Flying around with med bays but crew don't use them to heal themselves...

[Boku]

...?

Never really understood this. So, you can heal your crew at stations for a fee, or if you have med bays and the right talents, you can heal them in the height of a pitched battle with another ship. Or, you can use doctors to heal them during intense crew combat.

But when you're just cruising between the starts, these crew members hang around with limbs falling off, not seeking medical attention?

I know that this would alter the dynamics of the game, but by the time you can afford serious amounts of med pay and doctor skill on your ships, putting into port to heal one wounded crew member who is close to death seems a waste of 2 weeks. I find myself flying around waiting for an encounter so I can go into battle simply to use my healing talents...

[Taipan]

Not sure I understood. You mean that actually if you have a medical bay the crew is not healed when you are out of battle, flying around???

[Boku]

That's right, your injured crew just ignores their doctor and the medbays while flying around. They only heal in combat or crew combat, or when healed at a faction holding when you're docked.

Quite how you can heal LOADS in combat but not patch your crew up while flying around I don't know.

Maybe the game could be balanced to allow crew to heal somewhat during space flight if you have med bays - it makes no sense to me and as I said, I've actively sought out combat just so I can heal my crew.

[nosavynada]

I understand that it is a.... money and crew.....sink.....but you are right it does not make sense compared to other aspects of the game. As stated it makes zero difference if you have a med bay other than after a combat. Doctors make no difference other than crew comba, healing after a space combatt OR making a saving throw to save someone who dies. It is always....frustrating to get a warning for crew member low on heal (from presumably a random event during space travel) when you have like 5 doctors onboard..... So having some sort of healing rate based on overall doctor skill (which med labs add to..) would help. Might have to do more study because obviously this could have an impact on space and crew combat as well...

[Trese Brothers]

Here is a link to the wiki page on how Medical Rating effects healing Talents, death saves, travel saves etc. Hope it helps.

https://startraders.gamepedia.com/Medical_Rating

[Gilmoy]

Yes, it's working as designed, even if it doesn't make "sense". Medical Bays are not event handlers: they do not respond directly to any ST:F event (including flying-around events). Rather, they're data for some event handlers, in particular those ship combat/landing/death save talents that explicitly query for ship medical rating. They have no effect during regular travel.

The point is precisely to make you spend the same 3 weeks in port to heal your crew that all non-Medical Bay ships must spend. Otherwise, Medical Bays would be OP, no-brainer, must-have components, and no contender could play without them.

It's consistent with all other ship components. None of them are event handlers. I think ST:F's internal pipeline goes like this:

1. There exist a set of events. (Sort the crew talents wiki page by the icon box, and those are exactly the set of events.)

2. Ship and crew actions raise events: landing, trading, card game draws, deaths ...

3. Talents are event handlers: they subscribe to events. (From other threads, we know alert players are already grumbling that they cannot control the subscription queue order for each event type, and so they go to extremes like retraining away all crew talents of the On Landing event just to ensure that the captain's mega-talent will be the sole subscriber, and thus be guaranteed to fire.)

4. Skill levels, and some ship components (intel, mining, medical), are data, basically a vector (or phone book) of quantities. Some event handlers (talents) do table look-ups to query certain values, as explicitly stated in each talent's description.

It's a nice system, quite elegant. But some "common sense" things become weird fits when you shoehorn them into it. Medical facilities lying fallow until something queries them doesn't jive with our understanding of Star Trek sickbays and RPGs, but that's the game. It seems to be deeply intended that You Don't Just Heal Over Time. I don't think it's wrong; it's just one more unique rule that makes this game not-an-RPG. (Similarly, ST:F has the brilliant, if a tad startling, concept that leveling up does not increase HP, which means an L18 xeno dies just as quickly as an L04 xeno -- if you can hit it. So does your L24 captain.)

We note that there are talents that auto-repair "over time" (actually on landings, but that amounts to time), and traits that auto-cheer-up (add morale), but no talent that auto-heals. Surely this is deliberate. I like it: it gives you some uncomfortable decisions to make when you're camping on a card game, and ensures that crew battles you barely survive eventually do attrition you down. Plan ahead, bring extra guys, have a bolthole or haven nearby, and periodically shift gears.

And maybe pick an easy fight for the sole purpose of popping off a bunch of repair + healing + morale talents, then escape. That's a perfectly legit use of a Pirate.

[nosavynada]

I do like the game and am not complaining, only mentioning afirming that not all make "sense" it is still a great game. I would by no means want to nit pick something like that, I mean really some people do I suppose. I am amazed at those with the patience and talent to create.

[Råb!d]

Perhaps an 'event' can accur during space travel and battle that will only slightly be better than with a lesser med bay. Noticeable, but only barely. Minor injuries are fixed, but really major things may need a better facility on a planet.

I have to say that these space travelers sure seem accident prone.

[[ﻩﺩﻨﺸﻜ] Union Made]

I think the OP is thinking that there should be a slow passive healing rate if you invest in a med bay, for balance I would think there would be a doctor talent that unlocks this, something like "Follow up care", During the downtime of space navigation, the Good Doctor applies the med bay rating x2 to three crew members.

[Oubley]

Not understanding the med system was one of the main reasons I stopped playing (the other main one being I was afraid I'd play the game non stop lol and had real life stuff to do), people were constantly blowing stuff up/stubbing toes, getting hurt and losing morale, then you dock and some of them would even leave... increasing morale was another concept I seem to not fully grasp, they have the bar thing at port but a lot of times it doesn't appear to do anything. Quartermaster had some perks to prevent leaving... I would agree that the doctor should have some extra passive roll, particularly if there is going to be constant random stuff happening. I wouldn't mind the checks so much if there was some kind of ship schedule, like it's time to check the reactors as opposed to some magically internal time tick.

[Taipan]

Hopefully this will change and med bays will also have an effect on the fly if you of course have doctors. But, the wiki says this:
"When making doctor tests during Travel, medical rating plays a big part in your success, specifically it adds 3 weak dice per point of rating. That's effectively the same as 1.5 doctor skill per point of rating applied to these rolls."
Doesn't this mean that medical bays also affect travel? Or this is something that applies to events occurring during travel, like work injuries, not on previous health issues.

[CoryTrese]

We will keep working to improve the game with a focus on fun and balance. Right now, you should keep in mind how the game's mechanics work as you upgrade your ship. Medical Bays are very useful during certain periods of the story and during combat when Talents are in play.

We do not have a roadmap item to totally redesign the Ship Component system but we will have a discussion about the suggested changes and see if there is something we want to change there.

Thanks for playing!

[219A730]

I don't mind the existing mechanics, but I'll admit I enter space combat simply for the sake of triggering as many heal, repair, and morale restore talents as I need, especially after getting a diplomat with a combat focused crew.

In my opinion, morale lose and ship damage is also very dangerous to leave uncheck. It not uncommon to have crew desert from low morale. Leaving your engine damaged from from a bad card is a recipe for disaster.

Later in the game, I usually lose more time from spice hall and repairing at port then finding easy prey to trigger both in combat and post combat talents to heal, repair, and rally.

[JimmysTheBestCop]

Its just like you don't repair while traveling or fix morale while traveling. If you allow 1 aspect then it opens up the gates sometimes

[Boku]

Well yes, but there's no reason why you should fix morale while travelling. Repair, though, absolutely. That slightly broken panel as we're flying through space for weeks? Repair it? Nah, we'll leave it, let the grunts at the dock do it.

As has been said I think this is one of those cases where the game has been designed to balance a concept (you're stuck in space with limited ability to repair, do you take a risk and make the mission timer, or play it safe and repair to make sure you make it at all?).

It does seem that later in the game everyone seeks out combat just to use talents to heal/repair, because it's quicker than the starports.

While on that, though - why the frag do combat hospitals etc take so long to repair? :)

[JimmysTheBestCop]

Originally posted by Boku:

It does seem that later in the game everyone seeks out combat just to use talents to heal/repair, because it's quicker than the starports.

Not sure about everyone else but later in the game I am super busy and don't have time to get into a fight just to fire off talents.

Granted it is a good tactic if you failed a major kill test and you have like 9+ crew members with bad morale.

If its not something major like that I don't bother with it personally.