Medic system

[Fungwu]

Here are my thoughts about how medics and reviving work in the game:

The current system is too forgiving. Basically getting shot is no big deal in some circumstances. You can poke your head out, get hit, and then in a few seconds be back to full health if you have a medic.

Additionally a whole squad can be taken out, and brought back to life without too much effort and be back in the fight with only some time lost.

Here is my suggestion to improve things:

Every loadout will have an epipen along with the current bandage.

Medic as a spawnable kit will be removed and replaced as a requestable kit with a limit of 2, but no timer on respawning after it is lost.

Rifleman specialist will carry the squad's medical supplies and have 6 bandages and 3 epipens.

Increase critically wounded timer to 5 minutes and give unlimited medic calls.

The idea is this:

If someone gets wounded in your squad it is now a bigger deal. Since only bandages are available, and the squads supply of bandages is limited, getting wounded too much will quickly deplete the squads medical supplies.

If you get critically wounded, everyone has one epipen, this represents being pulled to safety. But once the soldier is revived, he is now a liability. It will take at least 4 bandages to bring him back to full health.

The result of these changes is that a squad that takes either too many wounds, or too many critical wounds will be left with no bandages and many bleeding soldiers.


This leaves 2 options:

1: Falling back to a forward operation base to secure more medical supplies to heal the wounded.

2: Calling in one of the 2 dedicated medics to heal the squad, this is like calling in a medivac. Additionally since the timer for revive is now 5 minutes there is a better chance a medic can make it from far away to pick up fallen soldiers.

Medic will be limited to 2, but the kit should have no timer on respawn so the medic can be dedicated and get another kit immediately if he is killed.

Under the current system you could shoot at a squad and kill half of them, but with a medic they could potentially be all back up within a minute or two and without penalty.

With the changes outlined above, even if all casualties were revived, some wounded would be unable to fully heal, and the squad would have to fall back to get more medical supplies, this would represent bringing the wounded back to a field hospital.


Basically if you consider the changes made to requesting kits, spawning, and repairing vehicles over the past couple of patches, the above suggestions would bring the medic system the same sort of realism focused overhaul.

Thoughts?

[>para<]

to easy i like the hard way

[Tirak]

Wrong spot, moved to suggestions forums. Carry on.

[Axel]

I like the idea that everyone carry epipens and there's a limited amount of heal, but I'm going to stay conservative here and say that limiting the medic kit will be enough.

[Fungwu]

I like the idea that everyone carry epipens

This is what I had in mind:

You and your buddy run across a road. You make it, but your buddy gets hit and goes down.

What do you do?

Well, if you run out and hit him with the epipen and then have him follow you, coughing and bleeding to a safe spot.

That to me is like going out and picking him up and dragging him to cover.

What next?

Well, you give him your bandage so he doesn't bleed to death. So you try to stop the bleeding and stabilize him so he doesn't bleed to death.

But he is still bleeding out and needs a proper medic. So after you have dragged the wounded guy to cover, and stopped him from bleeding to death immediately, that is when the dedicated medic gets called and your squad holds position until he gets there to fully heal your guy.

So under that concept you could even give 10 epipens to every soldier, since all it represents is dragging the wounded to cover, the bandages are what brings him back to full health and lets him return to the fight, and those are tightly limited.

[Orthas]

It's a good idea. Could also work with keeping the current medic system but taking medicbag away. So that getting people up is no problem but keeping them alive when wounded is unless there is some serious supplies available. And emphasizing the importance of supplies is always good.

And we do have unlimited medic calls. Right click the give-up button.

[Rudd]

give unlimited medic calls.

right click give up and you keep calling

I rather like the suggestion you've made tbh, I would need to playtest it to see though.

Gonna be hard fitting an epipen in to the rifleman kits though. (and might actually be good to give a new 'weapon' and animation to 'help comrade' or something)

[myles]

Increase critically wounded timer to 5 minutes and give unlimited medic calls.

you are alrady able to do this by clicking right click on the sucide button
but anway about your idea i dont think they shiuld use it beacuse everyone in real life dont carry epipen and know medic skills

[Tarantula]

yea needs a test but i think this is a good suggestion, i like

[Fungwu]

Correct me if I am wrong, but right clicking on give up does not put your position on the medics' map like left clicking, right?

It's a good idea. Could also work with keeping the current medic system but taking medicbag away

I was thinking along those lines, but I figured rather than just neutoring one kit, it would be better to just give extra medical supplies to rifleman specialist and make that kit more useful. So for instance you would have one soldier with a grapple hook, breaching gun, and extra medical supplies, but no scope, grenades, or extra ammo.

but anway about your idea i dont think they shiuld use it beacuse everyone in real life dont carry epipen and know medic skills

If you read my post a little closer, reviving a fallen soldier is more to represent pulling them out of harms way rather than any sort of medical procedure. After you have revived someone, you have to lead them to safety, and they are bleeding out and almost dead. So it is not like they are back in the fight. Instead, now they are a liability that you have to look after.

To actually heal them fully would either require a medic, which would be limited to 2 per team, or use bandages which would be scarce within a squad.

If you had a squad with 1 squad leader, 4 other kits, and 1 rifleman specialist, you would have 13 bandages.

It takes 4 to bring a critically wounded soldier back to nearly full health. So, ammo bags notwithstanding, the ability of anyone to revive is held in check by the limited amount of bandages to actually return them to fighting shape.

With limited healing, even getting shot in the arm will be a pain in the ***, because eventually the squad will be out of bandages with people who still need healing, this is where things get interesting, as they need to call out for a doctor or find supplies.

[Tarantula]

I really like the idea +1
This could mean dedicated medevac and Medic squads

I like the idea but maybe you could change the model and name of epipen to something else.

[Gleger]

I really like the idea.

Also, adding to this medic system, having a deployable Field Hospital (using the same rules as any assets around a FOP) that could be built and it would simulate having doctors at an outpost. Limit those to 2 per map also. They could use the tent models and just add a + on it.

Anyways, the medic system does need to get tweaked in my opinion, and Fungwu's idea is a great start.

[Fungwu]

I like the idea but maybe you could change the model and name of epipen to something else

I think the first thing is to find if it is better to give unlimited revives to everybody and just limit healing, or maybe it will be better to limit both, and give the average soldier just one epipen.

If reviving is unlimited than the current resuscitate weapon could just be tweaked so that it revives. If reviving is better to be limited, than keeping the epipen might be fine.

Another idea that crossed my mind was making the deploy time for a bandage ~30 seconds. So it would actually take a considerable time to bandage a wounded soldier rather than the current couple of seconds.

Think of a second about the impact here, for someone to drop 4 bandages to a freshly revived soldier would take two minutes of dedicated bandage deploying and dropping, so the squad is even more slowed down by the wounded.

Additionally, unless 4 guys drop their bandages simultaneously, the guy would probably bleed out enough in the 2 minutes that he would need a fifth bandage to fully heal.

The overall aim here is to make being shot:

A bad thing for you

A very bad thing for your squad who has to look out for you

Also the teamwork element would be greatly expanded.

If a guy goes down, you can't just call for a medic and then expect your mate to be painlessly back on his feet within a minute with the effort of only one soldier.

Actually reviving him will be easier, since anyone can do it, but after he is up your troubles really begin.

You need to get him to a safe place, start treating his bleeding immediately, and organize your squad to defend, because you know this will take awhile.

Then you need to analyze how much medical supplies you have, and whether you need to fallback for supplies (which would represent carrying the guy out to a medical station where you could hand him over)

Or call in a dedicated medic, which obviously could entail many difficulties depending on where you are and what travel options are available.

I don't want to get too far ahead of myself, but I think an update to the scoring system would help facilitate a change in the mentality of the players.

My first idea here would be to make getting shot and then revived equal 1 ticket and 1 death on the scoreboard and getting shot and giving up would equal 5 deaths and 5 tickets.

The theory behind these point changes goes like this:

Squad A is hit by enemy fire and loses 3 guys. Since bringing those 3 back to full health and out of harms way would be a big chore, they just give up and respawn on the rally point. However the scoring system would penalize them for unrealistically leaving wounded men behind and they have 15 deaths added to their squad score.

Squad B loses 3 men, and decides to fallback, regroup with another squad and retrieve their fallen comrades, possibly calling for the teams medic to assist them. Ultimately they are successful, and thus only lose 3 tickets, as opposed to Squad A's 15.

The importance of having even a revive equal 1 death is so that being wounded meaningful represents a soldier being taken out of action, even if in the game he eventually is fully healed.

If the action of abandoning fallen comrades is greatly discouraged, cooperation not only between players, but between squads and ultimately the whole team will be greatly rewarded.

Imagine one team where all the squads run off on their own. Any squad that got wiped out would cost the team 30 tickets, and the chances of retrieving the fallen with the team spread out would of course be slim.

On the other team all the squads work together, and if one is wiped out, then the others fight their way to the position and try to rescue them. This approach, even if the actual kill ratio wasn't in their favor, would leave the team that plays together far ahead in tickets.

Also, adding to this medic system, having a deployable Field Hospital (using the same rules as any assets around a FOP) that could be built and it would simulate having doctors at an outpost. Limit those to 2 per map also. They could use the tent models and just add a + on it.

I had this same idea, but I could not work out all the kinks. If the firebase was under attack the defenders would have an unrealistic supply of constant healing.

I figured that FOBs have supply crates around them, and you can get bandages from those, so in approximation it works out as a field hospital, without an undue advantage when you are defending.

Also, since for the average player a bandage takes a full ammo slot, and even big ammo crates are limited, using a FOB to heal would create supply problems if too many people on the team tried to heal there(which is a good thing). Thus I think, getting bandages from crates would be a better stand in for a field hospital than an actual structure.

[Rudd]

you are alrady able to do this by clicking right click on the sucide button
but anway about your idea i dont think they shiuld use it beacuse everyone in real life dont carry epipen and know medic skills

iirc all soldiers are taught basic life saver first aid, with opportunities to complete extra courses.

Remember the epipen is not actually carried into battle, its a parody of the realistic treatment of casualties with adrenaline and other pharmacological interventions via intravenous administration.

[llPANCHOll]

I can see some merit in this suggestion..
It think a full squad should be given enough bandages to get 1.5 of there members back up and to full health if they go down.

As far as the requestable medic kits, I am all for it but I think there should be more than 2, and to keep these from being exploited, they should be unarmed, epipens still harm opposing forces correct?? Perhaps give them restrainers on insurgency maps.

[Fungwu]

"As far as the requestable medic kits, I am all for it but I think there should be more than 2, and to keep these from being exploited, they should be unarmed, exept for say a knife or restrainer."

That is interesting, I hadn't thought of taking away their guns.

I am not sure what would be best, a normal unscoped rifle as now, some sort of personal defense weapon, like a pistol, or nothing at all.

Maybe some one else can share their thoughts on the ups and downs of this.

In terms of numbers I thought 2 kits with no respawn time would be enough for a small medivac squad with 2 medics and some pilots, drivers, support etc. My reluctance in having more is that there would be more medic kits available than dedicated medics, and a player could grab an available kit, heal his squad, then drop it.

So I think the number of kits has to be linked closely with how many people are willing to be dedicated medic, and I think two is a good number to start at.

[Solver]

Very solid thinking, the only problem I can see is that those dedicated medics would essentially have to lonewolf. They can't work with a normal infantry squad and respond to calls - no squad leader wants a member who just runs off because he's needed elsewhere. If the two medics form a squad for themselves, it's still not much of a squad as they would likely be better off splitting up to cover more area with their healing ability. And that would make gameplay very difficult for the medics, no convenient rally points, hard to get transportation most of the time unless there's, say, a LB pilot that dedicates himself to moving the medics around (but would then not have the time to transport other infantry probably). Maybe give the medics their own transport vehicles (medevac) that would only be usable by the dedicated Medic class?

[Fungwu]

You raise some good points solver.

In my experience, chopper pilots usually transport infantry in the beginning of the round, and then their activity starts to really drop off once the FOBs get built and rally points get deployed. So I think flying medivac would actually give choppers a lot more to do on maps like Jabal, Barracuda, and Muttra. On a map like Kashan or Qwai, I hardly ever see people deploying by chopper. So 2 dedicated medivac choppers on those maps would be add a whole new dimension for pilots.

The medics might have to lone wolf, but I see it like this: Many times on a server the squads are all full, and maybe I am not too interested in putting 100% attention into playing. Right now players like that mill around, try to one man vehicles, grab sniper rifles, etc. Having a dedicated medic would give lonewolf players something team oriented and useful to do.

You could create an "ambulance" Humvee, similar to the engineer jeeps of the last patch that only medics can drive. This would give lone wolf players some significant ability to reach their teammates, but since it would be combat ineffective they would have to focus on their role.

I am sure some creative and dedicated players could find all sorts of ways to implement the medic class in the field. Maybe someone lazy can just hang around a firebase, and heal wounded as they filter in from the field. Or maybe someone will really get into the idea, and get 2-3 guys to go with them as they visit squads in the field to heal them.

Ultimately the medic is not totally necessary as squads can revive and heal without them, however it does provide an outlet for motivated and ingenious players to really excel and help their team.

I think the DEVs have shown a "build it and they will come" strategy to realism and teamwork can really succeed. Rather than talk down to the players, each release asks more and more from them, in terms of tactics and teamwork.

So I think rather than thinking of all the problems increasing the complexity creates, I see all the opportunities for a deeper, more immersive, more team oriented game that changing the medic system can create.

As we have seen with deviation, sometimes balancing needs several releases to get right, but with a solid idea the effort can really pay off.

[Tarantula]

I say they should be unarmed, meaning the squad they're coming to heal would have to cover them.
Also new medevac vehicles would be good for the medics.
"you have to be a medic to use thie vehicle"
I support this idea 100%, maybe some DEVS could take a look see.

[Remoted-Bomb]

2 medics isn't enough for 30 players.

I'm also thinking that some people are taking the medic kit just for fun, and then not reviving people. That would make the whole team fall.. so i think there is to much responsibility for 1 person (even if he is not playing around, he can still be a bad medic and just die).

Also, when there is infantry maps? What is he supposed to do then, when it will take 15 minutes to go there.

Last thing.. if a full squad is bleeding, and the medic estimates 10 minutes. They have a rally next to them. I think that squad would choose to suicide and just respawn instead of waiting.