Matrix Games Forums

Why is there a hospital on my troops ships? what does it do?

In THEORY, a hospital is supposed to assist a planet now even if it is not on a spaceport. It is unknown whether ships can perform this function. Additionally, hospitals are supposed to allow transported troops to recover their readiness. However, you cannot actually pick up unreadied troops, so this is useless.

what about troops that are nearby fighting.. would the ship idling on top of the planet increase the combat powers of the troops fighting on the planet below?

Well the hospital is suppose to heal any troops on board the ship as well.

but the ship cannot pick up "injured" troops. so how will it provide said bonus?

ORIGINAL: Fishman
In THEORY, a hospital is supposed to assist a planet now even if it is not on a spaceport. It is unknown whether ships can perform this function. Additionally, hospitals are supposed to allow transported troops to recover their readiness. However, you cannot actually pick up unreadied troops, so this is useless.

[;)]

ORIGINAL: taltamir

but the ship cannot pick up "injured" troops. so how will it provide said bonus?

Well if it had troop transport capability, then it could. From posts I read, Fishman is correct, if stationary at a planet, it's suppose to help out the planet as well.

ORIGINAL: Davor

ORIGINAL: taltamir

but the ship cannot pick up "injured" troops. so how will it provide said bonus?

Well if it had troop transport capability, then it could. From posts I read, Fishman is correct, if stationary at a planet, it's suppose to help out the planet as well.

We are strictly talking about transport ship here... they don't remain stationary at a planet to provide a hospital, thats why a space port is for.
Are you saying the a troop ship with a hospital CAN pick up "injured" troops?

I have no idea, but this is from reading on the posts and galactopidiea. I know that the documentaions isn't the greatest, so something can be missinge. For example look at the spy missions. There is one in the manual and galactopidea, but is not in the game, and what is in the game, is not in the manual or galactopidea. Who knows what else could be missing as well. But from what I read, I assume if you have say one injured troop on a planet, and it's your only troop, if the ship picks it up, it's suppose to heal faster.

I tried to get the troop ship to follow the planet as well and can't do it as well. So I don't see how the ship can help the planet. Maybe it's for other ships and not troop ships. I don't know.

Troop transports, with or without hospitals, refuse to pick up unreadied troops. Therefore, the bonus to recovery is useless because if you order them to load troops at a planet that has damaged troops, they will not pick them up. Try this. Invade a planet with them, then immediately attempt to pick up the troops: Some of them will refuse to load because they have taken battle damage, and you will have to wait until they recover to pick them up.

I tried that before Fishman, and this is weird. In one game, the troop ship will pick all 4 troops, in another game, it would only pick one up, one at a time, and I would have to do it 4 times to load up the troop ship. I don't know why, or if I am doing something wrong, that it dosn't pick up all up.

My guess is that those troops have sustained damage and are healing, one at a time, in the interval you retry it. I've seen that one, too, though. It always seems to stop doing that if you wait and come back later.

ORIGINAL: Fishman

My guess is that those troops have sustained damage and are healing, one at a time, in the interval you retry it. I've seen that one, too, though. It always seems to stop doing that if you wait and come back later.

I have a different hypothesis.

In my recent game the 'picking just one ground unit up per order' happened to me on a Securan planet where I was (almost) certain that the troops there hadn't seen any combat or bombardment and they had been ready for a long time, being supposedly at maximum strength.

Closer inspection showed them to have a strength of something below 8000, maybe 7700. I didn't check through many Securan planets (my main race is Kiadian), neither did I compare the strengths of fresh troops systematically. But I think their default strength may depend on the majority race on the planet (at the time the unit was ordered, probably). It is something like ~8000 for Securan, 10000 or even 11000 for Kiadian and around or above 12000 for Dhayut.

The actual hypothesis is that troop transports refuse to load more than a single unit when all the available ones are below a certain threshold value in strength, probably 10000 or so.

If this is true (I am by no means certain), it should be fixed, of course. It would be a sort of design flaw and a very annoying one.

One caveat: I am still playing a 1.0.3 game and don't know what changes regarding the loading of troop transports may have been implemented.

Edit: Not that I dismiss your hypothesis. It seems that new troops usually become available a bit before reaching maximum strength. Then they take some time to reach that maximum, it seems. In the instance described by me above, this probably didn't play a role, though. All Securan troops I inspected had the exact same strength, iirc.

wait... but a ship now provides the bonus from the hospital to a planet if it is sitting still on top of it.
doesn't that mean that the troops on the planet will heal faster, allowing quicker pickup by the troopship?