Coastal Rescue UK Mod [Alpha Released]

[Guest yuriclone]

Hey all

I'm new to posting here, but I've been very interested in this mod and have been looking in since the beginning. I have a couple of things I want to say, to put my oar in:

Firstly, great job so far! This is looking brilliant in almost all respects - although there're a couple of points I think could be improved to make it more realistic - if thats the direction the modders want to go.

I've noticed a couple of problems in all the grouped shots of vehicles. The fire appliances all have the standard FD-XX numbers in white on their roof. In my experience, none of the appliances I've worked with (demobbed / reserve ones but still fire engines!) have them, and I don't believe this is any difference these days! They're a common occurence in the US, but not so in the UK, since we don't generally use helicopters for unit recognition at incidents. Also, the numbers are supposed to be unique to the unit - but in game if you request two pump units, they both spawn with the same skin, which is the same number.

Also - something I don't think people have noticed is a problem with the traffic police's uniforms. In the recent shot which includes traffic police, I noticed that whilst in the hi-visibility jacket, the police officer had a black flat hat, not a white one. Having a white hat is literally the only perk of being in traffic police (according to an old school friend), so for realism it should be changed if possible. If you want confirmation of how it looks, watch that "Traffic Cops" show on Dave, which is on 5 times a night!

Also - doctors on call in the UK actually can drive using green lights (check the highway code!) which essentially offer the same privileges as the usual "blues and twos" but are used solely for doctors, as no previous driver training is necessary. Privilege of the MB BCh letters after your name I suppose!

Secondly, there's been a bit of debate about St Johns Ambulance in the game. In my view, they should not be included. My reasons are as follows -

(1) They do a useful job in the community, at fetes, non league football matches etc, but this is not a game about community healthcare provision. They're there to provide first aid cover at events, but if anything serious was to happen at these events, the first thing they would do is to call the genuine NHS people. Think about it in legal terms, if an open fracture of the femur occurs, all a St Johns ambulance person can do is prevent bleeding as best as possible on the outside of clothing and support it. A (registered) ambulance technician will be able to remove clothing in order to better see the injury and use things like pnuematic splints in order to support it, and will be able to administer entonox for pain relief. A trained paramedic will be able to administer IV fluids and much stronger pain relief such as morphine. So in summary the St Johns person would at best be able to triage casualties in game, and thats effectively it if realism is to be adhered to. (I'd like to say at this point Im not just an outsider with little knowledge of this subject - I have a sister who is a trained paramedic, a brother who is a community responder and I am a third year medical student. So I do know about it!)

(2) This game is all about emergencies, and St Johns do not normally deal with emergencies. They are only called to provide medical cover as a strictly last resort option, when medical services from neighbouring areas / districts are unavailable to cover, and in extreme civil contingencies (bombs, earthquakes etc etc). But rest assured, they are almost never called on (at least not in my area). The NHS has to have a list of backups, so that if (for example) there was a gas explosion at the ambulance depot and all ambulances were destroyed, they could still provide a service. The list includes nearby military formations, fire & rescue units and st johns, the local TA and cadets, but I don't think the modders will want the hassle of including all of these? Whilst this game does test some civil contingencies, its still not right to have every agency included on call. I mean, in a forest fire they might call in the forrestry comission, but the game devs are (in my opinion, quite rightly) unlikely to include every single emergency agency for every contingency.

(3) This is so much extra work, when the first release of the mod isn't even out yet, to have to reskin a load of models and include them specifically to provide a non-emergency service. IMHO.

(4) Not only is there St Johns Ambulance, but in many areas there is also St Andrew's Ambulance, and what about the Red Cross/Crescent? All of these can provide some semblance of medical cover, but IMHO this isn't the point of the game. this is about EMERGENCY care - and at the end of the day the only people on call 24/7 365 days a year are the 5 emergency services - Ambulance / Fire / Police / Coastguard / Mountain & Fell Rescue.

(5) In order to legally drive under blue lights on the road in the UK, you must first take and pass the police advanced drivers course (external info - the institute of advanced motorists), and I do not believe St Johns ambulance adhere to this. Therefore, they will not be able to drive in the UK under blues and twos - although their vehicles may have them fitted.

Thanks to all who read this, I understand it is nitpicking(!) but hopefully it is also useful and informative, and not too much of a rant. And yes, St Johns do do a lot of good, helpful work, but I just don't think they would fulfill a useful purpose in the game.

EDIT - not posted links to outside info - if you're desperate to confirm it find it yourself, I don't wanna upset anyone by posting dead / wrong links.

EDIT 2 - apologies about spelling / punctuation mistakes. I am writing this after quite a long placement working in an A&E Dept...so I think I can be forgiven for mistakes!

[Forensics]

to the forum.

If you did the thing with different roof numbers you would have to have a new unit for every number. Which would mean lots more units in the mod. Which would increase loading time.

Yes, traffic police often do have whit hats:

I agree with you about the St Johns ambulance

There are many more emergency services

E.G.

mine rescue

RAF

RNLI

cave rescue

blood service

bomb disposal

goes on forever...

[Guest yuriclone]

Thanks very much! Hopefully it doesn't seem like too much of a tirade against them. But its not the place for them IMHO.

[Forensics]

Thanks very much! Hopefully it doesn't seem like too much of a tirade against them. But its not the place for them IMHO.

I'm sure they won't mind too much.

I don't mind too much if the colour of hat of a policeman is black in the mod and white in real life. Same with unit numbers. Obviously detail matters but little things like this don't affect the over all gameplay. So i don't mind too much about it.

[Guest yuriclone]

No, good point - the modders might want to look at it a little way down the line, but it won't kill the thing if they don't change it right away. Just one more thing to be put on the list!

[Dosedmonkey]

Yuri, you saved me a lot of typing, I completely agree with your statement about St. Johns, they did have mass casualty units, but the most recent I've seen is late 1980s early 1990s build, so obviously was never used. The best example of this perhaps is the last London bombings, where only NHS ambulances appeared on scene as far as I've ever noticed.

We are planning to add another ambulance and paramedic rapid response car yet.

I think with the hat, if I made the visor black, the tops black, and the top white, the viser turns white. Character models are a little screwed up in EM4 as Zmodeler does not import them properly, so its impossible to UVMap them again as far as I'm aware.

[Forensics]

OK

Thanks Dosed

[Guest yuriclone]

Ok, thanks for the heads-up dosed monkey

[theocd]

Woah woah woah,

Sorry to shoot you down Yuri but you say driving on Greens give 'blues and twos' privelages? A green light is used by a doctor on call who may not break the speed limit or anything else, the light is purely there do display to other drivers that they mish to pull over or be more lenient about letting the vehicle pass than if it was a normal car.

Some doctors like to livery their vehicles but it is perfectly acceptable to have a magnetic one or no light at all. It is optional and gives no privelages, just a warning.

Hope that helps,

The OC-D

[Forensics]

Some doctors drive in things similar to this :

Which has blue lights. So i suppose if a doctor passes his fast driving courses he's/she's allowed to drive rapid response cars.

[festival]

I think that gps can only have green, NHS ambulance cars can have blue as they are emergency doctors?

[Forensics]

Yeah, it's like an A&E doctor. As for GPs i didn't know they ever responded to emergencies.

[theocd]

Those who drive the RRV's with blue lights tend to be paramedics more then doctors (GP's)

The OC-D

[Forensics]

I don't think GPs drive RRV just emergency doctors.

GPs would drive things like this:

[theocd]

I have some small inkling that Forensics and I are arguing the same point on the same side of the arguement, so I'm going to leave it be now.

The OC-D

[Forensics]

I wasn't arguing I was..errr...not arguing

Anyway in the mod there won't be a special doctor will there? just paramedics?

[Guest yuriclone]

Yeah, I agree with everything said above. And about the whole breaking the speed limit thing, okay, I accept green lights are just there for warning, was going on something I'd heard a consultant bragging about. Sorry to confuse matters!

[Officerrule]

Sorry it has takin me a long time to reply but yuri your wrong st. john ambulance and I'm trained in alot more than how to cover the bleed and minor stuff we are trained in how to stop it how to slow down bleeding ect. We arnt just a back up ambulance service just becuase we arnt payed dosent mean we dont act like any other ambulance service does we know alsorts of stuff if we wernt usful we wouldent still be on the streets we are also trained in alot more than first aid being cadet i just finshed my electrical appliences handling that involes Defib ,life support systems (sorry if i spelt some things wrong dislectic) 3 weeks back i passed my emergency transport that involes transporting a casualty by ambulance with blues and twos with the ambulance rocking side to side as we turn each corner while your in the back stibilizing the casualty 2 months ago i just finished how to stabalize a casualty with major injeries iv done alot more those things up there are nothing to do with first aid but we do them if we were a first aid unit we would have writing on the side saying first aid unit yes we do have some ambulances saying that on the side but we have alot that dont have it becuase we are alot more than first aid trained! End of!.

[DylanPong94]

Sorry it has takin me a long time to reply but yuri your wrong st. john ambulance and I'm trained in alot more than how to cover the bleed and minor stuff we are trained in how to stop it how to slow down bleeding ect. We arnt just a back up ambulance service just becuase we arnt payed dosent mean we dont act like any other ambulance service does we know alsorts of stuff if we wernt usful we wouldent still be on the streets we are also trained in alot more than first aid being cadet i just finshed my electrical appliences handling that involes Defib ,life support systems (sorry if i spelt some things wrong dislectic) 3 weeks back i passed my emergency transport that involes transporting a casualty by ambulance with blues and twos with the ambulance rocking side to side as we turn each corner while your in the back stibilizing the casualty 2 months ago i just finished how to stabalize a casualty with major injeries iv done alot more those things up there are nothing to do with first aid but we do them if we were a first aid unit we would have writing on the side saying first aid unit yes we do have some ambulances saying that on the side but we have alot that dont have it becuase we are alot more than first aid trained! End of!.

[Dosedmonkey]

Okay, basically, what Yuri was saying on a day to day NHS take emergency calls, not St. Johns, he also said it was his opinion, not fact, so please don't take offense, doesn't matter what training you did, thats not going to help me make the mod, to be quite frank. Theres topics for that in off-topic.

So I actually went and googled st. johns and read about them, they do have emergency and paramedic ability, but they are there to support the NHS, when they are over stretched, or can not reach a rural area quickly, they will be called upon, but can take over a hour to respond to major incidents with more then first aid equipment, for example the London Bombings, not that this makes it any less a important contribution, just not the first line of response.

In November they were assisting in the floods in Cumbria, this is the most rescent major example, although they support at Football Games, and other events, where, more commonly minor accidents occur, however major injuries could still occur. I mean in first aid you do heart attacks and strokes, and they're not that minor to the person having it!

http://www.sja.org.uk/sja/what-we-do.aspx

Also on a unrelated note, the importance of first aiders was pointed out to me when I did my advanced course, in the UK less then 2% of all people are first aid trained.

[Forensics]

Does that mean you have decided not add St Johns ambulance to the mod?

[Dosedmonkey]

Secondly, there's been a bit of debate about St Johns Ambulance in the game. In my view, they should not be included.

This game is all about emergencies, and St Johns do not normally deal with emergencies. They are only called to provide medical cover as a strictly last resort option, when medical services from neighbouring areas / districts are unavailable to cover, and in extreme civil contingencies (bombs, earthquakes etc etc). But rest assured, they are almost never called on (at least not in my area). The NHS has to have a list of backups, so that if (for example) there was a gas explosion at the ambulance depot and all ambulances were destroyed, they could still provide a service. The list includes nearby military formations, fire & rescue units and st johns, the local TA and cadets, but I don't think the modders will want the hassle of including all of these? Whilst this game does test some civil contingencies, its still not right to have every agency included on call. I mean, in a forest fire they might call in the forrestry comission, but the game devs are (in my opinion, quite rightly) unlikely to include every single emergency agency for every contingency.

At this time, my opinion reflects Yuris, adding them to the game will not add anything, just work load. If theres any modern, unique units, such as mass casualty that St. Johns has, but other services don't and you can find photos for it, then I would think about putting them into the mod for more serious emergencies.

EDIT... when we do have our new dispatch system coded into the mod, there would be a use for St. Johns though now I come to think of it.

[Forensics]

OK thanks

St Johns treatment center:

[Guest krystle]

i have a suggestions. don't know whether you guys wanna hear it or not..

[Forensics]

i have a suggestions. don't know whether you guys wanna hear it or not..

I do...