Medics in Cold War - questions

[John Given]

Hey battle kat -

It sounds almost like you're describing both a main dressing station and a field hospital in your description. Or were you thinking more along the lines of a division level field hospital and a corps level?

My feeling is the 'medical hierarchy' should be something along the lines of

1. field Hospital (divisional level) - immobile unit.

2. Main dressing station (regimental level unit, transportable)

3. Forward dressing station (battalion level, transportable)

4. Medics (company level)

As far as how many ambulances or medics to 'assign' to a dressing station / hospital? I would think 1 ambulance and 2 medics, BUT, I was envisioning that level of detail to be left up to the individual scenario designer. (I.E. no need to overcomplicate)

However, if you want to make some suggestions and put them in the readme, that's cool with me.

Also, there should be a short description in the unit description itself (F2) mentioning the unit's place in the 'medical hierarchy.' It should probably also be mentioned in the mod readme file all the different types of medical units and what 'rank' they hold in the medical hierarchy (just to avoid any potential confusion).

But just to be clear, the actual number and type of medical units should be left up to the scenario designer to balance the scenario (cuz' it's gonna happen anyway - it's the nature of our hobby).

almost forgot - the actual units any medical units 'heals' or 'boosts' is in game terms entirely dependent on where the unit sits in the oob file for that particular scenario. You could technically have a corps-level medic or a battalion level field hospital - depends on how you set up the oob. So talk of 'medical hierarchy' is very interesting for realism and historical purposes, but the oob placements trumps everything with regard to what unit the medic is 'attached' to - just like with tanks, HQ's, anything - it's the nature of the game engine.

And thanks for all your suggestions and research on this!

[Crossroads]

Yes, I was describing the Divisional Field Hospital. Based on my little research I was earlier of mind that they do not fit into scale, but as I found out there was a Field Hospital element responsible for surgery that was set up closer to front lines, that would be the Field Hospital element that could be modeled. 50 beds and all that.

The difference bw Main Dressing Station and Field Hospital was that while the former was larger and better equipped than Dressing Station, they still lacked the facilities for the more demanding surgical operations a Field Hospital (/A) had.

My little research was done on one country only, but what you summarised would be a very good abstraction of how to add medical logistics to JTCS engine. I would only add Medical Platoons too, for those designers who would like to stick to platoonsized units.

So, instead of Medics I personally would prefer Medical Squad (SP2) and Medical Platoon (SP6), which otherwise would be similar as far as their capabilities would be considered. Then, designer could choose whether to place one Medical Pltn per Bn or Sqd per Coy.

Now, if Stefan would experiment this with CWE, I would be very keen to see how these are implemented into platoonXX.oob files

[Crossroads]

Further info:

WW I to WW II: http://www.ramcjournal.com/2002/sep02/tailpiece.pdf

It seems we got it pretty much spot on, and the Finnish system was not that different from the British system:
- Advanced Dressing Station
- Main Dressing Station / Emergency Operating Centre / Mobile Surgical Team
- Advanced Operating Centre
- Mobile Hospital

...or the later ADS - FDS / FSU - CCS.

I believe it is the evacuation logistics we should try to recreate, where each node would have an affect to recover from disrupt status, to imitate the evacuation of wounded.

WW II to Present: http://www.ramcjournal.com/2003/mar03/bricknell2.pdf

There's some food for thought for CWE timeframe too.

[John Given]

Very interesting battle kat - where did you dig all this up?

So I'm thinking that to mod this, all we'd need is to make some skins and game files, and add these to the ORG file? Roughly, how long would it take with you and Stefan working on it? (without hurrying)

There are several different medic units in Cold War I've noticed - in the new scenario I'm playing with Stefan, there is apparently a higher-level ambulance based on an apc, in addition to the truck-like ambulance. even has the red cross painted on it's sides and front. Very cool.

Posted by Battle Kat - Today 04:55 PM I believe it is the evacuation logistics we should try to recreate, where each node would have an affect to recover from disrupt status, to imitate the evacuation of wounded.

Speaking of evacuation logistics, the graphic that I saw in the link also brings to mind a few new ideas for ferrying wounded - namely medevac choppers and even hospital ships. Kind of redundant in a way, but the extra variety would be fun to have in very large battles.

[Crossroads]

I don't know, given I could figure out the proper platoonXX.oob files say over the next weekend, and then sending the files to Jason for encryption and allowing him say two weekends this could be available within three weeks? Given he agrees of course

I guess they would need to go into each major country within EF:FB, but I could start with identical bitmaps and to differentiate them later so that's not an issue really.

Also, first release would only have ADS, FDS, Med Sqd, Med Pltn and Ambulance. But it would be a start?

[Panther]

WW II to Present: http://www.ramcjournal.com/2003/mar03/bricknell2.pdf

There's some food for thought for CWE timeframe too.

This is very interesting for the modern war game. Excuse me that i´m a little bit rare here now but i have a lot to do at the moment. I´m still working on it.

R
Stefan

[Crossroads]

Something like this?


P00450 2 0 1 0 25 25 10 5 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 40 73 P00450 0 2 3 0 0 0 30 1 53 12 0 0 0 Medical Squad , Medics Sqd , Medics
P00451 5 0 1 0 25 25 10 5 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 40 73 P00450 0 2 3 0 0 0 30 1 53 12 0 0 0 Medical Platoon , Medics Pltn , Medics
P00460 4 0 1 0 100 100 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 40 73 P00460 0 0 3 0 0 0 30 1 53 12 0 0 0 Advanced Dressing Station , ADS , ADS
P00461 6 0 1 0 100 100 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 40 73 P00461 0 0 3 0 0 0 30 1 53 12 0 0 0 Field Dressing Station , FDS , FDS
P00462 6 0 1 0 100 100 0 0 0 2 5 3 0 0 0 40 73 P00462 0 48 3 0 0 0 30 1 53 12 0 0 0 Field Hospital , Field Hospital ,

Medics are foot units, Dressing stations can be transported, Hospital is fixed. All are "commanders".

What else? Am thinking zero VP value instead of negative values.

Need to add medical Nato symbol to icons, in all likelyhood. Have not checked yet if it is there (a cross inside a square)

Did I miss anything?

[Panther]

Well, the structure seems very good for me. I told John that in my platoon files the medics, especially the transport units were not very lucky created. I will revise them now.

Would you really change the VP values from negative to zero? Maybe i gave them to much points!?, but i would further vote for the negative.

For CWE i would prefer to see this units, further with the negative VP´s:

-1 for Sanitäter/medics,

-2 for Aerzte/doctors

-3 for Stabsaertze/staff doctors

-1 for Feldlazarett/ADS

-2 for Feldhospital/FH

-3 for Krankenhaus/Hospital

-1 for Krankenwagen/Ambulance

Any other suggestions?

[John Given]

It sounds good to me Stefan - you could even increase the negative values by one in each category (from -1 to -2 for example) and it would still be balanced, because the scenario creator would take this into account with his scenario victory conditions.

And let's not forget, that even in large scenarios, these medical units would be fairly rare, so their share of the overall points gained or lost would be small.

Also the negative point value is to discourage blind shelling and being deliberately targeted, but it should be large enough of a negative value that it will *actively* discourage that kind of bad behavior (Geneva Conventions and all).

And again, thanks to all of you guys for helping with this!

[Panther]

Now i gathered stuff about the east german medic organisations into the NVA.

They had one medic battalion in each combat-division. They called them Medizinscher Dienst. They should to secure the first aid of casualties and their transport to the Hospitals in the Rückwärtigen Dienste. I´m not to one hundert percent sure but it seems that they were not armed.

I will create the medic section into the platoon-files and we could test them than.