Medikits

[Sarin]

The electric impulse travels at faster speed via electronic parts than through biologic nerves, also do you realize how many muscles are involved in simple pressing the trigger? Yes, the difference will be a few miliseconds at most, but that can be difference between life and death.

And getting a gunhand, well, that will be MUCH more difficult than getting a normal gun. And without proper training, it would be more dangerous to user than to anyone else. That's not a problem. And who said powered armor and implants can't be used at same time?

By the way, I doubt such thing would ever be main gun. The gunhand will more likely be a sidearm.

[TrashMan]

There is another forum where a long winded, detailed discussion was held on the same subject..

Take a look if you will:
http://www.kerberos-productions.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=8696&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&hilit=cyborg&start=90

The real good stuff starts at pages 9-10

[Another Guy]

Cyberweapons and implants aside, it would be nice to hear what devs think about using old XCOM damage/stun/morale/fatal wounds/medikit system as coding reference.

[shevegen]

I agree that armour failure and degradation should work or be implemented, but as a general rule to simplify it for now, we could just agree that depending on how many shots someone take, he would have to pay a little sum to repair armour or clothes he was using. Not too much money, but a little bit to simulate that (if it would be too expensive, they would just buy a new armour anyway)

[Chriswriter90]

In 2.2 Medikits could be used over and over,

In 2.2.1 Medikits could be re-used, but each soldier could only be healed once per mission.

What are they going to be like in 2.3?

I'm not going to talk or complain about implants until they are implemented.

My Idea: Can soldiers with higher "Mind" Skill heal more than 20 HP in future installments (2.3.1 or afterwards)

[zinder]

This is probably too late, but i just recently found this.

The system i'll describe is based on a number of squad level tactics games i liked. It is a bit more abstracted than the wounds level system, but otherwise similar.

There are four pools of hit points, healthy (real) HP, mission-recoverable HP, mission-recovered HP and lost HP. The sum over all four pools is constant during a mission.

Healthy HP are the points the soldier starts out with, if he is fully healed at base.
Mission-recoverable HP are lost during a mission and can be restored by a medkit or similar device (for example an armor extension) or by medical attention on base.
Mission-recovered HP have been restored by a medkit and require medical attention on base heal.
Lost HP can only be restored by medical attention on base and take the most time to heal.

If a soldier is hit, the loss is divided according to severity in lost and mission-recoverable HP. Severity can for example be influenced by the armor, the total amount of damage done, or where hit(if implemented).
Side effects like dizziness, sensory loss(eye or ear), stamina loss, bleeding wounds, loss of function in limbs, etc are separate conditions and require extra attention, ie they need a dedicated use of the medkit or maybe even specialized equipment or training.
A soldier is unconscious if he either has no healthy or mission-recovered HP, or stun damage is higher than healthy and mission-recovered HP combined.

[Crinos512]

My experience with all games is that shooting to kill is always more effective than shooting to cripple.

In actuality shooting to maim is by far a more effective tactic assuming
  A. an injured team member can die from blood loss, and
  B. the other team mates care if he dies.

from another viewpoint:

• if I headshot a foe and he dies... That's one less foe gunning at me.
• if I cripple a foe and he can die from blood loss then SOMEONE has to come save him with a medkit. ...That's TWO less foes gunning at me.

just my 2 cp on the matter.

[BTAxis]

from another viewpoint:

• if I headshot a foe and he dies... That's one less foe gunning at me.

How is this NOT shooting to kill?

Seriously, I can't think of any game where shooting to cripple was actually useful in any way, except maybe Jagged Alliance. Haven't played a lot of that one, so I don't really know. But I can say that in the latest game to feature this, Fallout 3, it's 100% useless.

[Destructavator]

In real life (to compare), I can tell you that I've heard various people from law enforcement and military explain that shooting people to cripple or disable just isn't done, it isn't something officers or soldiers are trained to do with firearms.  Unless using a taser or weapon specifically designed to stun or be non-lethal, I've been told that when such people do resort to opening fire on a person, the intent is to kill.

On the same page (real life), there are many people who survive gunshot wounds, but many such survivors have permanent injuries that can be very debilitating.  It's only in the movies and fiction where you can see a hero eat a bullet one day, spend a short time in a hospital, and then next week be running around chasing bad guys again.  I know of one case where a police officer survived a single bullet, but was in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

It might in fact make sense to implement something like this in the game:  A soldier surviving a hit from an alien attack, but being permanently disabled, or at least disabled for a long time until some type of cybernetic / bionic / whatever implant can be done.  Of course, such recovery to eventually go back in action should take a *long* time if realism is desired.

[zinder]

The only game i can remember off the cuff, where aiming for body parts was useful, is Silent Storm. But there you also got hit zones and partial cover. Somebody half around a house corner or behind a tree had lower hit probability on the covered body parts and any attacks you put through the cover lost power.

Or if you had a good positioning of the enemy, you could put one round through multiple targets if you aimed for the right body part.

[Winter]

In actuality shooting to maim is by far a more effective tactic assuming
  A. an injured team member can die from blood loss, and
  B. the other team mates care if he dies.

from another viewpoint:

• if I headshot a foe and he dies... That's one less foe gunning at me.
• if I cripple a foe and he can die from blood loss then SOMEONE has to come save him with a medkit. ...That's TWO less foes gunning at me.

just my 2 cp on the matter.

Rubbish. As Destructavator said, you never, ever shoot to cripple unless you're a sniper on a war footing and have a very specific plan in mind. Just like a tank with its tracks blown off, a wounded enemy can still shoot at you.

Jagged Alliance 2 featured aiming for 3 body parts (head, torso, legs) but crippling still never came into it. You could make an enemy fall down temporarily by shooting him in the legs, but it always did less damage than a torso or headshot. JA2's enemies never bothered with giving each other medical attention either making the crippling strategy completely useless. Our aliens, being the cold calculating sort they are, certainly wouldn't take away their attention from killing the hell out of you.

Regards,
Winter

[TrashMan]

How is this NOT shooting to kill?

Seriously, I can't think of any game where shooting to cripple was actually useful in any way, except maybe Jagged Alliance. Haven't played a lot of that one, so I don't really know. But I can say that in the latest game to feature this, Fallout 3, it's 100% useless.

I have. JA2 is a sweet, sweet, sweet game (1.13 mod make things even better). I luv it to death.

Shooting for the legs could not only slow down the enemy, but also cause the enemy to collapse, and he was vulnerable when lying on hte floor..and it took AP's for him to get back on his feet.
Shooting for the arms massed up his aim and could cause him to drop his gun.
Shooting for the chast was the most secure, and if you used a shotgun or some other weapon with a kick, you could kick the air out of his lungs, causing him to loose energy (not HP) and fall on the ground, loosing all of his AP's.
A headshot didn't do extra damage, it confused the enemy (he could turn around like he's disoriented and loose wisdom), affected his aim, and could also lower his energy. But there was a slighly increased chance of a critical if you shot him in the head.

[homunculus]

imho the main point against the traditional health point system from the 1980-s would be that it is not a boxing match where you can try to score points and the referees are going to decide who wins.
if the damage does not stun or is not crippling or does not cause bleeding, then i think it should be a morale loss at best, am i missing something?

therefore, at a lesser level of abstraction, i would suggest that a non-missed shot would cause a random amount of crippling, bleeding and stun, based on its damage types.
the randomness would come from the chance that the bullet hole in your body not only makes you look ugly but actually damages something vital.

we could say that a shot from a gun  that causes crippling usually also causes bleeding, and with that assumption all the effects could be incorporated into just those two bars we already have.
the blood pressure would go into stun bar, and wounds would go into crippling (health points) bar.

so, in the health points bar we would have undamaged health points, bandaged wounds and bleeding wounds, the total would be the max health points stat of the soldier.

• damage would turn undamaged health points and bandaged wounds into bleeding wounds.
• bandages, naturally, would turn bleeding wounds into bandaged wounds, but this would take a significant amount of time units per wound point.
• the general effectiveness of your stats would depend on undamaged health points, so bandaged wounds would still count as crippling.
• bleeding wounds would reduce blood pressure over time, and some extra when the soldier is not crouching and some more extra when the soldier is using time units.

in the consciousness bar we would have blood pressure and stun, and those would be overlapping.

• when blood pressure drops to 0 the soldier is permanently dead. afaik clinical death has something to do with brain getting blood and oxygen.
• when blood pressure drops below stun, the soldier becomes unconscious. the consciousness value is the positive difference from stun level to blood pressure level.
• reaction time and movement speed stats effectiveness would depend on consciousness.
• strength would depend on blood pressure.
• stun would start at 30% (to produce unconsciousness before death but also to motivate the use of stimulants), and would slowly regenerate to 30% over time (from either direction). using stimulants would reduce stun by, say, 50%, but would turn a small amount of undamaged health points into bandaged health points to produce the cool after-effect when the stun regenerates back to the normal 30%.

[Winter]

*SNIPPED a whole lot of conversation and not much action*

Mmmmmmmmmmmmno.

Regards,
Winter

[homunculus]

Mmmmmmmmmmmmno.

Regards,
Winter

the intended purpose was to try to put as much gameplay and realism into as simple health bars as i could.
what you call conversation and what you call action is for me to figure out yet, i guess?