Hit-Point Dilemma

Less is more.
I personally couldn't bother having to keep up with anything more than 6 body parts damage counters.
4 limbs + torso and head is plenty, any greater degree of "realism" would just hamper the gameplay.
To be honest, even this much seems already to be stretching it and i definetly would do without it if it meant putting more useless strains on my machine
Also what would be the point of limb injuries in first place if it was impossible to animate it and had no visual effect but only slowed the little folks down or decrease their effectivness?
I mean, even if it was possible to animate missing body parts i'm not sure i still would care for it. What use has a maimed metalworker or a crippled soldier anyway? (Not trying to put down amputees.)
Also, altho' it might be funny to laugh at the disgraces of our cogsfolks i still find it unpractical and don't think it adds much to the game having to manage with permanent handicaps.
Pixel people are still people ! I guess.

 

It's not so much that 'less is more', but that too much emphasis on injury can shift the focus of the game from managing a settlement to managing a rehab facility or convalescent home for your rapidly-growing crippled populace. It's good to have some detail about individual citizens to the extent that it's supposed to affect how things work on a more macroscopic scale, creating unexpected events and behaviors. But too much focus on the minutiae can actually take away from the game as a whole IF it doesn't serve any other purpose but to add complexity. Before you ask for more detail, you have to ask yourself exactly what you are trying to accomplish that you aren't getting without that detail (and crippled citizens is not enough of a reason, imho).

 

I like the idea of the 6 parts, head, arms, legs, torso, but I wouldn't mind if those were split down further, say two more for each part, legs consist of leg and foot, arms being arm and hand, head being skull and face, torso being chest and stomach. Also possibly sight damage could be cool too but that really mucks with pathfinding.

You don't need to do the whole tissue-layers thing that DF does, although personally I wouldn't mind. It can all be hidden behind menus anyway, you don't have to animate each and every bruise. Hell, just a red texture over the affected area for larger wounds and then detailed information in their bio would do me.

I find that "Citizen has a broken arm, it's healing" is much more immersive than "Citizen has lost 4hp, priest has waved his hands over him, all fixed," although some sort of demonic healing, "sold his soul to the devil for restored sight," could be a cool motivation for injured characters. "Citizen X has summoned Tujahb'Gha, he has bargained away his first born in return for increased healing"

Honestly, I like the character info in DF, I like that you can look up the medical history of an individual dwarf. If you do go for limb injuries, medical notes are nice to have! It all helps in making a citizen less of a renewable resource and more of an individual.

 

I really don't see that being a likely problem. The focus of CE is on overview management, after all. There's no direct control. So, at worst, it seems that medical issues will be a case of issuing a "Treat the sick and wounded" order. More probably, your colonists won't even need telling to do that, any more than they need telling to go eat, drink, or sleep. You'll never need to order a doctor to, say, perform a muscle-tear stitching operation rather than a muscle-tear immobilisation operation. There may be some pieces of equipment to build for a medical station, but even in Dwarf Fortress, that's no more complex than providing a bed, a traction bench, some thread and, if you're feeling ambitious, soap, water, cloth, crutches, and plaster for casts.

In return for that, you get an extra layer of emergent behavioural manipulation at the individual level, with all the added richness, variation, and deepness that entails.

 

I'd like to add that a soldier missing his left arm probably has a more interesting (and horrifying) story to tell than a soldier who has all his body parts. Not to mention what's to say there wont be some form of steampunk prosthetic that the rich could afford that make it like they never lost a limb in the first place. Also peg legged commoners.

 

Fallout handles this beautifully and it makes the game more immersive. As with some wonderful ideas mentioned here I have to agree that having crippled and injured citizens could be bring some really interesting elements/scenarios to the game.

 

Yes, but this opens a lot more depth in to the game. Say, a rebellion is at hand, or a colonist goes beserk. You want to cripple him instead of killing him, so you can take him to a rehab center (colonists are rare and the empire is in dire need of some fresh meat) so your soldiers aim at his hands and feet instead of his torso or head. Combat can become more random with this system too. Say, aiming for the head requires more accuracy, has a bigger probability to miss, but guarantes an enormous amount of damage if connected. While a shot in the legs or arms can cripple the soldiers/citizens/fishpersons ability to fight, and can be captured likewise or run from combat. Recruits would aim randomly and for the feet, arms, head or torso, since they're inexperienced. Trained soldiers would aim for the torso, as the military teaches to aim for the center of the body, and experienced soldiers would aim for the biggest hit probability

 

but yeah, 6 is overkill for the damage system, since it will not be animated either way. A 4 limb based damage system would be good (legs, torso, hands and head, no need to make the hands and feet individual, as there's no animation for the damage or removable limbs anyway)

 

What about head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes? Head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes. And eyes and ears and mouth and nose. Head, shoulders, knees and toes.

 

I feel Dwarf Fortress's injury system is actually an important part of the game. Now it doesn't have to be as complex or insane as Dwarf Fortress. However, I feel the way Dwarf Fortress models injuries directly contributes to the narrative of the game.

Thomas was low on HP, but Fred ran out of HP isn't that engaging. While a Dwarf Fortress style combat where "after losing his left armor, Belgor entered a rage and proceed to decapitate 6 goblins, then killed a 7th goblin by throwing one of the severed heads through his chest" tells a story.

 

one of the things I love about DF is the hospital system. It creates just such an awesome feeling seeing the bloodshed that a siege has caused, and then going to dorfs running out into the battlefield to carry their dieing brethren to the hospital so they might survive and get better. I've had hammerdwarves that lose an arm and have their legs broken and limp around for a season on crutches before being able to take their place on the line again.

One of the things I worry about CE is that the memory system being a toxic thing for your soldier pops and forceing them to delete those memories to be good soldiers. They should find solice that they survived horrifying things and not be so horrified the next thing they see dead bodies lieing on the ground. They should remember the fallen and fight for their honor. The damage system should filter into the memories that they earn.

Also soldiers should be promote-able? so that they can become noncoms at least to pass on their experience instead of having soldiers carved out of wood but officers you're so afraid of loseing that they're just cookie dough.

 

Also desensitize children to violence by walking them around a fresh battlefield.

 

One could, of course, always characterize hit points as "upper lip stiffness" and get around animating injured characters. The citizens of the Empire clearly don't wish to do anything as self-indulgent as actually displaying outward signs of injury/illness/massive internal trauma, and so soldier on until at last they've exceeded their capacity for stoic indifference to their various physical afflictions -- at which point they are simply terminally mortified.

 

I support the notion that the only cause of death should be "terminally mortified"!

 

Having Limb injuries would not only be really awesome, it would also force players to take the sterilization of cloth into consideration (with booze, maybe) during early colony development. After all, who nows what lurks in the shadows of the untamed frontier?

 

and dont forget an entire world.

 

So in the latest blog I noticed the guy on the top left:

Is he missing an arm or is the arm jsut clipping into the ground? Can´t say if that little spot beside him is his hand or blood.