UFO:Alien Invasion
General => Discussion => Topic started by: TrashMan on April 24, 2012, 12:12:04 pm
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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666 posts...I am the devil :P
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....
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I like this proposed system, but it should probably be optional.
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*BUMP*
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As you might know, I'm trying to implement the Medikit and Wounds system in this proposal (http://ufoai.org/wiki/index.php/Gameplay_Proposals/Medikits), 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.
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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
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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?
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Sorry trasman but I think I prefer DarkRain's solution using numbers greater than 0, it sits easier as I imagine it playing the game. also I like the old XCOM 3 button system it's more intuitive, but it might be handy if you can set how many doses you can use in one go, for example if the wounded soldier has only 1 critical then just 1 point from the med kit is needed, but if the soldier has 3 crits then the player can select to use 3 doses in one go that uses slightly less than the TUs it normally takes to do 3 separate doses
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There was one part about healing that bothered me. It took forever to heal up soldiers to full health in the hospital, but on the battlefield I could heal someone up to full health in a few seconds with a med pack. Seems to me that someone in the hospital should realize that the away teams have med packs and use them a little more. :)
If you really want suspense, get rid of med packs all together. That would give the hospitals more use, which as the game is right now, there is no need to take up a base space for them. Balance wise, I'd prefer to see med packs gone and the hospitals heal a little faster. Then there would be need to swap chars out more, and bringing home a wounded char would be suspsenful. Right now, there's no need to swap chars out because they can be healed to full health before bug hunting, assuming you survive the initial onslaught.
The other issue is that med packs are unlimited in ability. The original XCOM had them as a consumable, and had to be replaced and only had one or two charges on them, depending on the wounds of the chars. It might be worth putting that model in the game as well so they have to be managed a bit more carefully and are not as powerful as they are now.
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Perhaps the medpacks needn't restore hitpoints at all, only heal bleeding wounds to keep a trooper from dying?
That would certainly change gameplay, but it would seem 10x more realistic - front line field medics don't heal anyone back to normal, they just keep you alive for the time it takes to get you into a hospital.
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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.
Well, you can always use another variable if going into negatives is not an option.
you got soldeir max health, soldeir current health.
So if hte soldier is reduced below 0 HP, the difference goes into the new variable.
So a soldeir with 30HP gets hit for 50 damage - new variable is now 20.
If that variable becomes greater than maxHP/2 the soldier dies.
Or you could increase HP across the board, but I like this system better, as it clearly differentiates between health and life. You also have to ask yourself what HP represent.
Does 0 HP represent death or does it represent inability to fight further?
Without defining that, talking about realism is pointless. And soldier with 3HP left still fighting? Not as unrealistic as you might think. There have been cases of people who have been shot 100 times (no, not a typo), still fighting.
The whole point of negative HP is there to give you a bufer zone and time to save a soldier. Also to cleary destinguish them fron normal HP. Again, it can be done with a single bar - altough in that case I'd propose the lower part (that would correspond to negative HP) be shaded differently to give you a better idea of your soldiers state.
Also, five modes for the medikit? Isn't that a little too much?
Not really. Is it relaistc for a magical medikit to have super-healing abilities? Does it use magical space energy to heal different types of affliction?
How does it heal? I assume a medikit has advanced diagnostic tools, and a supply of drugs and medicines. But having a single "resource" to heal all wounds and all afflictions? By what principle?
Painkillers and stimulants are not the same thing. I don't see a medikit magicly generating them out of thin air or turning one into another. If you have gauze, alchocol, painkiller and other items in a medikit, once you expend the gauze, you still have the painkiller. It doesn't turn into more gauze.
Which is why I proposed them being separate.
You could combine treat and heal into one I guess.
And stabilise could be implemented as 2-3 uses of Heal/Treat .. that puts it back to 3.
Also I like the old XCOM 3 button system it's more intuitive, but it might be handy if you can set how many doses you can use in one go, for example if the wounded soldier has only 1 critical then just 1 point from the med kit is needed, but if the soldier has 3 crits then the player can select to use 3 doses in one go that uses slightly less than the TUs it normally takes to do 3 separate doses
How is that better?
You shouldn't be able to heal a heavily woulded soldeir quckly. You wants 1 click to take care of 3 criticals in one turn? That kinds cheapns hte severy of the wounds.
Also, what I propose is kinda liek the X-Com system.
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Well, you can always use another variable if going into negatives is not an option.
I think you missed the point here...
Is it relaistc for a magical medikit to have super-healing abilities? Does it use magical space energy to heal different types of affliction?
Oh, yeah! Congratulation! What a sillyness! You are speaking about a "bug" which we wanna replace with a correct implementation like it was a feature!
-geever
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I think you missed the point here...
Oh, yeah! Congratulation! What a sillyness! You are speaking about a "bug" which we wanna replace with a correct implementation like it was a feature!
-geever
Mayhaps you missed the point. I was reffering to a medikit having 5-6 charges of "something" that is universally used for all kinds of afflictions.
I'd much rather have 2-3 charges of something for X, 2-3 charges fo something for Y.