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Resting your operatives?


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One of the few things that sort bother me about finishing a mission is that soldiers should need to rest before going to the next mission. If you send the same operative on missions too frequently they should eventually get exhausted. A system where they get penalties to strength, accuracy, reflexes and TU if they don't get some rest between missions (say 5-7 days) could be interesting since you would need more soldiers and you would put more importance on those that really make it to higher levels.

Anyway... just wanted to throw the idea out there...

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It would increase your choices. Do you take out your veteran for a simple mission only to have them exhausted when a terror site occur the day after.

Perhaps you must use a tired soldier in a harder mission but they will now just need even more rest and be unavailable for even longer after it.

This type of mechanic worked great in a mod to the new X-Com from Firaxis.

It would not be tedious, just give you some more tactical choices to make in the strategic game. Do you focus on a smaller number of elite soldiers or train up a larger base to cover those times when you get many hard missions in a tight time window.

As I said, it has worked in other similar squad management based games.

Edited by Jorgen_CAB
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Couldn't you get the same effect from nerfing medical centres? Right now soldiers fully heal up between waves. And medical centres are available from day one. I guess nerfing the capacity of medical centres or their healing effect might do the job, at least until research later on improves them.

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It would increase your choices. Do you take out your veteran for a simple mission only to have them exhausted when a terror site occur the day after.

Perhaps you must use a tired soldier in a harder mission but they will now just need even more rest and be unavailable for even longer after it.

This type of mechanic worked great in a mod to the new X-Com from Firaxis.

It would not be tedious, just give you some more tactical choices to make in the strategic game. Do you focus on a smaller number of elite soldiers or train up a larger base to cover those times when you get many hard missions in a tight time window.

I don't see how this gives you more options. To me it appears to give you less. It effectivly blocks out the small number of elite soldiers options, as you need to have enough soldiers to rotate out.

Imo you could just as well roleplay this instead of being forced into it by a mechanic.

As I said, it has worked in other similar squad management based games.

Which games would that be? So I can read up on them I mean.

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The one I can suggest is X-COM:Enemy Unknown from Firaxis using the Long War mod... this mechanic introduced a greater strategic importance on your elite soldiers. Now instead of playing the game with about ten soldiers you needed more like fifty to rotate them and cope with them being wounded or tired for much longer.

And it does increase your strategical choices. Now you must manage the threat level of each mission since you can't just send your veteran soldiers out willy nilly. You need to manage and save them for the most dangerous operations while you send the less experienced ones on easier missions.

Sure, you can always role-play it as an additional difficulty level, I still think it would force you to make a few more hard choices on an operational level.

Edited by Jorgen_CAB
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Couldn't you get the same effect from nerfing medical centres? Right now soldiers fully heal up between waves. And medical centres are available from day one. I guess nerfing the capacity of medical centres or their healing effect might do the job' date=' at least until research later on improves them.[/quote']

Could you point me in the general direction here. I can't really find a value in the xml files that govern for how long operatives need to recuperate from wounds. The medical bay speed it up, but they seem to heal quite fast even without a medical bay, or is that just my imagination?

With the medical bay they heal up from serious wounds with a couple of days, that seem a little too fast and it would be nice if I could modify the base time soldiers will take to heal up.

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Yeah, I can't find anything either. Bummer. I've never looked at buildings.xml before, but it turns out to be cost and display data. I guess both the rate of recovery and the medbay boost are hardcoded, at least for the time being. Sorry to get your hopes up like that.

I've had soldiers taken down to below 10hp in the first mission before, which takes something like half a month to heal up. It probably should take longer, for the same reason that airplanes take ages to repair: either you need to splash out on better facilities, or you need to get more manpower, or you try and make do with what you've got and spend your money on other things. I build my medbay at the start and then never think about it again. I don't even know if the medbay effect stacks, because why would you build more than one in their current state anyway?

Edited by Ol' Stinky
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And it does increase your strategical choices. Now you must manage the threat level of each mission since you can't just send your veteran soldiers out willy nilly. You need to manage and save them for the most dangerous operations while you send the less experienced ones on easier missions.

I'm sorry, but you keep saying that my options are increased, then you say that I can't do something and that my options are acctually limited... I'm confused, how am I given more freedom by preventing me from doing something? o.0
Sure, you can always role-play it as an additional difficulty level, I still think it would force you to make a few more hard choices on an operational level.
And here you are using the word force further implying that my freedom is restricted and my options limited. :S

Do you have any other examples of games with this mecanic? Maybe some that has it from the start and not just as a mod?

(Personally I can see this as being more interesting mechanic with different classes. With virtually identical interchangable soldiers as in X-com94 and Xenonauts it seems a lot less interesting)

PS: I'm not trying to prevent you from getting the prepwork so that you can mod this. Initially I just wanted to express my opinion as I don't particularly find it to be interesting or fun mechanic. And right now I'm hung up on want you mean by "more options" as your concept seem to be limiting them by your own admission, and wish you would clarify that.

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Doesn't the medical bay just give you a number of beds to treat your soldiers in?

So building two just give you the ability to treat more soldiers at the same time. At least that is what I think anyway, I have never built more than one medical bay so far and it is also one of the first things that I build in my base.

Anyway, I'm hoping we can mod this in the future to get more reasonable healing time of our wounded soldiers. That would probably satisfy my need in a mod for balancing the game differently.

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I'm sorry, but you keep saying that my options are increased, then you say that I can't do something and that my options are acctually limited... I'm confused, how am I given more freedom by preventing me from doing something? o.0

And here you are using the word force further implying that my freedom is restricted and my options limited. :S

Do you have any other examples of games with this mecanic? Maybe some that has it from the start and not just as a mod?

(Personally I can see this as being more interesting mechanic with different classes. With virtually identical interchangable soldiers as in X-com94 and Xenonauts it seems a lot less interesting)

PS: I'm not trying to prevent you from getting the prepwork so that you can mod this. Initially I just wanted to express my opinion as I don't particularly find it to be interesting or fun mechanic. And right now I'm hung up on want you mean by "more options" as your concept seem to be limiting them by your own admission, and wish you would clarify that.

Well, giving more OPTIONS might not be the right word. It will instead give you more operational CHOICES to make.

Do you use your elite team on this mission and risk having to bench them on the terror mission you know is coming, perhaps that happens just as the chopper leave the base?

Now... will you return and change the squad and keep your best soldiers for what is obviously a more dangerous mission or do you force them to participate on both missions and knowingly have them exhausted for a long time after this?

These will become operational or strategical CHOICES between keeping a larger soldier base with slightly lower average experience level or using a more elite force. Perhaps even drug them to cope with the exhaustion... ;)

If you had played the Long War mod to X-Com you would know what I mean, that is just the type of choices you need to make. I'm not sure if the class system does make that much of a difference, at least in that mod. There you have eight different classes plus the psionic class and the SHIV and you can have up to eight soldiers on every mission and start with six. Most classes are not as important as in the original game either, except for maybe a medic perhaps. Soldiers typically need to rest for about 4-6 days and can be wounded up to a month or even more. When they rest you can take them out on missions but will automatically become exhausted for about two weeks, which is like being wounded.

Another similar mechanic in another game that I play is Aurora which is a spaceship tactical game, here ships require maintenance and spend time in dock to do maintenance for quite some time. So, there is always a trade off on how long maintenance will last and how often you send them to do overhauls and how many of your ships you send there at the same time. If an attack happens while a ship is in overhaul they will not be able to join the fight, it takes to long to get them out of overhaul status.

It is basically the same type of operational management that I'm talking of even if this is ships and not people. Just think of the ship as a soldier and the task-groups as squads... ;)

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Doesn't the medical bay just give you a number of beds to treat your soldiers in?

So building two just give you the ability to treat more soldiers at the same time. At least that is what I think anyway, I have never built more than one medical bay so far and it is also one of the first things that I build in my base.

Anyway, I'm hoping we can mod this in the future to get more reasonable healing time of our wounded soldiers. That would probably satisfy my need in a mod for balancing the game differently.

Yeah, you're right. One medbay gives eight beds. I don't think I've ever had that amount of wounded in a base before. Without any beds, healing's noticeably slower: I shot a soldier in the leg with a pistol, taking him down to 72% hp, and with no beds it'll take him ten days to recover. General Stinky's orders are arbritary and cruel, but they're also informative.

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Yeah' date=' you're right. One medbay gives eight beds. I don't think I've ever had that amount of wounded in a base before. Without any beds, healing's noticeably slower: I shot a soldier in the leg with a pistol, taking him down to 72% hp, and with no beds it'll take him ten days to recover. General Stinky's orders are arbritary and cruel, but they're also informative.[/quote']

But you probably would have if soldiers took longer to treat... especially of you order your men to shoot each other for your own sick perverted experiments... ;)

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It's not been moddable for the best part of four years and you've only just noticed - I think that tells us something about how interested you are in it :)

I'm surprised it's not a variable in gameconfig.xml though tbh, I think medical centres presently just double the base healing rate.

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