ARMA 2 Healing System?

[blackhawkdown 10]

wait???? in the event that i activate the advanced battle field healing and clearance and i sink it to multiple groups??? for example a ginormous battle of some sort. like 2 marine platoons patrol the country side and are bombed by enemy artillary. so people on both sides can be affected with the healing thing in the editor? can you sink more than one group to one module? do they have to be on the same side?

[maddogx 13]

wait???? in the event that i activate the advanced battle field healing and clearance and i sink it to multiple groups??? for example a ginormous battle of some sort. like 2 marine platoons patrol the country side and are bombed by enemy artillary. so people on both sides can be affected with the healing thing in the editor? can you sink more than one group to one module? do they have to be on the same side?

You can sync as many as you want. :)

[frederf 0]

Or just respawn.

What's respawn?

[Junker 0]

What's respawn?

Isnt it that magic thing they do in COD :D

[CarlGustaffa 4]

Or just respawn.

Hopefully we'll see missions in the future where respawn has a cost. Although fine for action modes like deathmatches, their current implementation in coops are way too convenient.

Coop mission designers: Set respawn to 5 minutes, or some sort of dynamical 'banana room' implementation where dieing too often is heavily discouraged.

@Junker & Frederf:

Some of us actually like missions that go on for hours and hours, maybe even days.

[Murklor 10]

Hopefully we'll see missions in the future where respawn has a cost.

But why should the act of respawning come at a "cost"?

Its a wargame, someone is going to die. The penalty of death is not being able to score kills and thus points. Is there negative score for dying too? That's the usual cost...

Besides, any kind of waiting is dull.

Personally I prefer instant wave respawn with a decent solution for soldier delivery. For example, an AI C130 flying in circles on the map and end up over the "mission start" area every 5-10 minutes or so.

[frederf 0]

My favorite method of respawning involves no waiting since waiting is a rather unproductive use of player "man hours." It would make players who die "work off" their death doing necessary support tasks until they can join the "fun fight."

There's still a penalty to death (good) but now you get the benefit of otherwise not done support (good) and people aren't just sitting on their thumbs (good).

[CarlGustaffa 4]

Its a wargame, someone is going to die. The penalty of death is not being able to score kills and thus points. Is there negative score for dying too? That's the usual cost...

This cost is simply not enough, as has been clearly shown in the past.

Besides, any kind of waiting is dull.

Yup, that's the point. Don't want to spend too much time in the wait? Play safer. Slow down. TRY to survive.

Personally I prefer instant wave respawn with a decent solution for soldier delivery. For example, an AI C130 flying in circles on the map and end up over the "mission start" area every 5-10 minutes or so.

A time limited delivery system doesn't sound half bad. But you need to contain those that are being bored from starting TK'ing in the base because of it.

My favorite method of respawning involves no waiting since waiting is a rather unproductive use of player "man hours." It would make players who die "work off" their death doing necessary support tasks until they can join the "fun fight."

Hehe. I have no idea how I could enforce something like this. But, noted.

A new system (very very roughly):

My respawn/gamemode system would work something like this:

* You get bonus for playing a grunt. Penalty for playing a sniper or other typical attachment. Heavy penalty for being pilot or crewman. Reason being that the grunts are the easiest to replace.

* If you get killed you are instantly respawned, but in a 'jail'. You have a respawn timer that needs to count down. The timer will reduce to the minimum time based on your current 'class' (grunt, sniper etc) over time if you don't get killed. If you get constantly killed, the timer will increase over time.

* Mission difficulty and respawn times are affected by the number of players. This means that if you start up the server solo, you can still have a blast of a time with near instant respawns. But as players join, missions become more and more difficult and respawn times increase, which means you have to start becoming more careful and start playing in teams.

Selecting a grunt, sniper, pilot, crewman, whatever, is based loosely on the Project Reality kit system. Limited number of certain kits, and will also be dynamic depending on the number of players available. Idling players should loose their kit as to make them available to others. Maybe some sort of voting system where the newbie that is actually trying, can be awared stuff (i.e. lower their respawn times) by the other players. Those that doesn't even try, naturally won't get awared anything.

Everybody gets a fair chance, but if you keep playing stupid you'll get punished for it.

Reasons:

* Arma1 public mainstream games become no better in terms of realism and teamplay than BF2.

* Evolution attempt with a ranking system simply didn't work and was exploited east and west. Intent is good, but needs to be much better though out.

* Domination instant respawn and teleport produced stupid players, with no respect to their own and team mates lives. Also everyone became tank killers.

* Warfare lets everyone become pilots 'instantly'. People are using Javelin for close engagements because 'it can be done'. They want the score points, with no regard for team play.

* (Not mainstream, but...) The hard core missions with no respawn at all, are just quick objectives and not persistant missions. They are also 'too hard core', meaning that some players are reluctant to even try them out.

Conclusion

* Hard core missions are too unforgiving, scare away potential players.

* Main stream missions are too forgiving, attract the wrong kind of players.

* We need something in between. Something that allows the more realism oriented players to have a blast for a really long time (unlike the hard core missions), where the wrong kind of players will eventually leave once their respawn times are too high becoming intolerable to deal with. But they got their chance.

[tophe 68]

In a few of my City Take missions I scripted some medivac choppers... Worked really good. They didn't fly by AI so you'd need a player to do it.

As soon as a unit entered the chopper it was set to "captive" so no enemy units would shoot at the medivac chopper. Also you could not bring any weapons in the chopper, so it could not be used to ship soldiers to the front. When you entered the chopper your weapons were taken and put inside a hospital tent in the base, so you'd have to go pick them up afterwards.

I have been picked up by it a couple of times.. Really immersive having to hide in the bushes and wait to hear that chopper come for you.

Those missions used a revive script but 6 different endings depending on how many soldiers you lost. So the only way to finish the mission with highest grades is to do it without anyone getting killed even once. So you really want to stay alive in it.

Not super realistic but a lot of fun.

[galzohar 31]

So why bother having wounded at all.

ACE probably won't do it, thank God. They are the ones who advanced the medic system in Arma 1.

If you want total realism, enlist.

Been there, done that. Now I want a game where I can play with those stuff without actually getting shot. You know, when you get a "game over" when you die rather than "life over".

I think a system wherein you get hit badly, your squad mate gives you immediate first aid, the platoon medic stabilizes you, and a MEDEVAC chopper takes you to a hospital facility to get back to 100% would be the best and most interesting compromise being reality and arcade.

It would give medical extractions meaning. You could still fight in the rest of the mission, you'd just have to make the trip to the hospital and back which would take 15 min tops.

Look, if you're going to make it realistic, then wounded people should be as good as dead. IRL you only really medivac after fighting is over (because if you medivac mid-fight you'll just risk having even more casualties). Having badly wounded people be considered dead is a lot more realistic than having a revive system. Then if you really want you could add medivac elements to your missions for bonus points, though I doubt anyone would actually want to take part in it.

For handling no respawns, you have to make a mission that's short enough (<<10 minutes) so that it works fine for both realism and gameplay with no respawns. Longer and nobody will play it (unless it's a coop that lets you easily overpower the AI with no casualties), and respawns will be necessary, in which case realism pretty much goes out the door anyway. If you're going to make a mission with respawns, at least make it so that it feels like you're getting reinforcements in some way, rather than coming back to life, but still not have massive downtime for respawning players - 5 minutes of no action is already a lot. Try to sit down right now and watch your clock for 5 minutes straight, and tell me how much that made you want to do it again. Anyway, whatever respawn system is used is irrelevant to the medic system, as the medic system simply decides who is dead and who can still play.

To make a realistic game playable some compromises need to be made, yes, but they don't have to be in the medic system. If anything, just the stupidity of having to shoot downed enemies again so that they don't get revived is enough to warrant not having some silly revive system.

[Lauxman 10]

There were plenty of coop/versus missions that could last for around an hour, which is plenty of time IMO with no respawn. I never saw a lack of this in Arma 1. Nobody wants to spectate a match for a couple of hours just because some enemy artillery script decided that they were dead or some driver accidentally ran over a friendly as he was boarding in the starting area.

[galzohar 31]

Like I said, if you want to make a realistic mission playable, you have to make it very short (or very easy). Otherwise you'd have to lose some realism to get reinforcements in, but even then it can be done more realistically (that is, actually act like you're bringing reinforcements) without some weird healing stuff.

[CarlGustaffa 4]

I don't mind the 'weird' healing at all, especially during open public servers, as it helps aid teamplay. And these servers usually don't play missions that even touches realism in the first place. But I'd rather play on one of these, than all alone on a more realistic setup...

[DFA_Graywo1f 0]

hmmm. so most missions in multiplayer not using this complex script? because the healing in all multiplayer servers are just like ArmA 1 :confused:

[frederf 0]

I'm definately for teamplay over pure realism. Having to occasionally send a heavily wounded friend back to the big H to get patched up is fun. Having MEDEVAC helicopters and never using them is just as dumb as lugging AT gear and never engaging armor.

As far as "well people are going to die like flies or it's not realistic" I don't know what you think happens in real life but casualties are relatively rare. I can play an equal force coop mission for 1-2 hours and take maybe 3 casualties out of 20. I really, really don't like playing with people who think that 5 minutes is a long time or that dying is a fast way to travel back to base.

[Nephris1 10]

Could anyone already check if the healing modules are working now on dedicated servers?

[galzohar 31]

Try a real equal-sided war (or simply multiplayer), rather than fighting AI in COOP. A lot of things work in COOP that shouldn't work simply because the AI is easy to fool and beat without taking much casualties. I'm not talking wars like in Iraq or Afghanistan where the enemy:friendly casualty ratio is inflated by the lack of training and equipment of the enemies (equivalent to trick-able AI in Arma 2). I'm talking World War 1/2, Vietnam, or many of Israel's wars. Of course you can't really simulate a realistic war in Arma, but you can simulate a short fight that can be a part of a war realistically.

Yes, 5 minutes wait is a long time for waiting for a game, if your mission has more (or even average of 5 minutes) wait time, you probably need to re-design it. Like I said before, sit 5 minutes in front of the clock and stare at it. Good luck.

Dying IS a fast way to travel back to base if that's what the mission designer made. The solution isn't to change the people, but to change the mission design. There are many ways to do this, not just the total-realism-no-respawn way.

Teamplay over realism is what games like Team Fortress 2 are for. What's the point of having all that work into Arma's realism and then throw it away wherever it promotes some slight teamplay?

[CarlGustaffa 4]

I'm definately for teamplay over pure realism. Having to occasionally send a heavily wounded friend back to the big H to get patched up is fun. Having MEDEVAC helicopters and never using them is just as dumb as lugging AT gear and never engaging armor.

3 hour deep recon behind enemy lines. All you get is a single one shot M136. Do you engage the first BMP you see or take a detour? It's the mission that counts. Not the destruction of encounters.

I really, really don't like playing with people who think that 5 minutes is a long time or that dying is a fast way to travel back to base.

I agree. Therefore I want the respawn to hurt more. Also in an earlier Domination edit (using ACE), the player would join near the crates, pretty far away from where he would respawn. Base respawn to change weapons was practically eliminated, and all he could get the easy way was ammunition. I guess the 3 minutes you had to spend was too much for most :)

Yes, 5 minutes wait is a long time for waiting for a game, if your mission has more (or even average of 5 minutes) wait time, you probably need to re-design it. Like I said before, sit 5 minutes in front of the clock and stare at it. Good luck.

What I'm talking about is dynamic respawn. If you play well and keep youself alive, your respawn timer as grunt crawls down to say 20 seconds, maximum 60 seconds if you play bad. As a weapons squad (or some other typical standoff role) member that is assumed not to run & gun as much, you get minimum 60 seconds when you play good and maximum 240 seconds. A sniper gets even more, maybe 120 to 300 seconds. It ensures that those who wants to run & gun gets to do that, at the cost of not being able to play as a 'sniper'.

Teamplay over realism is what games like Team Fortress 2 are for. What's the point of having all that work into Arma's realism and then throw it away wherever it promotes some slight teamplay?

You're suggesting we go play TF2 so we can have some teamplay? Have you ever seen what public games look like? There is no team play at all! It's filled with nothing but run & gun people usually. Only rarely have I seen exceptions to this. Public play is a major part of Arma/Arma2 even if you prefer to play only hard core games, like it or not. Also, it should be a major part, if only to attract new players to the game. Why shouldn't we be able to have mechanisms that promotes team play at the expense of some realism (especially for typical public play respawn games), when you can go play at closed servers with as much realism as you want? Realistic games use enforced roles to enhance team play, and usually require a large number of players to make the mission playable. This is not flexible enough for public play, where you sometimes start up even solo. But as we have seen, being completely free with fixed mission parameters, is also not the way to go.

Oh, and your solution is simple. Simply play without a medic. If I get this right, everyone is able to perform first aid which can save your life. Get back to medevac and be transported back to base. Find an aid station and heal yourself. If you want to be realistic about it, don't get back into fighting on the next ride out. Maybe you should wait a couple of weeks before you fire up Arma again, to simulate the healing process...

Edited June 21, 2009 by CarlGustaffa

[Hell_Toupee 0]

You should probly play more tf2 then, theres teamplay every game just by the simply fact of people using their classes in the way intended.

Any sort of wounding system that results in you going back into the fight is unrealistic, so why try and make it super complicated, if you don't want people getting back to 100% health on the field don't include any medics and chuck a medic tent at your base or where ever simple.

[galzohar 31]

I just threw TF2 as the first example that came to mind as a game that has gameplay elements directly meant to enforce teamplay, and serve no real other purpose. If you don't like that example I'm sure you can come up with a better one, my point stays the same.

I didn't say Arma 2 shouldn't have teamplay, but rather that the teamplay should come from realism, and not at the expense of realism.

Unless I'm missing something with how the system work, even the basic first aid system can get someone to function better than he did before he got treatment. The fact of life is, though, that (field) medical treatment doesn't put you in any better shape than you were before the treatment - it simply makes it so your situation does not get worse, or that it'll get worse in a slower fashion - so that you might live until the operation in the hospital, so that you might walk again someday. In the world of gaming, though, other than giving score, you cannot really make realistic first aid or any other kind of medical treatment in a way that will affect gameplay, simply because the only real effect of these treatments is a long-term one (more people coming back home with a pulse at the end of the war). If you just wanted to win a war and didn't really care about anything other than winning, you probably wouldn't have bothered with medics or any kind of first aid.

If you're making a mission with a respawn system and want it to feel anywhere near realistic, it should feel like your respawns are actually reinforcements coming in to help the forces that lost members. The time/location of spawns is extremely missions specific, and there are a lot of ways to do this decently (but even more ways to do it outright wrong). Anyway the respawn system has little to do with the topic, as the way you respawn (or not respawn) when killed has little to do with whether or not you can be BF2-style-revived or not.

Edited June 21, 2009 by galzohar

[CarlGustaffa 4]

Well, I for one am interrested in a system that grants both gameplay, don't become too unrealistic (medic system is a part of the game, and part of gaming for me, even if not fully realistic), very free, but at the same time prevents 'unfortunalities' to happen. This include having medics flying A10s while they're carrying M107, but also avoid having a 30 map coop with 20 'snipers', two infantry, and the rest in hardware. It's become increadibly unbalanced in some missions unfortunately...

Respawn is a must for long missions, but it should be designed in such a way that it enforces people to be more careful, similar to how ACE managed to slow down people by adding weight and stamina effects. Group respawn could also be an alternative; lock them all up in a cell (without weapons) until i.e. 40% of the force was dead. But personally I like the idea where an infantry grunt respawns quicker than a sniper, as a measure against everyone being snipers.

The problem I had in Arma1 was that everything had to be slot or class based. If everyone left and only the sniper was left, he couldn't proceed with the mission since he couldn't get any AT weaponry. Also a modular respawn system was hard to come up with since the mission wasn't scaled to suit one man. Maybe this can be fixed by temswitching into a scipted createUnit now, I don't know. If so, it would allow kit by class, with an easy way to restrict the number of kits so as to create a more balanced game.

These are just some ideas I'm currently brainstorming though. Oriented more as a mainstream system and not necessarily a realistic system that will fit everyones wishes. Something that would make it fun again to be on public mainstream servers, unlike the madness it usually was for Arma1.

[kt187 10]

This whole healing thing is total BS IMO. If you're shot in the leg so badly that you can't walk, then no medic in the world will make you able to walk again. This whole healing/revival thing is a total gameplay/realism/immersion killer for me.

IRL medics don't heal. They save your life, yes, but they don't make you able to fight again, at least not in the next few days/weeks/ever depending on the severity of the wound..

I really hope ACE2 takes this into realism land like it does with the rest of the game, rather than just make it a bit more complex while keeping it totally unrealistic.

The Healing medic thing is ULTRA realistic in the Scheme of the things....The AK-74/ M16 rifles are designed to wound the enemy slowing them down and making them less combat effective, when you go to heal your comrads you are taking a medic and a rifle away from combat. Thus slwoing your unit down and you would heal or try to help your comrad if they are hurt in battle you need the manpower, it realistic. You can walk when shot in the leg, or arm or chest, war isnt a movie where one shot kills. least not with .223

[galzohar 31]

The Healing medic thing is ULTRA realistic in the Scheme of the things....The AK-74/ M16 rifles are designed to wound the enemy slowing them down and making them less combat effective, when you go to heal your comrads you are taking a medic and a rifle away from combat. Thus slwoing your unit down and you would heal or try to help your comrad if they are hurt in battle you need the manpower, it realistic. You can walk when shot in the leg, or arm or chest, war isnt a movie where one shot kills. least not with .223

OK I want to see you take a .223 to the stomach and knee and keep fighting... I'll even give you 5 minutes of treatment by doctor/hospital of choice, which is much more than the game would give you. Fact is, a shot to the knee means you pretty much will never really walk again ever, and a shot to the stomach takes a lot more than some field medical treatment to recover from. Depending on the damage it can take days/weeks/months to recover.

You've obviously never had any kind of first aid combat training, or else you would've understood what I was saying. May use google a bit ("combat lifesaving" or "field medical treatments" or similar are probably a good start) to help you with that.

[WhoCares 0]

You could consider it something like this: the medic is busy with treating a wounded soldier and once finished he returns with a replacement from the reserves - something that is almost never modelled in any mission.

I remember someone making such (a) mission(s) for OFP, e.g. with two squads at the front and further behind another squad to swap with or replace a decimated frontline squad.

It's rare that a unit (at least platoon and upwards) is completely engaged with the enemy but has some reserves behind to fill the gaps, and usually no units are sent against the enemy with no reserves behind as this would mean a gap in the front if the attack fails miserably or the first defensive line is overrun.

It might happen sometimes but it is certainly not standard procedure...

However, to model this properly in a mission might not be all that simple - the High Command system might make it a bit easier, but it will still be quite an effort to get it right. An effort that often is not neccessary/overkill. So the medic system could be considered a welcome abstraction to such a complex solution. The alternative could be a medevac/reinforcement system, the latter like in the SecOps module.

[galzohar 31]

Except medical treatment and reinforcements have nothing to do with eachother IRL, so that "abstraction" makes 0 sense. Reinforcements will happen regardless of whether your men were killed or incapacitated. In terms of winning the fight, incapacitated soldiers are as good as dead. It's only because we're human and prefer to bring home more living people that we actually have medics and first aid. Therefore the only way to really model first aid or medics is via score (or money in Warfare), and even that has its flaws but anything else will be much worse.

I just can't stop seeing in my head the BF2 (or was it Project Reality?) video of a guy playing a medic, basically running around hitting people with his "jumpstart" to bring them back to life... I know the Arma 2 system is a better than that, but it's based on the same silly principal of medics and first aid being used to make people able to keep fighting.