Silly but interesting idea.

[Nicholas]

Now I know theres going to be AI tank loaders, and people are talking about AI MG loaders, but what if there were AI medics that could take dead men off the battlefield in strechers?

I know it would take new gameplay mechanics, but it would be an interesting alternative to bodies magically disapearing into thin air....

 

[Attilaken]

Interesting
But I'm afraid if civilians are a no go, medics will not be possible as well because realistically you would be able to shoot em. And who is going to take away the medics getting shot ? Could become pretty messy

 

[Nicholas]

Interesting
But I'm afraid if civilians are a no go, medics will not be possible as well because realistically you would be able to shoot em. And who is going to take away the medics getting shot ? Could become pretty messy

Maybe they wouldn't go pickup bodies as soon as they drop, they would wait until the fighting moved out of that part of the map, and maybe people wouldn't be able to shoot them or would recieve a penalty.

 

[FlyXwire]

Nicholas, this could be doable for SP scenarios, where devoting processing to the additional AI actions could be resource-managed for performance. However, it's in the MP modes where performance drains against the essential/wanted actions need to be most guarded.

I suppose if there was a near one-for-one swap in overall "body count", that is, removing an active/wounded soldier from the battlefield, then the performance drain might be manageable, because the stretcher bearers would be performing like a clean-up crew. Still, we now know that RO2 wounded are just lightly wounded, so they can self-treat, meaning the stetcher bearers would be redundant for them. What we're left with would be the dead, and they're removed from the battlefield post-action (generally).

 

[Nicholas]

Nicholas, this could be doable for SP scenarios, where devoting processing to the additional AI actions could be resource-managed for performance. However, it's in the MP modes where performance drains against the essential/wanted actions need to be most guarded.

I suppose if there was a near one-for-one swap in overall "body count", that is, removing an active/wounded soldier from the battlefield, then the performance drain might be manageable, because the stretcher bearers would be performing like a clean-up crew. Still, we now know that RO2 wounded are just lightly wounded, so they can self-treat, meaning the stetcher bearers would be redundant for them. What we're left with would be the dead, and they're removed from the battlefield post-action (generally).

Will the dead magically disapear or will they accumulate?

 

[FlyXwire]

Don't know (good question), and might be a server-side option too.

 

[SheepDip]

Neither side deployed squad medics etc because they just got killed - the fighting on the Eastern front was far more barbaric than the West and no Geneva conventions applied.

 

[Nicholas]

Neither side deployed squad medics etc because they just got killed - the fighting on the Eastern front was far more barbaric than the West and no Geneva conventions applied.

Good point.

 

[hockeywarrior]

Neither side deployed squad medics etc because they just got killed - the fighting on the Eastern front was far more barbaric than the West and no Geneva conventions applied.

This idea is pretty silly for multiple reasons.

1) People died in DROVES in this battle and many others on the eastern front. It was complete carnage and medics could just assume they would get killed like any other thing moving across a battlefield.

2) How would the server manage AI? Imagine the lag in a MP game!

3) Even in singleplayer, how would the AI medics know when to go towards bodies? I can, even now, see like 10 AI soldiers die then a massive exodus of stretcher bearers running suicidally towards enemy AI soldiers and dying in droves ... then another army of stretcher bearers, repeat ad nauseum. Actually is pretty funny .... I think in real life if there were that many stretcher bearers standing around the local commissar would just give them rifles and use them for fighting instead.

 

[The_Emperor]

We all know about the brutality of the Eastern Front so why not take it to the game? After the first reports of medics being killed by enemy fire, medics were soon armed, sometimes with a pistol sometimes even with an smg. That's about the Axis side, I very much guess Soviets did the same. So medics were no civilians. We're not talking about field doctors seen in the front backward area.
So it's actually possible to have medics in and let them be some sort of class like the combat engineer. Difference is that they are carrying wound packages (not healing boxes!!!). To keep things at realism they can't treat every wound and they can't revive people with some sort of defibrillator.
A lung shot, heart shot, gut shot and head shot will not be treatable by them.
As we know that every standard soldier in the game shall carry small woundpackages for themselves it should be possible to see medic classes carrying larger amounts of this stuff.

The argumentation that they were shot on sight doesn't count for me as every soldier will be shot on sight. We have officers in our ranks and they were primary targets just like medics back then, still they are in the game as the squad leader class. So why shouldn't medics be in?

 

[Oldih]

So why shouldn't medics be in?

Because ultimately it would be very difficult to make medics 'worth' something. Only way that could be useful in the long run is that when they treat friendly soldier it would slow down (somewhat) the reinforcement pool drain or something like that. Officers have more pragmatic function on the battlefield regarding what player can do, medics have alot less unless you're willing to make them more "unrealistic" (aka able to limitedly 'heal' players\something like that) in order to give them something to do.

After the first reports of medics being killed by enemy fire, medics were soon armed, sometimes with a pistol sometimes even with an smg.

Funny thing about this whole medic carrying a gun or not is that the Geneve convention does not say anywhere that medic must be unarmed\non-combatant personel. For germans your standard medic (on the eastern front) was often a rifleman without any visual identification that he is any sort of medic, and even the western countries occasionally fired at will against a german medics in case if they had visual identification but were carrying a gun aswell since they thought they are going against the convention, even though once again it does not state anywhere that medic must be unarmed or non-combatant.

 

[SheepDip]

I can't believe we're having a medic discussion again.

If you just search "medic" in the ROOST forum you'll get at least a half a dozen threads with the same discussions. If you're wounded enough to need a medic, you're dead, that's the way it works.

The medics deployed on the Eastern front were not the same as medics used on the Western front. If someone was wounded enough, and lucky enough to be wounded in the presence of a medic the medic would not treat him on the field. He would be taken away (which is Nicholas' idea in the first place) - but given the amount of fatalities in an average game you'd end up having more AI medics with stretchers in the map than actual players. Just. No...

 

[Nestor Makhno]

We all know about the brutality of the Eastern Front so why not take it to the game?

Zagradchiki anyone? Einsatzgruppen?

 

[FlyXwire]

Emperor, your post above could be included in this thread also:

[url]http://forums.tripwireinteractive.com/showthread.php?t=46036[/URL]

Just to make a general point of discussion here, but about Nicholas's idea concerning the stretcher bearers, there was no requirement that they be medics or trained medical personnel, in fact they were often just soldiers given the job of transporting the wounded or the task of body retrieval.

Now to one of Oldin's points above. I'd actually expect to see "the reinforcement pool drain" affected by this wounding mechanic, and as mentioned in the thread I started further on the idea, by actually involving other team members in the process of recovering (bandaging) their side's wounded, this idea could end up modifying a team's combat action on the battlefield, by introducing recovery of wounded teamates as a tactic, and a way a side could hold onto their ground gained or already occupied. Self-bandaging works, but it's not something that requires teamwork nor involves team tactics either.

 

[Drecks]

Silly idea. Why on earth would you carry dead people away on stretchers ?

Dead people on an ongoing battlefield are carried away by maggots and rats.
That could explain the magically disappear. Its only speed up a little for the sake of gaming. You don't spoil any people to take away dead soldiers from the battlefield as dead people are of no use. Dead is irreversible So once dead you stay dead.

Once a battle is done there comes the time to think about what to do with all the dead meat. But carry dead people away during a battle is a worse idea. Carry dead people away in a computer game is even worse.

I never came across any written reference where the mentioned anything about carry dead people away while a battle is going on. We could discuss the use of tourniquets, bandage, morfine and tell your wounded comrade that everyting is gonna be allright. But in my opinion its mostly a waste of time as I want to play a game where I want to shoot people to the irreversible state of dead and not add bandage on them like somesort of Florence Nightingale.

 

[Nicholas]

Silly idea. Why on earth would you carry dead people away on stretchers ?

Dead people on an ongoing battlefield are carried away by maggots and rats.
That could explain the magically disappear. Its only speed up a little for the sake of gaming. You don't spoil any people to take away dead soldiers from the battlefield as dead people are of no use. Dead is irreversible So once dead you stay dead.

Once a battle is done there comes the time to think about what to do with all the dead meat. But carry dead people away during a battle is a worse idea. Carry dead people away in a computer game is even worse.

I never came across any written reference where the mentioned anything about carry dead people away while a battle is going on. We could discuss the use of tourniquets, bandage, morfine and tell your wounded comrade that everyting is gonna be allright. But in my opinion its mostly a waste of time as I want to play a game where I want to shoot people to the irreversible state of dead and not add bandage on them like somesort of Florence Nightingale.

But speaking of maybe morfin could play a role in RO2, like say your arm was wounded and it was messing up your aim, the morfin would help fix that!

 

[Hausfeld]

After the first reports of medics being killed by enemy fire, medics were soon armed, sometimes with a pistol sometimes even with an smg.

This made me think of a player class portraying a Zug/Platoon level medic with either a rifle or SMG who's medical advantage was having a hefty helping of bandages one can drop for other players to pick up.

 

[=TaT=Rabid]

How about this?

Have a medic class, armed with an SMG but only half the standard ammunition load, as their weapon is used mainly for defending themselves and their patients rather than going on the offensive. They can bandage flesh wounds to stop players bleeding out, and can do it faster and better than regular soldiers because of their medical training. Of course, they can't heal wounds to vital areas.

Now the main idea I have for medics comes into play when soldiers are severely wounded. What I mean by that, is when a soldier is hit in a way that doesn't kill them outright, but renders them combat ineffective, so that for gameplay's sake they are counted as dead, and respawn. So when a soldier is severely wounded, there could be a period of say 5-to-10 seconds, during which a medic can get to the soldier and "heal" him. Of course, this doesn't magically restore his health, the player still "dies" and respawns, BUT there is no reinforcement penalty for that player's "death".

In summary, medics patching up wounded soldiers doesn't heal them, but rather extends the team's reinforcements.

 

[FlyXwire]

Treating wounds that bleed out and become mortal if left alone during a short span of time, as seen in the videos via the blacking-out game screen, sound pretty grave.

US GI's, who's industrial and logistics base could supply them well during WW2 carried a single medical pack on their web gear. How many were the Soviet soldiers supplied with in comparison, or the German Landser?

I'd say maintaining supply of bullets to the strongpoints got priority over bandaids everyday in Stalingrad, and then after the German's were surrounded and the Luftwaffe's airlift failing?

Anyway, it's all just an abstraction, and as Alan said in the other thread:

Anything more serious (requiring a second person or trained medic) we aren't really interested in, in RO2...

 

[hockeywarrior]

So why shouldn't medics be in?

The difference is that officers have abilities in real life that can be translated well into the game, and provide unique player-controlled opportunities. There is no way for medics to be implemented realistically into the game -- all casualties, dead or wounded, would have been out of the fight for some time in real life. Games like BF2, BFBC2, and even Project Reality implement medics that have the ability to instantly (or almost instantly) bring people back into the fight, which makes no sense.

You could argue that the squad leader spawn is also on the same level of being non realistic, but at least you can justify that from a "general effect" point of view to convey the types of firefights seen in the real battle -- in other words, keeping the squad together. By having a form of squad leader spawn (that doesn't look wierd, ie, magically appearing soldiers), you get the larger effect of bigger groups of infantry engaging other bigger groups, rather than just individuals. Thus the result from this "non realistic" feature is a realistic scenario.

But having medics running around healing people back into battle looks wrong on so many levels that it would really take away from the "general effect" of the game, and introduce a very non realistic scenario. Does anyone get what I'm trying to say?