Medical Discussion

[NikovK]

There's a lot of threads about medic healing, reviving and medical vehicles. I think we should take these discussions into a singular thread where we can better keep track of all suggestions being offered.

Here's my previous suggestion for the medic class.

Medic
Assault Rifle with 3 magazines
Hand grenades
Medic packs
Shock Paddles
Unarmored
Thanks to self-healing, revives and a powerful weapon, the medic kit could be renamed "Half Your Team" and be accurate. Medics carry 90 rounds of ammunition, 2 hand grenades, and limitless capacity to instantly heal troops with thrown packs and zap them back from the dead. The class has only one weakness; a finite supply of ammo which runs out after twenty rezzes. A Chinese or MEC medic is a Special Forces soldier who turned in his pistol and C4 for an even better gun and a Ph.D. A U.S. medic simply has burst instead of auto. Anyone see the problem?

Suggestions
Remove dropped medic packs. This forces a medic to hold the healing pack close to wounded troops instead of running up and down a defensive position, dumping aid packs into foxholes. Healing will now be a slow process, and self-healing far less useful.
Replace Hand Grenades with Smoke Grenades. This drastically reduces the medic's combat potential, particularly in close quarters. Smoke grenades help him protect his squad and allow him to dash behind the smoke to a downed man. This also adds more smoke grenades and the tactics involved to the game.
DEFIB/REZ CHANGES

Rezzing has to be changed, there is no way around it. Although removing grenades reduces the medic's combat power, and removing dropped packs prevent instant healing, the medic can still wait for players to die and then zap them for teamwork points and full health. Well-inteded suggestions that the defib be limited to only a few shots a minute are not only contrary to reality but very damaging to the idea of only one medic in a squad and will be a nightmare if the first rez attempt misses or is bugged. Two or three medics will be almost mandatory to keep players rezzed back at any useful rate. The following changes should reduce the effectiveness of spam-rezzing, increase the time needed to revive and encourage players to stay alive for pack healing without rendering medics near-useless in their critical role of reviving teammates.

From
1. Defibulator charges and batteries. As it stands, the defibulator is "realistic" in that it doesn't always work the first time and needs a second or two to recharge, but unrealistic in that it never runs out of juice. The solution lies in limited rez attempts. A defibulator battery will operate like an ordinary magazine, each battery being good for a small number charges and thus revive ATTEMPTS. At between four to eight zaps per battery and only two batteries on a medic, the medic has to reload his defibulator for five to ten seconds, creating a serious pause in spam-rezzing and creating a dependancy on the ammunition resupply class. A medic can no longer zap, zap, zap entire squads back from the dead over and over. He must now practice triage; reviving his squad leader and ammo bearers first, reloading, and then attempting to heal the rest of a downed squad. Squad mates who do not respond to the first or second zap, or who cannot be easily reached, may well be passed over. A real level of skill in reviving in the best order will make good medics stand out from the crowd.
2. Rez Effects. When you get zapped by a defibulator, you do not pop up and start seeing straight, much less moving and shooting at full health. Rezzing should restore the player to life at the very limit of "bleed" health (above or below, depending on play testing. I'd start at "below"). This forces the player to cover, since only one bullet could kill him. But jumping up and running away will be difficult for a recently zapped man. The "Shellshock" effect should be applied at the highest possible setting, causing the recently rezzed to be at a serious disadvantage if he attempts to fight or run. A good low crawl back to cover should be the only action a shell-shocked, still-bleeding soldier would consider, and exactly what the Project Peality mod should strive for.
3. After rezzing, the squad will not be truely combat effective until the medic breaks out the pack and starts wrapping people up to non-bleeding health at least ("Stabilizing" right after a rez would only take a half second to put the player back above bleed level but longer if the medic left for more rezzes). This increases the down-time of a critically wounded soldier.

While it will take a lot of work, these changes to rezzing will keep the medic a valuable part of the squad who must spend more time healing instead of shooting and is still capable of keeping a squad alive if he is the only medic in it, unlike suggestions of severely limiting the shock paddles to a few charges a minute.

[BrokenArrow]

I think the medic should be given more ammo, I've seen alot of medics in game (myself included) who really have to fight to get to a wounded guy. In intense PRMM firefights you can go through your mags like crazy even when taking careful shots. While he is a medic he is still a combat medic, so another mag or two can't hurt too much, either way his main job will be helping people. LOVE the smoke grenade idea as it makes the most sense for a medic to have, but this is part of the reason why they should get more ammo, grenades are extremly useful. Everything else you have proposed seems perfect.

[Rhino]

Rezzing has to be changed, there is no way around it. Although removing grenades reduces the medic's combat power, and removing dropped packs prevent instant healing, the medic can still wait for players to die and then zap them for teamwork points and full health. Well-inteded suggestions that the defib be limited to only a few shots a minute are not only contrary to reality but very damaging to the idea of only one medic in a squad and will be a nightmare if the first rez attempt misses or is bugged. Two or three medics will be almost mandatory to keep players rezzed back at any useful rate. The following changes should reduce the effectiveness of spam-rezzing, increase the time needed to revive and encourage players to stay alive for pack healing without rendering medics near-useless in their critical role of reviving teammates.

I disagree. I think a Player should have a limmit to how manny times he can be razed as such. so give it a max of 2 times say. maby 1, so if he gets shot, he can be razed, then if he gets shot again, he can be razed, then if he gets shot again he cant be razed and is left on the filed to respawn.

This will stop "stat padding" if you get any in this mod, and also will stop "medic Squads" running arround constanly rezing each other.

[GRB]

We could always just remove the symbol for a player in critical condition from the 3D map and the mini-map. This is one thing that has always bugged me.

I think the mini-map needs to be completely altered in a way that it mimics a GPS system and shows very little pertaining to what is going on around the player. The 3D map needs to be removed completely.

If this was to be done, the medics would have to rely on medic cries and medic cries only. No visual confirmation on where the player went down. Gotta go look for him/her. This would also give good reason to the long critical condition time.

More things need to be done audibly in the game than they currently are. Especially pertaining to communication. A soldier isn't going to use his radio 15ft away from his teammate.

Also, I agree with the medics not being able to toss medic packs that instantly restore 100% health. That's a bit of a far fetched concept. It's good for fast paced gameplay but horrible from a realistic standpoint.

Anyways, just my humble opinion.

[Happy]

Originally Posted by [R-PUB]GRB

I think the mini-map needs to be completely altered in a way that it mimics a GPS system and shows very little pertaining to what is going on around the player. The 3D map needs to be removed completely.

It should be a topographic map.

[Szarko]

Originally Posted by [R-PUB]=BONG=Happy

It should be a topographic map.

thats a good idea...


but leave the other map... so that players can find out where they are easily if they stop and look at it...

[Juhani.fin]

Change the shock paddles to something more realistic like morphine.. i don't think medics in real war run zapping ppl with those shock paddles.

[[7E]ToJo]

Originally Posted by Juhani.fin

Change the shock paddles to something more realistic like morphine.. i don't think medics in real war run zapping ppl with those shock paddles.

Actually morphine wouldn't be bad and it would be still something you could kill with like the paddles. Make them get the vision as if gassed and make it keep getting worse for a few seconds while thier life depletes.

I can picture it now A medic sneaks up on you and instead of knifing you, He injects a high dose of morphine and your eyesight starts getting all wiggley then you hit the ground and while laying there for a medic everything stays wiggley.

[Happy]

I don't think many people go into cardiac arrest in a gunfight either.

[Hitperson]

they may well have a severe nervous disposision or cardiac problems but then again what the hell are they doing in Iraq.