General > Discussion
List of improvement ideas from a new player
BTAxis:
--- Quote from: Winter on May 25, 2008, 06:55:37 pm ---There is no reason for medics to be in the game! They don't add ANYTHING except the frustration and needless complexity of having to manually manage hospitals! Adding restrictions in order to try and justify their existence doesn't make them any less of a bad design choice, it just adds more bad design choices to bolster something that ought to be removed in the first place. If we're letting bad design choices run rampant for no good reason in the face of every valid argument BTAxis and I raise aginst them then why am I even here?
--- End quote ---
In order to nuance this issue, I'd just like to point out Kracken's argument earlier on IRC, which was basically that if we don't need medics we don't need workers or scientists either, which I think is fair to say. These people also don't add anything per se. They're just there to exploit the full potential of a lab or workshop, adding the need to manually manage them. The only difference between labs/workshops and hospitals is that soldiers can only heal so fast, while research and development proceed at a pace proportional to the amount of dedicated researchers/workers.
Now, in my opinion it's not necessary to completely remove the medics. It should be enough to reduce them to a number of hired staff, as should be done for workers and scientists. They still don't add anything per se, but they take up space in living quarters and appear on the payroll. Plus it makes more sense to have a staffed hospital, as opposed to one that is by all appearances self-service.
kracken:
--- Quote from: Winter on May 25, 2008, 06:55:37 pm ---They don't add ANYTHING except the frustration and needless complexity of having to manually manage hospitals!
--- End quote ---
These are 2 different points. I don't like either to have to manually manage hospitals, it should be automatic. I just mean that the efficiency of your hospital should be limited by the number of medics you would have, just like the efficiency of your workshop or lab is limited by the number of workers or scientist you have.
Basically, player would just recruit medics when he needs them, and pay them every month.
And having medics does not imply that we can't have pilots.
Winter:
--- Quote from: BTAxis on May 25, 2008, 07:25:06 pm ---In order to nuance this issue, I'd just like to point out Kracken's argument earlier on IRC, which was basically that if we don't need medics we don't need workers or scientists either, which I think is fair to say.
--- End quote ---
I don't think that's fair to say at all. The presence of workers and scientists on-screen is a mechanic to manage the speed and assignments of labs and workshops -- like you said, they are a hard representation on the speed of work in these facilities.
Medics, on the other hand, have no such purpose. If we moved them to a footnote under base salaries and left soldiers to heal at a standardised and constant rate, they would not be missed as a means of managing the hospital, because the hospital is not a facility that should be managed. Humans heal at a certain rate, and that's that. Giving a patient six doctors to take care of him isn't going to affect his recovery process one bit.
Medics also do not produce anything concrete in-game such as research topics and new items. Their presence is so minimal that giving them such a prominent space in the interface is both misleading and wastes space.
--- Quote ---Now, in my opinion it's not necessary to completely remove the medics. It should be enough to reduce them to a number of hired staff, as should be done for workers and scientists. They still don't add anything per se, but they take up space in living quarters and appear on the payroll. Plus it makes more sense to have a staffed hospital, as opposed to one that is by all appearances self-service.
--- End quote ---
A footnote in base salaries is fine with me, but that's all. When you build a hospital, the inclusion of medical staff and equipment is assumed, it doesn't need to be managed. Saying that because we have a hospital we need to have medics on-screen is like saying that because we have a hospital we should manage its inventory as well, forcing the player to buy blood packs or something silly like that.
--- Quote from: kracken on May 25, 2008, 08:02:58 pm ---These are 2 different points. I don't like either to have to manually manage hospitals, it should be automatic. I just mean that the efficiency of your hospital should be limited by the number of medics you would have, just like the efficiency of your workshop or lab is limited by the number of workers or scientist you have.
Basically, player would just recruit medics when he needs them, and pay them every month.
And having medics does not imply that we can't have pilots.
--- End quote ---
I'd refer you to my argument about 6 doctors to 1 patient. Your proposal adds limitations to the game for no reason, forcing micromanagement on the player for no actual gameplay benefit. The player gains nothing from having more than the required number of medics, he only gets a penalty for NOT having them. That's bad game design.
Furthermore, adding pilots without removing medics would be more work than simply replacing medics with pilots, again keeping the medics for no good reason that I can see. They don't need to be on the recruitment screen. Hospitals don't need to be managed. The only other thing you seem to argue is that they should take up living quarters and draw salaries, which I don't agree with (except for drawing salaries, but that ought to be rolled into hospital running costs and only mentioned in a footnote). Space in the living quarters is already tight enough with only 20 people per living quarters (and we may actually want to reduce the size of living quarters with the incorporation of larger bases) without having to waste it on people whose only function is to avoid a penalty to soldier healing.
I'm not saying that we should remove all mention of hospital staff from the game and turn the hospitals into self-service pumps, but we need to remove the needless micromanagement which they and medics represent. Medics should not appear on-screen.
Regards,
Winter
BTAxis:
--- Quote from: Winter on May 25, 2008, 08:26:54 pm ---I don't think that's fair to say at all. The presence of workers and scientists on-screen is a mechanic to manage the speed and assignments of labs and workshops -- like you said, they are a hard representation on the speed of work in these facilities.
Medics, on the other hand, have no such purpose. If we moved them to a footnote under base salaries and left soldiers to heal at a standardised and constant rate, they would not be missed as a means of managing the hospital, because the hospital is not a facility that should be managed. Humans heal at a certain rate, and that's that. Giving a patient six doctors to take care of him isn't going to affect his recovery process one bit.
Medics also do not produce anything concrete in-game such as research topics and new items. Their presence is so minimal that giving them such a prominent space in the interface is both misleading and wastes space.
--- End quote ---
You're reasoning in the wrong direction. The theory is that if there are not enough medics, soldiers will heal more slowly. The soldiers will get less attention to their injuries than would be optimal, which slows their rate of recovery. Let's leave actual biology and wound healing out of this; looking at it purely as a game mechanic I find it makes sense.
--- Quote ---A footnote in base salaries is fine with me, but that's all. When you build a hospital, the inclusion of medical staff and equipment is assumed, it doesn't need to be managed. Saying that because we have a hospital we need to have medics on-screen is like saying that because we have a hospital we should manage its inventory as well, forcing the player to buy blood packs or something silly like that.
--- End quote ---
I can't agree with this. If you're going to reason like that, let's also remove workers and scientists. To twist the words you wrote, the inclusion of worker/scientist staff and equipment is assumed when you build a workshop or lab, right? Saying that because we have a workshop/lab we need to have workers or scientists on-screen is like saying that because we have a workshop we should manage its inventory as well, forcing the player to buy screwdrivers or something silly like that.
So no. That's not a valid argument. It's about building a facility and then staffing it. Hospitals are NOT different from labs or workshops in this respect. If you're going to think of medics as stuff to be abstracted from, you might as well abstract from the hospital itself. After all, what is building a hospital if not micromanaging a base to facilitate the recovery of soldiers? You can't look at the hospital separately from medics, as you've been doing in the preceeding.
Finally, just a footnote in the costs doesn't account for the medics living space. It just doesn't make any sense that they shouldn't need a place to sleep while soldiers, workers and scientists do. It's illogical, and it's going to raise more than one eyebrow. I don't feel comfortable with a game decision like that.
Iemeli:
Ok, I'd like to add something to my original post -- even though medics etc. stuff sure aren't in perfect shape, it's probably not the most urgent thing to fix. So I tried and succeeded compiling the trunk version, thanks to the instructions in http://ufoai.ninex.info/wiki/index.php/Compile_for_Mac, and that seems to run and have some nice improvements in geoscape and base view. There seems to be at least one major problem with opening a saved game the second time since restart, leading to instant crash. This can, however, be overcome by restarting the game, which is annoying though not fatal.
But alas, there is one blocker bug: it seems I can't enter tactical by any means, that is, both entering missions in geoscape or choosing Skirmish result in completely black screen. The only working thing seems to be Esc button which leads to the menu, no good. Is this a known issue or something Mac-specific? I could try building the game in Linux or even Windows, too, if it helps.
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