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Removes cryo and roundstart advanced scanners, adds IB/foreign body detection to handheld scanners, and more.


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I'll miss cryo solely on the basis of it being a fairly interesting Sci-Fi reference. As for removing advanced scanners, I can only hope you also buff the 'passive grab > click limb with grab on help intent' inspection for players willing to spend more time without an ez-mode hand scanner and whom are capable of understanding the results.

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The problem is that right now, medical is pedantic, boring, and lifeless. It is an all or nothing job, except, when you do have an something like an emergency, you aren't expected to take time to roleplay the situation, but rather, get them in and out as quickly as possible, resolve it as quickly as possible with the fewest possible fatalities. It is a department defined entirely by its mechanics and how quickly one can do those mechanics, at the expense of all else, including roleplay, in some situations. The mechanics themselves are brainless as they are simple, and are designed in such a way to be fed constant bodies from tg station traitors. We aren't tg station, and the in/out revolving door medical is something we've actively fought against in the past, but in the present, its mutated away from clone spamming to simply OP chem mixtures, effectively dumbing down an already dumbed down process to simply giving an injection for your injury and sending you on your way.

 

Because we built upon a foundation that was already meant to service a different purpose than what we want for it, it will never be what we want it to be without creative design decisions that change the basis on which those foundations are laid. Cryo Pods are cool, but they are also braindead easy, and uninteresting beyond acting as a body storage for cycling patients that would otherwise die if held in any other means. This is the sole, realistic purpose cryopods reliably serve.

It should be obvious how little so much of medical gets used to see how pigeonholed and optimized it is, so any measure of deoptimizing it in my opinion feels like a first step in the right direction. 

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1 minute ago, Bygonehero said:

The problem is that right now, medical is pedantic, boring, and lifeless. It is an all or nothing job, except, when you do have an something like an emergency, you aren't expected to take time to roleplay the situation, but rather, get them in and out as quickly as possible, resolve it as quickly as possible with the fewest possible fatalities. It is a department defined entirely by its mechanics and how quickly one can do those mechanics, at the expense of all else, including roleplay, in some situations.

I would say this is a poor argument on the basis of it applying to near-every single role and department in the game, excluding Journalist (and potentially Bartender). Security is defined by how quickly and effectively they can react to antagonists, Engineering to defined by how quickly and effectively one can react to any sort of station damages/non-viral biohazard, Science even carries the same in how you aid the station by essentially speedrunning research/exosuits/useful slimes. Then Cargo with mining supplies and orders, the Janitor with cleaning messes left by others, the Chef with filling the crews' nutriment reserves, the Chaplain with dispelling cult runes and exorcising ghosts.

I'm not against these changes, but in a game of mechanics, your argument against them shouldn't be arguing against the game itself but rather the changes to the game they might bring. As I wholly guarantee you, these changes do absolutely nothing to change how mechanical Medical will be, rather changing what mechanics they utilize in the first place.

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My biggest problem is still the false positives. A random chance of being misdiagnosed is not fun in the slightest for either party. On the doctors side I have to either guess or waste time spamming the scanner, no thank you.

As has been stated, much of medical already struggles quite a bit with our simplistic system, adding false positives makes that worse. Might have IB means you have to check for IB, this isn't something you can leave untreated, especially with the nerfs to medical's blood bag storage, on top of their extremely poor ability to restock them.

Regarding scanners, I also echo that not being able to fully scan things conveniently is going to make things slow to a crawl. A lot of patients don't know everything that is wrong with them, and it wouldn't be abnormal to have to individually scan damaged limbs for IB and infections, about as fun as pulling teeth on my end of things. I don't mind buffing hand scanners to include the whole body, but having to individually scan each of someones' limbs to check for infections and IB is not very cash money.

Of note I also still don't see anything in this changelog that makes organ damage show up on the hand scanners. That's something that needs to be addressed in the PR, not after. Medical attracts a lot of new players, and saying, "We have a wiki", isn't very helpful. As I said on the Discord, I have had to walk players through whilst the wiki was open, some people just do not have an easy time grasping medical, and not being able to definitively diagnose organ damage is going to make that much harder. This PR isn't that big a deal for people who are already very experienced with Medical, but for the less experienced it's going to be pretty bad.

Is it a fun challenge to diagnose people without the scanner? Yes. Would I force it on everyone in medical? No. Not everyone can be expected to memorize the system like we have.

To get my support the PR needs to:

  • Add a way to full body scan someone without making me tear my hair out. Relying on R&D isn't a great solution here. 
  • Make it possible to identify organ damage definitively.
  • Remove the false positives from the normal hand analyzers. Not a fun addition, do not like. Advanced health analyzers are already sufficiently superior, we don't need to make life without R&D even more miserable.
Edited by Nantei
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33 minutes ago, Carver said:

I would say this is a poor argument on the basis of it applying to near-every single role and department in the game, excluding Journalist (and potentially Bartender). Security is defined by how quickly and effectively they can react to antagonists, Engineering to defined by how quickly and effectively one can react to any sort of station damages/non-viral biohazard, Science even carries the same in how you aid the station by essentially speedrunning research/exosuits/useful slimes. Then Cargo with mining supplies and orders, the Janitor with cleaning messes left by others, the Chef with filling the crews' nutriment reserves, the Chaplain with dispelling cult runes and exorcising ghosts.

I'm not against these changes, but in a game of mechanics, your argument against them shouldn't be arguing against the game itself but rather the changes to the game they might bring. As I wholly guarantee you, these changes do absolutely nothing to change how mechanical Medical will be, rather changing what mechanics they utilize in the first place.

Ah but see, that is where the All Else is important, Think of it, the ultimate failure state of medical is to of course have the person you are caring for to die. Securities failure is to not deal with the antag, but barring that they live they can continue being Security, A engineer that has a failure state of an SM overload still can be an engineer, Scientists can still be scientists if they dont maximize every tracked metric, if they fail Cargo can still deliver cargo if the cargo account has no money...etcetera for janitor, chaplain. They can continue doing their jobs, role playing all the while even in the absence of situations, or even after a worse failure state. Not so with the doctor, as you cant roleplay with another person  that is dead save for with their fellow doctors, but barring how easy its all become even the most gruesome of injuries becomes hardly spoken about unless it requires surgery, and even then its a handoff.

 

On a slight tangent, but as part of above; Part of the point of dividing resources between departments that other departments need is to set people in those departments on a journey through mechanical incentives. In roleplaying games, the journey is more important than the destination almost always. Its not interesting that the security officer foiled the antag, but it is interesting what he had to go through to do so. Its not interesting that the scientist "maxed science" (a lrp phrase) but rather the cool methods and gizmos, or the dangerous things she had to endure to do so. Its not interesting that the engineer made the station areas safe, but it is interesting the tasks and risks if any he had to take to do so. and so on. 

Its not interesting to get a person and be solely focused on them living or dying as its only outcome. It is a journey that does not have many paths, the stories play out the same and the mechanisms used require nothing from nowhere else. It is an island unto itself in the station. 

Edited by Bygonehero
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8 minutes ago, Bygonehero said:

Ah but see, that is where the All Else is important, Think of it, the ultimate failure state of medical is to of course have the person you are caring for to die. Securities failure is to not deal with the antag, but barring that they live they can continue being Security, A engineer that has a failure state of an SM overload still can be an engineer, Scientists can still be scientists if they dont maximize every tracked metric, if they fail Cargo can still deliver cargo if the cargo account has no money...etcetera for janitor, chaplain. They can continue doing their jobs, role playing all the while even in the absence of situations, or even after a worse failure state. Not so with the doctor, as you cant roleplay with another person  that is dead save for with their fellow doctors, but barring how easy its all become even the most gruesome of injuries becomes hardly spoken about unless it requires surgery, and even then its a handoff.

 

On a slight tangent, but as part of above; Part of the point of dividing resources between departments that other departments need is to set people in those departments on a journey through mechanical incentives. In roleplaying games, the journey is more important than the destination almost always. Its not interesting that the security officer foiled the antag, but it is interesting what he had to go through to do so. Its not interesting that the scientist "maxed science" (a lrp phrase) but rather the cool methods and gizmos, or the dangerous things she had to endure to do so. Its not interesting that the engineer made the station areas safe, but it is interesting the tastes and risks if any he had to take to do so. and so on. 

Its not interesting to get a person and be solely focused on them living or dying as its only outcome. It is a journey that does not have many paths, the stories play out the same and the mechanisms used require nothing from nowhere else. It is an island unto itself in the station. 

In this regard, I'd be miffed if I died because a doctor focused on the journey over the results. It's an interesting sentiment, but carries little weight with how entirely similar so many of these 'journeys' can be on a round-to-round basis. You can only fight a Wizard/Ninja/Nuke Op/Traitor so many dozens of times before it's all so utterly predictable, and same goes with fixing engines, or doing research. The mechanics are often rushed if only for a lack of variance in the base gameplay. Nothing will change this because at the very core this is a game of mechanics (essentially a far more advanced version of the game Mafia) that's been crudely repurposed to accommodate RP, rather than being an RPG at it's core built around variance and roleplay.

Edited by Carver
Addendum: People are also often very hostile to suggestions to bring it more into the realm of RPGs, from a mechanical sense.
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Yeah, I can't get behind cryo removal. I don't see it adding much besides taking away one of the best ways for medical to keep their dying patients alive for when they need treatment and stripping some nice sci fi stuff out of our sci fi setting. I seriously can't see why gutting medical and making it even more obtuse is a good idea. 

More sleepers and patient beds are fine, the handheld scanners being updated seem cool, but the false positives are a terrible idea considering the time and resources they could waste with devices that are supposed to be advanced shit. And for the love of god don't remove the full body scanners. If science can upgrade them, sure, but removal is too much. 

Your goal of more analysis and helping new people integrate better is admirable but I really don't see this as the way to go. All this would do is make the medbay some 21st century shit while making it harder to help people to solve issues that arguably aren't even there.

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After reading the insights of other people in the thread... I'm definitely against the body scanner removal. I still think cryo is lame but I understand that people want the cool sci-fi element. If the mixes were nerfed it would be fine. But I also empathize with wanting to gut shitty code, too.

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7 hours ago, Pratepresidenten said:

"HOW U KNOW LUNGS BROKEN??"
And I would run a hand through my lush, long hair, smiling as I told them..
"Ara ara.. We have a stethoscope you know.."

Ah yes, the lowpop "where did the power go" medbay experience :D I love it still...

Thing is that medical players don't RP until they have the experience and are sure of what they are doing. Surgeon is really one of the easiest beginner friendly roles due to the scanners and repetitive steps used to "fix brain". You can RP before and after the OR, while the patient is no longer dying and nobody will complain.

Imho medical is way to easy and I for one would love to see it made a lot harder, but I think not everyone is up for the challenge, so I think the removal of cryo tubes is all we should do for a start to see whether or not people like it. They are a real RP blocker and almost reduce the "urgency" of medical to zero by just storing a patient or two in the waiting tube. That being said I'm supporting Burger strongly on his take. Chemistry is a major issue, the rest just kinda follows. I had it happen way to often that the doctors would wordlessly inject me with the cure all and send me on my marry way... I'd like to see RP instead, something that medical often drops when things get tense. That's also what makes people think the medbay is either 0 or 100 in terms of action. You should be able to have a more varied experience as doctor and as patient. 

Leaving out names and somesuch, but at some point I used to punch doctors ICly when they wordlessly injected me with things over a bruise or some headache ^^ happens in real life, that usually lead up to RP :P

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Guest Marlon Phoenix

How would you address the need for something to handle patients with critical, extremely time sensitive injuries? At least give us an injection that freezes damage rates, like an injectable cryo tank. Heck, it doesn't even need to heal the person, as long as it buys me time to diagnose and scan.

That said, removing cryo will make many patients need multiple different medications to take the place of cryo, which increases complexity and human error. This could be good or bad.

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10 hours ago, Bygonehero said:

Ah but see, that is where the All Else is important, Think of it, the ultimate failure state of medical is to of course have the person you are caring for to die. Securities failure is to not deal with the antag, but barring that they live they can continue being Security, A engineer that has a failure state of an SM overload still can be an engineer, Scientists can still be scientists if they dont maximize every tracked metric, if they fail Cargo can still deliver cargo if the cargo account has no money...etcetera for janitor, chaplain. They can continue doing their jobs, role playing all the while even in the absence of situations, or even after a worse failure state. Not so with the doctor, as you cant roleplay with another person  that is dead save for with their fellow doctors, but barring how easy its all become even the most gruesome of injuries becomes hardly spoken about unless it requires surgery, and even then its a handoff.

 

On a slight tangent, but as part of above; Part of the point of dividing resources between departments that other departments need is to set people in those departments on a journey through mechanical incentives. In roleplaying games, the journey is more important than the destination almost always. Its not interesting that the security officer foiled the antag, but it is interesting what he had to go through to do so. Its not interesting that the scientist "maxed science" (a lrp phrase) but rather the cool methods and gizmos, or the dangerous things she had to endure to do so. Its not interesting that the engineer made the station areas safe, but it is interesting the tasks and risks if any he had to take to do so. and so on. 

Its not interesting to get a person and be solely focused on them living or dying as its only outcome. It is a journey that does not have many paths, the stories play out the same and the mechanisms used require nothing from nowhere else. It is an island unto itself in the station. 

I, THE medmain, very much disagree. I have adventures with patients. Last night I did a completely mechanically unnecessary lung transplant and RP’d out the following treatment for organ rejection over the next two rounds. I’ve prescribed weird chemical mixes that do nothing to help people speak. I’ve put so much personality and emphasis on rp and communicating with the station that every single person reading this probably knows my character no matter which hours they play, how often they play.  Some island. 

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12 hours ago, Resilynn said:

Another posed solution was having the ability to print off an analyzer, in which case, that's just a buff.  That's just handheld scanners.

The scanning is per-limb, so it takes longer and you could still miss something. It's mostly focused around deduction and diagnosis now.

12 hours ago, SatinsPristOTD said:

Cryotherapy is something we already use today. In fact, they freeze off my mothers skin cancer.

That is entirely different than cryo in-game. It's a complete non-sequitur. That works because it cuts off the blood supply and kills the tissue; if full-body cryo did that, it would only be useful for traitors trying to kill people.

4 hours ago, Marlon Phoenix said:

How would you address the need for something to handle patients with critical, extremely time sensitive injuries? At least give us an injection that freezes damage rates, like an injectable cryo tank. Heck, it doesn't even need to heal the person, as long as it buys me time to diagnose and scan.

Cryo doesn't freeze damage at all. In fact, it leads to malpractice because clonexadone does nothing to treat internal bleeding, so patients bleed out and die in cryo. What you want is a stasis bag, which prevents you from accessing patients.

The way you handle "patients with critical, extremely time-sensitive injuries" is something called 'triage'.

10 hours ago, Doxxmedearly said:

After reading the insights of other people in the thread... I'm definitely against the body scanner removal.

That's fine; I was considering adding one to the sublevel for tough cases. It'd be out of the way to prevent people from jumping to it immediately and to encourage triage and diagnosis. I'd also be all for nerfing it too until it gets upgraded parts. However, I'd still like to do a test-run without body scanners, if possible.

12 hours ago, Forktress said:

I'd be more inclined to give this a chance if the false positive thing was dropped.

I worded it very carefully to make it not a false-positive; it's just an indication that you should check for internal bleeding, i.e. after using an ATK and giving iron/blood, check again and see if they haven't regained enough. If people choose to interpret "massive hematoma, potential internal bleeding" as "definite internal bleeding", that's their fault and not mine, but I'll see what I can do to reword it. Maybe make them give different messages?

10 hours ago, canon35 said:

Your goal of more analysis and helping new people integrate better is admirable but I really don't see this as the way to go. All this would do is make the medbay some 21st century shit while making it harder to help people to solve issues that arguably aren't even there.

12 hours ago, SatinsPristOTD said:

I'm genuinely against removing sci-fi things from the sci-fi game.

This is a bad argument in its premise, but I'll humor you.

We have plenty of other cool sci-fi things. Sensors, stasis bags, incision management systems, handheld all-in-one vitals scanners, chemicals that aren't clonexadone/cryoxadone, rezadone, pure synthesised epinephrine, etc.. Cryo and advanced scanners prevent most of those from seeing the light of day because they're overshadowed by them. This is removing bad sci-fi mechanics from the sci-fi game to allow the rest of the mechanics to have their time to shine.

12 hours ago, Resilynn said:

Moreover, a huge part of what doctors and nurses do is diagnosis and scanning before handing a patient off to the surgeon.  I feel this change removes that role.

The ultrasound and vitals scanner part of the scanner are entirely separate. Doctors and nurses can scan with the ultrasound while EMTs scan with the vitals scanner. They shouldn't really be doing more unless they're helping with triage.

 

Overall, I'm considering adding chemical side effects to this PR and slightly un-nerfing things like the advanced scanner. Thoughts? It might make Skull kill me to have it be so unatomic, but I think they need to be together.

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Guest Marlon Phoenix
55 minutes ago, MoondancerPony said:

Cryo doesn't freeze damage at all.

Set cryo cures catastrophic damage immediately. This is wrong. I know it doesn't cure IB. But this statement isnt true.

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Guest Marlon Phoenix

There will be more malpractice in this new set up than what we have currently. If your goal is lower malpractice then it is counter intuitive.

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On the note of removing cryo, I'd argue for keeping their related chemicals specifically for their cool synergies with Frost Oil and other rare sources of freezing temperatures. Frost Oil becomes essentially a useless meme-grenade chemical without the cryo-chems.

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As another med main. I like what this PR is doing. I recently have been on an SS13 odyssey, trying out other servers and the similarity of how we play medical here than to say, TG is something that surprised me. Our current system I think creates an assembly line that discourages RP. And I think changes that encourage problem solving, and RP beyond "The magical machine says you got 6 brute liver damage" would be amazing. Even if I think we should just port brainmed I like these changes, and with some practice and problem solving even now it isn't difficult at all to guestimate what exactly is wrong with someone. I think this is a good step in the right direction, and I would also love to see a nerf on super chems as well, or an increase in side effects or healing times. 

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6 minutes ago, N8-Toe said:

As another med main. I like what this PR is doing. I recently have been on an SS13 odyssey, trying out other servers and the similarity of how we play medical here than to say, TG is something that surprised me. Our current system I think creates an assembly line that discourages RP. And I think changes that encourage problem solving, and RP beyond "The magical machine says you got 6 brute liver damage" would be amazing. Even if I think we should just port brainmed I like these changes, and with some practice and problem solving even now it isn't difficult at all to guestimate what exactly is wrong with someone. I think this is a good step in the right direction, and I would also love to see a nerf on super chems as well, or an increase in side effects or healing times. 

It isn't so much the current system discouraging it, as much as the game itself discouraging it. If Antag/Group X produce 5 injured critically injured personnel, and medical has 3 individuals currently working it, then there wouldn't be much room to offer RP and keep those 5 alive regardless of any changes made, as the priority should always be preserving life.

The best one could do is reduce the potency of medical's tools but increase the tools that stabilize critical injuries, something that made cryo popular in the very first place. Make healing slower by all means, but don't make it harder to keep people alive. I'd sooner push for more stabilizing options all-around (that aren't complete and utter shit like stasis bags).

Edited by Carver
Side note: Brainmed is shit.
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I was originally against this when I read it, but I think it would be a good thing - I'm already super comfortable diagnosing without an advanced body scan and have been for awhile. We just need to teach our newer medical players the ropes.

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2 hours ago, Marlon Phoenix said:

Set cryo cures catastrophic damage immediately. This is wrong. I know it doesn't cure IB. But this statement isnt true.

No, it treats damage. It doesn't freeze it. The only thing that can freeze damage is stasis bags, and either way my original point still stands.

2 hours ago, Marlon Phoenix said:

There will be more malpractice in this new set up than what we have currently. If your goal is lower malpractice then it is counter intuitive.

My goal is to make Medical involve thought and deduction and to slightly increase recovery times. My goal has nothing to do with malpractice.

30 minutes ago, Carver said:

The best one could do is reduce the potency of medical's tools but increase the tools that stabilize critical injuries,

I've seen most chemistry mains prepare epinephrine for exactly this purpose. It's like inaprovaline but it also treats, albeit not very well, the highest damage type the patient has.

 

Additionally, this isn't mutually exclusive with Brainmed. We've been planning to add things like defibrillators and a better blood system for a while now.

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45 minutes ago, MoondancerPony said:

I've seen most chemistry mains prepare epinephrine for exactly this purpose. It's like inaprovaline but it also treats, albeit not very well, the highest damage type the patient has.

Having more non-chemical means and generally more means as a whole of stabilizing patients is mainly what I desire. Cryo pods filled a niche for this in not needing a chemist, stasis bags tried to fill this niche but ended up being changed into becoming utterly useless (more often killing than actually stabilizing).

I'd even take a system based off our other type of cryo that'd freeze the patient and keep them stable without treating their injuries or otherwise causing any change in metabolism/damages - a true stasis, none of that genetic damage bullshit the bags have.

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2 hours ago, Carver said:

On the note of removing cryo, I'd argue for keeping their related chemicals specifically for their cool synergies with Frost Oil and other rare sources of freezing temperatures. Frost Oil becomes essentially a useless meme-grenade chemical without the cryo-chems.

Frost Oil is impractical to get at best and absolutely painful at worst. Either you rely on botany to be able and willing to mutate peppers for it, or you pray that the xenobiologist won't spam adamantium slimes or get eaten trying. It's carpotoxin again; if you can't get it reliably, it's not worth considering as a treatment. A skill-locked way to get Frost Oil would be perfect, though.

 

1 hour ago, MoondancerPony said:

I've seen most chemistry mains prepare epinephrine for exactly this purpose. It's like inaprovaline but it also treats, albeit not very well, the highest damage type the patient has.

It's rezadone but not as good, so yes. You could easily go out with nothing but epinephrine, bicaridine and inaprovaline on your belt and manage most if not all critical patients. The 5u epinephrine autoinjector is already a popular measure, and as said before an omni-healing cocktail for critical is as easy as putting three chemicals together as a racemic.
 

 

4 hours ago, MoondancerPony said:

Overall, I'm considering adding chemical side effects to this PR and slightly un-nerfing things like the advanced scanner. Thoughts? It might make Skull kill me to have it be so unatomic, but I think they need to be together.

Side effects are great as long as they can be treated. It makes little sense for thetamycin to cause vomiting when we don't have an antiemetic. Maybe add anticoagulant effects to some treatments and put new chemicals to balance the side effects? Cocktail making is fun and the idea that chemists would ever stop fine tuning mixes for a better effect is wishful thinking. A flat out nerf to healing values, as suggested by others, only invites ways to circumvent it. Side effects are both a complication to chemicals and a method that goes well with the tendency to bypass chemical hurdles with even more chemicals. I'd expect at least one MD to raise a brow at a drug mix that involves 7 different substances just to minimise negative effects.

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Guest Marlon Phoenix
2 hours ago, MoondancerPony said:

My goal is to make Medical involve thought and deduction and to slightly increase recovery times. My goal has nothing to do with malpractice.

Yes, you are introducing more human error. I am trying to convince you that by taking away the simplistic, automated processes for more complicated procedures, your wait times for treatment and increase in human error will increase malpractice and death. We need a tool that offers immediate stabilization to give doctors breathing room (i.e. time) to diagnose and begin to treat a patient's damage. And these tools need to be quick, easy, and intuitive.

A test merge would definitely prove my point, but I worry that the predicted results would be dismissed as medbay simply needing to adapt to the changes - and on it would go, forever. This kind of PR was done with medical traumas, increasing the complexity of cloning and introducing higher human error to the post-cloning process by having cryogenics not be the be-all end-all of curing traumas. And traumas are, for the most part, pains in the butt on medical's side and the patient's side. I like traumas as a concept, but I also can see their complexity causes issues within medical.

2 hours ago, MoondancerPony said:

No, it treats damage. It doesn't freeze it.

You know what I meant... :( Please do not try to do a got'cha at me if I do not use the technically correct term for it.

Without cryogenics, which gives us a basic outline of damage as it starts curing it to give us a rough estimation of what's wrong (crazy high brute damage, crazy high burn damage, etc) without the incredible time constraints of having them in crit right in front of us. Having some sort of injector that halts the damage (like cryobags) WHILE letting us examine the patient (which we can't in crybags) is what I am saying is absolutely necessary as a replacement for cryogenics if you want to make a dent in the pile of bodies we are going to end up having in the ICU.

Edited by Marlon Phoenix
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