Medics (the dilemma)

[Moody]

So, medics classes and realism games have always had an odd relationship. The idea of healing someone in the field back to combat effective status is pretty far fetched except in rare cases with bullet grazes. So if a medic is going to be added in, it would have to be with the knowledge and understanding that whatever mechanic was put in place for healing would be a bit far fetched and game-y.

Most video games simplify the medical mechanics as much as possible, usually to the point of it simply being point and click. You guys can keep it simple as well (or not at all). It sure as hell is much less work. But I think that if you guys add in a very awesome and somewhat complex medical system it would not only be awesome, but would be one more thing to make you guys stand out from other realism based games.


Part 1: Healing in the field (very feasible, involves some work, but not too much imo)

When a player is injured they receive several negative effects based on where they were hit.

• Legs: Slower movement speed.
• Arms: Increased weapon sway.
• Torso: Extreme pain and bleeding.
• Head: Pain, disorientation (I'm assuming this would only happen if a pistol/smg round hits a helmet)

If the wound is sever, there will be shaking and shivering because of the pain and blood loss. When the player uses their personal bandages, it only removes those negative effects to a certain extent, and might not completely stem the bleeding. To be back to normal the medic must use first aid on the player. The medic gets a med-kit and morphine. When you go to heal someone, you simply press a button that inspects the other player's condition, and tells some side effects. This is to determine whether the pain is severe enough that you should administer morphine. Giving morphine to a player that doesn't need it will increase weapon sway and increase color saturation (just for effect). These effects wear off over time. Giving someone more than one shot should stop a person's heart (negative points for incorrect treatment or team killing with morphine to prevent trolling)


Part 2: Stabilizing a downed player (a large amount of work, but would be awesome)

When a player is very severely wounded, their body falls to the ground and plays some sort of wounded animation. To the player that is downed, it acts as if they had died (they soon respawn and can't be brought back to life). The point of this is to give the medic a chance to stabilize that person, and if done successfully, the team doesn't lose a ticket for that player's death.

Stabilizing someone could involve using bandages, morphine, epinephrine, plasma, and/or sulfanilamide (depending on how complex you want to go). It would require inspecting the person, which returns a text based response (ie, on the top right of you screen a text box comes up explaining the person's condition) and then giving the correct treatment (epi if barely conscious, morphine for pain, plasma if heavy bleeding, sulfanilamide to prevent infection, ect). The more accurately you treat the wound, the more tickets your team gets (maybe max 5 tickets if you are pristine)

Sorry for the wall of text. I know this is complicated, and I know it's a lot of work, but I think it would be awesome, and I don't think it would be too difficult of a learning curve. I've seen these types of suggestions for many other realism games, but none of them have gone the extra mile in this field yet. But I do understand that you guys have to set priorities and can't be unrealistic about your goals.

Thoughts?

Edit: If the gore goes far enough as to include severed limbs, tourniquets would be an awesome addition to my suggestion.

 

[VonMudra]

I think the main question is less "how do we implement wounding and healing", and more "how do we get people to play as a medic." The issue is, to be realistic in WW2, the most a medic can be armed with is a pistol (only on the ostfront and in the pacific did medics sometimes carry rifles). So the problem lies in how to convince a player that they will have more fun picking up a pistol only kit and run around slowly healing other players, than simply picking up a rifle and shooting at the enemy.

Beyond that, I'm not a coder, and I don't know the bounds/limitations of the engine. All your points are quite nice, especially as it would mean the wounded player not magically rejoining combat (cases of badly wounded men fighting on are famous for a reason: they're so damn rare. Tis why they win pretty medals). But as I said, the main issue is implementation in a way that players will go "Hey, I want to be a medic."

 

[Maniche]

Being an educated Medic from the military with an Advanced Medic-course last year, these are things I've always wanted to see but never got. Having a realistic approach to the Medic-class will truly make the class shine! It might be a too advanced feature at the given time of OVERLORD, but I'm confident that with enough time and perfection, it could be something you could see in the game, as we strive to create the realistic and immersive game we promise to deliver.

Your different suggestions are both very good and well-thought off, as the mechanic is easy to understand but would still make being a Medic a quite demanding (but highly rewarding) task. The idea of rewarding a soldier that plays a Medic well must be the way to go for it to be successful; too often do we see the Medic-class being spammed in Battlefield 3 because of the one-button-res. ability, which frankly is (as you said) not very realistic.

Having a system similar to what I used on my live-dummies (actual people wearing laser-equipment with small pocket PCs attached) during our platoon assault a few months back (204 soldiers against 60 enemy soldiers, tanks, Quads, amphibious, jeeps, and the good old marching), is a system that builds on the same principle as the ones your propose now; I was carrying a hand-held PC with a LCD-monitor that I would manually plot-in my treatment based on the information the soldier or his suit was giving me. So yeah, this is something I can relate too indeed, and in my mind this would be the ideal system for an advanced (and realistic) Medic-class to ever be featured. Might take some time, but why not?

And Mudra; Moody already made a good idea of having a small "reward" consisting of perhaps 5 or so tickets and/or have your team not loose any tickets because of a death. In my mind that sounds about it for "convincing" anyone to pick the Medic-class.

Maniche

 

[SwadianFC]

I think the main question is less "how do we implement wounding and healing", and more "how do we get people to play as a medic." The issue is, to be realistic in WW2, the most a medic can be armed with is a pistol (only on the ostfront and in the pacific did medics sometimes carry rifles). So the problem lies in how to convince a player that they will have more fun picking up a pistol only kit and run around slowly healing other players, than simply picking up a rifle and shooting at the enemy.

Beyond that, I'm not a coder, and I don't know the bounds/limitations of the engine. All your points are quite nice, especially as it would mean the wounded player not magically rejoining combat (cases of badly wounded men fighting on are famous for a reason: they're so damn rare. Tis why they win pretty medals). But as I said, the main issue is implementation in a way that players will go "Hey, I want to be a medic."

I definitely agree with Maniche in that I don't think getting people to play as medic will be as difficult as one might think. If the class provides a tangible benefit to the team (in restoring/saving tickets), then teams with better medics have the advantage.

I would agree with you in that it might not be as playable, and that's a valid concern. I, for one, liked running around with the officer as a radio operator, but there should be some draw to play as a medic. Bear in mind, the draw could some sort of meta reward (a gold star next to your handle on the scoreboard for experienced medics for instance) as opposed to gameplay that may be difficult to implement.

 

[CanadianSquirrel]

good idea of having a small "reward" consisting of perhaps 5 or so tickets

Or maybe having a static bonus: For that i mean, If you have a medic near you (Let's say 20 meters) You win a Courage/Accuracy Bonus, and the much Troops the Medic saves, The stronger the Bonus gets ?

Cons - You could just cheat it and Teamhit your dudes and let the medic heal them, now your medic has a much bigger Bonus for no efforts

 

[Moody]

I don't think it would be difficult to get people to play the medic class. I think making it complex and challenging to use would actually make it much more attractive than being a normal rifleman. It would be awesome follow a squad and clean up after their mess.

It is an issue when it comes to medics not having more than a pistol. This might be something you guys could sacrifice just for the sake of making an enjoyable medic class. I don't think it would be that bad to give medics a K98 or Lee Enfield. Maybe it could even have limited ammo, so that the medic is encouraged to use it only when needed.

Maybe it would be interesting to make it so that you don't get points for killing a medic, so that in the heat of battle people would decide to shoot at the enemies shooting back at them over the guy that's just treating the wounded. I don't know about static bonuses though. It wouldn't be bad if it was very minor, but I think it would work better if having a medic around would be a big buff to moral instead (what I mean by the moral system is post #10 in this thread http://www.twmod.org/general-discussion/2248-viewbob-flinching-recoil.html#post29200).

As far as the teamhit problem, healing an injured player shouldn't increase moral or give any effect. It should only give the medic points, and purely be used to heal friendly players and get them back up to combat effectiveness. As far as team wounding so that the medic can heal them and get tickets for the team... First of all, that would be considered team killing, so it would mean lots of negative points and possibly getting kicked or worse. But if that's not enough, you could make it so that when friendlies are team killed their bodies always die and never go into wounded mode. The latter would be the better option since it would make team killing even more harmful, and encourage people to really watch their fire.

 

[Nate]

Maybe a medic could only have supplies to treat 6 people or so and would have to scavenge the medkits off of the dead as to prevent him from being the amazing mr medic with port and starboard attachments (if you be diggin spongebob squarepants you are on my level haha). A medic could also get supplies from a firebase foxhole (something I had mentioned in a previous thread). This gives the medic plenty of running to do and could give him that feeling of running back and forth under fire to save his comrades. So rewarding medic feels rewarding and still has to get through the lines to save more people if he is really bein put to good use.

I just saw mr. pinkmans post and to support the medic with pistol idea I would say that the medics hazardous job of running to wounded soldiers would be much more intense with just a pistol than with a rifle. Gives you that feeling that you must use your intelligence to move at the right times and right places.

2nd edit : Just thought that maybe the medic doesnt always succeed in "reviving" the soldier. Depending on where he is hit and the time it has taken since he was shot maybe the percentage of death increases even though the medic is using his supplies. This makes it a bit more realistic in a way because now the medic must think "do i wanna cross the fields of fire and waste medical supplies and that man still may die? Hell yeah he is my teammate" Obviously less serious wounds that are treated right away are almost always going be cured. Also it would make for some dramatic moments trying to stop the bleeding under heavy fire only to have the poor fellow bleed out. Once again something to think about.

 

[Moody]

Limited supplies and running back and forth to get more supplies would be cool. I think giving the medic a stamina buff would be a very good idea, to help with the running around and getting ammo, and to make it possible to do epic mad dashes across open land to get to the wounded player.

You have convinced me of the pistol sir, I do agree with you that running around with a Webley would be quite intense. But to further support that I would still push that medics should give no points or credit when killed, and that maybe they shouldn't even cost a ticket when they die. That would help players decide who the real problem is in a firefight, and would add a bit of dynamic to the ROE. It would be pretty awesome to have a friendly squad lay suppressive fire and force the enemy to turn their attention away from the medic.

It would definitely be awesome if you don't always succeed. I don't know my medical stuff very well, but wouldn't epi and/or morphine increase blood flow a lot? So maybe if you inject someone with epi before you bandage and tourniquet them, they will bleed out faster.

It would also be really awesome if after you are done treating them you get a message that tells you how you did and whether they survived after evac. ie, you successfully bandage and stabilize someone, but you forgot to use your sulf powder, and so you get a message that tells you the wound later became infected and they had to amputate the guy's leg. Or if you did an awesome job it says the soldier fully recovered and returned to his family. Or maybe you stabilized him, but you only used one bandage to conserve supplies, so it says he bled to death before making it to the field hospital.

I think it would also be cinematic, and almost traumatizing if it was possible for an enemy to kill your patient while you were treating him. But to help make it happen less often, it would be interesting to give a very small negative to points when you do that (just as a slap on the wrist type thing, since that's a terrible thing to do irl).

Edit: I like what you said about having to prioritize who to heal. Is it really worth wasting all that equipment over the guy with wounds on both legs and in the gut who will probably bleed to death before I can do anything? Or do I just heal the guy with the punctured lung and move on? The more I talk about this possible medic class the more I think I'll be playing medic only for a while.

 

[Maniche]

I agree, limited supplies and running back for more would be ideal, and not to mention a risk in itself with a high reward and at the same time be extraordinary fun! Making it alive across a field with gun blazing, to find your mate laying on his back with (to be) excruciating pain, and then be able to save him somehow, really appeals to me.

Morphine won't make a patient bleed 1) more 2) or easier, as it doesn't contain 1) any substance that acts as a blood-thinner 2) as it lowers the heart-rate and thus the blood-pressure, making it less likely that a patient would bleed easier. On the epi I'm a bit more green as I haven't studied it through my course, sorry, but e.g giving a patient pure adrenaline (EpiPens for instance) could trigger increased blood-flow because of increased heart-rate and respiratory rate, but at the same time could actually lower the risk of bleeding because it acts as a stimuli of what we call "smooth muscles" that normally are to be found for instance around arteries - epi (or adrenaline) could make these muscles contract, which again would make any arteries tighter and thus make less blood flow through it. You'd be surprised of how much any artery/vein could contract/dilate, haha!

Other than that, you should only expect the use of adrenaline/morphine as either pain re-leavers and/or medicine for e.g astma/cardio cascular issues/other trauma, and _not_ (can't express this enough, you can kill someone with a high dose, haha!) as a secondary treatment for hemorrhage, as tourniquets/bandages/Martin's Bind etc. cover that one more effectively without any risk of side-effects (too much morphine could make your respiratory functions fail, and you'd choke yourself from, well, lingering in the drug-Heaven, haha!).

A normal procedure in modern times would be to follow the MARCH/ABCDE (which is both a treatment and an Evac-prep.), which will cover any critical (and "normal") trauma a soldier would experience, and prep him for later treatment off-field, from gunshot-wounds, blast-wounds, broken bones, head-trauma, hypo/hyper-termi, intoxication and so forth.

Agreed! Having a such a system to pop-up after each treatment will massively boost a persons efforts in doing a good job, at least for me it would. Perhaps something alongside "Person X got massive hemorrhage from right tight; you successfully stopped the bleeding using a tourniquet and bandages! Reward: Next friendly-death will cost only half a ticket", which (based on what you suggestion earlier) will rewards a good Medic as well as reward any good deeds done.

And yes, having a system to "punish" an enemy-soldier for killing a Medic would be ideal, as frankly, they're 1) pretty much unarmed having only a e.g pistol as you say 2) it's against the RoE (though pre-1949 there wasn't any written law to it) to kill any Medic 3) it's unethical to kill anyone trying to help another human being, whilst being unarmed (which is the case at many scenarios) 4) there was actually a general agreement from what I remember, between German and Allied Forces to not shot any Medic that was currently care-taking another soldier.

A clever system on how to punish one is another thing though, not sure how you'd go about that?

Maniche

 

[Moody]

The problem is that the medic still gets a gun they can use at will, so if a punishment was put in place, there would need to be some sort of way to figure out ROE. I think the best way to do this would be to:

1. Give medic an unarmed mode. When they are in unarmed mode, if they are injured or killed, the enemy player receives punishment. Using medical supplies counts as being unarmed.
2. If the medic has his pistol out, or has had his pistol out in the past 30 seconds, it is within the ROE to kill him without punishment (but the medic still doesn't count as a ticket).
3. Make it so that if the medic gets too close to the enemy (30-50 meters?) it is within the ROE to kill him (this is to prevent troll medics from mixing with enemy forces and pulling the pistol out when no one is looking).

Possible punishments:

• Lots of negative points
• Costs your team tickets (3 tickets maybe?)
• Increased respawn timer when you die (+30 or 60 seconds)

I think that the best solution is, instead of all this ROE stuff, making it so that killing an enemy medic costs your team a two tickets. This creates a dilema, do you shoot the medic and bite the tickets, or risk letting the medic earn 5 tickets for the enemy team.

 

[Nate]

Maybe the player and close teammates that shot the medic while treating a person would receive a slight moral penalty (slightly desaturated screen like RO 2) and those who are on the side of the medic and are close to the incident will have less weapon sway and a slight stamina and a very slight speed increase (to represent the frustration with the breaking of the RoE by the enemy and the vigor to eliminate the villains that did such a thing.)

And with the regards to treating the wounded. Maybe if they are only incapacitated from a minor or slightly serious wound they can be healed on the spot to go back into the fight. However if they are critically wounded a medic or another player could carry them to a triage center (possibly the same one where medics get their supplies from). Although this wounded individual does not return to the fight the tickets are not lost or not as many are lost.

So if it were in a chart it may look like this.

Minor incapacitation wound (Shot in thigh or maybe side) treated within
15 seconds- Player regains control of wounded man when treated with no penalty
30 seconds- Player regains control of wounded man however there are slight penalties for wound type (leg=slower jog)
every 5 seconds after that without treatment the penalties become greater.
After 1 minute the wounded player must be taken back to a triage center and the tickets are restored. However the player who was wounded must respawn.
After one minute and thirty seconds the wounded player dies.

Medium Incapacitation Wound treated within
15 seconds- No penalty to wounded player when "revived"
every 5 seconds after that the penalties to the area increase by a percentage just like the minor incapacitation wound.
After 30 seconds the wounded must be taken back to triage to restore tickets.
After one minute without action the wounded player dies.

Major Incapacitation wound treated within
10 seconds (Pretty much medic has to be there when this happens) Wounded player is revived with a 20 % penalty to whatever was injured.
After 10 seconds the wounded player must be carried back to a triage center to regain tickets.
After 30 seconds without action the wounded player dies.

Insta kill shots (head shots, shots to heart and center chest area)
No comin back from that.

When player is wounded they have the option of waiting for the medic until the point where they can't be revived and must be taken to triage. If player chooses to opt out and die so they can respawn then they just faint and if they are taken back to triage then tickets can be regained.

Keep in mind it will be hard to take soldiers back from a fight under fire and conscious decisions have to be made of whether or not it is worth it to spare the manpower. Any player can carry a man back to triage but only after a medic has seen the wounded soldier. (this is for balancing purposes so you don't have a team that never loses tickets.

sorry for the book btw

 

[Nate]

sorry for the double post but this is kinda seperate from what my last post was...
Having my system or any where the medics play an important role could bring up cool situations such as.
4 men in an 8 man squad are wounded and a medic is there to help. The medic can't help everyone so he has to decided. Do I help one man or just check all of them so the rest of the squad can carry them back to regain the tickets. Or is it too important to abandon this position so the medic treat one or two people and the other two are just **** out of luck. Obviously this would be a complex system but there is actually more complexity in the players decision than the system which I think is that golden area of a game feature that gives more options and tactics than the actual feature puts in front of you.

 

[Moody]

My have a couple of problems with your suggestions, purely from a gameplay standpoint. I think you're going a bit too far with reviving incapacitated players. The truth is that if it's anything more than a minor leg/arm wound, there's little chance that you can be made combat effective. At that point, field treatment is more about stabilizing the casualty than about getting them back up to combat status. I realize that this is a game, but I think that it would be better for the game if casualties are treated like casualties, and injuries are treated like injuries.

My second problem (again just from a gameplay standpoint) is the idea of having to take the bodies back to a FOB or base of some sort to get the tickets. It's a lot of work, a lot of effort, a lot of obstacles in the way, all for 5 tickets. I would argue that with all that time and work it would be more worthwhile to go rifleman and kill 5 enemies.

I think it would be better to simply have casualties on the ground, you treat them, and when you're done you tag them for evac and move on.

Just my opinion.

 

[Nate]

Well the devs have said Gameplay>Realism and if all the medic does is run around treating injuries to gain 5 points for tickets than the tactics that come from that are run around treat casualties that will have no effect on the immediate fighting so you then get 5 tickets. Im not saying I dont like your idea its just I think it separates the medic from the other team members too much. Basically you have two games goin on in a way. 1 everyone fighting for objectives and 2 a medic who is treating people to get points back.

Obviously if you only have 30 seconds to revive someone and you are 300 yards away then clearly that person wont make it. It really is set up so most of the time you will not be able to revive everyone or even a quarter of the people injured but it makes a medic a valuable team member because he can replenish a squad member who is hurt. Yes it is not fully realistic but keep in mind that it is primarily an idea to promote a medic to think tactically and use his ability to help the team the best.

Also my chart before was more of a basic outline that can be downgraded just for injuries not incapacitations. I was just trying to demonstrate how there would be varying degrees of injury that could be treated that would provide different benefits.

But now that you mention it carrying people back to a triage unit may be too much in which case your idea of just tag em for evac is the answer.

Honestly I believe a synthesis of our two ideas would be ballin as hell. It will just take some discussion (like this one here) to iron out the kinks so then the devs can do what they like with it.

 

[Moody]

I'm not fully convinced. The truth is that medics were very separate from everyone else, in fact they were considered very valuable and always kept behind the lines, brought up only when needed. It's a bit of a hollywood thing to have a medic in every squad, and to see them running out in the middle of fire to heroically save a friend. Usually it was only 1 medic per platoon, with maybe some sort of assistant. I understand that gameplay takes precedence over realism, but one thing that the dev team seems to be striving for is high authenticity, and for a medic to be anywhere close to authentic they would have to give medics that feeling of being there for a completely different purpose. Treating casualties is never about the immediate effect on the overall fighting, but about keeping up moral and saving lives. If a medic is really good he can probably save 20 lives in one round, that gives your team 100 extra tickets, that is a very big difference.

Don't get the wrong idea, the system you're talking about isn't bad, far from it. The problem is that it's been done before, and is not authentic.

The way to make medic not boring is give a healthy mix of risk reward incentives, and a complex diagnosis and treatment system. Force the medic to get to casualties fast before they bleed out, communicate with squad mates to secure the casualty as safe as possible. Medics will see action, and will have to work as fast as possible under pressure and maybe even gunfire. I can just imagine frantically trying to patch up a guy while a brit takes pot shots at me.

 

[Nate]

Ahh I see what you have been saying this whole time now. Yeah your idea is definitely the way to go because if anything it doesn't make the enemy say "what? i just shot that dude like 5 seconds ago and now he's fine". Were you thinking of having those reports about how well you treated the casualties after the match?

Also any system like this means only one medic and if that medic dies there maybe should be a small cooldown. If anything this would just encourage medics to stay away from the firefights like you suggested and just help those they can get to. Plus considering that the devs already are having each player have bandages those small injuries can just be taken care of by them obviously with the penalties associated with their minor injury.

Moody has made me a believer