Healing allies

[TruePurple]

As you all know a allie with a healer can heal your units at double rate(or triple etc if even more allies with healing) Considering this synergy of factions with healing units, this seems to throw off faction balance. Like that 3 player ocaria map. I saw some players do great on it(despite the fact that its very hard), but they had multple faction healing. Being able to heal units of 24-26 hp a round is bound to make a person do better on it (since its tough to heal up before the next waves comes with only 8-10 hp which puts out the higher level units from action for awhile)

My recommendation/idea:

Have healing be done only on the controlling units players turn, even if the healing is from a allied unit. So if your spear man is next to a allies white mage, it will heal on your turn only. Not your allies turn. Thus it won't stack with the healing of your own healers/village/regeneration etc. But you can still heal from allie healers.

[Darker_Dreams]

wrong or right there are a whole set of places where it says max healing per turn is 8. I know leaving a unit alone on a town gives 10, I don't know how stacked healers do... but someone should look at the help, because I've been seeing this over the last couple weeks.

[Velensk]

From my experiance this is how it works.

Aside from resting, all healing is capped at 8 per turn, however allies heal you on their turn, and are thus have an independant healing cap.

[turin]

Interesting points... I'm not sure if what you're complaining about is really a problem though. Yes, "being able to heal units of 24-26 hp a round is bound to make a person do better", but at the same time, if they have three different sides with healers next to a single unit, don't they deserve it? Just because it's useful doesn't mean it should be nerfed.

I'm also not sure if it throws off factional balance, because this can only occur in team battles where factional balance is much more complicated than in 1v1s... perhaps factions with healing are more powerful in team battles, but similarly teaming up a chaotic faction with a lawful faction is (in my understanding, though I'm not 100% sure) more powerful than having two lawful factions, and there are probably a million other considerations...

Basically, I'm not sure whether this is a good or a bad idea, because I'm not convinced there is a problem that needs to be solved.

[TruePurple]

Yes teaming up chaotic with lawful is extra useful. But not like healers are. Since all sides have to individually hold or press their lines anyways. And sending units over to help allies can be difficult because it takes time for them to get back and forth. If your sides are all lawful or all chaotic you can attack in unison better anyways.

Its also much harder to coordinate attacks then it is to coordinate allie healing for nonfront line units.

Allied healing isn't just "useful" its powerful. Being able to heal multiple units (since they can gather around allied healers) two or three or four times faster then the supposed cap on healing. Any synergy in chaotic/lawful teams is nothing compared to it, if you do it right. It is partially map dependant. Maps that have allies further apart make it harder of course.

Let me ask this, what is the functional purpose of breaking your own healing cap when it comes to allies? How hard would it be to change the programing so that units only heal on their own turn, even from allies?

[TruePurple]

Another couple of questions for you, do you think that it would throw off factional balance if healing stacked within your own units? If so, why is that much different if its your allies healing thats stacking instead?

[Sapient]

I already made a real nice proposal to fix allied healing; unfortunately, no one cared enough for me to bother coding it.

http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=15880

[TruePurple]

Your solution is very hard to understand Sapient. Near as I can make out, you want the healing to be on what ever turn (yours or allies) comes first. Just never to exceed the healing cap of 8. But two +4 heals would stack unlike normal.(which is not good from my perspective, it just weakens the flawed allie healing stacking instead of fixing it altogether)

My suggested solution is much simplier. I see no particular reason for the healing to be done on the allies turn, other then concepts of "realism" and wesnoth is not realistic/that is not a good reason says you guys.

Also if the healing was done on your turn from allied units would simplify allie healing. Since the allie could move the healer to your units and have it do its business on your turn, instead of you having to move your units to the healer which is much more disruptive to front line fighting.

Having allie healing stack is like having allie leadership stack, considering most mods don't even allow your allie leadrship units to effect yours...

[Jetrel]

Like turin was saying, I don't want this to be fixed. It's not a problem, and it's a nice pat on the back for advanced players.

There are lots of other team-combination exploits that other teams can wrangle; like a team with skirmisher helping a team with backstab, or a chaotic faction backing up a loyalist faction. Also, this "combined healing" between teams only becomes signficant when there are multiple level-2 healers, on different teams, in play, which generally doesn't happen in multi. We'd need some 3-4 level-2 healers in play, all allied, in order for this to become unbalancing, and that's extremely rare.

I like the fact that players can exploit this, and in most of the situations where it comes up, it's not an issue of being unfair to another player (like MP RPGs). I would actually ask that we don't fix this.

[TL]

Also if the healing was done on your turn from allied units would simplify allie healing. Since the allie could move the healer to your units and have it do its business on your turn, instead of you having to move your units to the healer which is much more disruptive to front line fighting.

But apparently not so disruptive that it does not stop you from getting a huge and unbalancing advantage that absolutely must be fixed from the healing your ally gives you, yes? You're shooting your argument in the foot here.

Stacked healing is nice, but since only 2 mainline MP factions have recruitable healers the most likely scenario for it to come up in is duplicate factions--which is in my opinion a very disadvantageous setup in a 2v2, 2v2v2, or 3v3. Even then it's only healing +4 and +4, which is nice but fairly piddly considering that there's usually going to be an opportunity cost in arranging everything for the healing to happen that way.

Admittedly there are leaders with heals +8, but I don't think white mages and druids are especially well liked due to their fragility. As far as I'm concerned they need all the help they can get.

The most common use I see for stacked healing is in RPGs when there's downtime between fights and everyone is sitting around waiting to heal, and I wholeheartedly endorse any feature that makes this process faster. Other than time sensitive missions there is little possibility that stacked healing would have a significant impact on the challenge of the scenario; it just cuts back on the number of "end turns" everybody has to go through to get healed up.

[Aethaeryn]

which generally doesn't happen in multi. We'd need some 3-4 level-2 healers in play, all allied, in order for this to become unbalancing, and that's extremely rare.

Not entirely true, a village can function as a healer here, so if it's 1-2 healers and a village, it can still be a lot of healing, and I've seen this happen in survivals before. Then again, most healing tends to be lawful/neutral and it's better to have a lawful/neutral/chaotic mix in a 3p game and a lawful/chaotic mix in a 2p game. I think the advantage of this mix is more potentially unbalancing than stacked healing of a lawful/neutral or lawful/lawful combo, so I generally agree with you.

[TruePurple]

As well as regeneration which also stacks of course.

@TL
My point in what your quoting there is that beyond restoring balance and such, it would also simplify an allies ability to heal his/her allie. Right now it can be kind of difficult to coordinate healing allie units on the front line, this would make it easier. Since you can park your healer behind the front line units, instead of having to have those units go to/stay by the healer.

Besides villages & regeneration, theres "era"'s like age of heroes. Which is sorta mainline. Since it comes default with the game and it is the main line game, only with level 3 leaders and the ability to recruit level 2 units.

And theres games with lower experience requirements which tend to have higher level units.

Thats where this really shines anyways, once you get those higher level units. Since it can take awhile to heal those higher level units. Not alot of opportunity lost if you have a bunch of badly wounded units that can't really afford to attack anyways.

For roleplaying games, they can use mods/eras that allow healing stacking, in all forms. Even if say the healer gained control of a NPC healer & so on.

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Someone please answer the following questions:

How hard would it be to change the programing so that units only heal on their own turn, even from allies?

Do you think that it would throw off factional balance if healing stacked within your own units? If so, why is that much different if its your allies healing thats stacking instead?

How are those arguements for allowing allied stacking much different then allowing healing to stack in general? Because its harder? Wouldn't it be better to make it easier and fix it so healing either stacks or doesn't?

Why then in main line does a allies leadership not stack, but not even effect your allie? I see a stacking leadership being no different then stacking healing. But as of right now it has no effect at all.

[turin]

Comparisons to AoH, playing with 30% XP, etc, are useless when talking about balance. They're like saying a faction is unbalanced because it does worse on Isar's Cross.

[TruePurple]

Except Isar's Crossis a badly balanced map to begin with, and just a map. So I don't think thats a fair comparison.

Where allied healing can come up often enough in different circumstances. Long drawn out games for example. And many other examples.

I mean it sounds like the biggest issue raised is "we want our +4 healings to add up" and Sapient's more complicated version of fixing allie healing is his way of compromising to this crowd.

Someone please answer those questions I posed please. Those questions contain within them the heart of the matter I think. Like the leadership thing is a real issue, as well as a real inconsistancy with the healing stacking issue.

The way I see it, losing some minor bonus "reward for experienced players" is more then balanced out by fixing it in all the circumstances where its not balanced & making it easier to heal your allies to boot!

Since its just shifting when units get their heal from allies, I would think the programing for that would be minimal.

Minimal effort for good effect = well worth it?

BTW, alot of the balance arguements against my faster healing for higher level units could be applied in spades (that is a great deal more) for not stacking allied healing.

Like that most races don't have healers to stack in the first place. One team could by random race assignment get loyalist and orcs, and heal those trolls/units on villages double time by growing a few white mages, where as maybe the other team is just undead and dwarves and benefit nothing from allie healing stacking.

Don't forget that healing stacking works by towns too, adding to the value in general of factions with healers for any allied game.

[Sapient]

Your solution is very hard to understand Sapient.

It's not easy to express, but it's easy to play.

Near as I can make out, you want the healing to be on what ever turn (yours or allies) comes first.

That's the basic premise, yes.

Just never to exceed the healing cap of 8. But two +4 heals would stack unlike normal.(which is not good from my perspective, it just weakens the flawed allie healing stacking instead of fixing it altogether)

No, that's not what I'm proposing at all. Did you read the whole thread? You're not understanding it correctly.

My suggested solution is much simplier. I see no particular reason for the healing to be done on the allies turn, other then concepts of "realism" and wesnoth is not realistic/that is not a good reason says you guys.

There are other reasons, which you can find through Searching the previous discussions about this issue.