War is not nice. Soldiers who take major hits need cybernetic replacements. It'll be an expense, and you'll wonder whether it might be better to 'retire' them rather than having to build your 60 million dollar men....
Oh it depends on the injury. And since X-Com is an organization with funds from all over the world, which have even the technology to build a Spaceship(Avenger), I doubt it very much that Advanced Medical Technology would cost THAT much.
The same wound causes the same amount of hospital time for everybody. A character with high HP has extra-ordinary resistance to pain and will to survive, an ability to stay functional when a less hardened character would have gone into shock and died - but it doesn't mean he heals 2 times faster from a plasma burn.
If you want to reduce hospital time, it's possible to define a formula that curbs the hospital time for extreme wounds, for example round((60-wounds)*0.005*wounds+0.5*wounds) which results in maximum 30 days:
I agree there partially and disagree partially. A Soldier with high HP is of course more tough and resistant against pain and all this bad stuff, still he might also recover faster from such an injury as a Plasma-Burn as somebody who went into shock from it.
The medical bay idea is sound and logical, I wouldn't mind seeing it implemented. It was indeed implemented in some other games, for example UFO: Extraterrestrials.
Having said that, health recovery should be percentage-based in the first place; the fact that someone with more Health takes longer to recover from losing half their Health is silly.
Frankly, I have no idea what this feature is supposed to add to the game. Make it a little easier, yes; but nothing else. You may as well propose better armours or whatever.
I was actually talking about the WAR-Mod from Warboy, when I suggested the Medbay, but I also liked Extraterrestrials.
And there I agree: Percentage-based wound-recovery is a MUST. Gameplay technical it makes a lot of sense and since the game doesn't have specific wounds it might be more benifical than the current system.
Losing 4-5HP shouldn't kick one into Hospital for days.
To the Critical: It adds a slightly better way to "lose Soldiers in Combat".
Losing a Veteran at 0 HP is quite annoying, especially if the standard game is a "Either you gain damage and die instantly due to heavy plasma" or "You got hit but survive it.".
I know it's X-Com and it is supposed to be hard, but it's just silly if you have a Soldier in a thick and heavy armor suit that protects the full body and he dies because of a single lucky hit.
The Gameplay will be a slightly bit fairer and more logical with Soldiers going into Critical.
While a Operative without any Armor will suffer an instant death, somebody in a Power suit can actually survive heavy plasma hit. (Even if heavily injured afterwards)