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Bleeding Wounds System


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Don't get stuck on any of the numbers I used.

What I suggested is a mechanic, not any particular value in a formula.

Besides...

What might be frustrating is if a xenonaut gets hit in the alien phase, goes from 60hp to 4hp from a plasma rifle shot, then bleeds out when bleeding is resolved at the start of the player phase without the player being able to do anything about it!

War is hell. Sometimes you watch people die before you can even get there.

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I would definitely argue that the system you mention is not simpler Gazz :P

I am not sure what the red part of the health bar would represent.

Is that lost health or some kind of potential loss due to the bleeding?

Or is it just a colour to show that someone is bleeding?

I don't really like the random chance of bleeding when you have a bleeding wound.

Might as well keep it simple.

If you have that kind of injury you take damage, if you don't then there is no damage.

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Gazz, war is indeed hell but it would be especially hellish early-game, when the scenario I paint is more likely to happen each time a xenonaut gets shot. Having checked the armour values for jackal armour, the damage value for alien plasma rifles and checked that against the damage taken formula, the plasma rifle does on average 55hp of damage per shot. The average HP for a solider (at corp. level) ranges between 56-64, so it would seem on those odd occasions when a xenonaut survives a plasma rifle shot they're going to die anyway, so why bother with medikits?

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Gazz, war is indeed hell but it would be especially hellish early-game, when the scenario I paint is more likely to happen each time a xenonaut gets shot. Having checked the armour values for jackal armour, the damage value for alien plasma rifles and checked that against the damage taken formula, the plasma rifle does on average 55hp of damage per shot. The average HP for a solider (at corp. level) ranges between 56-64, so it would seem on those odd occasions when a xenonaut survives a plasma rifle shot they're going to die anyway, so why bother with medikits?

That's exactly the point at which you should bring medkits. If the plasma rifle does 55 damage (and it could do less, as that's an average), then your average corporal (60 HP) will have five HP remaining. At 55 damage you'll have on average 1 critical wound that's causing damage over time.

So the perfectly average shot leaves your corporal with 5 HP and losing 2 per turn, which gives him two turns to live. That's a fair bit of time to get him medical attention if you have someone already close enough.

Sometimes, sure, the wounds will be too great to get someone there in time. Other times you'll have multiple turns (if damage is low or HP was high), or take hits that don't need medical attention at all. But with those figures, I guarantee you that bringing medkits will save lives.

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Comassion, I would say it would depend upon average amount of damage that a critical wound does. Provided that the average critical wound does 2hp damage per turn, then yes, with the figures I present then the average corp who survives a plasma blast stands a chance (the median seems to point to 58-59hp, but that's another point entirely). If the average critical wound does more damage than that and it is resolved at the start of the players' turn rather than the end, then I argue it is more likely that a player who watched his solider who got shot in the alien's turn will watch him die in his own turn, and is likely to find that experience frustrating at not being able to do anything about it. It was brought up in both suppression threads that taking away control from a player was a bad thing. Therefore, I argue that to reduce the frustration a player feels, critical damage/bleeding should be resolved at the end of a players' turn, not at the start.

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I think bleeding or fatal wounds as they were called UFO, should be done at the the start of the turn. Get all the messages out of the way at the beginning of the turn. The system doesn't look to bad, tho I think there should be a higher chance of getting a fatal wound and reducing damage per to -1.

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Having no problem with bleeding checks after each 10 points of damage received. UFO had this system (with different values though) and a hit from an alien plasma rifle could really result in numerous fatal wounds.

However, the same game aslo had an impact on soldier`s characteristics when fatal wounds occured. I can`t remember them all, but i think that fatal wound in arm could result in dramaticall accuracy reduction. Torso resulted in strength and stamina loss, legs - AP (?). Don`t know what fatal head wound resulted in. Possibly in bravery or the same accuracy?

I mean - if this system does not sound too complex - it should be used in Xenonaughts.

And i personally think that 2 HP per turn is too much. 20% chances - is quite a lot )

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I went back and did a little more work on the chances of more than one bleeding/critical wound happening under Chris’ system. As each bleeding check is not dependant on the last, it’s possible to work out the cumulative probability of bleeding events happening. Using an online binomial distribution calculator (http://stattrek.com/online-calculator/binomial.aspx) , I plugged in the figures already discussed by me and Commasson (shot damage of 55hp), which means there would be five bleeding checks. Using that, I got the following figures:-

The chance of exactly one bleeding check passing is 40% (0.4096)

The chance of exactly two bleeding checks passing is 20% (0.2048)

The chance of exactly three bleeding checks passing is 0.05% (0.0512)

The chance of exactly four bleeding checks passing is 0.06% (0.0064)

The chance of exactly five bleeding checks passing is 0.0032% (0.00032)

So, with an average alien shot, the chance of one bleeding check passing is relatively high, and there is a 1 in 5 probability of passing two bleeding checks.

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I think bleeding or fatal wounds as they were called UFO, should be done at the the start of the turn. Get all the messages out of the way at the beginning of the turn. The system doesn't look to bad, tho I think there should be a higher chance of getting a fatal wound and reducing damage per to -1.

If the 'fatal wound' system (or at least name) from X-COM does get implemented, though, I'd really suggest changing it to 'mortal wound', as 'fatal wound' implies that the wound was...well, fatal, when it isn't necessarily - while a mortal wound is a serious/life-threatening wound that you are capable of living through, with the appropriate treatment.

Just one of my pet peeves from the original, heh. (That and no soldier memorial page!)

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well you copmlain that your soldier dies on the next turn from his wounds

didnt that happen alot in the normal x-com your dude gets shot like maybe 3 times and you are omg he lives!! :) and next turn he cries out in pain and colapses it was kind of fun to see.

and it doesnt realy take control away from the player chris said you need to get 10 damage trough your armor so that adds even more use to giving armor to your troops instead of tossing them out in their shirts

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Dorphin. It was a great source of joy for me to see a guy who had been shot survive the withering barrage of plasma. It was not with any happiness that my guy would then die of a fatal wound at the start of the next turn, when I could have got one of my other guys to the wounded feller. That's not an "oh well", that's a "what the *&%!". My suggestion is to mitigate frustration. If the player can't get a medic to wounded guy X before he bleeds out, then "oh well". But if wounded guy X bleeds out before I get any chance to do something, then that, to me, is a "what the *&%!". It is the very definition of taking control away from a player.

In my previous posts, when I talk about a guy in Jackal armour taking 55hp of damage, it is because I have already taken armour into account. (Plasma rifes do 65pts damage, jackal stops 25pts, plasma rifle has penetration of 15pts. Ergo, 55hp). Furthermore, Chris wrote that the bleeding check is taken per 10 points of damage caused (personally, I like Gazz's system better). At the moment, jackal armour stops corporals from dying, leaving them with between 1-10hp, depending on their inital hp. If bleeding out is applied at the start of the player turn, then if the player is below the hp threshold as a consequence of getting shot, the squaddie will die. End of. And that is what I find disagreeable - that a squaddie survives a plasma shot, to die in my following turn without me being able to affect the outcome of that.

What I would like to see is bleeding out to be important, with a reasonable damage over time so I doesn't treat it as a minor nuisance. At the same time, I would like to be able to have at least the opportunity to treat the wounded squaddie before he keels over.

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I don't know if I like the idea of a "soldier is bleeding" notification every turn.

Imagine a situation where 3 or 4 of your soldiers are bleeding and you don't have a med-kit (or maybe you do but the medic

is half the map away) this notification will get quite frustrating to see for every bleeding soldier every turn.

Maybe it should just notify you of any new bleeding wounds and the green circle above and below the soldier should turn

brown or orange to indicate the soldier is taking continuous damage.

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The notifications of bleeding soldiers would be kinda annoying.. I'd propose just one notification "Soldier X suffered critical hit, has Y bleeding wounds" when a soldier gets hit and then just simple blood drop icon (with a number next to it to indicate count of bleeding wounds) on the soldier's portrait when you click on him.

Edited by Shima
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the green circle above and below the soldier should turn

brown or orange to indicate the soldier is taking continuous damage.

Interesting idea, I like it a lot :D Couple that with some indication on the portrait and its perfect.

Is the notification for bleeding supposed to happen when the soldier gets the wound or when the players turn start?

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The notifications of bleeding soldiers would be kinda annoying.. I'd propose notification "Soldier X suffered critical hit, has Y bleeding wounds" and then just simple blood drop icon (with a number next to it to indicate count of bleeding wounds) on the soldier's portrait when you click on him.

I would think that the message only comes up once, in your turn after it happens or when your guy gets hit by reaction fire that causes a fatal wound.

And yeah I'm calling them fatal wounds, because for me they were usually fatal.

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I don't think they are intended to only pop up once. If they did then you would have no way of knowing if your soldier was still bleeding and might only noticed once its too late.

If its anything like the panic status as Chris suggested then it would pop up on screen for 1-2 seconds for each soldier that is bleeding. Of course during this time you have no control which is why I think it could become frustrating if you have 3 or 4 guys bleeding and have to wait 6-8 seconds after the hidden movement screen to regain control.

Far better to give you the notification once and then have a more subtle critical damage indicator.

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The best choice I think would be a subtle indicator and a popup that says something along the lines of: "This icon means the character is bleeding. It means blah blah.." with "Ok" and "Don't show this again" buttons.

This way the game clearly tells you about the mechanic, you can't miss it and it doesn't bother you for the rest of the game.

Edited by Ljas
Typos
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There is already a blood spatter tile in the assets somewhere if I remember rightly.

Rather than an on screen message telling you they are bleeding maybe they should just start the round stood on a blood spatter.

If you see blood around your troopers feet he is bleeding.

Should be enough info without having to resort to pop ups.

You could combine it with an icon on the soldier screen or above the soldiers head, in the same way as the suppression marker is planned.

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well let's just see how it all comes together before we jump to conclusions no?

if this implemented in the next build we can see how it all turns out maybe its not so bad after all and in the case it gets bad then you can complain but for now lets just see and wait no? :D

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And yeah I'm calling them fatal wounds, because for me they were usually fatal.

Yes, usually fatal, but not necessarily. You can't really go around calling a serious gunshot wound 'fatal' if it didn't actually result in your death, can you? That would be a mortal wound, which is what the stat/condition/whatever should really be called, as it's not really committing the soldier to death; just showing that they've sustained however many serious wounds, and will likely die unless given medical attention ASAP, which does happen - even in the harsh environments that X-COM/Xenonaut operatives are forced to endure! :D

(Sorry, I know this is really a non-issue, but whatever)

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