1:1 representation and casualties

[Pvt. Ryan]

What if you represent WIA as a soldier lying down with a red cross on his chest for the remainder of that turn. The marker would then be removed on the next turn. Or you can have an animated soldier crawling away for a certain period of time (e.g. 30 seconds) or stays on the screen for the remainder of the turn and is then removed on the next turn. Obviously it takes more than a minute to evacuate a wounded soldier, but at least the wounded soldier is visually represented in some way without causing the other propblems mentioned.

[Michael Dorosh]

I am fully in support of BFC not doing any of the half-assed suggestions being bandied about in this thread. Do it right, or not at all.

If you really want to model wounds, you need to

a) track exact flight paths of every bullet and piece of shrapnel in the game, including velocity (which is dependent on range, chiefly, also the effects of gravity and wind, etc.)

track body size and position of every body part of every soldier on the map at every second of the game

This alone is enough to choke the computational process. You can abstractly determine all this, of course, but you're getting into territory which had a gap between observable, proveable data and the ability to justify the game's treatment of same.

c) once wound locations are calculated using the data in a) and (or else simply abstracting it) you then model the disruptive effects of the wound - dividing into several categories

i) fatal wounds - soldier is killed instantly

ii) mortal wounds - soldier is wounded beyond recovery but not killed

iii) serious wounds - soldier is incapacitated but not mortally wounded (ie may recover)

iv) lightly wounded - soldier is not incapacitated but wounded bad enough that in game performance is effected

v) no effect

Beyond the physical effects to the soldier's body, there are morale issues to model. Also consciousness - does the soldier black out? For how long? Can he be revived? If so, should the AI handle attempts to revive him? Under what conditions would he likely be revived by a fellow soldier? By a medic? If only one medic is available and three friendly soldiers are wounded, will the AI know to triage correctly? What if one of the wounded soldiers is an enemy soldier? Will he be triaged? And will the computer do it, or will the player have control over triage and treatment?

Some units had standing orders that wounded men were not to be treated but to be left where they fell. Some individuals ignored these orders. How often? Which units were more likely to do this? Other units had standing orders that only two soldiers could be used to assist wounded men. (The Grossdeutschland pictorial history by Spezzano says that the Division permitted a wounded soldier to be assisted by two comrades, but no more. Was this common? Did Spezzano get it right?)

I think Ardem had it right when he said that "lightly" wounded men continuing to fight within a thirty minute game is bull****. There are notable cases where wounded men kept fighting. Some won medals for doing so - Fred Tilston of the Essex Scottish got the VC for fighting with wounds so bad he later lost a leg and an eye. Was this common? And then, some wounded men never even knew they were wounded until after a fight.

People suffering gunshot wounds usually describe the feeling as "like being hit with a baseball bat" - even for so-called "light wounds." What is the recovery time for a "lightly" wounded man? Even a "small" gunshot wound is going to create shock. Is it likely that a man suffering a GSW will recover in the space of a CM scenario to get back into the fight?

This is a giant can of worms.

[Pvt. Ryan]

Would you prefer that wounded soldiers vaporize into thin air? When squads were abstracted it wasn't an issue, but with 1:1 representation it has to be addressed in some way.

[JonS]

Mike, all you'd need to do is

1) decide someone was hit

2) do a random roll for hit location (perhaps modified by cover)

3) do a random roll for severity.

2) and 3) could be random rolls based on historical distribution patterns (and, or course, the relative sizes of body parts) and severities, both of which are available in greater or lesser detail, at least for the US Army. Severity could also be modified by agent - 1/2 inch hurts more than 9mm, esp at 1000m.

OTOH, I'm not that wild about seeing it modeled anyway. I just don't think it has to be anywhere near as convoluted as you propose. Tracking indiv rounds? *pfft* Put the crack pipe down.

[jeffsmith]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

I am fully in support of BFC not doing any of the half-assed suggestions being bandied about in this thread.

Do it right, or not at all.

snip

This is a giant can of worms.

Michael,

I have spent over half a decade listening to the great "Bren Tripod" debate in one form or another

(Granted not always of your own initiation)

You can tolerate a little speculation & suggestion for a single bloody thread now can't you ?

I agree with your can of worms statement

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Pvt. Ryan:

Would you prefer that wounded soldiers vaporize into thin air?

Works for me.

When squads were abstracted it wasn't an issue, but with 1:1 representation it has to be addressed in some way.

Why? Even FPS don't handle wounded soldiers in any great detail.

I don't recall carrying wounded men off the field in Operation Flashpoint, and that is a game done on an individual scale. I do recall medics being in the game, but the simplification of the treatment of casualties was pretty obvious.

Moreover, when my squad was advancing on a village, and the enemy threw in a counterattack, I was too mesmerized by the sight of dust clouds in the distance, trees falling, and then T-72s and BMPs roaring through our troops to really pay much attention to whether or not wounded troops were being simulated. It just didn't matter to the play of the game.

[Sequoia]

I've been thinking about this some more and came to realise a battlefield full of Red Cross markers might be ugly to some, but I thought of a compromise that my please all involved:

1, Make the Red Cross marker for WIA optional like labels are now.

2, Make the Red Cross marker modable like the hidden unit markers are now so modders can change it into little wounded guys for those who want to see it.

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by jeffsmith:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

I am fully in support of BFC not doing any of the half-assed suggestions being bandied about in this thread.

Do it right, or not at all.

snip

This is a giant can of worms.

Michael,

I have spent over half a decade listening to the great "Bren Tripod" debate in one form or another

(Granted not always of your own initiation)

You can tolerate a little speculation & suggestion for a single bloody thread now can't you ?

I agree with your can of worms statement </font>

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by JonS:

Mike, all you'd need to do is

1) decide someone was hit

2) do a random roll for hit location (perhaps modified by cover)

3) do a random roll for severity.

You can do that for armour, too. Yet CM apparently models things using real world physics and ballistics.

Why?

[JonS]

but it still seems to randomise hit location, and - to a degree - severity.

Why?

[Gpig]

When a tank is "wounded" you still have to take care of it. Find a place to hide it, or try to use it in some other manner. At least until it's DEAD, then it stays there.

If it's "wounded" and immobilized, it stays on the battlefield.

In my junior opinion, there should just be 3 states for infantry. Healthy (incl light wound), WIA and KIA. For the sake of game-play.

All's you REALLY need to know for infantry is

1)wounded?

2)how severe (no location is even needed)

If it's severe enough to take him out of the action, he's now a WIA.

The problem is, it becomes REALLY tricky after that (as Steve and Michael are saying).

Just blabbin' here, but . . .

When men are WIA they PANIC and can crawl to the nearest cover (or stay in cover if already there). Then the player can either leave them there, or, at a later date detail a half squad to take them to the rear. (Wherever that may be.)

Like c3k said, allowing non-mechanical units (squad/half-squad) the ability to transport things (wounded) then it *might* work.

*floats balloon*

[PseudoSimonds]

Tsk, tsk, tsk, you didn't ask why so you're out of the game.

Why?

[Battlefront.com]

Even if we simulated guys being wounded, dragged to safety, and then treated by Medics... we would still randomize the wounds based on certain realism parameters. It simply isn't worth the CPU power to figure things out more than that.

All that should be important to the player is if a Soldier is:

Fully functional

Partially functional

Temporarily Non-functional

Permanently Non-functional

The Temp status only matters if it is persistent (i.e. not just getting the wind knocked out) and only if for scoring purposes. For Campaigns it matters in terms of if you get the Soldier back for a later battle. The example of Task Force Ranger in Mogadishu is a good example. Next day few in that force were ready for combat, but most probably were within another day with even more the day after that.

Vehicles and what not aren't a part of this discussion

Steve

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Gpig:

In my junior opinion, there should just be 3 states for infantry. Healthy (incl light wound), WIA and KIA. For the sake of game-play.

All's you REALLY need to know for infantry is

1)wounded?

2)how severe (no location is even needed)

If it's severe enough to take him out of the action, he's now a WIA.

The problem is, it becomes REALLY tricky after that (as Steve and Michael are saying).

Just blabbin' here, but . . .

When men are WIA they PANIC and can crawl to the nearest cover (or stay in cover if already there). Then the player can either leave them there, or, at a later date detail a half squad to take them to the rear. (Wherever that may be.)

Like c3k said, allowing non-mechanical units (squad/half-squad) the ability to transport things (wounded) then it *might* work.

*floats balloon*

So no one gets shot in the legs in your version of CM?

Or would "mobility kills" (to borrow the tank phrase) simply be treated as KIAs?

[c3k]

Guys,

In all seriousness, I disagree with the Doroshian viewpoint.

(I usually put smilies or an unmistakably funny comment into posts when I'm not serious. Therefore, I assume Michael Dorosh's post _was_ serious: to a degree.)

CMx2 could be an even better game, depending on how WIA are treated. I, personally, do not want to play doctor. I would rather be crushing my enemy beneath the treads of my tank!

Gpig, and others, have agreed with my view that the lightly wounded simply don't matter. Of course, we don't know how BF.C will feel. [shrug]

I'm fine with WIA, by game definition the seriously wounded, just laying on the ground. If there will be a gameplay difference between WIA and KIA, then make a visual difference between KIA and WIA. (Add in some blood puddles, or any other eye-candy you want.) Just don't make it some sort of icon. That would destroy the immersion factor.

I agree with Steve that WIA should be able to change state to KIA. I would base it on additional wounds rather than some sort of changed medical condition.

I don't want any player control of the WIA unit.

If WIA need to be evacuated for points, then the player should be able to move the WIA. To me that is the biggest problem: how are WIA moved.

Thanks,

Ken

[c3k]

Michael,

Great. After your forensic wound tracking post,with no smilies, I make a post...which you follow up with a funny one: with a friggin' smilie!

I would submit that being shot in the legs would affect your ability as a soldier. Therefore, it's a Serious Wound . Hence, your leg-shot soldier is a WIA. (But, note how my WIA representation by legless torsos dragging themselves off-board would fit PERFECTLY with leg wounds. )

Ken

[stoat]

'Tis but a flesh wound.

[Philippe]

If the care of wounded is going to show up in the game at all I really think that it should be largely out of a player's control.

My reason for saying that is simply that I see a strong connection between morale and the need to take care of the wounded.

If morale is high and the wounded aren't hurt too badly, they're probably given minimal help getting back to the aid station. If morale is low, even if the wounded are walking wounded, everybody and their cousin will help the guy back to the aid station, and stick around until they're sure he's well down the road to recovery. Units will temporarily melt away, unless an officer in charge of the aid station chases them back to their units, or their commander didn't allow them to leave their ranks in the first place. One man gets hit, but two others are temporarily incapacitated while they escort him out of danger.

I'm not sure we really want to see this part of the fight moving around the battlefield. I want the aid station (medic kneeling at attention/medic perfoming a simple stylized care of the wounded in the style of Jagged Alliance -- and the presence or absence of an abstracted patient or two), but I'm not sure I even want the little red crosses cluttering up the battlefield.

As an aside, in the Hasbro game Starship Troopers from a few years back retrieving bodies was part of the mission. If you took casualties you had a limited number of seconds to put the warm bodies in some kind of medical stasis from which you could essentially re-animate them later on. After about ten seconds or so your only option was to retrieve the dog-tags, and it was considered a serious disgrace to abandon dog-tags on a bug-infested planet. Some of those warrior pseudo-arachnids actually looked a bit like lobsters, come to think of it...

To my mind the main reason for having a care of the wounded routine is that it creates a rear area and a line of communications that stretches behind you off map. I would think that it would be sufficient if WIA's simply dissapear, possibly taking a few intact soldiers with them, depending on that unit's morale state. After a certain number of turns (depending, I suppose, on distance to and from the aid station) the missing soldiers would reappear in their unit. This is probably more elegant if you aren't doing 1:1, but I think the reality is that those missing soldiers do temporarily become unavailable.

As for the aid station, I suspect that given the scope of a CM battle there should be no immediate need to evacuate them off-map. I suppose you could load them into trucks and drive them away if you're worried about capture, but that shouldn't be the norm.

Though I want aid stations, I don't want CMx2 to turn into MASH: WW 2.

Space Lobsters of Doom: Clan Quest, on the other hand, is a perfectly acceptable alternative...

[Cpl Steiner]

In CMx1, squads can become AI controlled if they panic or become broken. This sort of effect could be used in CMx2 for the handling of wounded. It would allow the AI to do some sort of standard wounded SOP for the squad (pick up wounded, carry to cover, kneel over wounded and apply first aid). Once the wounded SOP had been done, the squad would become player controlled again. The casualty could fade out or just lie there after that.

I'm not saying this would be easy to do, but it would get around some of Steve's complaints about the player wanting to do something with the wounded if they aren't abstracted.

[Philippe]

Originally posted by stoat:

'Tis but a flesh wound.

Nie !

[stoat]

I think that since CM is a combat game, only combatants should be modeled, and since medics are noncombatants, they should be left out. I just want to know if we will see more bodies.

Here's an idea for taking care of wounded: For each engaged company, add one St Bernard with a cask of brandy around its neck. This will be especially useful in winter scenarios.

[Vanir Ausf B]

If you compare the gameplay problems that leaving the WIA on the field creates with the minor loss of immersion it's intended to fix, abstracting them out is the obvious choice. I guess crosses are ok as long as you can turn them off.

[Barrold]

If they left out any WIA representation could BFC accomplish the primary goal of a good combat simulation?

My vote is for yep-per-rip-diddley.

Even with above said accomplishment, are there any number of acheiveable features that Charles is not going to have the practical time to incorporate into the first release?

Dittos to the yep-per-rip-diddley

The conclusion should be that spending a great deal of time adding the wiggling wounded comes at the expense of combat features. I for one want the potential of Combat Mission to be as fulfilled as possible. For this I understand that REMF Mission and MASH Mission are separate games than the one I want to play.

Of course if Charles can be induced to perform an asexual reproduction and split into additional brain jars so CM can reach it's highest potential and add the wiggling wounded at the same time...yea!

If not, the abstraction and KIA display should leave us plenty of other duties to handle within the game without this unnecessary distraction.

BDH

[RSColonel_131st]

I don't really care how it's handled - just, like some people said, don't have the 1:1 squad "vanish into thin air" as the soldiers take their hits.

[aka_tom_w]

I could be wrong

BUT I think Steve said "We can't open the can of worms of how, or if, or when to move or transport the WIA"!

Period

End of Story

Now I assume he is refering to the severely wounded.

They become immobile like KIA and can't move.

What then/therefore becomes the issue is what they look like in the game or how they are represented in a 1:1 way with the healthy body that they were before they got severly wounded and immobile (in the game).

I may be mistaken but I don't think BFC is prepared to budge on the WIA WILL BE immobile issue.

Maybe I am wrong...

Lets see where this one goes.

-tom w

[ September 13, 2005, 04:47 PM: Message edited by: aka_tom_w ]