Soviet wounded recovery

[Grand Duke]

Hello, EF team and community. While we all are waiting for some news or even (unlikely) a fix for this unpleasant situation this awesome mod ended up in, I'd like to start a small brainstorm about the future content, just to kill the waiting time  .

So, what's this all about?
I am more than sure this was suggested before but still - how about a wounded recovery mechanic for the Soviets? I guess  some problems with balance will arise from adding it and that's why no such system exists but I still think it would be good in terms of historical accuracy. I've read somewhere (unfortunately, I cannot provide exact source, that was a lot of time ago) that more than 70% of fighting troops of the Red Army were W.I.A. at least once and brought back into the fight thanks to being recovered by field sanitars and field hospitals, so it would be nice touch if something represented this fact in the game.

Balance and usefulness
The balance problem with this mechanic can be summed up in one sentence - the Soviets already have alot of dirt cheap infantry, so why add zombie conscripts to worsen the situation? I think this can be balanced out by changing the bonus for recovering infantrymen (which was already done for Ostheer) and, optionally, make it a doctrine unlock (so it would be more rare). So, I suggest that the new soviet hospital (whatever that would be: a truck, a building, an emplacement) would give boni for every single infantryman recovered in the form of refunding of Manpower needed to reinforce the squad that lost one of it's members. I understand that there's no way to give different boni depending on the type of squad, so make the bonus equal the reinforcement cost for the most expensive russian infantry squad (don't know what that would be - either Guards or Navals). The difference between this system and the US, UK and Wehr ones is obvious, and the difference between it and the Ostheer mechanic is that Ostheer gets refunded resourses only after saving several infantrymen and the Soviets would get a much smaller resource bonus for saving single soldiers.

The implementation
So how could the devs implement it?
My first idea was to merge the soviet hospital with the already implemented medic truck, but there would be some problems: Is it even possible to implement medics spawning on a unit? Would the truck spawn medics only when stationary? Should it be unlocked from the start or should it be an upgrade? Finally, wouldn't it mak the Medic truck extremely useful and even OP(mobile healing unit+mobile retreat point+mobile infantry recovering)?
Another option is to make the hospital a building/emplacement US/UK-style. The problem with it is one - it's boring and not unique.
My last idea is to make it possible to turn neutral buildings into hospitals that would spawn medics outside. The single issue I see with this option is that some maps have few of ambient buildings and some just lack them, so it would be much more difficult to use Soviet hospitals on these maps.

Name of the building, medic and building models
I'd like to suggest some names for the hypothetical Soviet medic building:
Polevoy Lazaret (Полевой лазарет) or Field Lazaret, or just Lazaret
Medical Point (Медицинский пункт)
I think the model of the medic unit should be either a female medic (the majority of field medics during the war were women) or, if a female model is too much to ask, you could just use a conscript figure and slap a medical bag and a armband with a red cross on it.
I actually don't have any ideas on how the building (if it's a building) would look like, probably a tent or atrench with a roof.

So, that's pretty much my vision of this topic and now it's up to everyone to criticize and discuss it, feel free! I'd certainly deeply appreciate if someone of the devs would tell us what does he/she think about all this. Thank you.

[Gerrit 'Lord Rommel' G.]

I think the red army had a working heal system so i cant see any reason to change, modify or rework it.

[Hendrik 'DarcReaver' S.]

Overall, this idea sounds interesting and is pretty well thought out, thanks for providing us with this idea

However, we also discussed about this matter internally pretty often in the past. The main reason why we decided against introducing a medic-casualty system is a pretty simple one: Conscripts.

To elaborate: Conscripts are extremely inexpensive units, they do not cost a fortune, do not cost anything to maintain and are cheap to reinforce. Still, conscripts die. A lot. So, casualties will not only be dead soldiers, but also lots of wounded soldiers. And, since you'll field a large force of Conscripts by default, it will be pretty easy to get a lot of benefit from the medic stations, especially in teamgames where you could actually spam those medic stations to collect higher amounts of casualties. Even if you reduce the effect of the individual bonus that you receive it's likely to be a broken system. Soviets have low upkeep and reinforcementcosts for a reason (apart from Guards), which is that soviets have no casualty collection system.

[Grand Duke]

Thank you, Lord Rommel and dArCReAvEr for your quick reply. Actually, I didn't expect anyone to reply so quickly, let alone 2 members of the dev team .

Well, yes, I truly understand your reasoning, a casualty recovery system+cheap spammable infantry can really be abusable, and no one wants that, some historism must be sacrificed for the sake of playability, that's an axiom. You see, the reason I'm clinging onto this idea is that I like CoH for making us care for our soldiers, showing that they can be incapacitated (not just 0 HP - BAM - dead for good, well, time to build another unit) and theoretically saved. Medics saving wounded people is one of the best sights one can see in the game, when I see one rush across the battle, sometimes, I stop micromanaging the troops and zoom in on him, watch the medic run to the guy wriggling on the ground in pain, check his wounds and struggle to carry him back to our lines, while bullets fly around them and shells fall around. All that does not exist in CoH2 (which is one of the MANY reasons I couldn't play that game), yeah, there are wounded people. Yeah, you can shoot them. That's pretty much it. Oh, and, errrm, sorry, we talk about EF here, sorry.

So, in the end, the decisive word remains yours, and I respect your decision (still, a tiny little part of my soul hopes that one day a soviet medic system will find it's place in this great mod, hehe)

[Blackbishop]

If Conscripts is what prevent this to be tried, we can just make them avoid Conscripts.

[Hendrik 'DarcReaver' S.]

If Conscripts is what prevent this to be tried, we can just make them avoid Conscripts.

Sure we could, but from a logical aspect: why should medics work with a "2-class-system" in which some casualties are collected and others not? This sort of contradicts with the concept of trying to rescue every wounded soldiers from the battlefield death, especially since conscripts will make up the bulk of your losses. Ofcourse you can say "better some than none" but well...

[Blackbishop]

Not precisely what I had in mind. If we reduce the time they are on the field they cannot be pícked up.

[The Soldier]

Would it be possible for it to take more than, say, 6 casualties to make a 6-man squad?  Maybe you'd need 8 or even 10 casualties to get a  free squad out of it, to save on the 2-class system.

[Grand Duke]

Would it be possible for it to take more than, say, 6 casualties to make a 6-man squad?  Maybe you'd need 8 or even 10 casualties to get a  free squad out of it, to save on the 2-class system.

Well, I don't actually know, as I know nothing of the modding, but judging by how the Ostheer mechanic is handled, I guess this whole "Collect X wounded - Get Y-man squad/Z resources" is quite flexible and can be played with and tweaked. Can someone with more knowledge tell us how does this system work and just how flexible is it? Another thing I'd like to know is whether the type of rescued soldiers can affect the filling of the red bar (e.g. you'd need to feed the medic station much more Cons than if it would be Guards to get the bonus) or the the size of the bonus you get (you saved some Cons - get a small negligible bonus, collected some Guards - get a proper one).

[Dreamerbg]

Not precisely what I had in mind. If we reduce the time they are on the field they cannot be pícked up.

Isnt their time already reduced. Its really hard to find a situation where American medic will manage to pick up a conscript before the body disappear.

[Monos]

What if the healtruck can build a unit when deployed which is a Medic.

Instead of having the medic run back to a casulty clearing station or the truck itself you would micro it around the battlefield finding wounded soldiers and using an ability to revive one soldier with a cooldown and munitions cost.

When revived the soldier will be a one man squad (?) not very usefull for fighting but ninjacapping and scouting. Maby give him one special ability....

Edit nr 2: had to rewrite -_- it crashed:

what if to avoid having to many new 1 man squads out and... maby using manpower to get a useless unit that gives u another useless unit for muni aint a good investment.

maby the unit u build could put the wounded out of their missery and recover lost gear.
maby like the pios salvage wreck it would give u a molotov worth of muni. or if this unit had some cool abilities with superlong cooldowns (10-20-30min) "recovering" a body would decrease the timers by 10 min each. and on top of it make these abilities free to use. no muni cost. but when u use an ability the others go on CD again. so if u want to use the best one u need to recover 3 bodies, dont die and not use the first two.


IDEA 3:

To recover wounded would give u bonus XP for command points!!! instead of other resource. to get that ability u need for your strat earlier by sacrefising microtime and alittle mp!!!!

wehr buys vet, why not be able to "buy" xp

Let's say that early tankriders are a part of your strat, if you could get them a minute earlier it would be helpfull.

This xp giving unit would have to be forced fired on like normal medics and it would have one more ability. finnishing enemy wounded also. If that wehr medic bunker is giving you problems, kill enemy wounded if your multitasking is up for it.

[Grand Duke]

Hey, another idea (mainly inspired by Monos's post). So, the thing goes like this: an automated medic runs to a wounded soldier, picks him up, returns him to hospital, this fills the hospital's bar completely and it spawns a 1-man unarmed (optionally, to prevent a lot of 1-man armies fighting on the frontlines) squad, called something like "Replacement Troop" or "Reinforcement", after that you can move this unarmed soldier to a squad that lost one of it's members and you use it's ability to merge the guy into the squad, something like the COH2 Conscripts merging with other infantry squads. So, basically, by saving a wounded man you get one free replacement for a squad of your choice, but you have to micro-manage getting that guy to the frontlines alive. I don't know whether it's technically possible to make a merging ability, though.

Now that I re-read it all, I'm starting to understand that this would be over-complicated, requires micro-management, not really original and, probably, hard to implement, but hey, there's no harm in me suggesting it .

[Gerrit 'Lord Rommel' G.]

Lot of micromanagment or? Too much mirco! When u have to concentrate on "merging troops" u wont have the time to concentrate on the battle. This is a problem. And keep in mind; merging units is already a CoH 2 concept...

[Alexander 'ApeMen' J.]

Hello, EF team and community. While we all are waiting for some news or even (unlikely) a fix for this unpleasant situation this awesome mod ended up in, I'd like to start a small brainstorm about the future content, just to kill the waiting time  .

The implementation
So how could the devs implement it?
My first idea was to merge the soviet hospital with the already implemented medic truck, but there would be some problems: Is it even possible to implement medics spawning on a unit? Would the truck spawn medics only when stationary? Should it be unlocked from the start or should it be an upgrade? Finally, wouldn't it mak the Medic truck extremely useful and even OP(mobile healing unit+mobile retreat point+mobile infantry recovering)?
Another option is to make the hospital a building/emplacement US/UK-style. The problem with it is one - it's boring and not unique.
My last idea is to make it possible to turn neutral buildings into hospitals that would spawn medics outside. The single issue I see with this option is that some maps have few of ambient buildings and some just lack them, so it would be much more difficult to use Soviet hospitals on these maps.

from the coding side it is possible that medics can spawn on every unit (expect of infantry or infantry based units like HMG etc.)
we hat a similar mecanic in the ostheer alpha with the famo
the problem with this is you are forced to remove the lockdown ability, because we are not able to remove these medics again. that means it dosnt matter if the truck drives through the map or you want to place it again in your base
the medics will always stay and will only die when the truck dies

[Dreamerbg]

If you want to do something there is always a way to do it.

For example use USA - they have 2 separate buildings for healing and for recovering wounded soldiers... so IF YOU REALLY WANT you can always create a new building "field hospital" that will use this mechanic.

But having such thing for soviets is .... not ok. They are already designed around having greater numbers of inf squads on the field and adding another way for getting "cheap" soldiers wont work well and will require another redesign the how faction...
Also it is not an unique mechanic - to avoid this point OH med tent is returning man power instead of units.

********** didnt read 1st post, just said what is stopping us(from my point of view) to do it at all.