Fuse Medical Roles and Detach Medical from the Real Job of Medical Doctor

[nonno_anselmo]

Whatever kermit said. 

[Carver]

I'd prefer if the new names still veered towards scientific/research-esque titles. As said before, an entire hospital on the station with staff often outnumbering Research is ridiculous to me. Just the mere re-flavouring gets that bad taste out; because whilst little has changed mechanically, you can now argue the department has a base in medical research and theoretically contributes more to the station than sitting at a desk until someone gets shot or falls down an asteroid chasm.

[nonno_anselmo]

The funny thing is that: medbay does more than run at you if you fall down a shaft already. 

It handles:

-Your perscriptions (chemist, physician)

-Checkups (physician, nurse)

-First aid courses (any role except surgeon)

-Forns countless interns and residents (all roles)

-Gives information on your medication be it psychoactive or not (physician, nurse, chemist, psychologist, psychiatrist)

-Give insight on one's conditions be they physical or neurological (all roles) 

-Gives survivors and unreachable injuried people directions on what do (trauma physician, EMT) 

-Pats assistant_shitter.dm on the back and gives them tips on how to not get banned in an IC manner (all roles) 

-Still has to handle complex medical cases where everyone should be around their 50s to handle all facets of it at once (all roles) 

 

There are many things we do not do though! 

-Cloning

-Genetics

-Dissections

-Virology

-Xenovirology

-Xeno-Based dissections

-Nanites

-Exploratory chemistry

-The exploring of the human body which has probably stopped being a mistery for us ages ago

-The exploration of xeno races on the station which thanks to their respective race's efforts in anatomy has stopped being a mistery for them ages ago and decades ago for us. 

 

People who, and i have to point this out, have played the department have already thoroughly explained why and how these roles generate roleplay and create a healthy environment in which you can freely work with a team. Without necessarily doing the many things they were accused of such as: overstepping, whing about realism (literally who) , whining about role restrictions (literally who). 

I know it sounds gatekeepey but this whole thread calls for it, i urge everyone to actually stand up from their desks and spend more than a round and begin to play intern or resident and then pick a role they'd like play after getting acquintanced with the chemicals, surgery procedures, basic etiquette, steps to take to both stabilize and resuscitate a patient. 

The only roles that come to mind with which you can bring over knowledge from other roles is physician to trauma physician but that is it. 

 

Lately it has started to seem like a trend for people who hardly ever touch the department to start suggestion threads which accuse the department of things that either do not happen or happened that one time maybe and people who pretend to know what we need but due to a lack of experience only propose things none really needs or has asked for. 

Where is my imbible gauze? Where is my injection-ingestion-touch-smoke methods of giving chemicals with their actual benefits and list of chemicals who can only use them? Where are the chemicals specifically made for the scenery object that is the cryotube? What about the medical hud inside of sleepers? Where is the nerf to clonexadone? Why can't we propose new chemicals to work with and maybe get these awful awful trekchems out of the way as they are arguably older than some players? Why can't we add aditional reagents to the chemmaster to make actually complex recipes and maybe fix the fact that all of the chemicals medbay uses drain all the carbon and acetone? Where are the fixes to the following outdated and badly formatted paperwork: the autopsy forms, the medical release form, the medical wavier form, the failed neural imaging form? Why can't we have a body scanner in the morgue so we can print out the needed body scan for autopsies when the CSI has one? 

People like to bitch and moan about medical players bitching and moaning about change, that is because medical already bitches and moans about actual issues in the department which need actual changes which always end up withe CIYS rule or the "dude lesbay lmao". 

If you want to change medbay for the better implement actual mechanics for us to play with, brainmed was a step in the right direction but the homogenisation of roles under the pretense that it fixes nonexistent problems in the name of "straying from realism" is simply wrong. Add actual mechanics to the department which sound futuristic at least or just create the Autodoc Operator, port Autodocs from CM, slap in a 300u cryobeaker compartment the chemist can fill in and reduce it the medbay roles to 3,that is unrealistic and futuristic enough for all of you, it's not like half of you played mefbay anyways. 

Furthermore i would like to apologize if in the past you had RP experiences not up to par with your standards or you witnessed one of the few stray cases in which there was overstepping, none of these are the case anymore, really. 

 

Edited July 31, 2020 by nonno_anselmo
Fixed a bunch of typos and sentence structures

[Connorjg1]

I don't play medical often but the points Kermit raised seem good and correct and I agree with them on almost all fronts. 

Edited July 31, 2020 by Connorjg1

[Skull132]

@nonno_anselmo to counter you a bit.

First, please drop the "No true Scotsman" argument. I have a good 3 - 6 months of cumulative play time in medical behind me, in various roles; and I'm sure that could well be said about other proponents of this thread. So your call to arms is a worthless logical fallacy at best, downright insulting and dismissive at worst.

What's more, none of the things you listed as "Medbay does" would be in any way inhibited by these changes. Again, the mechanical and responsibility sides of the medical bay would not change with this. A point repeated to death by Coalf in this thread, but apparently not enough.

I also question your point about there not being any toe-stepping. We have an entire chart to outline what certain roles can and cannot do. Why do we need such a chart? The answer is, because it is not clear otherwise. And that is a problem. It is a problem for gameplay and general user experience. And we've had regular shifts of age requirements, job fragmentation, etc. on grounds that all go back to "Because this is how it should be IRL" or for other similar reasons, that are not supported by gameplay.

[nonno_anselmo]

5 minutes ago, Skull132 said:

@nonno_anselmo to counter you a bit.

First, please drop the "No true Scotsman" argument. I have a good 3 - 6 months of cumulative play time in medical behind me, in various roles; and I'm sure that could well be said about other proponents of this thread. So your call to arms is a worthless logical fallacy at best, downright insulting and dismissive at worst.

What's more, none of the things you listed as "Medbay does" would be in any way inhibited by these changes. Again, the mechanical and responsibility sides of the medical bay would not change with this. A point repeated to death by Coalf in this thread, but apparently not enough.

I also question your point about there not being any toe-stepping. We have an entire chart to outline what certain roles can and cannot do. Why do we need such a chart? The answer is, because it is not clear otherwise. And that is a problem. It is a problem for gameplay and general user experience. And we've had regular shifts of age requirements, job fragmentation, etc. on grounds that all go back to "Because this is how it should be IRL" or for other similar reasons, that are not supported by gameplay.

-It is not a "No True Scotsman" fallacy because no opinion was dismissed, i am simply asking people to see for themselves that the roles have a place and a functionality from both an rp and mechanical standpoint which are already two hard enough things to balance and are currently balanced enough to not warrant them to be dismissed as bloat and their removal. 

-The things that have been mentioned, as stated before, will be inhibited because the roles create a clear cut definition of what to do and not do conforming to the player's necessities and skills too. If a player plays nurse it means they favor rp, paperwork and not going in too deep with the mechanics related to surgery and chemistry, if someone plays surgeon it means they rather tackle the mechanics of surgery sites, surgery site layers and implants. The same way people play xenoarcheologist, xenobotanist and xenobiologist, we can still merge all 3 roles into a single one called Xenospecialist, it has access to all 3 labs aswell as eva, we can merge CSI and Investigator into CSI since we are 440 years in the future and education aswell as csi technology must have advanced to a point where some loon chainsmoking cigarettes and wearing a trenchcoat is useless; we can merge Bartender and Cook into Cafeteria Manager or Catering Manager too since we are on a sterile station whose only purpose is phoron research, no need for a bartender or chef role. All of these things are bloat technically, cooks and bartenders share access and vault constantly into one another's workspace, xenobiology, xenoarcheology and xenobotany all technically deal with alien lifeforms and aswell as CSI and Investigator are only separated by access, these roles purely exist for flavor. 

-The chart exists because of people who refuse to read the wiki or play intern, it is on the same level as a scientist building another AI because the RD left the door to their office open. It is not my fault and i should not pay because people refuse to behave properly on a few occasions. As kermit also stated on his previous post people more often than not ask to assist and do not take needless action, expecially those who know that with brainmed are able to evaluate wheter or not someone is going to quickly crash or not (scan, count to 3,scan again and see how much BA is missing). 

-(cont to 3rd answer, formatting on the phone is hard) the shifts in age calling for realism are minor issues and the new ones are in all likelyhood to be final not because they actually make sense. Unless 440 years from now we'll have super learning where you can condense today's years of proper training into a shorter time span. 

 

[Coalf]

15 hours ago, SadKermit said:

'It’s going to rename them all, and give everyone a wider skill set so they can apply it in more situations.' -- The skill sets are already fairly broad. A trauma physician can do everything a trauma physician is ‘meant’ to do, but can also do the basics of the other specialities. What this means is, if there is a role not present in the medical bay, the trauma physician can fill in. The same can be said for a physician, if there is no trauma physician, the regular physician can fill in stabilising patients in the ICU. There is no in-game condition that cannot be treated by a (trauma) physician, unless they happen to lack a chemist, so there is no argument that, should medical be filled with a dozen arterial/fracture cases, only the surgeon has anything to do, as (trauma) physicians can treat AB via alternative routes, limb fractures via alternative routes, or ask the surgeon if they can reduce the load by helping in the second OR. How exactly do you think merging the physician roles will broaden the responsibilities of, say, a trauma physician?

To Preface: In this response I will call my suggestion's role "Biologist". This doesn't mean it's the name chosen. I'm doing it for the ease.

Yes, exactly.
A Trauma Physician already overlaps with a Physician, a Physician already overlaps with a Surgeon, a Surgeon overlaps with all three. It's needless splitting for the sake of splitting.
Plus the fact that literally anyone in medbay bar a resident can treat ANYTHING if a chemist is present isn't a defense, on the contrary, it just shows they only function as healy-juice carriers if a surgeon isn't present.

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'Or we just remove all 3 of those jobs, replace them with a Biologist and he can do that except he can also operate if he feels like it.' -- By merging the roles, you remove the need for teamwork and coordination. If a critical patient comes in with severe AB and fractures, then as a ‘biological/medical specialist/researcher’ could, first, stabilise them in the ICU, then move them to an OR and fix them up, then move them to the GTR to make sure they’re all fine. This cuts out most interaction within the medical department when there’s a large intake of patients as there is no need to talk to another player. Working as a team becomes a choice with a change like this. If the problem is that half of the physician roles are sat around doing nothing depending on the cases that come in, then perhaps we can figure out alternative ways to treat all of the conditions in game, each with their own pros and cons so that, regardless of the case, no one is sat around doing nothing.

As you said before, cooperation between these three roles is ALREADY optional. Every one of them can fix a patient if a chemist is present because they only function as needle administrators.
A Biologist role will be able to choose between needling and operating. It will be able to choose if it wants to assist another biologist or not.
It doesn't strip away the cooperation, it just gives everyone the option to cooperate, rather than forcing a few members to be subserviently cooperative to the ones with a better skillset.

 

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 "this isn't removing a chemist or making a super-doctor who will be able to do literally every job in medbay. Chemist is still going to exist." -- By making all of the physicians capable of surgery, it devalues the job of a chemist rather severely. There will be no need to stock chemicals which treat organ damage as, now, all of the biologistics researchers/specialists are capable of just whisking the patient to an OR to open them up and slap some regenerative membrane on it. There is no need for a biologistics researcher/specialist to try to increase blood oxygenation to allow alkysine to have an effect on repairing the brain because they can now just whisk them to an OR and splash some regenerative membrane on the brain. Entire chemicals will become useless as they will see even less use than some of them currently do - namely adipemcina, peridaxon, pneumalin, oculine (imidazoline), alkysine, bicaridine ODs. If the physician roles are rolled into one, making them all capable of surgery, what do you believe will happen to these organ-regen. chemicals which are generally meant for (trauma) physicians to treat organ damage without the need for a surgeon? 

The clear boundaries allow the players themselves to ‘specialise’. A player who primarily plays surgery can just do surgery without having to know how to get someone out of asystole in the most effective way, they go in knowing that it’s a relatively stressful role; a player who primarily mains physician can just handle minor-cases and the exams and not have to fuss about having to learn the surgical procedures, they go in knowing that it’s a more relaxed role, presuming you have a surgeon/trauma physician to handle critical/surgical cases; a player who primarily plays trauma physician can specialise in getting people out of asystole in the most effective way without having to deal with minor injuries or surgeries, they go in wanting to deal with the intense and stressful cases. By combining all of the roles, players now need to be proficient in every field of Medical, regardless of whether it’s their strongpoint or not. 

 

 

The amount of operating doctors is already limited by the amount of OR's present.
Their choice is not going to be limited by an arbitrary chart people made up, their choice is going to be limited by the tools at hand. Additionally, a Biologist is not going to be as useful as the chemist on board, a Biologist is going to be useful on his own.

There aren't clear boundaries. That was demonstrated because people have to make entire charts and explanations in order to even understand what they're allowed and not allowed to do.
There has been a suggestion by @Chada1 to split Biologist into Medical Physician (Nurse/Physician/Trauma Physician) and Surgery Expert, this would solve this issue of being too stressed and additionally mine too. Actually, now as I write this I realize it addresses literally every point I replied to.
While I personally still don't fully like it and would rather smack surgeon into doctor, it's I think better in every way than what we have.

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This suggestion removes the unnecessary restrictions placed upon roles.

• 'I said the titles are arbitrary and useless, which they are.' -- I disagree that the restrictions are unnecessary. Bringing up a point I mentioned earlier, it’s these ‘arbitrary’ restrictions which generate roleplay and make the gameplay enjoyable. By having duties split between roles, then there are hurdles that can present themselves during your treatment of a patient. If you’re a physician or trauma physician with a patient in-need of surgery due to their severely damaged heart, but the only surgeon is busy treating an arterial bleeding case, then that’s a hurdle you need to try and figure out - you will need to consider alternative avenues such as peridaxon/adipemcina, you may need to hail the surgeon over radio and say there is a patient who is more dire in regards to triage and needs surgery more urgently. That is a dilemma that enhances gameplay and roleplay, by homogenising the physician roles you will not have this issue. Do dilemmas such as these not enhance gameplay and create roleplay that cannot be had with all the physician roles pressed into one?

 

This is already covered in the fact that there is a limited amount of OR's. Frankly, everything you named can be easily achieved by just reducing the amount of OR's to one instead of two and we don't need to have 3 jobs for in order to achieve the same effect. Actually the more we talk, the more I feel like medbay is way too overstocked with tools.
The only difference is that, if you're absolutely and completely alone in medbay, you will no longer be a waste of space as a Nurse or a Physician, and feel pressured by others that you should have picked a better role for solo.

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'The constant repeating and draining argument of "Well this job does X and needs Y age and also we should make 2 more subsets of jobs because these surgeries are extremely complicated for one person" is discarded.' -- Renaming the department and the roles doesn’t change the mechanics and expectations of the job. Whether a physician is called a physician or a biological researcher/specialist doesn’t matter, they will both have the exact same responsibilities and so people will still complain about the responsibilities if they’re unrealistic or not. By merging them into one ‘medical specialist’ job, you may deal with this problem of ‘why is x role capable/not capable of doing this task which they should/shouldn’t be able to do in real life?’, but then you replace it with people complaining about ‘but it’s unrealistic that a doctor is specialised in every field of medicine when it takes 2-4 years to specialise in just one field’. Renaming and merging roles isn’t a solution to this. Also, I don’t see why this is a problem, maybe it is because I can’t see from the perspective of developers, but so what if people are whining about realism? Developers can just ignore these people, if they wish, it’s not like everyone in Medical is going on about realistic expectations, and if they are, then that’s the audience you’re catering to and should tailor changes to - if a playerbase wants a more realistic medical system/role layout then, in my opinion, deliver a more realistic medical system/role layout or, alternatively, don’t try to make it less realistic to spite this audience.

That's flat out wrong, and I know that because it already happens.
I've used this example before, but what is an "Engineer"?
What exactly is a "Scientist"?
What exactly is a "Miner"?

It is ALREADY IN EFFECT and it ALREADY WORKS in EVERY OTHER DEPARTMENT. Absolutely nobody out there is telling me that it's impossible for an engineer to know complex electrical engineering, Supermatter Analytics, Station Infrastructure and perfect bar refurbishing.

Don't get me wrong, realism arguments aren't inherently bad. The issue is these job roles exist purely because they exist in real life. If they weren't named doctors from the start, nobody would have split them into 3 roles in the first place. It would have functioned exactly the same as science or engineering. With alt-titles being exactly that, alt-titles. Not alt-jobs.
You can't make the argument that "it works for some and not for others", when there is no other example besides medical of this system.

And to the point of "if players want it".
That's the thing. From what I have seen, I have convinced a good amount of people that this is a good idea after I explained myself. (Again, from what I have seen)
People don't start with a "good opinion" by default, opinions are just that, opinions.
Do I know this is going to fix what I say it will? No.
Do I THINK it's going to fix what I say it will? Yes

Departmental security was met with a lot of kicking and screaming from security, yet with plenty of enthusiasm from the same medical players who are jeering at me from the crowd right now. Departmental security was also reverted eventually. I don't see how trying this out would be worse. (besides the fact there are people out there who already decided they hate it, and instead of actually putting up a defense or changing their opinion like a responsible adult, they just leave the conversation and cry about how "nobody listens to them anyways", but this is how this game has always been with every change)

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It was fine in Star Trek, it doesn't matter here.'

• How other departments operate shouldn’t be a factor in how Medical ought to operate - instead you should consider who is playing the department and how many people are playing it, as well as why these departments may have a single role. In the case of science, less people play the department, and so there’s little incentive to split up the role otherwise there will, at no point, be a full roster, which is not the case for Medical as there are more players, meaning the roles can be more split to ensure everyone is working as a team.  Take security for example: it’s divided into cadet, officer, detective, warden, CSI. Each of these roles have their own clearly defined responsibilities and generally do not over-step on one another unless one of the roles is missing - this is the same way Medical works. If you argue that Medical should be unified with one role simply because Science and Engineering are, then should we not homogenise Security, Supply and Service into one role? The point here is homogenisation works for some departments, and for other departments it can ruin the experience. 
• I’ve skimmed through all the posts in this thread several times trying to figure out all of your arguments. You say homogenisation of Medical will result in less people whining about realism and will lead to broader duties for the role (though I’ve argued against this). Do you see any other benefits to the roles being merged into one, have I missed any other points you’ve raised? I’ve never really played in other communities, but from my observations, homogenised roles tend to be characteristics of LRP/MRP servers - sure science is unified in one role, but I think it could be split up to allow better RP (splitting scientist into Exploratory Chemist/Circuit Inventor/R&D Scientist, and whatnot [though I don’t play science so I cannot vouch for how conducive this would be for roleplay, this is just my uninformed opinion]), as is Engineering, though engineering was only merged into one role because no one played the alt-titles, which is not the case in medical.

 

There have been plenty of times where more people played science or more people played engineering than medical. In absolutely no way does splitting physician into arbitrary mini-roles somehow fix a population issue.
And people play the alt-titles in medical because they're given restrictions and allowances based on some out of game chart. They'd play the alt-titles in engineering if engineers weren't actually allowed to do that much, similalry to physicians.

You didn't really elaborate on how exactly medical works just like security, so I took the liberty of explaining it: (spoilered for lenght)

 

Spoiler

Security works like this:
Cadet is a learning role, Security Officer goes out and detains people, Warden Guards brig, CSI investigates which helps officers. They all have very clear cut roles that have different expectations and as a result, each one of them has different gear, uniforms and player types.

My Medical would work like this:
Medical Assistant is a learning role, Rescue Technician goes out and helps people, Biologist helps at medical, Psych helps at medical mentally, Chemist makes meds which helps officers

Medical as it is now is like this:
Intern a learning role, Resident a learning role but almost a doctor, EMT goes out and brings people back, Paramedic goes out and brings people back but with a little extra help, Physicians sort of helps at medical, Trauma Physicians sort of helps at Medical, Nurse assists existing doctors, Surgeon can do anything in medical, Psychatrist helps at medical mentally, Psychologist does the same thing but can't prescribe, Chemist makes chems that help people

Security done like current Medical would work like this:
Cadet a learning role, Cadet Senior a learning role but almost an officer, Security Officer goes out and detains people but can't use a taser, Security Officer+ can use taser when detaining people, Warden who can arrest only people who did minor infractions, Sayinan Warden who can arrest people who did medium infractions, Warden Jr. who helps the other wardens, Ultra Instinct Warden who can do anything, CSI who investigates and helps officers.

 

To answer your other point:
Would it create way more tension if I needed 2 extra people to cuff a single resisting guy? Yes.
Would it be beneficial or more fun in any way? I highly doubt it.

HRP means HIGH ROLEPLAY i.e HIGH AMOUNT ergo you are expected to be IN CHARACTER at all times. It does not measure how believable the setting itself is.
IF we had a server that is a clown school it would still be HRP if you were forced to remain in character at all times. I have no idea how less needless jobs would associate us with being closer to HRP or LRP.

 

 

 

 

• Quote

  'This already makes it very clear what they're supposed to be doing, makes it impossible to overstep because hey, there is no overstepping and improves IC mentality by removing this antiquated system of medical professionals everyone refers to.' -- Overstepping was a large issue when BrainMed was first introduced, yes, and I severely disliked it. However, as more people have become acquainted with BrainMed and the responsibilities of each role have been more clearly defined (physicians take the minor-moderate cases, trauma physicians take the critical-asystole cases and may often assemble a team of nurses/physicians to help, surgeons take surgical patients after they've been stabilised), people tend to stick to the limitations of their roles - and people do stick to them. The only exceptions to this is during lowpop. when there’s usually only one physician, however even during deadhour, I've been told that when there are multiple physician roles, the boundaries are still usually kept. This hearkens back to my argument regarding the importance of role distinctions, you are permitting everyone to overstep one another as there is no incentive to work as a team. You end up staffing this biologistics department with a handful of super doctors, where one doctor can do every single procedure to treat one patient - if only one patient is admitted in a round with say... severe burning and a fracture, then one doctor can treat the burning and the fractures, whereas with our current role layout, the workload will be divided between a physician/trauma physician treating the burns, and then  a surgeon dealing with the fracture.

  Yes, I think this exemplifies it.
  People "got acquainted with it", the simpler answer is "they got used to it".
  People got use to working this way and the sunken cost fallacy makes people feel like they wasted their time learning all these superficial charts and memorizing what they can and can't do.
  Again, if people want to keep cooperating, they can keep cooperating. If we go with Chada's proposal and split Surgeon away from this doctor fusion, it fixes all your issues and most of what I think is an issue.
  Plus a physician can already treat burns and broken bones, they can do bone surgery. Plus even if they couldn't, you said that doctors can "fix pretty much anything" with a chemist on-board, so I don't see how that discourages cooperation any more than my rework.

• Quote

  'Except this isn't an individual, nor is it a player specific behavior. It's an up-kept culture that has been normalized within medbay.' -- During rounds where the Medical Department is fully staffed, you’ll often see people organising themselves according to their role to ensure the intake of patients runs smoothly - and this is with or without a Chief Medical Officer being present. It is ingrained in how people play Medical, that there are boundaries between the roles and people organise themselves accordingly. By refuting the numerous rounds where this is apparent, you’re generalising the actions of a few individuals who have tended to overstep in the past to everyone who plays Medical - though this is no longer so much of a problem from my view and others. What examples of overstepping can you remember that are still present in Medical today - nowadays, physicians stick to the GTR, trauma physicians stick to the ICU, surgeons stick to the COT, they only deviate from their postings when they’re trying to meet the demands of a specific patient influx when another physician role cannot keep up or if there is a role lacking and their duties have been fully attended to?

  You say that "people who over-stepped in the past", yet somehow people have had to make entire charts to explain to people what they're supposed to be even doing.
  
  You are taking a few veterans you personally know, and using them as an example of how this medical thing works perfectly. But that's exactly the issue, everyone I argue with about how "it's not that complicated" are people who have already memorized every treatment, know every surgery and can mix chems blindfolded. As you said perfectly in your previous point, you have gotten used to it.
  Maybe it's time to play a different department if you're so bored mechanically, that you need out-of-game rules and charts to restrict you from doing literally everything.

• Quote

  I agree, there is nothing mechanical that separates the two roles. However, they are separated in how the roles act by a substantial amount. When there is both a physician and trauma physician around, these substantial differences between the roles are observable. Have you never played a busy round as a physician role where Medical is fully staffed, because if not, I urge you to as the roles make it several times better? Roleplay-wise having these two roles makes sense to give players choice in how they should roleplay their characters; setting-wise, it makes sense for there to be one role which handles minor incidents and another that handles the emergency cases, and this will be ever more so the case when the setting shifts to that of an expeditionary vessel. Instead of merging these two roles due to a lack of mechanical variance, why not advocate for the development of mechanics which further separate them? There’s a lot of creativity to be had when it comes to developing sci-fi. medical instruments, and these would go way further than just renaming medical to something mildly dissimilar and then making some Frankenstein’s monster out of the roles. While I understand that you need mechanics to back up the need for a role, I also think that the ability for them to act differently to another role also goes a long way.

  Yes, I was told many times in this thread that they're extremely different. But the best people keep giving me is a very broad generalization of "Well a trauma physician handles emergency cases."
  Let me run you through a test.
  
  A man comes bleeding into medbay, he is in critical condition. If there is a Physician, he handles the case and fixes his arteries.
  A man comes bleeding into medbay, he is in critical condition. If there is a Physician and a Surgeon, he handles the case but the surgeon is fixing his arteries.
  A man comes bleeding into medbay, he is in critical condition. If there is a Physician, Trauma Physician and a Surgeon, the Trauma Physician handles the case but the surgeon fixes his arteries.
  A man comes bleeding into medbay, he is in critical condition. If there is a Trauma Physician and a Surgeon, the TP handles the case but the surgeon fixes his arteries.
  A man comes bleeding into medbay, he is in critical condition. If there is a TP, he handles the case and fixes his arteries.
  
  In every case a Physician can handle everything the TP can, except without having to juggle the patient around.
  If someone's heart doesn't work, the TP is ONLY useful, if there is NO chemist and NO surgeon to provide medicine or surgery specialization. Again, could have been replaced by a doctor if there was a chemist and would have made no difference from a regular physician if there was a surgeon.
  This is why it's unnecessary. The entire department has to bend all of its functions in order to justify the TP's existence. This is the definition of a Mary Sue, not a "very unique job".
  
  Further, yes, why didn't anyone think of mechanically differentiating them? Because they have gotten used to it.
  Nobody thought about improving things, because they have already gotten used to playing this way.

• Quote

  A large amount of roleplay you see in the ICU stems from there being a trauma physician present.  On another forum post I went into a lot of depth regarding the importance of the trauma physician role and how much it affects roleplay. "Quite often, you would see a patient in the middle of the ICU in a stasis bag with a trauma physician and a couple of other medical staff looking at a scan planning, in depth, how they would tackle each problem causing the patient’s asystole, with the trauma physician usually being the one taking point. I’m not aware of how many people have been in situations like this but these moments are arguably some of the best moments I’ve had in the year I’ve played in Medical - people all gathering around a stasis-bagged patient, scan in hand, taking around five minutes to just devise a treatment plan for saving someone - and I’ve heard similar from other medical players." I believe the points I raised there are equally valid in this argument, because by homogenising the roles, you're stripping away this ICU/trauma physician roleplay, even though you say, "None of that is being taken away by this change. Said this like 3-4 times already."

  Literally none of those things needed a Trauma Physician. Read that entire annecdote again and tell me how the Trauma Physician was somehow a central figure in it? Anyone could have taken point. Yes, if we made a role called "Security Officer Sergeant", they would take point automatically because people would assume they're in charge, despite having no actual difference in terms of experience, or ability.
  By turning everyone into a Biologist, ANYONE can take point! That player who did it as TP? He can do it too, except this time more people can be confident about stepping up and saying "No, I don't think we should handle it like this, we should handle it like this", without being immediately shot down by "Well you're not the TP so you don't take charge."
  Homogenizing the roles INCREASES roleplay, and takes away needless "Let me check the wiki".

• Quote

  Merging the physician roles I can’t get behind for the numerous reasons I’ve mentioned above. I’ve discussed it a bit lately and really thought about it, but I’ve not shifted. There is genuine deviance between how these roles function and act, and I believe that makes up for the lack of mechanics separating them, but even then, mechanics can be suggested to further separate them, and I think that is a far better avenue to take than merging them to the detriment of people who play these roles and enjoy the dynamics they offered.

  I can agree with not merging surgeon and physician roles, as I've explained above although I'm still iffy about it.
  But as I explained above, Nurse/TP/Phys. Psycho/Psychia are un-needed and should be merged.
  If everyone thinks its such a great idea to differentiate between them using mechanics. If this thread closes and doesn't go through. I will be every single day on the lookout for that promised thread suggesting that mechanical depth. Just so I can jump in and give my support right away,

 

 

 

 

[nonno_anselmo]

I would also like to add: why not add ways for these roles to further separate temselves from oneanother the same way a roboticist is not a scientist (although roboticists break into r&d more often than not), the xeno- jobs are separated from oneanother and CSI/Detective are separated from Officers. 

In every server i go medical always feels like it is oversimplified or has to trade in mechanics for making sure Ayeet Mahpoop can stop John Jonhsons from going horizontal. 

I am not asking to channel this need for a different medbay not into a name change from which we'll derive probably nothing but rather the addition of actual mechanics to make the game more enticing to both learn and discover the nieches of, i am sure most of you have read the chemistry doc with the proposed changes, truth be told all of these changes were made to also make roles like physician, nurse, psychologist and to some degree TP into a more flavorful job wherr the player is pushed to spend a few minutes reading the wiki or at least giving a proper answer to a patient complaining about itching after receiving a dose of Dermaline. Building on what is already there and the possibilities they open up, what would a surgeon do in 2460? What about your average family doctor? And a nurse? Surely there would be new machines, new tools, new forms of treatment beyond the ones currently avaliable, no? The times are ripe to distinguish the medbay of the server from that of other servers instead of still being tied to these old mechanics still owing up to the older systems,there is potential to make something enjoyable instead of putting a bland patch over it. 

 

I am sorry for making yet another post probably bumping it to unneeded heights hopefully not disrupting anyone's experience on the forums aswell

[nonno_anselmo]

12 minutes ago, Coalf said:

But as I explained above, Nurse/TP/Phys. Psycho/Psychia are un-needed and should be merged.
If everyone thinks its such a great idea to differentiate between them using mechanics. If this thread closes and doesn't go through. I will be every single day on the lookout for that promised thread suggesting that mechanical depth. Just so I can jump in and give my support right away,

I know what i'm gonna do this week then

[Coalf]

7 hours ago, nonno_anselmo said:

There are many things we do not do though! 

-Cloning

-Genetics

-Dissections

-Virology

-Xenovirology

-Xeno-Based dissections

-Nanites

-Exploratory chemistry

-The exploring of the human body which has probably stopped being a mistery for us ages ago

-The exploration of xeno races on the station which thanks to their respective race's efforts in anatomy has stopped being a mistery for them ages ago and decades ago for us.

So there are many things and possibilities that would be added if Medical was more research focused?

Quote

 

People who, and i have to point this out, have played the department have already thoroughly explained why and how these roles generate roleplay and create a healthy environment in which you can freely work with a team. Without necessarily doing the many things they were accused of such as: overstepping, whing about realism (literally who) , whining about role restrictions (literally who). 

I know it sounds gatekeepey but this whole thread calls for it, i urge everyone to actually stand up from their desks and spend more than a round and begin to play intern or resident and then pick a role they'd like play after getting acquintanced with the chemicals, surgery procedures, basic etiquette, steps to take to both stabilize and resuscitate a patient. 

The only roles that come to mind with which you can bring over knowledge from other roles is physician to trauma physician but that is it. 

 

>literally who
Hello, hi, me, I have been whining about role restrictions. Also Borya, Hayden, Sherman, Chada have all agreed with me this is a beneficial change and have put their own feedback and spin on it. Not to talk about others who don't play medical perhaps as often but have shown their support nonetheless.

>literally who
Literally on the thread there is a debate about "what nurses do in real life", in serious discussion people immediately started discussing moon's proposal and "how does this equate to real doctors?", SadKermit in their post said that "We will not get rid of people who are saying that a doctor shouldn't know everything in specialist fields that take 2-4 years to master". There is clearly a basis in this. Stop trying to dismiss the argument just because you're willfully ignorant of it.

Yes, people do that.
That's why people understand you don't need 3 types of the same doctor to do all those things.

Yes, the whole point is to get rid of TP/Physicain, Paramed/EMT, Psychologist/Psychiatrist, the roles that are near identical.
 

Quote

 

Lately it has started to seem like a trend for people who hardly ever touch the department to start suggestion threads which accuse the department of things that either do not happen or happened that one time maybe and people who pretend to know what we need but due to a lack of experience only propose things none really needs or has asked for. 

Where is my imbible gauze? Where is my injection-ingestion-touch-smoke methods of giving chemicals with their actual benefits and list of chemicals who can only use them? Where are the chemicals specifically made for the scenery object that is the cryotube? What about the medical hud inside of sleepers? Where is the nerf to clonexadone? Why can't we propose new chemicals to work with and maybe get these awful awful trekchems out of the way as they are arguably older than some players? Why can't we add aditional reagents to the chemmaster to make actually complex recipes and maybe fix the fact that all of the chemicals medbay uses drain all the carbon and acetone? Where are the fixes to the following outdated and badly formatted paperwork: the autopsy forms, the medical release form, the medical wavier form, the failed neural imaging form? Why can't we have a body scanner in the morgue so we can print out the needed body scan for autopsies when the CSI has one? 

People like to bitch and moan about medical players bitching and moaning about change, that is because medical already bitches and moans about actual issues in the department which need actual changes which always end up withe CIYS rule or the "dude lesbay lmao". 

 

Where are the suggestion threads? Where are the issue tickets on github? Where are the github pulls?
You know what suggestions threads there are? Rename chems and colors for EMT's
You know what issues there are? Medical scanner bug and Surgery implements dropping. (I have not read all 437 issue tickets but I have read the first 5 pages)
You know what pulls there are? Two, the previously mentioned med scanner fix and lung collapse.
(Yes, I checked the archive too and the policy suggestions.)

This is why it looks like "Every non med player" is trying to fix the department rather than "Med players".
Because "non-med players" aren't risking getting ostracized when they stick their head out to suggest something to help the department, unlike "med players".
Stop sitting in the discord, throwing ideas at a wall, take direct action. If you can come here to disagree with me, you can come here to make a suggestion.

Quote

If you want to change medbay for the better implement actual mechanics for us to play with, brainmed was a step in the right direction but the homogenisation of roles under the pretense that it fixes nonexistent problems in the name of "straying from realism" is simply wrong. Add actual mechanics to the department which sound futuristic at least or just create the Autodoc Operator, port Autodocs from CM, slap in a 300u cryobeaker compartment the chemist can fill in and reduce it the medbay roles to 3,that is unrealistic and futuristic enough for all of you, it's not like half of you played mefbay anyways.

I am fixing medbay right here and right now.
If you perceive those issues as non-existant, well, I'd recommend reading "Metamorphosis" by Franz Kafka to better understand.

32 minutes ago, nonno_anselmo said:

I know what i'm gonna do this week then

While I am glad you have come around and finally agreed there isn't enough mechanical complexity between Physician/TP and Nurse to justify their existence. I am worried that it took 3 days of constant debate to convince you to actually do something about issues you've seemingly been complaining about for months.
Still, I am glad something is going to be done nonetheless.
 

[nonno_anselmo]

43 minutes ago, Coalf said:

While I am glad you have come around and finally agreed there isn't enough mechanical complexity between Physician/TP and Nurse to justify their existence. I am worried that it took 3 days of constant debate to convince you to actually do something about issues you've seemingly been complaining about for months.
Still, I am glad something is going to be done nonetheless

It did not take me 3 days, i always thought medbay had its roles blurred by a general lack of mechanical interaction, however i still think the homogenisation of roles is not going to fix any issue and that the effort should be instead channelled into new mechanics capable of rendering these roles special

[Skull132]

38 minutes ago, nonno_anselmo said:

It did not take me 3 days, i always thought medbay had its roles blurred by a general lack of mechanical interaction, however i still think the homogenisation of roles is not going to fix any issue and that the effort should be instead channelled into new mechanics capable of rendering these roles special

Except. Homogenizing will is very likely to fix the issue, because you stop a scenario where multiple roles could do the same thing...? Further, to make the other roles useful, or mechanically necessary would be to undertake a journey much more complicated and likely to end in failure.

We already tried to make mental traumas a mechanic, a lot of people moaned about it. We had chemical side-effects, things which made chemistry more difficult to use a "Get out of jail free" card, it was reverted because people moaned about it (though I will grant that in that case, it was a mildly lazy implementation). If you try to make, for example, hospitality staff necessary, you are setting yourself out to create mechanics which mandate that a player spends 15+ minutes in the medical bay. Who is going to enjoy a game like that? Same for mental traumas: the moment you try to add mechanics to those, you're gonna have a large set of people in uproar because we should trust the playerbase to roleplay those out properly or whatever the dicks.

My point is that there is a certain limit of depth we can allow for medical, or any department, really; without it detracting from the general gameplay experience. And the depth required to justify some of our specializations likely is beyond that point.

[Peppermint]

I've yet to hear any convincing arguments as to how this benefits people who are actually playing medical. The removal of nurse/TP? Fine. Whatever. The removal of everything into one generic role is where I'm drawing the line, because it feels less like this is a plus for people playing med and more a plus for being who are complaining about their character having a higher chance of dying when not everyone can do everything. When, ya know, there was a whole round of nerfs given people felt brainmed was too easy. 

 

And yes, if more research was added, if virology/genetics hadn't been removed, and if  there was any mechanical advantage/gain from this change, sure, I think many people would be on board. However, given none of these things are true and it's unlikely anything of this ilk would actually be added (hence their removal), I'm personally entirely opposed to this change.   Especially when we fairly regularly have people playing TP/Nurse/EMT over medic, ect - if people were oh so unhappy they can't do everything, why not just play surgeon? 

 

I also think it's entirely understandable that people are a little bit bitter where it's people who don't play the role (or, in some cases play at all - like what!?) are supporting this change where - as far as I can see- the majority of people who play the department are against them, even if they agree with some things like the nurse issue. But, again, if people want to play nurse, what is the problem with that? SS13 is already a difficult game to get into, and complaining that some of the roles are complex feels a little pointless.

[Haydizzle]

I guess to summarize a bit of the points going on in this thread as a TLDR because holy fuck there is a lot to comb through at the moment:

Pros of Renaming and Fusing Medical Jobs:
- Definitions of roles can be whatever we want for game design, and roles are malleable based on balancing the game.
- IRL comparison arguments won't be grounded/they aren't valid if these roles become fictionally based.
- There would be no more alt titles that nearly do the same thing mechanically (note, roleplay wise they are different roles, but people do not seem too keen on alt roles if the mechanics are the same).
- The "hidden complexity" (IE the surgery chart and similar role defines) can be diminished or removed.

Cons of Renaming and Fusing Medical Jobs:
- Changing and fusing jobs would alienate many medical players.
- The hidden complexity of the department is an appeal for some/it's much more complex than other servers.

(I'll update these points if people DM me, please don't bloat this thread by posting a two sentence reply about adding pros/cons.)


To chime in on the non-department mains/non-players commentary, that argument is rather slippery slope; big changes to departments usually draw ire from a lot of their players. I'd probably point to dep sec as an example if I had to. In general, I'm really disliking the "accusing non-med mains of changing the department because they don't understand the role nuance" argument especially when people that play medical have shown a willingness to cooperate with the changes too.


Moving on to the thread feedback, perhaps the following things can be agreed upon regarding fusing medical roles:

- Nurse/Medical Intern/Medical Resident can be combined into one learning role. I understand that each one has its own meaning behind it and what it signifies, but having one homogeneous job for the learner and RP roles wouldn't be too bad. It would be in the same boat as Lab Assistant for science, where I've seen people actually use the role to learn, and some people use the role to be just a literal lab assistant, rather than focus on trying to elevate to the next role. This removes unnecessary variance and streamlines three ideas that can summarily be combined as one.

- Trauma Physician and Physician get removed or replaced by/merged into one role, or they all have the same job expectation across the board and the titles just show a roleplay preference. Probably the latter here, but I doubt devs would encourage alt roles where there are no mechanical variance.

- Combine psychiatrist and psychologist into the same role. Mechanically the same and the difference in the future could simply be pedantic.


As for renames, I think Sherman's on the right track for the most part, maybe giving some futuristic suffixes or prefixes too as to further them from IRL equivalents.

Haydizzle out. ??

Edited July 31, 2020 by Haydizzle
Forgot psych roles oops

[Coalf]

1 hour ago, Lemei said:

I've yet to hear any convincing arguments as to how this benefits people who are actually playing medical. The removal of nurse/TP? Fine. Whatever. The removal of everything into one generic role is where I'm drawing the line, because it feels less like this is a plus for people playing med and more a plus for being who are complaining about their character having a higher chance of dying when not everyone can do everything. When, ya know, there was a whole round of nerfs given people felt brainmed was too easy.

But removal of TP/Nurse is the main objective of this thread. That and fusing Paramed/EMT and Psychologist/Psychiatrist, not turning everything into a single role.
If the concern is over also fusing surgeon, I concede that leaving Surgeon and Doctor roles separate would be better than fusing them together.
It's quite easy to see how it benefits people playing medical. For one you won't have to keep track of a chart, two, you will have a CHOICE in how you treat your patients, three, instead of being restricted by presence of other roles in the round you will be restricted by your own imagination and the tools at hand. By all accounts everyone in medical is going to have a more free hand in what they want to do, of course any true medical player would have already seen this.

In terms of balance, I don't know!
Everyone keeps telling me that this change will take away that "teamwork and efficiency of current medical", so according to all those medical players who are disagreeing with me, it'll actually be harder.

Quote

And yes, if more research was added, if virology/genetics hadn't been removed, and if  there was any mechanical advantage/gain from this change, sure, I think many people would be on board. However, given none of these things are true and it's unlikely anything of this ilk would actually be added (hence their removal), I'm personally entirely opposed to this change.   Especially when we fairly regularly have people playing TP/Nurse/EMT over medic, ect - if people were oh so unhappy they can't do everything, why not just play surgeon? 

Yes, no mechanical advantage can be gained from this change, because this isn't a change for that. Anselm said they're going to be making their own thread I recommend placing that feedback there.
Yes, "if if", but again, this thread isn't about adding those two. I said it would hopefully help it. But it's not the aim nor goal of this thread.
You also said you're fine with removing TP/Nurse? I don't know what your angle is.

Quote

I also think it's entirely understandable that people are a little bit bitter where it's people who don't play the role (or, in some cases play at all - like what!?) are supporting this change where - as far as I can see- the majority of people who play the department are against them, even if they agree with some things like the nurse issue. But, again, if people want to play nurse, what is the problem with that? SS13 is already a difficult game to get into, and complaining that some of the roles are complex feels a little pointless.

I don't think it's understandable to be bitter. Because multiple people who do play medical have spoken in support of this, in this thread.
Some have spoken privately in discord, I assume so they don't get targeted specifically by the people who seem to call shots on who is considered a proper medical player and who isn't.
And if people DON'T want to read charts to know what they're supposed to be doing. I think that's completely fine too.
 

8 minutes ago, Haydizzle said:

- Nurse/Medical Intern/Medical Resident can be combined into one learning role. I understand that each one has its own meaning behind it and what it signifies, but having one homogeneous job for the learner and RP roles wouldn't be too bad. It would be in the same boat as Lab Assistant for science, where I've seen people actually use the role to learn, and some people use the role to be just a literal lab assistant, rather than focus on trying to elevate to the next role. This removes unnecessary variance and streamlines three ideas that can summarily be combined as one.

- Trauma Physician and Physician get removed or replaced by/merged into one role, or they all have the same job expectation across the board and the titles just show a roleplay preference. Probably the latter here, but I doubt devs would encourage alt roles where there are no mechanical variance.

As for renames, I think Sherman's on the right track for the most part, maybe giving some futuristic suffixes or prefixes too as to further them from IRL equivalents.

I agree with the first fully.
I'd also like to see EMT/Paramedic and Psychologist/Psychiatrist. I think at this point enough people have gone basically avoiding talking about those jobs fusing, because they can't really find a good reason why they're separate.

The second one. Not sure if I'd be fine with alt-titles having no mechanical variance, since eventually someone would come and try to give it a variance and we would repeat this entire circle again.

EDIT: Agree with Sherman's points too.

Edited July 31, 2020 by Coalf

[Coalf]

Anyways, to get the thread back to the actual suggestion.

The Suggestion So Far:

Resident/Nurse/Intern are fused together to Medical Intern/Assistant
EMT/Paramedic are fused together to Rescue Technician
Physician/TP are fused together to Medical Specialist
Surgeon will remain as Surgical Specialist
CMO will remain as CMO
Chemist will remain as chemist
Psychiatrist/Psychologist are fused together to Mental Treatment Specialist (or just Psychiatrist)

That's it actually. This is a lot shorter suggestion than I thought.

Names are WIP

Edited July 31, 2020 by Coalf

[Haydizzle]

Edited in the psych roles bit, thought that was in there but I blanked.

As for EMT/Paramedic, I think it might be worthwhile to keep both roles and perhaps refluff them: one focuses on EVA/outside the station rescue (like being called Search and Rescue), and the other focuses on on-site response (could be called Paramedic still). This may not seem like a big thing, but having someone who’s capable of getting EVA setup and ready to go in a timely manner is huge and big distinction that remains important rather often.

[Carver]

9 hours ago, nonno_anselmo said:

I would also like to add: why not add ways for these roles to further separate temselves from oneanother the same way a roboticist is not a scientist (although roboticists break into r&d more often than not), the xeno- jobs are separated from oneanother and CSI/Detective are separated from Officers. 

The key difference is without a surgeon, you may be very well absolutely doomed to die. Medical role separation isn't an RP generator so much as a 'Surgeon may as well be a mandatory role for every round' due to the arbitrary restrictions of the surgery chart. The more you separate it, the more you need roles that may not even be present in the round.

It is an absolutely abysmal feeling to die or sit in paincrit for 20-30 minutes because Medical only had 1-2 people and neither are a role capable of doing anything useful. This doesn't generate RP, this just takes you out of the round and in the 'best case' condemns someone to sit there spam-clicking on you for 20-30 minutes until either a Surgeon hopefully arrives or Command calls an Emergency Response Team to handle the medical emergencies.

[Arrow768]

I am not a big fan of the WIP Role names and would prefer if we could get rid of the "specialist" in most of them.
It seems to be similar to the "everyone is a engineer"-thing that is common nowadays (just with specialist).

[UnknownMurder]

I agree with Arrow on the specialist thing terminology. Though, Christ. I had a quick overview on my goal as a wiki maintainer to medical positions. There are too many alt titles. I caught up reading this thread and there were misinterpretations. I am all for Coalf's idea to mush the roles together.

[Skull132]

An epiphany to be had. The amount of "master" roles in medical wouldn't actually change with these changes, if you go with surgeon remaining as a separate entity. The issue arises from the fact that medical is by far, the only department where alternate titles, which are meant to be just flavourful, now have a meaningful impact on gameplay. I guess this is a good example of when a tool is used for a purpose it wasn't intended for, huh?

[Fire and Glory]

9 hours ago, Haydizzle said:

As for EMT/Paramedic, I think it might be worthwhile to keep both roles and perhaps refluff them: one focuses on EVA/outside the station rescue (like being called Search and Rescue), and the other focuses on on-site response (could be called Paramedic still). This may not seem like a big thing, but having someone who’s capable of getting EVA setup and ready to go in a timely manner is huge and big distinction that remains important rather often.

I'd argue that if there are two rescue technicians, they could talk about who should focus on injuries on station and who should focus on those outside of it, like adults.

Although if these are actual alternate titles with no restrictions on what they can do in respects to their master title, and not the shit going on currently, then having them shouldn't be too bad.

Edited August 1, 2020 by Fire and Glory

[Haydizzle]

The idea would be to set them up how roboticist is now. There is no restriction on what you could do mechanically. It just implies that if there was one SAR and one paramedic, they would both have their own preferred fields is the idea. That and having someone just say by picking a title that they understand EVA would be a blessing ?

[Fire and Glory]

13 minutes ago, Haydizzle said:

The idea would be to set them up how roboticist is now. There is no restriction on what you could do mechanically. It just implies that if there was one SAR and one paramedic, they would both have their own preferred fields is the idea. That and having someone just say by picking a title that they understand EVA would be a blessing ?

Ya, that would be nice. I support this idea, so long as their is no confusion about paramedics being able to EVA.

Edited August 1, 2020 by Fire and Glory

[Chada1]

To replace the specialist roles, maybe

'Medical Specialist' to 'Medical Physician'.
'Surgical Specialists' to 'Surgical Physician'

'Mental Health Specialist' to 'Psychiatrist'?