ; tell squad to hold where they cannot see where I take the civ; wedge door(s) and execute civ.

Result: The "Kill Me" command does not appear in the menu at all, despite radio dialogue admonishing me for the civ's death.

Takeaways: Unclear. I have no idea why the command appears sometimes and not others. Based on when I have seen it appear, I know that it is not related to whether I've completed the level before or whether the civ was restrained when dying.