FA Medical

[costno]

Introduce a medical system with greater depth and gameplay rewards. We have the technology. The only reason we have used vanilla wounding for so long is because it’s built in and no one has taken the time to design anything better without mods. Until now! Here's what we're dealing with now:

Issues with Vanilla Wounding and Revive

1. Lack of feedback for being wounded (periodic grunts/moans). (Issue #71)
2. fixed bleedout time each time you are downed. Simplistic.
3. Very small gap between (functionally) not hurt at all and downed or dead. (related issue #246)
4. being downed does not affect your ability to communicate, you are allowed to carry on conversation as if nothing happened, can beg for help, and can report the precise locations of enemies who downed you. This does not fit in with the concept of authenticity, does little to encourage not getting downed.
5. There is nothing that can happen while downed unless another player helps you, you just have to sit there.
6. The sum of this system does not encourage you to stick close to your team, as you can always report to your peers your location and area threats.
7. Combine that with the low resource cost, and there are few incentives not to get downed other than pure roleplay elements.
8. Downed pilots are completely fucked, losing control of their vehicle and eliminating a transport or fire support asset. This can outright cancel any chance of completing a mission, and is not rewarding gameplay.

And here is what I intend to do about it: FA MEDICAL KEY COMPONENTS

• Passing Out and Waking Up: the more damage you suffer, the more likely you are to become unconscious. Depending on how hurt you are, you still have a chance to wake up after falling unconscious. This creates tension in the wounded-but-not-downed state, and forces you to choose between seeking cover, seeking teammates, or finishing off an enemy.
• Bleeding: add depth to the wounded-but-not-downed state. If you are shot and not downed immediately, you will need to seek cover and perform a treatment soon or your chances of passing out will increase overtime.
• Disorientation: While you are passed out, you will not be able to communicate. If a player passes out in the woods and no one is around to see them drop, are they still alive? Specifically, No outbound communication. Downed players can still hear channels they have access to.
• Resource cost: Stopping the bleeding of a unit costs anyone (including medics) one bandage. Vanilla revive has a resource cost for everyone except medics, utilizing a FAK. A medic, if present, has zero resource cost to provide healing. Infinite resources is not immersive, and means you can get shot infinite times and always have a way to carry on.
• Diagnose Action: more accurate feedback for “just how hurt am I?”. You would have a pretty good sense of how fucked-up someone is in real life, additional action added to simulate this in game. (Resolves part of issue #71)

INTENDED RESULTS The net result of these components is to provide heavier decisions with greater consequences. Should I bandage myself and wait for a medic to heal me up to save my FAK? Should I burn my FAK so that I can run again and make it to the extract? Should I risk separating from my fireteam, and will they find me if I get downed? Are we going to run out of medical supplies?

CURRENT FEATURES

• Players suffer damage and begin rolling pass out/wake up saves as intended.
• Bleed, Bandage, Diagnose Actions
• Units can heal/bandage as long as the caller or target has relevant resources.
• Only two additional actions visible over the vanilla system (Bandage and Diagnose).
• Diagnose self action hidden unless weapon lowered or unit prone (does not clog action menu in combat).
• Custom downed state dims audio, ragdolls player, disables weapons + actions, generally sets animation correctly*
• Downed drivers/pilots lose control of vehicle while passed-out.
• Damage to pilots redirects to random aircraft components, providing consequences without immediately ending their existence.

[costno]

Flow chart for system core.

[Aqarius90]

3. Very small gap between (functionally) not hurt at all and downed or dead. (related issue Add damage reduction component #246)

I would disagree with this statement, in that there are three distinct states with the current system: healthy, wounded, and downed.

6. The sum of this system does not encourage you to stick close to your team, as you can always report to your peers your location and area threats.

I see this cropping up lately, and I would caution that overdoing this line of thinking leads to one grenade wiping the tactical blob.

7. Combine that with the low resource cost, and there are few incentives not to get downed other than pure roleplay elements.

Related to comments on 3.: there are no incentives not to get downed if you're already hit. I'm reminded of that cyborg in that Kurt Russel movie.

Resource cost: Stopping the bleeding of a unit costs anyone (including medics) one bandage. Vanilla revive has a resource cost for everyone except medics, utilizing a FAK. A medic, if present, has zero resource cost to provide healing. Infinite resources is not immersive, and means you can get shot infinite times and always have a way to carry on.

Two points:

• Flat out not being able to do something because you just don't have the resources is not good gameplay. It's the same as not having enough AT, it's just frustrating. Resource limitations function well when they either allow for limited extra actions, or when a shortage forces players to find alternative ways of doing things. Otherwise it's just a failstate.

The net result of these components is to provide heavier decisions with greater consequences. Should I bandage myself and wait for a medic to heal me up to save my FAK? Should I burn my FAK so that I can run again and make it to the extract? Should I risk separating from my fireteam, and will they find me if I get downed? Are we going to run out of medical supplies?

Of all of these, IMO only the highlighted one is worth the added complication.

A few more points:

• In my mind, a major issue with the current system is precisely that instead of first aid dealing with light wounds and medics with heavy, we have everyone dealing with heavy wounds, and medics being only needed for topping HP off. This is the inverse of what should be happening: anyone should be able to walk of minor shocks, but major trauma should require specialisation.
• I do not see medics having infinite supplies as an issue. That's their job. A SAM team will be able to deal with enemy air assets unless misused and/or overwhelmed. A HAT team will be able to deal with enemy armor assets unless misused and/or overwhelmed. Same goes for medic. Now, lack of an asset, that leads to everyone scrambling to cover the gap, be it RAT, FAKs, or hosing down the AH.

[costno]

I would disagree with this statement, in that there are three distinct states with the current system: healthy, wounded, and downed.

But what functionally is the difference between healthy and wounded? There is no walking wounded state in vanilla, if you are wounded in vanilla you can still aim pretty much 90% as effective as if you were unharmed. In this system, there is a clear walking wounded state where your aim is quite bad, which is far more interesting.

I see this cropping up lately, and I would caution that overdoing this line of thinking leads to one grenade wiping the tactical blob.

There is gameplay in that. You want to be close enough to be recoverable, but not buddy-fucker close. And it's not just being close enough to see people go down, it's about maintaining accounting of your friends

Related to comments on 3.: there are no incentives not to get downed if you're already hit. I'm reminded of that cyborg in that Kurt Russel movie.

The incentive to not going down is that you can still report your position or get to safety. If you go down, your fate is in the hands of god and your comrades.

Flat out not being able to do something because you just don't have the resources is not good gameplay. It's the same as not having enough AT, it's just frustrating. Resource limitations function well when they either allow for limited extra actions, or when a shortage forces players to find alternative ways of doing things. Otherwise it's just a failstate.

My goal is not to have resources be a major factor in every mission. I merely want to give the opportunity to create that circumstance for the mission maker or for situations where you could have ended the mission sooner with less injuries if you had taken a different approach. This mostly comes down to default medical loads, and maybe the medic should carry like 40 bandages, who knows at this stage!

In my mind, a major issue with the current system is precisely that instead of first aid dealing with light wounds and medics with heavy, we have everyone dealing with heavy wounds, and medics being only needed for topping HP off. This is the inverse of what should be happening: anyone should be able to walk of minor shocks, but major trauma should require specialisation.

Actually what I want to say about this first is that this is still a game. In real life a gunshot wound will take you out of action, which militaries accommodate by a lot of people so that they can keep fresh bodies at the front. We don't have that luxury with our player counts, so we have to give our players super-human healing capabilities. I think the importance of a medic can be delivered in other ways.

My concern here is about making medics required. I'm okay with making medics required, but I would also want a way to not be screwed if the medic dies. I think making FAKs a precious resource can accomplish similar goals, if the medic is around the medic is more efficient. The FAK should really only be used in case of emergency. The biggest issue I have with that right now is that the default FAK action cannot be hidden, and it locks you in an animation. So if you start FAKing you can't go back, and it being BI action menu it is very easy to accidently FAK yourself even if you have the intent of saving it.

I do not see medics having infinite supplies as an issue. That's their job.

Same answer as above. I don't intend to make every mission a painful resource slog. It's more relevant in a long mission with resupply built in so that the medic can say "hey I'm low on medical supplies" and then the logistics player can accomplish that task. Medical resources having a cost can be another factor in planning, the longer you make a fight drag on the more hits your element is going to take. Plus, we can scavenge for ammo when we're desperate, you can scavenge for bandages.

And to double up, the Medkit is infinite heals. So your squad might be out of bandages, but you could have a situation where the medic is constantly topping off people who are constantly bleeding, which keeps the squad alive until resupply, extract, or mission end, but everyone keeps running the risk of passing out from blood-loss.

[Aqarius90]

But what functionally is the difference between healthy and wounded?

Wobbly aim. And since FAK will still get you back to the same .75, and you can't go above that without a medic, once you dip below that you literally can just take point and get patched up afterwards to no significant loss.

My goal is not to have resources be a major factor in every mission. I merely want to give the opportunity to create that circumstance for the mission maker or for situations where you could have ended the mission sooner with less injuries if you had taken a different approach. It's more relevant in a long mission with resupply built in so that the medic can say "hey I'm low on medical supplies" and then the logistics player can accomplish that task.

I thought that's what the CLS option was for? Or just take away the medkit.

So your squad might be out of bandages, but you could have a situation where the medic is constantly topping off people who are constantly bleeding, which keeps the squad alive until resupply, extract, or mission end, but everyone keeps running the risk of passing out from blood-loss.

...Wait, you're saying the medic would heal, but not stop bleeding? That seems... wildly counterintuitive. Dangerously so, even.

[costno]

I don't think it's that counterintuitive. And let me elaborate more on why the FAK and Medikit are implemented as they are: We're hitting up against the limitations of the vanilla medical items which have hardcoded effects.

The FAK sets your damage to 0.25 (heals to 75%). The medikit sets your damage to 0 (heals to 100%). I can do nothing to those actions as they show up on conscious players. I can affect the actions that appear on downed units, and easily make it take 60 seconds to FAK a downed unit, but where I feel this is counterintuitive is if that player happens to roll to wake up, suddenly you can FAK them in 6 seconds or so (the vanilla treat animation speed). The only other alternative from available inventory items would be the 'antibiotics' item, which would be more counterintuitive as we would have to invent a use from them and spend more time explaining the value of these items. People know what FAKs are, they know they are useful. We're about to make them worth their weight in gold.

Here's my proposal: Limit the amount of FAKs on players. FAKs are absolute magic, allowing a well-trained monkey the average Third infantry to instantly get to 75% health. Start everyone with one FAK, but they can have 3 bandages because most of what they should be doing is stopping their bleeding and getting a medic to help them. The medic on the other hand should carry a huge load of medical supplies, like 15 FAKs and like 40 bandages, and still have their medikit. This means they are integral to the squad's resources, and hosts will actually consistently slot them if their missing will be noticeable.

What this does is make the medic special the same way we make the other specialized roles special: give them primary access to this resource. Anyone can fire an RPG, or use the FTL's UGL, or shoot the MMG. But only select rolls start the mission with that, allowing the person who slotted there to roll-play as that roll. We would still be preserving the medic's unique ability to heal to full which no one could replicate, but the medic could choose to distribute FAKs/bandages throughout the mission. Or, a lowly soldier who finds the medic's corpse would be able to say "medics dead, nothing I can do with the medikit, but I'm grabbing all the FAKs and Bandages, lets keep moving...."

Doing it this way means you can still heal to the threshold the current FAK only system allows without a medic, but having the medic be the point of origin for a lot of that equipment means the squad actually has to recover that equipment to maintain 75% healing capability, much like the squad needs to recover a RAT's launcher or the ARs to maintain their firepower.

In sum: Bandage stops the bleed condition, FAK and Medikit reset HP. Make the FAK rare to make the squad dependent on the Medic, but the Medic a resource carrier so that these tools can be redistributed upon the Medics death.

[Aqarius90]

We would still be preserving the medic's unique ability to heal to full which no one could replicate, but the medic could choose to distribute FAKs/bandages throughout the mission.

If we're going on limited FAKs, how about give medic the kit and bandages, and let FAKs heal to full. Medics don't get overloaded, you avoid cheesing by redistribution, and you get an answer to "medic's dead, what now". Or are we expecting the antibleed to handle that?

Also, if FAKs are rare, bandages should be plentiful.