Disappearing first aid tent

[gcraighammond]

Sorry if this has been answered before. I did a few searches but an error response in debug mode is all that came up.

I've been playing randomly generating maps with the necromancer who starts with the first aid tent and the ability to heal/hurt more with it.

In several long battles the tent has been available for a few actions, then it disappears. Spending many rounds cycling through the action order does not bring it into sight. It's just gone.

I realize there is a creature ability to disable the enemy's war machines. However the last battle this happened with was against another Necromancer who had all undead, except for a stack of cerebi. As far as I know, none of these creatures should have that ability.

I'm fairly new to HOMM V, and own only TotE.

Is this a bug? Is it a hero or character ability that I am unfamiliar with? Does a tent that uses plague tent have only a limited number of "shots" without an ammo cart?

Thanks!

[Elvin]

Tents only have 3 shots, it's no bug.

[konfeta]

Yup, 3 shots and it's over. It's pretty annoying. The other war machine, Ballista, scales very nicely. Why couldn't they do the same gift for the First Aid tent?

[gcraighammond]

What's even more irritating is that the tent is no longer available for healing either.

Definitely an issue that needs fixing (if anyone ever does any additional patching)

It seems like a good idea to avoid Plague Tent like, well, the plague.

[gcraighammond]

Reading through Gaidal Cain's Buglist post, I note in the "Not a bug, but a feature!" list:
"First Aid tents only heal three times in combat."

I'm going to scrutinize some of my longer combats to see if the tent gets only 3 actions total, or 3 plague tents and 3 heals, or what.

[Metathron]

I have rarely picked the First Aid Tent ability (basically only to heal the Cyclops who have been "whipped" by Chieftains) and never the Plague Tent ability.

If what you write is true, then these abilities are way underpowered.

[PhoenixReborn]

If I remember right it's 3 total.

Res. from first aid tent is crucial for some factions in 1st week.

[danhvo]

Maybe I'm missing something, but I've never figured out why anyone would choose Plague Tent, when Ballista/Tripple Ballista would be much, much better at dealing damage. If a use of Plague Tent counts toward 3 Healing Tent uses, that makes it even worse. I've never used this, but I suspect that Elementals, Undeads, and Mechanicals are immune to this, right?

Whereas the Ballista improves with the hero's level (albeit indirectly, via stat increases), the Healing doesn't scale at all. With only 3 uses, healing a lousy 100 points of damage, this ability is mainly good for early creeping. I agree that it seems perplexingly underpowered. At least, I think it should improve with the hero's level like it does for Kaspar, or with the hero's stats like the Ballista (damage healed depends on, say, Knowledge and Defense). This way, the ability doesn't seem so useless near the end of the game.

[gcraighammond]

The reason I chose Plague Tent (other than the fact that this hero has increasing healing/damage with the first aid tent) is that I figured it would be like having 2 ballistas. I'm really new to the game so I'm still learning all the permutations (like ballista/triple ballista and the fact that ballista attack increases with Hero attack, but plague tent does not)

As far as I can tell, you get 3 uses of the First Aid Tent per battle total, whether they be heal or plague tent. Definitely underpowered.

I do like the fact that with the proper skill(s) the first aid tent will resurrect fallen creatures. Perhaps the developers limited its use because they thought this was too powerful.

[Dacarnix_]

I got used to the "3 uses" thing after a while and haven't given it much thought lately, but it's definitely odd that an army's support machines have an infinite quantity of ballista bolts but only 3 potions / band-aids / whatever.

I wouldn't even mind if the amount of healing was a little weaker if it meant you could use it each time the healing tent got a turn rather than just thrice.

[Mirez]

there was a mod wich increased the first aid tent healing rate to 52....
2 bad elrath is down

[ramparter]

It's pretty easy to make a mod to increase First Aid shots. In the data\GameMechanics\RefTables\WarMachines.xdb file you can find and change all the war machines stats.

[gcraighammond]

Thank-you Ramparter for the info.

Unfortunately I am unable to locate this file. Opening the "data" folder reveals only data.pak, sound.pak, soundsfx.pak and texts.pac.
Doing a search of my entire hard drive does not locate a file named "WarMachines.xdb" or "warmachines"

I don't know if this is because I own only TotE. It's also possible that the problem stems from the fact that my computer runs that steaming pile of $#!% called Vista.

If you can clarify this for me, I would be thankful.

[yuritch]

All of those .pak files are actually just zip archives. You can open them with WinRAR, WinZIP or any of the countless archivers out there (Windows built-in 'zip folders' feature won't do it most probably though). Then you look into data.pak and find the file there (if not, then it's in some of the other paks).