Combat heal

[bloody9]

So i started out with a guy and a dog, after much struggle i made it all the way to the 'green' lands.
Build my shack near a major village so i can trade easily but i often get attacked by bandits or river raptors that keep eating my vegi garden.
So i run away and they chase me, if im lucky there is a large town guard patrolling near by.

They pull the aggro off me and i try to heal but whenever i try my guys keep running back to towards combat.
Is this a bug? or its meant to be this way....?no combat healing?

[Hatsune_Neko]

Is it saying defending allies?

[Ocram]

You can summarize with "no combat healing", always been this way afaik. You can try turning BLOCK and HOLD on and disable RANGED, if your char is far enough from who is aggroed he can actually heal a bit before going in defensive and try to block.

[Sol Lignum]

You can summarize with "no combat healing", always been this way afaik.

It has never been that way, it all started in 0.98

[Ocram]

It seems pretty similar to 0.97 to me, I mean if I select HOLD and BLOCK they don't move until the attacker is close enough to land an attack. But I always played with block and passive/hold turned on, selecting who should pick which fight, maybe the problem is right there, or I just didn't get what's the problem xd
Also, do you manually select to heal your character? Maybe he's running to heal the dog?

[bloody9]

it seems to be a game feature, even with shift click.
if i run far enough i can heal...

[Ocram]

Care that the medic job has a priority on who is more badly hurt, you should't trust jobs while fighting, better a pause and right click order.

[Sol Lignum]

Ugh, right, sorry, i'm too concentrated on the issue with characters not quitting combat.

Sure, combat was always prioritised over other tasks, although, characters in passive has always been very passive and were attacked last.

[Kwikwilyaqa]

You can summarize with "no combat healing", always been this way afaik.

It has never been that way, it all started in 0.98

Yeah, combat is interfering with everything after 0.98 was release. In stable, when you have the Medic job and step away from the enemy your character start to patch himself and others, even with Passive disabled. Seems like "self preservation" and any other behavior that involves combat is denying/overwriting the player commands. You simply cannot trust in your characters anymore, having to babysitting every single action that may involves them in unnecessary harm (like move from point A to B).

[Ocram]

Ah, I got it now.
I suspect the medic task was wrongly higher in priority than fight (or protect squad). You could see npc heal themselves in the middle of a fight if they weren't in direct combat, might be more or less reaslistic but in terms of gameplay wasn't that great.
But turning back on pcs, as I see it, jobs are not commands and you can't trust the AI (there are rumors it will take over the world too, just saying xd), I personally prefer to micromanage fights, I don't want my medic to run around healing until it is necessary (which he can't really decide) or risk his life for it, imo a job should be what characters do if they have no immediate orders to take, like manage a fight situation. But I guess is a matter of personal tastes, just gave you my thoughts.
Just an addition, half a medikit could make the difference if used on the right character, if someone is already "safe" at distance, maybe he should keep those small charges for who and when they are more needed.

[EDIT] They changed the range at which the medic job can do his work while in HOLD, but seems something went wrong and now he just doesn't heal others if they aren't in range for the task, even if out of combat. Might be the issue. Or it is intended.

[Kwikwilyaqa]

Ah, I got it now.
I suspect the medic task was wrongly higher in priority than fight (or protect squad). You could see npc heal themselves in the middle of a fight if they weren't in direct combat, might be more or less reaslistic but in terms of gameplay wasn't that great.
But turning back on pcs, as I see it, jobs are not commands and you can't trust the AI (there are rumors it will take over the world too, just saying xd), I personally prefer to micromanage fights, I don't want my medic to run around healing until it is necessary (which he can't really decide) or risk his life for it, imo a job should be what characters do if they have no immediate orders to take, like manage a fight situation. But I guess is a matter of personal tastes, just gave you my thoughts.
Just an addition, half a medikit could make the difference if used on the right character, if someone is already "safe" at distance, maybe he should keep those small charges for who and when they are more needed.

[EDIT] They changed the range at which the medic job can do his work while in HOLD, but seems something went wrong and now he just doesn't heal others if they aren't in range for the task, even if out of combat. Might be the issue. Or it is intended.

What I meant by "when you have the Medic job and step away from the enemy your character start to patch himself and others" its not that the medic job must behave like that, but when you removed your character from the battle it remaining out of combat - the job being triggered was just an example. The problem now is that the AI took over the control from the player. It attacks when you say walk, it attacks when you say heal, it attacks another target when you say attack this one. What is keeping me away from playing lately is this lack of control - together with the fact that your squad have no way to walk 100m without spread to the 4 corners of the map things get pretty messy.

And micromanagement of combat: we need more mechanics to this be real (and fun). 1x1 combat as it is now I just pull off my squad and send only one fighter against 300 enemies because this one character has more chances of winning than my 23 guys united. Man, I cleared the whole cannibal plains with one character (1.5 squad size and 3 nest generation)... if I had used 10 all of them was gone because of the cleaver/club area damage and the impossibility of defend yourself when you are not direct engaged with the enemy attacking. But I guess this somehow count as tactics with a bit of micromanagement too, right? xD

[Sol Lignum]

(...) The problem now is that the AI took over the control from the player. It attacks when you say walk, it attacks when you say heal, it attacks another target when you say attack this one. (...)

Oddly enough, for me it only overrides several tasks, like healing or sitting (not sitting around AI thing, the actual job of sitting). Runners don't engage in combat, and others, who're operating a furnace, or haulting for instance, quits combat just fine, and don't target downed enemies, or those who're 5 kilometers away, or dying, or whatever.

[Ocram]

Honestly never experienced all of that. I can move around freely while in combat (with HOLD+BLOCK), I can heal with the right distance, I can switch ranged and melee at will without "feeling glued" to one or another stance, the only thing that always bugs me is looting while aggroed, the loot window goes crazy as it tries to automatically close but it fails, but seems to happen only if you are clicking while the window closes.
Anyway, there's really no point keeping the 1x1 combat, it just makes no sense and makes fights longer for seemengly no reasons, chars just stare at other chars beating their friends way too long, like they are some kind of jedi doing some mind mumbo jumbo trick xd, I keep it at 2 so that even in late game you outnumbering squads doesen't make things too easy, also probably solves many issues as you can have a backup target for the npc. But even fighting alone I didn't feel being stuck in something.