3 Commando Brigade

Medical System Changes

Hello All,

Now, I've been playing here for an awful long time and I returned to 3CB (after the hours of mod installing ) yesterday. I was playing as a combat medic which is my most preferred role, I'm sure @Rev will agree as we always had to fight for the medic role! :D However, something just wasn't fun for me. I don't know if it was the mission, as the current mission of hearts and minds is quite a slow paced mission which at times, a lot of the time, can be quite boring, and I understand some people feel the same way regarding this mission. Regardless of the mission, I noticed during my entire time that no one went unconscious. I then asked around and heard of this change. 

I've read over the medical system forum post which @Goodson started and I've got an idea as to why on the public server, it was changed so that insta-death is true. The main argument, which I would agree with is some cases, is that having insta-death turned off slows down the pace rapidly and thus, a lot of focus is put on the medic. From what I can gather, people like having a rapid pace mission as many of you will agree, you will hop on the public server to have a bit of fun and shoot some people. 

However, being a medic is really pointless I feel. I believe too much focus has been taken off the medic role as during my entire 3 hours on the public server, I was only really required to fix broken legs as every other role can be fulfilled by a standard infantry soldier. Simply, medic isn't fun. Before, I felt really immersed into the game and I felt as if I was saving someone's life when they went down. It's so sad that this has been taken away as it's my favourite role. But my opinion alone doesn't matter. 

I honestly feel that medics should have a much higher speed in doing processes such as bandaging etc. Also, I feel that insta-death should be turned off, however, ambulances should have the ability to PAK if you are inside, regardless of your role. 

What are people's opinion?

Thanks for reading! 

I liked it when insta death was off. 

Having the unit rally around an unconscious casualty with some protecting the medic and a few people working on him added to the gameplay. Especially if time was critical before he bled out.

Now it just seems like a minor inconvenience to patch yourself up if you don't die instantly.


And it's really really annoying to step foot off the chopper and instantly get shot in the head, 3 times in a row. 

One of the reasons insta-death was turned on was because of a certain incident where a full chinook crashed and nearly everyone went unconscious. The problem was that it took a ridiculous amount of time to revive everyone (due to the extreme extent of everyone's injuries), so we ended up wasting a lot of time. However, this is an extreme case, so I do see your point that insta-death does significantly dampen the general experience for medics.

What we really want is to keep insta-death on, but raise the threshold at which you die. This way we'll get unconsciousness, but once you reach an extreme number of injuries (which would take medics too long to deal with) then you die.

I don't know how easy it is to modify ACE, but I imagine it shouldn't be too difficult to do. The modders have got their hands full, so if anyone is interested in finding which part of ACE needs modifying to raise the insta-death threshold, feel free to do so (although I can't guarantee whether we'll implement it anytime soon).

@Robbie

I totally agree. What you described there is teamwork and that is the ethos of this community. 

@Goodson

I agree also, Those situations can be quite annoying. However, there is a suicide option as a last resort. I just feel right now that the medic role needs to be changed and a lot of people, especially in my section last night, agreed that they preferred the medical system without insta death. 

I think training plays a part with insta-death off too. SLs and medics need the ability to judge when a casualty is beyond repair, and when stopping to treat them puts the section in danger or hinders either the completion of an objective or the enjoyment or the other guys in game.

The problem is that the @ace team keep changing the way the medical system works (or doesn't, depending upon your perspective), and there are recent rumours that more major changes are likely in the near future, making mod team involvement in changing it unlikely to be worthwhile currently.

What we want to find is that happy medium where medics have something interesting to do with just the right level of detail (possible for untrained person to get by, but training improves effectiveness of treatment) and which doesn't grind everyone elses game to a halt for 15 minutes each time someone is hit. The medic should be no more, and no less important than any other member of the Section. With the previous settings it was impossible to play without a medic - once the medic was incapacitated or d/c'd the game was effectively over.

The current settings were agreed through massively long and protracted group forum discussions to reach majority decision. There is already a thread that public players can contribute to here:
http://www.3commandobrigade.com/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=4813

Not sure how much ACE has changed since we decided on insta-death (8 or 9 months ago?), so it may be that people's opinions have changed since then (going by what Shaun has described, I wouldn't have much fun as a medic/rifleman either).


If what Apollo is saying is true, about the ACE team making major changes soon, then I agree we should just wait it out. No point fiddling with settings/mods until that's rolled out. Hopefully we'll get an option to adjust the insta-death threshold (hitting a sweet-spot between keeping fast-paced gameplay, and making medic a vital role).

If anything was to change, I'd suggest turning instant-death off, but having a limited bleed-out time. Say <5 minutes. If no one can get to the casualty in that time to tourniquet or bandage, then they die. It would make things tight for the medic (especially if the casualty is still under fire), but it might finally make people use the tourniquet!

Can we also add the option to tourniquet the head?

That's what we had before Evrik?
5 minute bleed-out time.
We tried 2 or 3 minutes and it almost never gave medics time to reach the casualty so it was kept at 5.
And at 5 minutes, lots of public players would just respawn rather than wait, as their life count meant nothing.
Add the fact that many injuries resulted in unconsciousness and none in death, the game play was slowed to a snail's pace with each injury forcing the Section to stop and repair for 10 minutes, only for it to happen again 2 minutes later.
Nothing significant has changed in ace to make this different now - just which bandages or injections have effect on what wounds.