Medivac and MASH

[Scandicci]

Originally Posted by IAJTHOMAS

Who wants to spend 15 minutes in a car/ tent, coughing and splutering like an asthmatic tortoise with TB running a marathon went I can just respawn and get back to the right quicker.

Even if there are no rallys, getting a lift from main/ FB would still be quicker. Although it sounds like it might be fun for the people doing the medevac, its would be dull as hell for the 'patient'.

IAJThomas, you are right. No one would want to spend 15 minutes with no ability to participate in the action. If this sort of thing were implemented it would have to be such that the time and effort required were not herculean. Gameplay and fun would have to figure in the final solution. Again, the mechanics of this would have to worked out so that it was more advantageous to do this than just die and respawn. Ever heavier penalties on respawn times would probably be enough to make people avoid just giving up and respawning.

These MASH stations could quite simply be Bunkers or Firebases, or could be deployed by SLs from bunkers and firebases. As Ghoststorm suggested, a revived and patched up soldier could never reach 100% health without getting proper medical care.

As far as gameplay mechanics go, it would definitely slow things down a little bit but it would certainly add to realism. It would encourage squads to be prudent. I am for it.

[ghoststorm11]

The whole idea of MASH and limited medical action is to re-institute a realistic game play world. By that, I mean no squads with 5 medics. This makes it impossible to stop the squad. I dont know if the idea I suggested would work the greatest, but the game needs to be re-focused on actual fighting. In vBF2, a squad could spam the medic action and stay alive. This is Project Reality. The whole idea is not to punish those who die, but rather force them to value the meaning of life in the game. Imagine rules of engagement changes, strategy changes, the need for a higher commander structure. All of this would play into each other. Squads would have to work together to stay alive. Communication would become a huge focus. Responsibilities and leadership positions are now more administrative than loosely held together. I.E. You better listen to the squad leader and the squad leader better listen to the commander and squads need to listen to each other (some exceptions apply [bad squad leader for example]). Kashan Desert would have a new meaning. Instead of tanks just going off to fight each other, they would have to support the INF. This gives a new meaning to the game which is INF support. This is the focus of real world battles. I know that this is a game, and it needs to be enjoyable. However, I find a teamwork focused game to be the most fun for everyone. This could be solved with these simple additions that I mentioned. Are they perfect? Of course not. Just a suggestion.

I forsee one of two results:

1. The application would fly like a lead balloon and it would be erased from the game.

2. The application of the medical system would give more focus on teamwork and revive the qualities that make pr (which is already great) an awesome game.

[OGSam]

@IAJTHOMAS
i completly agree

But the medic-job should be more difficult and more complex. Just holding a bag and waiting is to easy it would proboply also stop or slow down the medic whore culture. i think there was already a post about something like that but in my opinion it´s the best if the medic needs to use more than just 2 tools to revive and heal a player.

[Rudd]

But in what other manner could the engine understand injury?

It understands % health, and it understand arguements regardinc < / > x% what else can it do?

I don't think it can understand leg wounds, chest punctures, abdominal wounds, major bleeds, minor bleeds, concussions, etc etc etc etc etc etcx10^5 that all require differing treatments.

Medics are gonna get a limiting change for .9 and that should help alot.

BF2 can't really give us a realistic healing system, only a system portraying some of what a realistic system portrays. For now, medics are a gameplay facilitator.

I assume you could make ppl heal at a stabilised rate in an ambulance or whatever, but the problem is that the skirmish maps wouldn't be able to use this.

Remember this has to work on skirmish layer also.

[14thunder20]

I find the coughing while bleeding out to be the most annoying thing. So I'm at 70% health and now I have to hear myself cough for another 3 minutes until I bleed out. Jeez, I'd rather run out and get shot sometimes just to shut it up. Give one or two coughs then just stick with the red blurry screen.

And limiting the medic kit would make them much more valuable. I say about 1 med kit available per squad created. with a limit of 2 medics per squad would be easy to implement and have the potential to greatly increase the teamwork required.

[Camlost]

Like the idea, but I think it might slow down gameplay too much for too many people. Moreover, your team would depend on always having 4-6 people wanting to stay medic for the duration of the round and nothing else, something that might not always be a possibility. If servers could contain more than 64 people this might be an even better suggestion.

To implement this effectively(i.e in a way that it didn't slow down gameplay too much) I think that you shouldn't limit the medic class too much; let each inf squad have at least one. Moreover, you'd have to give regular veichles such as humvees/APCs the ability to set up small field "hospitals", much like grade II /III field hospitals are set up in real life. This would mean that the veichle would temporarily stop fighting and become a hospital field unit in which injured soldiers could heal up. Setting this up and packing it down again would have to take a certain amount of time. In order to not slow down gameplay too much, you'd have to allow the regular medics to be able to heal injured soldiers up to something like 90% and slow the bleed after treatment considerably. I'm unable to find any pictures of this, but when I was in the army it basically consisted of a veichle with a small tent attached to it with 2-6 bedposts. These would be set up almost anywhere, pretty close to the front lines.

Alternatively, you could give supply trucks the ability to drop containers that were field hospital units, which are considered more stationary, better equipped field hospitals than the ones deployed briefly from standard veichles. You could limit the amount of containers deployable to something like 8-14 depending on the map size. Again though, the trouble about this idea is that it'd require a squad devoted to pure logistics, but if the bleed was slow enough and medics in the field could do some good without the containers, it might work out.

Basically if you make dying from bleeding a lot harder(hence not giving players the ability to "give up", but still imparing their ability to fight) I think you'll find a larger amount of players sticking around for medical attention.

[Action Jackson]

Well, a problem that presents itself with the engine is that except for head shots, locational body damage is not representable in a completely satisfactory way. A player who is shot in the leg can not be instantly forced to crawl or be carried but be in a otherwise stable condition. A soldier hit in the arm is not impaired in all his capacity to function as a rifleman, until he dies; his general life force is merely drained. Such are the limitations of python, and the Devs have moved heaven and earth to simulate the most of these kind of situations and effects to create the most personally involving realistic simulated combat environment I've ever experienced, in ways second not even to games like ArmA. I've seen a lot of people complaining that they started bleeding after jumping down a moderate height; I'd always figured it was the workaround for example spraining your ankle and needing moderate medical attention in order to be in perfect operating condition again. The reason for the constant bleed is because even such a light injury as a sprain or bullet graze would hamper the soldiers capacities and could not be ignored until it is treated (i.e. field dressings or professional help).

Thinking further along this line, I find the medical deployable and something along the lines of having a continuous bleed even if the medic has healed you to maximum until you get it to such a deployable in good vibe with the goal of realism without detracting from so much as adding aspects of game-play.

What I would propose would be sort of the opposite of the healing system in Left 4 Dead; Medipac can heal you completely, but only field dressings can stop bleeding (you might even add that they only heal a little bit and only stop bleeding when health is above 85% so that medics have to heal the patient before stabilizing them). The constant bleed from that point on is the equivalent of the squad having to transport a more or less wounded compatriot with them once they run out of proper medical equipment, with the accent on having him still be more or less combat/transport ready (by being periodically healed) to preclude the advantage of just dying and respawning.

Once field dressings run out, you cannot properly stabilize a wounded patient (literally stop the bleeding ), only keep pepping them up and keeping them running until you get resupplied or to a medical deployable. This works as a natural extension to the ammunition ecosystem, as for instance a soldier who is out of ammunition can be viewed as the analog of a wounded soldier, as he is continuously impaired until he receives resupply/healing. However, even the ammo bag is only of limited use, and eventually an AT team has to RTB for resupply. Adding such a medical branch to this system would deepen game-play, make things a little more dynamic for the medic and give the number one idea of Project Reality: 'Stay Alive!' a whole new dimension without diverging from existing templates or making things unintuitive or overly complicated.

Also, to all those who cry out about no medic being around after being shot and still bleeding out after using their field dressing and yet playing Project REALITY, how well do you think your state of being would develop after you've been shot in the gut, separated from your squad and have a box of band-aids with you... for the better or for the worse?

So there's kinda what came to me from some of the cool previous posts. Turned out a little longer than expected, but I guess it's your fault if you read the whole thing.

[[R-COM]HangMan]

currently the supply depot acts as a medical centre aswell. I think this is good but could be improved on further if they were split apart. ie have a supply depot for ammo/vehicle repairs and then a separate location for a field hostpital. So seeing as we already have a place at the main base to heal i do not see this as a problem to bring in.

For those of you who think tht healing at the supply depot is fine...
it leaves you exposed to enemy fire, especially in insurgency and thus is under valued.

If people would actually like to see this implemented then i would be glad to help out in the development of this (or just do the whole thing myself)..

cheers,
HangMan

[Shovel]

Originally Posted by Scandicci

One more thing to add... I don't think 'medic' humvees or helis are necessary. A deployable medic station would be adequate, just like the stations for vehicles.

i dissagree. medevacs happen often in real life and it would be a cool element of gameplay. Too often people try to stage medevacs with regular things but it rarly works. a heli or car that heals you would be optimal, although i could see how people would exploit this...i.e. a medevac humvee being parked behind front line and being used as a revive station

[Excavus]

Why did you bump this just to post your opinion?