Hell-Fox

Me and my friend Eklipse were doing what we call a "sandbox run". Anyone familiar with Garry's Mod from HL2 will know what sandboxing is, for those who don't it essentially is playing around with the engine in-game and just overall messing around. So anyway we were experimenting with medics tonight because I noticed in a match that my medics wouldn't rush out to save my guys when a certain enemy structure was in the area, once it was removed they rushed right in.

At first I thought the OP was the culprit, nope it wasn't, apparently CoH has a setting where if the enemy team has established their own medic bunker/station within a certain radius around where your casualties are, your medics will not save them at all. Normally when the other team has no medical facilities, your medic bunker/station has a large range to bring in casualties. The range is about as far as a medic can possibly run to get to a casualty successfully, so you would have to factor in how long a casualty stays on the ground and how fast a medic runs to get the exact distance on the map. But it can be surprising how far out the medics will try to grab troops, that is until the enemy build their own med bunkers.

For some reason when enemy med bunkers are present they essentially create a block zone denying your medics access to your own casualties unless your med stations are very close to where the casualties are or the casualties have to be at a certain distance away from the enemy med station where they can be picked up.

Some other information of note I found was that you could, with enough resources, create limitless amounts of howitzers on a map as long as you killed the crew off each time. Everyone knows this of course, however I was able to create a battery of 8 howitzer guns and then unleash a true howitzer barrage. It was beautiful seeing it just annilate the landscape, however I wanted to see what could possibly survive such a barrage. So we threw in a Tiger with lvl1 veterancy for good measure. The findings were interesting, EIGHT howitzers could not even kill that Tiger in one go. It would have taken at least two barrages to kill it and I saw that some of the shots were DEFLECTING off the top armor. I am of course thinking it has to be that veterancy, just lvl1 veterancy makes a Tiger that tough. Makes me wonder how Axis get by without veterancy :-x.

And finally to end the night we did an experiment with making a bunch of Flak88s using the same method I used to get a bunch of howitzers and thats to build them. Have the crews all killed off so you have all the guns unmanned and then using enough infantry man them and it won't matter if you are at pop cap you will go over it and still can keep manning all the built guns. You could see where this was going *grin*, we decided to see how well the Allies armor could take oh, say 8 Flak guns. Needless to say any direct assault with infantry or Tanks was VERY costly. One barrage from all 8 Flaks KNOCKED A PERSHING INTO THE AIR AND KILLED IT. I was laughing pretty hard at the sight. Oh yes and I sent 10 Rifle squads at the defense, just body parts and rag dolls all over the place. lol :P

Anyway thought I would let you know about the findings particularly about the medics, even though you don't see medics used alot.

Jewegee

Hmm that's interesting.

I (for one) use medics quite a bit.

The tricky bit is killing your 88 crew without damaging the gun...Do you have any suggestions?

Murton

Not possible in a competitive game, but when sandboxing you set your flak gun to attack ground at a safe location (or otherwise override it's auto-target) then have your "opponent" run riflemen in behind and kill the crew with their rifles.

Would be interesting to see how the 88's would do vs a Tiger as they have the same gun. Perhaps a test for the next sandbox game...

Akranadas

Grenades

Nice Information there about the Medic bunkers

Hell-Fox

Also in regard to medics being effective it seems that machine guns like MP40s, BARs, MG42s, 30 Cals, tanks HMG. All have a higher rate to inflict casualties than accurate weapons like KARs, sniper rifles, garands as well as of course explosives like a tank shell. Why would weapons like KARs and sniper rifles and all that not have a high casualty rate? Because normally they kill outright more than they induce casualties. Mortars also can cause quite a bit of casualties depending on where it lands.

norfolknclue

Here's a question:

Whenever I see a medic running about from the opposing team, if I have a sniper knocking about, I order the sniper to kill the medic. 1 shot - POW! While this is funny, (and also totally against the geneva convention ) does it actually hurt the opposing player's medical ability? Or does the medic bunker immediately spawn a new medic?

Hell-Fox

While you are hindering their ability to retrieve casualties by picking off the medics, as long as they have medic bunkers they will continue to spawn medics so no it doesn't hurt their medical ability. So the only way to get rid of their medics permanently is to destroy their medical bunkers/stations, but a wary player will likely have his bunkers/stations protected. I like to use (on axis at least) my med bunkers as pill boxes with at least 1 mg in it. Add the defensive doctrines abilities to reinforce squads from bunkers and you can make a bunch of forward reinforcement points for infantry squads using medic bunkers. Unfortunately for Allies they don't have such an edge with their med stations.

norfolknclue

Cheers for your reply. In that case, it's prolly often best to wait until the medic has picked up his casualty. I imagine then he loses the casualty?

Hell-Fox

Actually no, from what I have seen the casualty plops to the ground and can still get picked up by another medic! You could probably pick two medics off trying to go for the same casualty. However if the casualty was near death(say his countdown timer to disappearing was close to 0) and he gets picked up. Then you snipe the medic, then yes the casualty will disappear once his timer runs out.

norfolknclue

How sadistic it would be be to allow your sniper to execute a wounded man rolling about on the ground!

Azraiel

Sadistic or merciful? LOL

bonemachine

In case you didn't know killing the medic awards you experience as well as keeping him from recovering the wounded soldier.

Pyro Paul

Medics-

after 30 secs to 1 minute a medic that has died will respawn. same applies to Repair teams as Killed mechanics will respawn after a given amount of time.

Killing the medic lays the wounded person back on the ground, if close enough the second medic will run for him if he is also free.

Persons being carried From the battlefield Can die while in transit with the medic. it makes counting exactly how many bodies it takes to remake a squad a bit harder, as well as gives the realistic sense of 'you can't save every one'

Killing a medic gains you 3xp.

losing a medic gains you 1xp.

Stokes52

On certain "Stalemate" maps, where neither side can advance, its funny when you order a sniper to take out a medic... and a few seconds later *another* medic comes to pick up the medic that just got shot. And then you shoot that one too, haha.

I know, its evil... but I don't want my enemy getting more troops!

norfolknclue

Be better, instead of killing him, you could shoot him in the leg so he takes 4 times as long to pick troops up. :E

kippcasper73

regarding the re-manned howitzers.....

maybe im wrong, but i remember discussion way back, that recrewing derelict artillery or flak means that the effectiveness of the gun is decreased because the recrew are not a trained gun crew... perhaps this is why u had weak results against the vet1 tiger?

my 2c

AntiCommie

Stokes: Unless your sniper misses, then they get a free troop. I also like to drop artilery delivered presents on those snipers

TankHunter678

It is possible to build 8 88s or Howitzers without having to decrew them, you just have to forego just about any offensive power you have unless its a huge map with lots of pop.