Healing by Combat Class

I really like it beside two things:

a) The Medical Ship is for me still a swimming hospital and has nothing to do with ship repair.

b) In your system, a highly specialized (in Person healing) Medic can do such an amazing job, that somehow the ship becomes undamaged, even if no engineers are around. Same is true the other way round, but I think a heavily damaged ship with a healthy crew is way worse then an undamaged ship with some injuries amongs their crew.
I'm not sure if crew health is something to consider on modern day battle ships at all or if they only should heal as naval unit and not as persons.

Faustmouse said:

I really like it beside two things:

a) The Medical Ship is for me still a swimming hospital and has nothing to do with ship repair.

b) In your system, a highly specialized (in Person healing) Medic can do such an amazing job, that somehow the ship becomes undamaged, even if no engineers are around. Same is true the other way round, but I think a heavily damaged ship with a healthy crew is way worse then an undamaged ship with some injuries amongs their crew.
I'm not sure if crew health is something to consider on modern day battle ships at all or if they only should heal as naval unit and not as persons.

Click to expand...

a) The FIRST medical ships perhaps. Certainly as the upgrade chain goes on they become more and more focused on ship repair itself and in fact the 'floating hospital' role is gradually handed over to Troop Ships.

Nevertheless, I don't think it would be a stretch to see such early hospital ships also being heavily equipped with trained divers with repair resources. In game terms I think around this stage players start really needing to go beyond the ability of a loaded healer. Besides, what would thus make healing ships beneficial over having a transport or troop ship with a healer loaded onboard?

b) I had considered getting much deeper into things and enabling an ability to assign a 'weight' to each Heal As unitcombat on a unit. But I felt that it would become an unmanageable over-complication.

In the first scenario, as the crew recovers, their own ability to repair their own ships expands rapidly so it's a certain degree of self-repair being envisioned there. In the second, where the ship is being repaired but the crew is not, it's figured that a fairly recovered skeleton crew can run the thing pretty well in the interim to represent a stronger (more 'healed') ship while the extra deckhands take time to recover still.

However, what you are suggesting, really, is to completely split up the health of the unit into its various types and have each heal type recover completely independently (almost as if they were entirely differing units.) I gave this some consideration. I'm soon to introduce differing damage 'types' that stem from differing sources. I was a little concerned it might make that issue harder to account for than it already is. Plus, this would mean a lot of little potential adjustments throughout the code. BUT it might be that I need to give it deeper consideration yet - might be simpler than it may seem. Could also produce a bit more result variety... hmm...

So as I think more about this I start getting into thinking about the deeper implications of splitting up health pools.

On the plus side, it would make it much easier to model how different attack or damage (weapons) types would say, only damage people or equipment (like EMP weapons only damaging electronics for example.) There could be differing results aside from death/destruction if certain types of health are reduced to 0 (Ships left floating without crews for example.)

So there would certainly be some upsides here.

But it's complex, would be a major modding project in itself, would have deep ripple effects into other (highly complex already) areas of the game code such as battle odds and AI. It would beg for the NEXT step further still, which would be to differentiate the crew and the ships as separate units entirely. (which may not be a bad idea at all but the vastness of such a project is beyond daunting considering what it would mean in terms of AI work.)

In short, I think it would be opening too large a can of worms (for now at least.)

I like the Idea, and it would be an upgrade of the now random battle trophy system by introducing predictability, making it a new layer of war strategy.

Most units should be able to damage all health types but with different probabilities dependent on weapon and tech involved. Example; Arsonist vs Catapult: every strike that hits during a battle has a 90 percent chance to damage the wooden construct and a 10 percent chance to damage the crew. An archer unit vs. a catapult would perhaps follow an opposite logic.
More relevant to the naval overhaul your doing would be, Destroyer vs EMP missile; where the missile could potentially take out the destroyers capability to intercept air units and spot submersibles.

Crew health at zero would result in a battle trophy if attacked by a regular unit or in the ship being unable to move (like stuck in swamp event message, only: "Unit has no crew, thus it cannot move this turn") when attacked by special units like bio-missiles (until claimed back or taken from you by a unit arriving at the tile). The ship could also have a probability of turning into a barbarian every turn.

This could greatly enhance the combat class possibilities, but I fear multiple health bars for units would be difficult to achieve in a polished/elegant and balanced way.

Toffer90 said:

I like the Idea, and it would be an upgrade of the now random battle trophy system by introducing predictability, making it a new layer of war strategy.

Most units should be able to damage all health types but with different probabilities dependent on weapon and tech involved. Example; Arsonist vs Catapult: every strike that hits during a battle has a 90 percent chance to damage the wooden construct and a 10 percent chance to damage the crew. An archer unit vs. a catapult would perhaps follow an opposite logic.
More relevant to the naval overhaul your doing would be, Destroyer vs EMP missile; where the missile could potentially take out the destroyers capability to intercept air units and spot submersibles.

Crew health at zero would result in a battle trophy if attacked by a regular unit or in the ship being unable to move (like stuck in swamp event message, only: "Unit has no crew, thus it cannot move this turn") when attacked by special units like bio-missiles (until claimed back or taken from you by a unit arriving at the tile). The ship could also have a probability of turning into a barbarian every turn.

This could greatly enhance the combat class possibilities, but I fear multiple health bars for units would be difficult to achieve in a polished/elegant and balanced way.

Click to expand...

Exactly... the whole thing is quite a cool concept. But it's a seriously major can of worms.

'Defeat' of the unit would be absolute with full damage taken on any given type of health. However, what happens at defeat may vary. Yes, captures, complete paralysis, death would all be possible.

I figure in any case, the 'worst' amount of damage on any given 'type' that the unit has suffered would be the amount shown on the health bar. And the amount used to determine % of full fighting strength.

That part would be easy really. It's the part where it would influence odds and actual combat that would be hard to sort out properly. Maybe not as bad as I think though...

I would not do a random this damage type vs that damage type system - that would be nearly impossible to work into the odds system. When a unit hits another unit, it's damage would be equally applied to all of that unit's types of damage. However, a unit may be able to protect or damage particular types more or less, so you'd have some variation introduced by these modifiers. As long as the worst damage type calculated (vs the health on that type that the other unit has) is used in the combat odds calculating it might actually be able to work...

But then... am I introducing damage types or heal as types with such a system? And if it's a heal as type, how would damage types work into that picture?

I'll keep thinking on this. I often do look at something these days and say to myself it's too complex to work out but then insight hits and I figure out a way to make it work in an effective manner.


EDIT: Ok, so I've been, as noted, trying to work out a system for differing damage types by weapons. The more I ran some scenarios and tests on various mathematic models here, the more I began to realize that this proposed mechanism of differing health pools... would help me solve all the problems I had not quite worked out about differing attack and defense forms. I believe some brilliant stuff is about to come of this... thanks to your feedback! Hooray for the forum!

It may not be a system that can be gradually implemented though so it might take a few weeks to pop up fully prepared and ready to go so we really need to start thinking about healing unit lines for types of healers to cover the other healing types. Can someone give some consideration to that for me? Labels (names) and art is the main thing, and tech prereqs and upgrade paths - the stats can be easily sorted out on this end.

Thunderbrd said:

EDIT: Ok, so I've been, as noted, trying to work out a system for differing damage types by weapons. The more I ran some scenarios and tests on various mathematic models here, the more I began to realize that this proposed mechanism of differing health pools... would help me solve all the problems I had not quite worked out about differing attack and defense forms. I believe some brilliant stuff is about to come of this... thanks to your feedback! Hooray for the forum!

Click to expand...

Awesome; I'm glad my rambling was useful.

This is not about health or anything but the recent discussion brought it to mind. I'd always thought it be an akward thing that just attacking with siege engines means these units are trying to get into melee battle with the opponent. So instead you have to klick a button. But it should be obvious that nobody is trying to get these kind of units into melee battle at any time ever. If anything bombard should be the default and suicide melee combat the optional button. But more preferrably bombard defences should be the primary role and if there are no defences then it will switch to bombarding units automatically. This way when you select a bunch of seige units you can simply move them all in group towards the city/stack/fortress and they will do exactly what you want with a minimum of micromanagement. And should you prefer to not care about completely reducing city defences you can ofcourse always micromanage that. Maybe an option to decide a units primary role i.e. what it will do when you just attack with it normally without concern for button options. Or options on the unit automation page how much remaining defence is enough.

And this would be a nice feature for other units aswell. Say you have an air unit and you point at a city with it. If it's a friendly city it will automatically rebase. In a hostile city it will if not told otherwise assume that a balloon is for scouting out the place, a fighter will bombard land units and bombers will bombard defences.

Some specialization for

This could be built into all kinds of units

Ok, so I've completed the coding for separate Healing Type Pools. It tests out fine with the way things currently are but we'll see how it goes once the Combat Classes are implemented on the units.

This is a first step - only dealing with healing. All damage is equally assigned to all healing types as it currently stands but it will be quite easy from here to implement additional or less damage to be applied to particular Health Pools. I'll wait to implement that though because I believe it's going to be necessary to implement combat stages first so as to enable defining which weapons systems are in use at which stages during combat. I've begun the process of planning that out with some of the unitcombat settings already on units. But it'll still take a bit more to make that really work - odds calculations will be the most difficult part to get right there.

But this certainly does a lot to pave the way for the combat system I've always wanted to see enacted here. So it was good to get some feedback that thrust things further in that direction rather than having a patched over project that would've needed to be converted to something more like this eventually anyhow.

Next step will be to define the healing as combat classes for all units then work out the differing healing sources for those from units, promos, and buildings. Until then, what I've done here would only be impressive if you were to read the code changes. (And maybe not even then... lol)

But at least it appears debugged at this point.



So to be clear, at this point, if a unit only has one source of healing assistance it probably won't do all that much good unless all 'Heal As types' the unit has are covered with some support. The least effective healing help will be the most deciding factor.


Note: I've also added Heals As(Swarm) to the list for units like Locust Swarms. Probably won't be any healing 'sources' for those except from those sources that Heal All. But it was necessary nevertheless.

@Stoferb: A number of good considerations there. Very long term considerations but good things to goal for someday.

An idea about ships - not sure if this has been mentioned before.

When a ship relies on fuel (coal/oil etc) - it should suffer a strength loss each turn to simulate the burning of that fuel and consumption of food. So eventually it has to return to a friendly port to re-fuel (heal) etc. or connect with a fuel tanker/food supplier unit (healer).

No more staying at sea for centuries.

Nucleur ships would be OK - except for the food consumption part.

But ships don't get weaker when they are only half-full with fuel. Besides, all armies should get weaker over time then since they all lose moral, need food, restock ammo... etc.
These things were discussed and I think there is a better way to simulate limited time on high sea and such.

I've got some stuff in mind that may be able to take that stuff into account somewhat. We'll see how far we want to go with it as it goes.

Faustmouse said:

But ships don't get weaker when they are only half-full with fuel. Besides, all armies should get weaker over time then since they all lose moral, need food, restock ammo... etc.
These things were discussed and I think there is a better way to simulate limited time on high sea and such.

Click to expand...

This system was in PAE mod when you need logistics units atached to the stack when you fighting outsidie borders of your civ. Without them yours units lost health every turn.

NOTICE: HIGH PRIORITY FOR THE TEAM(please )

Ok, moving forward with this project. I'm probably going to need some help here if anyone can pitch in.

First, I'll discuss a few developments. Since we're adding healing by unitcombat and this will necessitate a review of and fleshing out of some further healing units, I've realized this is simply a good juncture to get a few things done that basically constitutes a full Advanced Healing mod.

So I've included into this:

1) iNumHealSupport: This value can be established on units, unitcombats and promotions. All 3 sources combine additively on a unit so that the unit's total is equal to it's base unit value, any additional values from its unitcombats, and any its getting from promotions.

The total represents the number of units that a healer can support and assist in healing in a given round. This will make it potentially useful to have multiple healers of a given type in the stack and should play into healers gaining XP from healing, both by providing us with more utility in designing the promotion structure for healers and for giving healers that aren't the absolute best for a role an ability to step in and help and get some XP themselves when the primary healer(s) are overwhelmed by the amount of injured units to assist.


2) Establish a Base of Operations: A new method of fortifying that healers may use that, rather than giving them a growing combat modifier, gives them an expanding healing ability, capping out at 5 rounds just as fortification does. Each round spent establishing a base of operations gives them an additional +2% Healing ability - so up to an additional +10% can be obtained this way. This bonus only applies to the types of units that the healer can normally heal.



I've begun a Healing Unit Review online spreadsheet. Doing this, I've been able to plot out where I believe we should have additional units to fill the new healing roles.

I'll be working on fleshing out the stats here (much like the naval review which isn't dead - this is really an extension of it but to get this system in place for the navies we need to have it working for the land units as well) BUT I'd like to strongly request all available assistance with the ART side of unit development here. With your help we can bust these out rather quickly. I'm thinking that unit designs abound on the forums and we've got a lot in use that could simply be reskinned as well (or as I suggested earlier simply having a glow removed from a GP and using that in some cases) so please lets get together to hammer out the art definitions for each of these while I sort out the extended statistics. I can then get these into the xml - I'll just need to have the art tags provided for each.

Keep in mind I really should also review the Healing AI... I think it's high time we had a dedicated AI type for healers and get them away from piggybacking on other AI types. This can solve numerous problems in other areas as well as give me a clean opportunity to help the AI determine how to use the new healing coding and options. So I'll need time for that. I think we can probably get this in before a freeze then have some time to work out any bugs or funny stuff in this and the rest of the mod debugging backlog then push for a new version release.

So here's the list of NEW units and some notes as to what I'm envisioning:

• UNIT_WISE_WOMAN: Wise Woman - a very simple and only slightly effective herbal healer. Good for getting a healer out with early stacks and hunting parties to get some additional healing xp moving right away. This is the only addition to the standard people healing units I'm looking for.
  
  
• UNIT_SHEPHERD: First animal healer. I'm thinking a robed dude with a shepherd's staff.
  
  
• UNIT_CARTWRIGHT: First mechanical healer. Perhaps this could be a de-glowed early engineer?
  
  
• UNIT_VET: Ancient/Classical animal healer.
  
  
• UNIT_SIEGE_MECHANIC: Ancient/Classical mechanical healer.
  
  
• UNIT_FIELD_VET: Medieval/Renaissance animal healer. Most likely a mounted unit.
  
  
• UNIT_GEAR_MECHANIC: Medieval/Renaissance mechanical healer. (note: I could see us doing a special Clockwork unit mechanical healer as well but this wouldn't be him.)
  
  
• UNIT_MEDICAL_VET: Industrial/Modern animal healer. The last of the specific animal healers. Animals play a much diminished role at and after this point and while ambulances+ aren't quite as specialized in healing animals, from a combat perspective they do fine for the demand (and can be specialized still in that direction from promos.) This is also at the last stage where people/animal healing units are represented as an actual person in unit design and mobility... from here, moving into ambulances and beyond we're getting into vehicular types. To keep with the last upgrade stage, he could be mounted as well.
  
  
• UNIT_MACHINIST: Industrial age mechanic
  
  
• UNIT_MECHANIC: Early modern auto mechanic. Perhaps he should be a jeep or motorcycle or something. We could keep him as a person if that's easier.
  
  
• UNIT_AVIATION_TECHNICIAN: First aircraft healing unit. Probably on foot since he'd be accustomed to being flown in wherever he's needed. Very early so probably has a bit of a worker/farmer look.
  
  
• UNIT_MOTORPOOL: A collection of military mechanics in a caravan - so a simple reskin of one of our industrial land merchant units might be in order here... something like a supply truck with a wrench on the side perhaps.
  
  
• UNIT_FLIGHT_TECHNICIAN: WWII era (fixed wing propeller craft) aircraft maintenance person.
  
  
• UNIT_AUTO_ELECTRICIAN: For more advanced system automotive repair. We should keep him a motorized vehicle himself and remain militarized but somehow show the upgrade in vehicular technology. Perhaps a reskinned humvee? Or more modern military fueling vehicle?
  
  
• UNIT_JET_TECHNICIAN: Works on jetcraft so is getting more modern.
  
  
• UNIT_PROGRAMMER: Our first tech healer. Tech healers could be drawn from reskinned/glow removed Great Scientists perhaps. This guy works with the really big room sized computers so wouldn't have a laptop which I think could be used later (as a reskin of an executive perhaps). Note: This healer line also sets us up for having some more foundation in place for future potential in cyber warfare game mechanics.
  
  
• UNIT_REPLICATION_MECHANIC: These mechanics simply go onsite, 3d print the parts needed and install. They'd need a powersource and 'mini-lab' for the 3d printing so maybe they'd be best to get around in a helicopter - they come in around the time of the modern medivac so perhaps a reskin of that unit?
  
  
• UNIT_ASTRONAUTIC_TECHNICIAN: NASA level aircraft/spacecraft design and repair folks. Still on foot expecting to be flown in where needed but looking more modern and more scientific/civilian and less military.
  
  
• UNIT_SOFTWARE_DEVELOPER: A total computer nerd. Could be a reskinned exec, complete with pocket protectors.
  
  
• UNIT_SERVICE_DROID: Can we count the ways this could be expressed? So many... they do have a rather multi-purpose role as well. They would likely be flying - not much more than the minimum a job may demand but transportation-wise they'd fit very well as a VTOL unit. R2D2 perhaps?
  
  
• UNIT_SYSTEMS_ANALYST: I've not determined whether this should be a person or an advanced artificial intelligence. Whatever we come up with for an art can decide that but I'm sure we're tired of people by now. Perhaps a hybrid unit would be best - something very cybertronic... wires his brain directly into the computer system.
  
  
• UNIT_NANITE_REPAIR_CLOUD & UNIT_ANIMA_REPAIR_CLOUD: Already fully plotted out in the naval review but we could use an interesting artistic approach to tweaking the existing nanite swarms and clouds for these two units. Perhaps just giving them a red color?

So please, I know the forum's been very quiet - I've been less active than normal here as well as I've been tooling around with things and not focusing much on discussion lately but can we come together to get this pushed forth? The stats won't take me too long - these are much simpler than naval units in scope. The AI will be a work in progress for a bit but it would help to have the units in the game to really get a feel for how well the AI is working once I start working on that. So really, these could go in quite quickly if we can sort out the art here. I was prepared to do it all myself but I thought of all the many units we've added to the game as a team and how capable we are when we join efforts.

I'm certainly planning to pitch in still and help to get the art together for numerous naval units that will be needing it but even then that's a whole world of stuff to know and figure out, much of which I haven't. I just know modelling stuff some from previous projects and believe I can get some entirely new models into the game (whether animated or not is not quite as important in naval units as it would be here.) It's just that with these healing units I can only imagine what everyone else has seen and encountered in other mods, in other segments of the forum, and even what familiarity you might have with current unit arts that can be easily reskinned to fit any of these roles. I think I'm not the best suited to try to go at this alone. And even if we just get something serviceable in place for them for now and find some better stuff for them later... that's fine too.

So my question is... what can YOU do to help here?

Here are my propositions for art files used (temporary) for new mechanics/vets units:


Ill create new buttons for these units as soon as you add them to mod. As for reskining they wait little longer because first I want to add new GP screens
Never then less if it possible ill try avoid adding new skins if old ones are correct.

Im little less active last times because GP project is huge. For now I collected all raw data for XML and created most dds files. In this week I should start generating XML files and starting tests. Week or two and im for your services TB

Thunderbrd said:

2) Establish a Base of Operations: A new method of fortifying that healers may use that, rather than giving them a growing combat modifier, gives them an expanding healing ability, capping out at 5 rounds just as fortification does. Each round spent establishing a base of operations gives them an additional +2% Healing ability - so up to an additional +10% can be obtained this way. This bonus only applies to the types of units that the healer can normally heal.

Click to expand...

I would suggest a slight change here:-

1) Healers are also disease fighters. I specialise the ones I am keeping in my cities with disease promotions and my field ones with healing promotions. This means that the function needs to work with that specialisation and either improve one or the other or maybe both. Especially the latter for when we start including diseases that strike down troops at war.

Alternately we need two "fortify" actions for the healer units one to heal and one to combat disease and let the player/AI decide what it wants the unit to do.

2) Field Hospitals. I am not sure what I mean by that at the moment but these would heal units in neighbouring tiles as well.

Sparth said:

Here are my propositions for art files used (temporary) for new mechanics/vets units:

Spoiler :

UNIT_WISE_WOMAN:
ART_DEF_UNIT_FEMALE_TENGRI_MISSIONARY

UNIT_SHEPHERD:
ART_DEF_UNIT_WORKER_BARBARIAN

UNIT_CARTWRIGHT:
ART_DEF_UNIT_APOTHECARY_GREEK

UNIT_VET:
ART_DEF_UNIT_STORY_TELLER_EUROPEAN

UNIT_SIEGE_MECHANIC:
ART_DEF_UNIT_APOTHECARY_GERMAN

UNIT_FIELD_VET:
ART_DEF_UNIT_SURGEON_EUROPEAN

UNIT_GEAR_MECHANIC:
ART_DEF_UNIT_COLONIST_MALE_GERMAN

UNIT_MEDICAL_VET:
ART_DEF_UNIT_TRENCH_CAVALRY_GREEK

UNIT_MACHINIST:
ART_DEF_UNIT_WORKERMODERN_SOUTH_AMERICA

UNIT_MECHANIC:
ART_DEF_UNIT_LATE_GREAT_FARMER_EUROPEAN

UNIT_AVIATION_TECHNICIAN:
ART_DEF_UNIT_PIONEER_MALE_EUROPEAN

UNIT_MOTORPOOL:
ART_DEF_UNIT_WORKER_FREIGHT

UNIT_FLIGHT_TECHNICIAN:
ART_DEF_UNIT_WORKER_FREIGHT

UNIT_AUTO_ELECTRICIAN:
ART_DEF_UNIT_HUMVEE_SOUTH_AMERICA

UNIT_JET_TECHNICIAN:
ART_DEF_UNIT_HUMVEE_SOUTH_AMERICA

UNIT_PROGRAMMER:
ART_DEF_UNIT_ECOLOGIST_SOUTH_AMERICA

UNIT_REPLICATION_MECHANIC:
ART_DEF_UNIT_MEDEVAC_DROPSHIP

UNIT_ASTRONAUTIC_TECHNICIAN:
ART_DEF_UNIT_CLONEWORKER

UNIT_SOFTWARE_DEVELOPER:
ART_DEF_UNIT_LATER_LAWYER_ASIAN

UNIT_SERVICE_DROID:
ART_DEF_UNIT_AUTOM_INFANTRY

UNIT_SYSTEMS_ANALYST:
ART_DEF_UNIT_SENTINEL

UNIT_NANITE_REPAIR_CLOUD & UNIT_ANIMA_REPAIR_CLOUD:
ART_DEF_UNIT_NANITE_SWARM for both

Ill create new buttons for these units as soon as you add them to mod. As for reskining they wait little longer because first I want to add new GP screens
Never then less if it possible ill try avoid adding new skins if old ones are correct.

Im little less active last times because GP project is huge. For now I collected all raw data for XML and created most dds files. In this week I should start generating XML files and starting tests. Week or two and im for your services TB

Click to expand...

You're a god! Thanks Sparth! Looks like we should be able to get these into the game within a week, possibly by the end of the weekend so from there take whatever time you need to reskin and button design. This is exciting!

Dancing Hoskuld said:

I would suggest a slight change here:-

1) Healers are also disease fighters. I specialise the ones I am keeping in my cities with disease promotions and my field ones with healing promotions. This means that the function needs to work with that specialisation and either improve one or the other or maybe both. Especially the latter for when we start including diseases that strike down troops at war.

Alternately we need two "fortify" actions for the healer units one to heal and one to combat disease and let the player/AI decide what it wants the unit to do.

Click to expand...

I want to do an alternative one. And maybe I SHOULD try to work it up now before I play with the healer AI. There would also be one for fighting crime for law enforcement units.

The main thing though is that I'm not sure if I can effectively work with the property mechanism for this. It might be tricky for me to do. I'd have done this already but I'm a little intimidated trying to interact with properties. To make this more possible without pulling my hair out trying to work with the property data structures I might make this an autopromotion mechanism actually. That might work much easier for me. (And may be a bit more genericalizable this way.)

Dancing Hoskuld said:

2) Field Hospitals. I am not sure what I mean by that at the moment but these would heal units in neighbouring tiles as well.

Click to expand...

Basically that's what this is... establishing a field hospital... but maybe not QUITE as permanent. What you're suggesting sounds like an improvement... one that maybe some healers could even build. I would urge you to take part in the advanced healing mod by working on that perhaps. The old errors we were having on non-worker units having build orders isn't really anything critical... just tweaks with the AI in a non-threatening way. So it can work without causing issues I believe. That'd certainly be yet another layer of intricacy for this stuff! I'd be very willing to help with any tag implementations you'd need for that.

Note: I THINK forts that act as cities do offer the base healing rate of a friendly city (though I'm not 100% sure about that.)

Thunderbrd said:

I want to do an alternative one. And maybe I SHOULD try to work it up now before I play with the healer AI. There would also be one for fighting crime for law enforcement units.

Click to expand...

This would be best.

Thunderbrd said:

The main thing though is that I'm not sure if I can effectively work with the property mechanism for this. It might be tricky for me to do. I'd have done this already but I'm a little intimidated trying to interact with properties. To make this more possible without pulling my hair out trying to work with the property data structures I might make this an autopromotion mechanism actually. That might work much easier for me. (And may be a bit more genericalizable this way.)

Click to expand...

I never use the autopromotion mechanism and don't understand how it applies in this case.

These buttons could be implemented as Python missions but the AI would also need to be python, I think.

Thunderbrd said:

Basically that's what this is... establishing a field hospital... but maybe not QUITE as permanent. What you're suggesting sounds like an improvement... one that maybe some healers could even build. I would urge you to take part in the advanced healing mod by working on that perhaps.

Click to expand...

There are problems with using an improvement. The first is that improvements belong to the owner of the territory in which it is built. The field hospitals are needed in the field which includes all territories, friendly (incl vassal) neutral and hostile. Making it like a fortification which could be built in hostile territory will have big consequences as it becomes a way of taking territory, not something we would intend.

Second is that your healers could spam the improvement effectively making more healers. They would provide healing while they are building the improvement, then the improvement would provide the healing and the healer would move to another plot and build another improvement.

Thunderbrd said:

Note: I THINK forts that act as cities do offer the base healing rate of a friendly city (though I'm not 100% sure about that.)

Click to expand...

As far as I know, forts that act as cities do give better healing than just fortifying in your territory does.

Dancing Hoskuld said:

This would be best.

Click to expand...

Dancing Hoskuld said:

I never use the autopromotion mechanism and don't understand how it applies in this case.

These buttons could be implemented as Python missions but the AI would also need to be python, I think.

Click to expand...

I didn't mean that mechanism exactly, just denoting the concept of a process. I've been spending the last 30 min or so thinking through how this could work and the thought did occur to me that we could do python based outcome missions.

HOWEVER... I think this brought up a truly brilliant concept that could apply to so much more than just properties.

What I could do is have a generic 'Build Up' mission that operates much in the same way as the recently added alternative fortification missions. Except that when you select the mission it sends you a popup selection that gives you potentially multiple manners in which you can 'build up'. Each would be a promotionline. The promotionline itself would be defined as a BuildUp line with a bBuildUp tag and would be available for build up selection to any unit that would qualify according to the usual promotion qualifications, including unitcombat and tech access controls. Each round the unit spends 'fortified' with this BuildUp selection it gets the next level of promotion (iLinePriority would control that.) As soon as the unit breaks its fortification then it loses them all.

This would make a VERY cool generic system that would allow us to define all sorts of Build Up types. You want your spearmen to set vs charge and gain a more powerful combat modifier vs mounted units instead of the generic fortification? This would enable us to design that. You want your healers to build up sterilization in an area (disease control)? We could do that through this mechanism.

Anything a promotion can do could be made to become a manner in which units can improve themselves over the time of a fortification (replacing the normal fortification bonus.)

So how cool would that be?

The AI could be a bit tricky... they'd have to evaluate which one to select before they go to build up but I could probably generalize this into an AI routine that fills in wherever units normally go to sleep or fortify. So it shouldn't be too bad really. There could even be, as there is now, an automatic consideration of a 'best practice' when Fortify All or Sleep All is selected that automates these selections for the less micromanaging player.

Yes... this system would be superb I think. And nothing about it is something I've not practiced before in coding.

I think I'll wait to address it once these units are defined though. Still - I'd hope to get it in place before release since it should be a pretty simple modification to design given the degree of familiarity I have with all the tasks required.

Dancing Hoskuld said:

There are problems with using an improvement. The first is that improvements belong to the owner of the territory in which it is built. The field hospitals are needed in the field which includes all territories, friendly (incl vassal) neutral and hostile. Making it like a fortification which could be built in hostile territory will have big consequences as it becomes a way of taking territory, not something we would intend.

Second is that your healers could spam the improvement effectively making more healers. They would provide healing while they are building the improvement, then the improvement would provide the healing and the healer would move to another plot and build another improvement.



As far as I know, forts that act as cities do give better healing than just fortifying in your territory does.

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You make very valid points there. Again, Establishing a Base of Operations is exactly intended to represent a field hospital - just more generically termed since it can also be a field mechanical depot etc...

Sounds very like Pie_At's defensive promotions in his Ancient Europe mod. You set the unit to "fortify" a position and it has the correct promotion while it is fortified and looses it when it is selected or activated.

Dancing Hoskuld said:

Sounds very like Pie_At's defensive promotions in his Ancient Europe mod. You set the unit to "fortify" a position and it has the correct promotion while it is fortified and looses it when it is selected or activated.

Click to expand...

Yes, except that since we have promotion lines I can easily set it up so that each round can take a step up, capping out at the normal fortified turns limit. The utility of some of the tools Koshling helped me to get established here early on are proving boundless.