Wounds, healing, etc...

[TrashMan]

A few suggestions...given how the system currently works and the proposals in the wiki.

The way I see it, the whole health/wound system should cause a sense of dread and fear - but at the same time should not be so extreeme as to frustrate. As it is now, there are no wounds and Medikits restore health too easily.


So, how I would do it is that in addition to HP damage, each hit has a chance of causing a wound. Chance would depend on the strength of the attack (damage recieved) and armor..also luck.
On hit there would be a high chance of a minor wound and a somewhat smaller chance of a critical wound. The stronger the hit, the higher the chance of a critical wound.
All wounds incure penalties.

Wounds also give an additional status effect, that depends on the weapon type. The original proposal on the wiki has all wounds bleeding, but seriously, cauterized wounds don't bleed.

guns, neelder, cutting weapons - bleeding (constant loss of HP over time unless treated)
plasma, laser - scorched flesh (morale loss, pain shock?)
fire - burning (short duration HP over time, ends by itself, panick attack?)
explosive - internal bleeding, disorinetation?
sonic,shock,blunt - loss of TU's (having the air knocked out of you)


Medikits have a limited number of uses and their use has more in common with the original X-Com.
Medikit has 5 options and comes with 5 charges: (or possibly, each option has seperate charges...usually 1 or 2)
- Treat (consumes 1 charge .. or 3 for seperate charges)
- Heal   (consumes 2 charges .. or 2 for seperate charges)
- Painkiller (consumes 1 charge .. or 2 for seperate charges)
- Stimulant (consumes 1 charge .. or 2 for seperate charges)
- Stabilise (consumes 5 charges .. or 1 for seperate charges)


Minor wounds can be treated with a medikit, and this removes the penalty.
Major wound can only be treated with a medikit (halves he penalty), but a stay in the hospital is necessary for full recovery.
Stimulants or Pinkillers can be applied to restore some TU's and morale.
Healing restores a small amount of HP and consumes 2-3 charges (we don't want people medikiting a soldier from near death to full HP)

Now, when a soldiers HP reach 0 he isn't dead (YET) be he is unconcius and in a dying state (losses HP every turn untill stabilised). He dies if his HP reach -50% of his normal health. (a soldier with 80HP would have to reach -40 to die). A weapon hit can bring a soldier beneath 0 (so a soldier with 30HP left is hit for 50 damage ends up with -20).
To save the soldier one must stabilise him (which effectively consumes a medikit). That soldiers HP are restored to 0, but he is out for the remainder of the battle and requires extensive hospital treatment.

Aside from bloodspiders, aliens genrally ignore dying soldiers.



Thoughts? 

[homunculus]

are you sure that plasma or laser wounds would not bleed?
and there is internal bleeding that can be caused by blunts.

as far as my opinion goes, if it does not bleed it may make you look ugly but it is not a wound.

[TrashMan]

Plasma would burn and cauterize. Helluva pain. Infection. But I dotn' really see much bleeindg.

Lasers...depends. You'd think it would cauterize, but there's a very real posibiltiy a high-powered laser would cause part of your body to literally explode (as water is instantly vapourized). So ti might bleed.

A wound is any severe damage to the body that limits you. A massive burn is a wound as you can easily die from it (huge infection) and the pain can be very debilitating.


Anyway, the point fo this poroposal is to make battles hard and challenging, but not so frustating that you men drop like flies. The negative HP and stabilise mechanic at least give you a chance to save your valued soldier from a 1-hit-kill.

[Sarin]

On the time scales we have here, dying from infection is impossible as soldier will be treated at hospital before it can cause fatal damage.

Burn will inflict shock that might knock you out, damage to mobility and function, pain, but it actually has less chance of killing you when hit outside of instant kill areas (heart, brain). Because unlike bullet, it will not by itself inflict internal bleeding, hydrostatic shock and bleeding from major blood vessels.

So, maybe in such system plasma and laser will have higher damage, but lower chance of critical wound while kinetics have lower damage but higher critical.
Explosives are another thing, they inflict damage from thermobaric effects (shockwave and heat) and fragmentation (kinetic damage like bullets). How these are distributed depend on distance from explosion and warhead construction.

Anyway, its interesting system, it might work.

[TrashMan]

On the time scales we have here, dying from infection is impossible as soldier will be treated at hospital before it can cause fatal damage.
Burn will inflict shock that might knock you out, damage to mobility and function, pain, but it actually has less chance of killing you when hit outside of instant kill areas (heart, brain)

It's still a wound, so infection not killing your outright doesn't matter much. Unless you don't have a hospital. In which case your poor soldier will face a slow death.

[DarthLuca]

Once we have a 'wounding' system the possibility of an 'Improved medikit' should be considered (with research) and later once alien tech's have been discovered and some of the advanced weapons have been experienced we should be able to research an 'Advanced Medikit'. Also means that the hospital should be better at healing too though.

[TrashMan]

You don't want the hospital to be too effective tough.
A player should have replacements and switch squad members, instead of constatnly running with one team.

[homunculus]

what are the recent posts supposed to mean?
it sounds like you want a "tick mark" at wounds being implemented, but you don't really want a change in gameplay.
at least that is the impression i get, maybe i misunderstood?

[TrashMan]

Eh? I don't think it's possible to implement wounds without changing gameplay.

What my postsare suppsoed ot mean isthat the wound system should be balanced to not be too harsh (hence the negative HP thing), but also not too simple/easy either.
If woulds and HP loss can be easily treated, then what's the point?

ADDENDUM: Since wounds would require more trooper rotations, them a bigger pool of available troopers woould be required.

[TrashMan]

666 posts...I am the devil


Aynwhoo, what I wanted to ask - when's the healing/medipack system stand in the pipeline?

It is such a grand thing that vastly enhances the tactical and strategic gameplay, and yet it's been on hold for as long as I remeber....

[ViolentAJ]

I like this proposed system, but it should probably be optional.

[TrashMan]

*BUMP*

[DarkRain]

As you might know, I'm trying to implement the Medikit and Wounds system in this proposal, and while I'm trying to stick with it, that doesn't mean I'm not open to suggestions, while some of your suggestions give me some ideas, your system feels a little overcomplicated to me, specially negative HP, I don't think that's going to happen.

[TrashMan]

I don't see whats complicated about that. Going into negative shouldn't bea problem programming-wise (a singe integer has a huge span going from -32560 to +32,767 .. or something like that), and keeping track of damage is simple math.

Frankly, it's hard to create a system that isn't either too punishing or too simple. The negative HP system is there to give you a chance to save a valuable soldier.
I consider that (and the medikit restirctions) to be the best part of my prosal.

Given that this is a turn-based game, there is no lack of processing power. Turn based games have that desticnt advantage over those real-time graphics hogs - they can use more complex and deep systems for calculating things

[DarkRain]

a singe integer has a huge span

Indeed, but the game is programmed assuming (and enforcing), in many places, that the HP will always fit within a byte (from 0 to 255), for such a feature it would probably be easier to increase actors HP by 50% and say that an actor with HP below 30% of its max HP falls unconscious.
But I must say that, in fact, it only makes sense that a heavily wounded soldier would fall unconscious, having soldiers with 3 HP left, fighting isn't very realistic.

Also, five modes for the medikit? Isn't that a little too much?