Healing by Combat Class

[Thunderbrd]

I have already said this. Same goes for anti crime units and crime and so on.

Well... since I'm working on this heal by cc stuff I can try to include this concept now.

 

[LordBaal]

Why not, in my humble opinion, for the classical/medieval age, make the siege engineers heal the siege units if are damaged and the medics heal the siege engineers if they get hurt.

Dunno if its possible, but what if the siege engineers are needed to construct the siege engines (don't know if is possible to spawn unit from other, and on top of that make an unit immobile but able to attack) but not to manage them, however having them at the helm could help accuracy or attack?

Why not need a medic at all for the siege units? The same reason siege engineers are not needed to operate them. Warm bodies to operate the engine should be aplenty on your "army", yet the minds that know how to made them not.

Don't know if the language barriers are letting me explain my idea with enough clarity, or if you already had it.

To try to express my self better I'll make an example.

You have a doctor, a siege engineer and some pikeman units.

All of them move adjacent to a city.

You order the siege engineers to build a trebuchet, wait for a turn, the next turn the trebuchet is ready. Its a immobile unit that however can still attack (don't know if possible).

You move the engineers to other place around the city and order them to build another one. You move your medics and some pikemen with them.

The first trebuchet gets some archers fire, it gets damaged. Wait for the next turn, the second siege engine is ready, you move your engineers back to the place of the first one. They then repair the trebuchet.

Now by some chance the siege engineers get damage by arrows fire, you move your medics towards them or vice-versa, the medics heal them.

While the engineers are standing on a tile with a siege weapon, they give some accuracy or a little damage boost, perhaps only to a single siege unit, not all of them to avoid being overpowered (don't know if possible, if not then discard this bonus).

When the city is conquered the trebuchets are left behind, with no soldier unit to man them, they disappear the next turn or even immediately after the last soldier from the square leaves (don't know if possible).

 

[Acularius]

Wouldn't it be better to make medic units able to prevent 'hits' on the unit's HP once in a while to represent a wounded individual or a vehicle with a glancing hit being able to get patched up and ready to go in the coming turn whereas 're-suppy' units can be used to 'prevent terrain damage' in a stack? Roads improvements can 'heal' a unit by re supplying it. 'Other improvements can do so as well'. Favourable Terrain aids with re supply and our standard terrain damage makes it difficult to re supply or cause damage.

Removing the units ability to heal in general. While working with the above system? I don't think the AI would enjoy it though, but it would be a nicer system. While simulating a supply line, but not needing to add a whole new supply mechanic.

Naval wise, just have water areas in general cause damage, and ships can only re supply in towns, or through promotions 'coastal re supply' and be resistant with supply ships.

It would give something like a unit 'saboteur' more dangerous as they would target said supply units first in a stack, thus bringing an advance to a halt or something.

Just food for though.

EDIT:
Using you combat sizes, the bigger units take damage a turn unless supplied and stacks can also accrue damage without a supply train. I think Realism Invictus had a system that showed support of other units in a stack, while in this case one can create a 'stack' size that needs a certain amount of supply or bleeds until equilibrium is reached.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Why not, in my humble opinion, for the classical/medieval age, make the siege engineers heal the siege units if are damaged and the medics heal the siege engineers if they get hurt.

Dunno if its possible, but what if the siege engineers are needed to construct the siege engines (don't know if is possible to spawn unit from other, and on top of that make an unit immobile but able to attack) but not to manage them, however having them at the helm could help accuracy or attack?

Why not need a medic at all for the siege units? The same reason siege engineers are not needed to operate them. Warm bodies to operate the engine should be aplenty on your "army", yet the minds that know how to made them not.

Don't know if the language barriers are letting me explain my idea with enough clarity, or if you already had it.

To try to express my self better I'll make an example.

You have a doctor, a siege engineer and some pikeman units.

All of them move adjacent to a city.

You order the siege engineers to build a trebuchet, wait for a turn, the next turn the trebuchet is ready. Its a immobile unit that however can still attack (don't know if possible).

You move the engineers to other place around the city and order them to build another one. You move your medics and some pikemen with them.

The first trebuchet gets some archers fire, it gets damaged. Wait for the next turn, the second siege engine is ready, you move your engineers back to the place of the first one. They then repair the trebuchet.

Now by some chance the siege engineers get damage by arrows fire, you move your medics towards them or vice-versa, the medics heal them.

While the engineers are standing on a tile with a siege weapon, they give some accuracy or a little damage boost, perhaps only to a single siege unit, not all of them to avoid being overpowered (don't know if possible, if not then discard this bonus).

When the city is conquered the trebuchets are left behind, with no soldier unit to man them, they disappear the next turn or even immediately after the last soldier from the square leaves (don't know if possible).

My first suggestion in response to DH was something along these lines. Aside from the fact that this would be quite a project to put together in and of itself, the one thing I don't like about this suggestion is the assumption that there are going to be plenty of bodies to man the weapon - I disagree that manpower should be so easily accounted for. Additionally, some siege weapons must actually move to attack, though I could certainly make it possible for them only to be able to move WHEN attacking.

However, if you had Siege Crews and Siege Engineers and the Engineer could convert the crews to Siege Weapons and the Siege Weapons could morph back to Siege Crews (by allowing the weapon to be torn down) and then combine that with an equipment inventory mechanism (which is actually something that's an inevitable modification coming soon anyhow) then it could well be made to work like that... eventually.

Wouldn't it be better to make medic units able to prevent 'hits' on the unit's HP once in a while to represent a wounded individual or a vehicle with a glancing hit being able to get patched up and ready to go in the coming turn whereas 're-suppy' units can be used to 'prevent terrain damage' in a stack? Roads improvements can 'heal' a unit by re supplying it. 'Other improvements can do so as well'. Favourable Terrain aids with re supply and our standard terrain damage makes it difficult to re supply or cause damage.

I get where you're coming from but to me it's completely considering damage on a unit to be a need to recover supplies and is not really considering it to be injuries and actual... well... damage. Healing should not be something that denies damage but should be an ability to recover from being damaged.

Removing the units ability to heal in general. While working with the above system? I don't think the AI would enjoy it though, but it would be a nicer system. While simulating a supply line, but not needing to add a whole new supply mechanic.

Of course there will be a bit of a supply mechanic being developed here soon so that will be modeled in its own way.

Naval wise, just have water areas in general cause damage, and ships can only re supply in towns, or through promotions 'coastal re supply' and be resistant with supply ships.

There is a plan on the books to take away the denial of ocean travel and replacing it with a variable amount of damage taken while at sea (like 1-300%) that has a chance of being incurred each round for each ship with more advanced ships reducing this chance severely. The chance itself would be on a 1k % scale thus like a base of 500% (out of 1000%) and by the time you have destroyers they'd have like a 1% chance themselves to have a major problem at sea. (Which would in essence mean a .1% chance per round.) The same basic type of mechanic could also then be transferred to units in space eventually.

It would give something like a unit 'saboteur' more dangerous as they would target said supply units first in a stack, thus bringing an advance to a halt or something.

Indeed this would be one of the major strategic benefits of improving the supply line concept as planned.

Using you combat sizes, the bigger units take damage a turn unless supplied and stacks can also accrue damage without a supply train. I think Realism Invictus had a system that showed support of other units in a stack, while in this case one can create a 'stack' size that needs a certain amount of supply or bleeds until equilibrium is reached.

I was thinking that would be the price of being undersupplied, yes. Thus it would in essence limit the distance of early exploration without placing an arbitrary limitation... though animal kills could fuel quite an explorative effort as they would add the food supplies needed to the unit itself - then the unit COULD bring back some to add to the city, which would mean that keeping them hunting close to home would be more beneficial than far exploring - or at least would certainly stretch the player to choose whether to use your hunting units to grow OR explore more.

~

So... many visions of the future of the mod here - most to be made optional. The main thing right now is making sure we determine how we want to go regarding the healing combat classes. This is to be a 'core' mod and not an option as there is really too many layers impacted by this concept - entire unit types would be made to account for this mechanism so unless we want to start making entire units optional then we should be planning this as a core modification. Therefore we should have as much consensus as possible, which is why I'm being patient about implementing things with this.


I've been thinking... The way I see it, we can go 'gamey' or 'realistic'.

If we go 'gamey' we take away the unmanned vs manned and leave the categories as 'animal, person, mechanical, naval, aviation'. We then leave it at that and pretend that the people in a vehicle or mounted are never injured and its only the equipment and mounts that need to be healed and/or there's an assumption that there's some people healers as a part of a veterinary or mechanic unit that only bother with the people that operate what the rest of the unit is specialized in healing. Our future answer to questions about how we envision things will be 'It's a game so deal with it.'

If we go 'realistic' we do more as I proposed but it might become a little more difficult for players (and even modders) to wrap their heads around.

So how does everyone feel about that? Do we prefer 'gamey' or 'realistic'?

 

[Harrier]

So how does everyone feel about that? Do we prefer 'gamey' or 'realistic'?

With all the things being added and adjusted in C2C, over time.

I vote realistic.

You can always use game options to turn off concepts some players do not like or understand.

 

[Sparth]

realistic for me

 

[Snofru1]

I´d prefer gamey.

 

[Faustmouse]

Same here, gamey...

Maybe because I haven't fully understood your system.

If you have a Knight, which is half human, half animal and you have a Medic that heals humans by 10% and animals bei 5%, and a veterinarian that heals animals by 9% and humans by 4%. By how much would the Knight heal?

How complex do you want it to get? What if you have a Chariot (Human, Animal, Vehicle) or even a Horse Artillerie (Human, Animal, Vehicle, Cannon)?

 

[LordBaal]

the one thing I don't like about this suggestion is the assumption that there are going to be plenty of bodies to man the weapon -

But historically it was, armies of antiquity usually were followed by a lot of civilians, and even those that weren't (like Marian Legions) they still had plenty auxiliaries, support and logistic personal or a few soldiers to spare into manning the siege engines.

Beside the engineers with the knowledge to put the weapon together, it's actually manning was done by peasants, soldiers or whoever was around. In my example perhaps I was not clear, but at least one unit of soldiers was required to man the siege weapons (or at least oversee their use by their auxiliaries or hired "local peasants"), and the moment the siege weapon was alone it was automatically lost.

The thing is that in retrospective, taking the example on the post above, if a knight got injured they got medical treatment, if the horse was, they were discarded and a new horse was brought for the knight. So it's a little tricky to get this done both historically accurate and well done gameplay wise.

We get to the point of what's a unit on the game? Each model is a single soldier, a representation of many? What's logistics and what's medical attention (which is in fact a fraction of the whole logistics).

I do not envy you on the decisions you have to make for this project.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Lots of fascinating perspectives here.

I'm thinking I can find a harmony between gamey and realistic yet. The code can very easily handle some more advanced mathematics. If units could have multiple 'healed by' categories and if more than one healer CAN have an effect on the healing of a unit, but each only towards the PORTION, a percentage of the damage that the unit has received that they are best at healing, then it could be a workable solutions for both sides - BUT it means that the player won't have quite as much obvious visibility on the system - though it would be quite intuitive, a la:
"Why are my mounted units taking a longer time to heal than my melee units?" - "Because you don't have vets in the stack but you do have medics."

There's more to mention here but I'll allow for more conversation first.

 

[Acularius]

I get where you're coming from but to me it's completely considering damage on a unit to be a need to recover supplies and is not really considering it to be injuries and actual... well... damage. Healing should not be something that denies damage but should be an ability to recover from being damaged.

Well, in reality that's what it will be doing but for simplicity sake its just preventing damage.
What it would really represent is a soldier who was wounded in battle, not so much that he's dead, but just incapable of fighting at the moment. The 'healer' just patches him up, and he's back to service. As for a tank, maybe it just needed a replacement part that the mechanic replaced after the battle.
So it is 'healing' by the end result, just in a time frame that doesn't get to be seen between turns. Furthermore, it doesn't have to be guaranteed, just a chance of it happening although by the time we get to more industrial and modern units, it becomes more likely but not (never) 100%.

There is a plan on the books to take away the denial of ocean travel and replacing it with a variable amount of damage taken while at sea (like 1-300%) that has a chance of being incurred each round for each ship with more advanced ships reducing this chance severely. The chance itself would be on a 1k % scale thus like a base of 500% (out of 1000%) and by the time you have destroyers they'd have like a 1% chance themselves to have a major problem at sea. (Which would in essence mean a .1% chance per round.) The same basic type of mechanic could also then be transferred to units in space eventually.

That's interesting to hear, and sounds great.

So... many visions of the future of the mod here - most to be made optional. The main thing right now is making sure we determine how we want to go regarding the healing combat classes. This is to be a 'core' mod and not an option as there is really too many layers impacted by this concept - entire unit types would be made to account for this mechanism so unless we want to start making entire units optional then we should be planning this as a core modification. Therefore we should have as much consensus as possible, which is why I'm being patient about implementing things with this.


I've been thinking... The way I see it, we can go 'gamey' or 'realistic'.

If we go 'gamey' we take away the unmanned vs manned and leave the categories as 'animal, person, mechanical, naval, aviation'. We then leave it at that and pretend that the people in a vehicle or mounted are never injured and its only the equipment and mounts that need to be healed and/or there's an assumption that there's some people healers as a part of a veterinary or mechanic unit that only bother with the people that operate what the rest of the unit is specialized in healing. Our future answer to questions about how we envision things will be 'It's a game so deal with it.'

If we go 'realistic' we do more as I proposed but it might become a little more difficult for players (and even modders) to wrap their heads around.

So how does everyone feel about that? Do we prefer 'gamey' or 'realistic'?

I tend to side with realistic, but that's because I like a little more challenge. I've also been spoiled by AGEOD games where supply tends to mean at least something.

 

[stoferb]

I think you can simplify the system down to 2-3 units. One healer for humans and animals and one engineer/mechanic for all the various war machinery. All the specialization then boils down to these units promotions trees. Healers can specialize on humans/animals. If they go down the vet promotion line they can even specialize on specific animals. Engineers then can specialize on their various fields: siege engines, naval warfare e.t.c. And in modern times you could add mechanics able to specialize for various branches of the army.

 

[LordBaal]

That's, simple, elegant, brilliant.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Perhaps a little too simple. But I do plan for some simplification in general here. At least for the player and modder experience. Not so much for the coding (much more complex.)

 

[Thunderbrd]

Ok, so I've broken things down to this:

Heals As Heals As (People) UNITCOMBAT_HEAL_AS_PEOPLE
Heals As (Aircraft) UNITCOMBAT_HEAL_AS_AIRCRAFT
Heals As (Animals) UNITCOMBAT_HEAL_AS_ANIMALS
Heals As (Mechanical) UNITCOMBAT_HEAL_AS_MECHANICAL
Heals As (Naval) UNITCOMBAT_HEAL_AS_NAVAL
Heals As (Spacecraft) UNITCOMBAT_HEAL_AS_SPACECRAFT
Heals As (Tech) UNITCOMBAT_HEAL_AS_TECH
Heals As (Nanomorph) UNITCOMBAT_HEAL_AS_NANOMORPH
Healer Sub-Type Heals (People) UNITCOMBAT_HEALS_PEOPLE
Heals (Aircraft) UNITCOMBAT_HEALS_AIRCRAFT
Heals (Animals) UNITCOMBAT_HEALS_ANIMALS
Heals (Mechanical) UNITCOMBAT_HEALS_MECHANICAL
Heals (Naval) UNITCOMBAT_HEALS_NAVAL
Heals (Spacecraft) UNITCOMBAT_HEALS_SPACECRAFT
Heals (Tech) UNITCOMBAT_HEALS_TECH
Heals (All) UNITCOMBAT_HEALS_ALL

All units will eventually be assigned Heals As type unit combats. They CAN have more than one. The code will find the best healer for each unit type and apply their healing according to the fraction that is appropriate based on the overall number of Heals As types the unit possesses.

Example:
A Chariot heals as People, Animals, and Mechanical. 1/3d of its healing modifier will be from the best People healer present. 1/3d of its healing modifier will be from the best Animal healer present. And 1/3d of its healing modifier will be from the best Mechanical healer present.

For a player (and modder), this is pretty simple. The complexity is handled in the code.



Additionally, I've added a little experience reward to each healer selected to assist a unit.

I've also added bNoSelfHeal and iSelfHealModifier tags to Units, Promotions and UnitCombats. If a unit has a source of bNoSelfHeal, it won't give itself any healing - only the aid it receives from cities and units will help it heal. iSelfHealModifiers total to an overall adjustment to the unit's own healing.

I'm also thinking of eventually adding an adjustable limit to the maximum number of units a given healing unit can assist. Expanding on how many units can be helped by a given healer unit can also become an expandable skill by promotions. I'm just not ready to do this yet as it will take some more complex AI advancements to pull off properly.

EDIT: I updated the above chart to show the full range that emerged due to my efforts to plan an application of this system to the units in the naval review project.

For an example of how these would be applied, I've planned them out for the Naval Review Project HERE.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I've generated the full workup for the game's soon-to-be naval unit structure, planning out the application for these healing tags.

You can get a pretty good picture of the mechanism by taking a deep look into how this is arranged.

The Naval Unit Healing Datasheet shows that Naval Units struggle to heal themselves (very slowly without aid.) For comparison, here's the base healing rates:

	<Define>
		<DefineName>ENEMY_HEAL_RATE</DefineName>
		<iDefineIntVal>5</iDefineIntVal>
	</Define>
	<Define>
		<DefineName>NEUTRAL_HEAL_RATE</DefineName>
		<iDefineIntVal>10</iDefineIntVal>
	</Define>
	<Define>
		<DefineName>FRIENDLY_HEAL_RATE</DefineName>
		<iDefineIntVal>15</iDefineIntVal>
	</Define>
	<Define>
		<DefineName>CITY_HEAL_RATE</DefineName>
		<iDefineIntVal>20</iDefineIntVal>
	</Define>

So without assistance, navies find it very slow and difficult to heal. However, the healing units get quite good, even if they don't have promos to assist them (though those will have a powerful impact as well.) Subs in general struggle a bit more to heal as it is more difficult to do so without the assistance of a drydock or port. Pirates are a bit better at it since they are more self sufficient. AI units start off being completely incapable of self-healing but progress to earn the first nanomorphic levels of healing that far exceed anything humans can match (until their ships also become nanomorphic.)

There's a LOT of little Easter Eggs in this evaluation to take note of and I'm hoping that those who can read this sheet and make sense of it will be able to easily see why I wanted a touch more complexity than was proposed but I HAVE introduced a lot more simplicity than originally proposed as well.

This whole system will be all the more interesting with Size Matters in play I think. The merging and splitting healing modifiers playing into all this will certainly make healing a matter for deeper strategic consideration.

All in all, I'm super happy with these numbers and how various evaluations of how they would play out come up. Once we get some promotions going to support this system it will get all the more interesting.

 

[Acularius]

]

	<Define>
		<DefineName>ENEMY_HEAL_RATE</DefineName>
		<iDefineIntVal>5</iDefineIntVal>
	</Define>
	<Define>
		<DefineName>NEUTRAL_HEAL_RATE</DefineName>
		<iDefineIntVal>10</iDefineIntVal>
	</Define>
	<Define>
		<DefineName>FRIENDLY_HEAL_RATE</DefineName>
		<iDefineIntVal>15</iDefineIntVal>
	</Define>
	<Define>
		<DefineName>CITY_HEAL_RATE</DefineName>
		<iDefineIntVal>20</iDefineIntVal>
	</Define>

What were the original rates for healing in enemy, neutral, and friendly lands as well as cities?
I knew some buildings provides bonuses like Repair docks (5%) and the Herbalist (10%) in the city.

I am curious to see how it pans out.

 

[Thunderbrd]

What were the original rates for healing in enemy, neutral, and friendly lands as well as cities?
I knew some buildings provides bonuses like Repair docks (5%) and the Herbalist (10%) in the city.

I am curious to see how it pans out.

These are unchanged base values. I was just posting for reference.

The changes listed on the naval units spreadsheet that make it tough for navies to heal on their own are listed under iSelfHealModifier. They range from -5 to -25 or so on this modifier which means in many cases they would be healing at minimum rate (1 if not set to bNoSelfHeal, 0 if bNoSelfHeal is true.)

Minimum rate BEING 1, this means that the standard unit with 100 HP, having taken 76 HP of damage, will take 76 rounds to heal. Each heal pt is one HP healed per round.


So a more game applied example:

A Dreadnought has a self heal modifier of -15. (As most naval units do.) Let's assume normal size/volume comparison brings the units HP to the standard 100 (original BtS ALL units have 100 max HP).

The Dreadnought takes 20 dmg from a battle. It cannot heal when moving so it parks itself in the enemy waters where the battle took place.

For most units, doing this would mean that they are healing at the rate of 5 HP per turn. (Enemy territory heal rate base.) So would take 4 turn to heal this way.

With a -15 self heal factor on the Dreadnought, however, the total heal rate becomes -10, which, since the Dreadnought CAN self heal, becomes the minimum rate of 1. So at 1 HP healed per turn, it'll be healed in 20 turns.

In Neutral and Friendly territory, the results are pretty much the same as even Friendly territory healing has a rate of 15. 15-15 still hits the minimum 1.

In a friendly city, however, assuming it's the most basic of ports with hardly any facilities to assist, it's at least a base of 20 (20-15 = 5) so they would heal 5 hp per round and be good after 4 rounds.

At sea, with some assistance from a Medical Ship (Which heals 20 Naval and 20 People which is the same for both of the Heals As types of a Dreadnought) giving +20 heal rate in total, even in enemy territory you'd have (5 -15 = -10 + 20 = 10 heal rate) Thus you'd heal in 2 rnds over 20 dmg.

Let's say you didn't have a Medical Ship but you did have a medic on board a transport in the stack and he was at least healing at a nicely promoted rate of 30 for People.

As mentioned, the Dreadnought has 2 'Heal As' Combat Classes, Heals As People and Heals as Naval. So he'll take the best available source of unit healing assistance for each Heal As type independently and divide that amount by the fraction that represents the overall amount of heal as types he has. So in this case, he'd take the healer's People heal rate of 30 and divide it in half - getting a bonus of 15. There's no source in reach for him for Naval so gets no bonus there.

So in Enemy Territory (5 base) with -15 self heal (-10 running total) with +15 from the People healing support, he gets a grand total of 5 hp/turn.

One final case, the Dreadnought has both the Medic and the Medical Ship in the stack. The Medic is stronger at healing People than the Medical Ship (30 vs 20).

So he's getting +15 from the Medic to heal people and +10 from the Medical Ship to help with the Naval side of things. (+25 total). We know the enemy territory - the self heal ends up at -10 so -10+25 = 15 hp/turn. He'll still take 2 turns to heal but in the 2nd turn he'd be a lot more prepared for battle as the people on the ship would be better recovered and ready for war.

Hopefully these examples help to understand the rest of the charting and what it means. On some review, I'm thinking I MIGHT want to reduce the healers' healing values by 5 across the board... not sure.

Yes, buildings and promos will need to be adapted to the structure as well. (I could probably use some serious help with buildings on this...)

 

[Yudishtira]

FWIW to me that sounds as close to perfect as I'm capable of detecting. Which is to say, I can't think of anything to criticize, and that's rare for me, isn't it? (At least I'm breaking the habit of a lifetime and giving some positive feedback here...)

 

[Thunderbrd]

Thanks Yudi! I'm looking forward to having this in the game myself.