Vaurca Med for Dummies (Like Me)

[Pedantic]

Massive Thanks Kaizr for sending me all this data on how they work. There’s no way I could’ve written this without them.

So, you’re a doc in Medical, and the round has been going well so far. You patched up some zapped grey shirts, fixed the engineer’s eyes for the fourth time today, and the shuttle is getting called any- VAURCA DOWN IN BAR! Now, you might be thinking “Goddamnit, why?! Things were so simple! I don’t even know what a Vaurca EATS how am I supposed to fix it?!” I’ve been there, as has just about every other doc out there. I know the bipedal ants are intimidating with their weird dietary, atmospheric, and chitinous needs. But fear not! While they’re a bit more complicated, they can be saved if you keep some things in mind. And yes, I am writing this because I messed this up too. And yes, it is in part due to a lot of this stuff being spread across three or four wiki pages, buried in archeocode, and you need to throw a soul or two to the God of Brainmed to get to the good stuff. Also, if your just here for tips and tricks, everything above “BUG DOWN, WHAT DO?!” is for you.

Note: this guide is based on both hard-coded variables dug up by the wonderful Kaizr, TheGreyWolf, Desven, and supposition from myself. Use your best judgement with the information I’m putting forward. Also, this guide isn’t entirely NewMed friendly, though I try to provide context where possible. I’m assuming you know how the various drugs the pharmacist throws at you work. Speaking of them, I tried to keep in mind a standard drug loadout you would expect a pharmacist to give. If they’re good, you can request other stuff that is much more effective in different situations than what I talk about here. Also, since at least some of this guide is hear-say, expect a few updates as we prove/disprove stuff.

General things to keep in mind:

• Unless its stated explicitly here, most drugs (including Nano (O-) Blood!) are Vaurca safe.
• Any food that doesn’t have K’ois (and thus, phoron) is going to cause toxin damage in Vaurca. Don’t do it.
• Conversely, food with K’ois is freaking awesome for them- it acts like tricord and peri rolled into one, while also restoring their phoron reserves. Note that too much food will rupture their internal tank, so try to limit the cramming.
• Nitrogen, Dexalin and Dexalin Plus are toxic to Vaurca (And always have been- regardless of what certain, amazing guides might have once said!). Side note, about 79% of the air is Nitrogen. Don’t let them breath that. See below why this is VERY BAD!
• Vaurca bleed 2.2x faster than a normal human, and unlike our favorite shaved apes, Vaurca don’t stop bleeding on their own. They also require drugs and food to regenerate blood, unlike everyone else who just kinda do it slowly.
• Replace Scalpel with Drill in the initial incision for surgery. Also, fun fact, they don't need a bone saw to access the torso- since, you know, you already drilled a hole in their skeleton.
• Contrary to popular belief, Oxygen is not toxic to Vaurca, but they cannot use it without phoron in their internal storage. They should know if its running empty, so try to keep them conscious with pain meds to communicate. Keep the mask on, so they don’t die to nitrogen-induced toxic shock and suffocation.
• Speaking of that tank, if its damaged, the Vaurca in question is going to have a hard time, even if their heart and lungs are working perfectly. Get them to a roboticist stat.
• Lastly: Cardox. Cardox is that funny "Definitely Not a Weapon" cleaning agent that removes all phoron from anything it touches- including Vaurca. Don't let them get hit by this, and if they do, make sure to hook them up to a phoron tank quickly.

Damage Modifiers for Vaurca in Engine:

For ease of reference, these numbers modify the damage a vaurca receives from different sources. Assume that 1.0x is the baseline for a human mob. The order is Worker/Warrior/Bulwark/Breeder/WARFORM (I really doubt any of you crazy bastards are going to work on these, but its here regardless)

• 0.5/0.7/0.65/1.0/0.5x brute damage (smashy or slashy things)
• 1.5/1.2/1.0/1.0/0.1x burn damage (Lasers, shocks, and of course, fire) [Note the Warform: Sec, if you guys gotta fight these, pull out something bigger than a pistol]
• 2.0/2.0/3.0/2.0/1.0x toxin damage (Infections, OD, MSOF, and of course, breathing normal air)
• 0.6/1.0/1.0/1.0/(N/A)x oxy damage (Forgot to use internals, damaged lungs, YOU TOOK ITS MASK OFF, DIDN’T YOU!?)
• 0.2/0.5/0.0/0.2/(N/A)x rad damage (SSD’ed during a radstorm, stared at the SM, made friends with a Uranium golem)
• 1.0x genetic damage (The intern thought giving it buta/bic was a good idea, slime snuggles) [This is the same across the board]

 

Random, But Useful to Know Stuff:

• Vaurca get a 3x blood regen from Sulfur, and, somehow, Drone Fuel. Don't ask.
• Internals. If you're trying to get the bug back on his phoron tank, you'll find... there is no option for internals. At all. You can't access their internal tank, so if they're really out of it, scream at engineering or cargo for a phoron tank, slap it in their hand, and NOW you can turn on the 'not die' button.
• Eyes. Bug eyes are, unsurprisingly, weird. They're very vulnerable to flashes, and if they get flashed too often? They go necrotic. You have a few options here- first, have the surgeon remove the dead bits. Its quick, cheap, easy... and causes massive scarring, making them not great. Second, probably better option: Drag them to the Roboticist, plant the bug in front of them, and demand robo-bug eyes. Assuming bug wants them. Final option? Oculine. Turns out, perma-blindness was kinda unintentional, and if its from flashes, you can fix their blindness with oculine.
• If you fail miserably despite your best efforts, worry not! IC, Vaurca are kind of immortal, due to their neural sockets. Get the surgeon/roboticist to rip it out to give it to the queens. Its fluffy, and gives them something to do, which most players like.
• Inaprovaline isn’t coded to cause toxins to Vaurca, while improving oxy. Meaning it can still be used as a stabilizer to buy you time.
• They have two hearts. This has zero mechanical benefit in game, since they both count as one organ, but its still interesting.

 

Okay, Cool, But WTF Does That All Mean?

Basically, what the above means to Medical Treatment is that a for a comparable injury in a human, a burn will take three times the amount of damage to heal as a smack from a comparable blunt object. This also translates into more blood going poof from a laser or energy-based attack, making it that much more important to get them stabilized (see below for tips on how). Additionally, if something toxic (LIKE NITROGEN OR DEXALIN PLUS) is introduced to a Vaurca, expect them to be in a bad way very fast, particularly the Bulwarks. This also means that moderately and heavily damaged organs are going to be high priority fixes to prevent toxic cascade, especially the liver and kidneys. Due to the toxin damage, infections are an even worse beast than they usually are. If there’s a burn, keep the theta (or STERA!) handy. Interestingly, the Oxy damage when mixed with the bleed implies that while they will be at reduced oxy levels quickly, the effect on brain activity is about 40% slower, and they’ll recover from suffocation faster. In short, they basically have built in pseudo-Dexalin. This can be supplemented by inaprovaline, and chest compressions if their hearts/lungs have stopped. Even if you can’t get it up to Dexalin Plus levels, you still have a lot more time to treat them than with a human if for some reason (cough *bombed medical* cough) you don't have dexalin. And finally, Rads aren’t a huge issue to them… Unless they decide to bathe in a radstorm. At that point, it may be better just to shoot them, since a Vaurca entering MSOF is almost unrecoverable due to the doubled (or tripled, for Ras) toxic damage. Oh yeah, just in case this hasn’t been made clear- leave the mask on, and Dexalin/DexPlus are toxic!

BUG DOWN, WHAT DO?!

Okay, so obviously, SS13 doesn’t lend itself well to algorithmic methods. The below is my general order of importance for “What will kill the Bug fastest?” You might notice that these bear a striking similarity to what would kill an ordinary person quickly, but with bugs, these first two need to be dealt with especially quickly. Don't be afraid to stasis bag them if you need more time to get things together.

1.  Bleeds, leading to brain death due to low Oxy and no Dexalin/DexPlus to save them
2.  Toxins, if present, leading to toxin cascade and MSOF (Dead bug)
3.  Everything else.

Now then- I put the rest of this into a spoiler tag. Its my current working plan, and a lot of it will be obvious to medmains, but if your an intern relying on this, I figured I'd include something more concrete for you.

Note that during this whole plan, you’re keeping the brain up as best you can. Its easiest to do this after Step 3, since alkysine can be applied then, but its still something to keep in mind. Hopefully, if you’re reading this, you know that 0% activity means a squashed bug.

Spoiler

1.       Stop/slow the fucking bleeding. It won’t stop on its own, and its fast. Slap 15u of Inap into them, then cover everything yellow with gauze and ATKs.

2.       Coagzolug is your friend for arterials. If you see that, get them to Surgery fast to fix it. Remember, that 2.2x bleed speed applies to arterials too, so it’s like having two for one. Do not do the Bicaridine overdose trick, the doubled toxic damage ain’t worth it unless you use dylovene too, and even then you'll have to fix their organs.

3.       So, the bleeding is stopped, but the oxy is still low, even lower than it has any right to be. Probably means their lungs are borked, and if they don’t have a heart beat, fix that with adrenaline. It’ll work without compressions to kickstart it. Make sure to have a surgeon poke at this if its an emergency, since Peridaxon is often too slow if the bug is in dire straits. Also, if they're trying to say phoron a lot, that probably means you need a tank of it. Ask Engineering, or steal one from EVA.

4.       Okay, so they’re not losing any more blood, and their organs can make use of it, but they’re probably not doing great, especially if a laser shot hit them. Assuming you hit them with the Inap, there’s not a lot we can do to get a quick temporary boost to oxy. Just have to raise it with O- (or Saline) IVs, and Iron pills. Note: Food also helps regenerate blood, so K'ois bars and sterilized k'ois is great for your bloodloss case, as is Drone Fuel, weirdly. Just be careful not to overload them with food, to avoid their internal tank rupturing. All of this is to get to that magical 85% oxy, so their brain stops trying to melt. If you have help, try to have someone do this during steps 2 and 3, and at least setup the IV during 2.

5.       All right, either you got your bug juiced up, or he didn’t loose anything to begin with. GREAT! Time to check for toxins. While not as fast to die as low oxy, this is still pretty bad. First, slap into them if they don’t have Inap. If they do, well, sucks for everyone, but its time for dialysis. Get the bad stuff ( toxins, OD drugs) out of their blood fast with the sleeper, and make sure to keep the organs in decent shape with peridaxon if it looks bad. Give dylo to flush out the toxin damage. If they have organ damage after this, peridaxon or your friendly surgeon can help. Note: If for whatever reason you can't use the sleeper, there are ways to help stave off toxins. Feed them carbon, or, if you somehow have pharmacy access but no Sleepers, fluvectioniem in small doses can be effective- just watch the organ damage from flu!

6.       Now that our bug is mostly stable, hit them with an alkysine IV and get that brain up as high as possible! Note, this only works for 85% oxy, so brain surgery might be required if they’re oxy was being stubborn, or you don’t have alkysine. Drag the surgeon out of GTR if you have to, since its kinda their thing. Also, brain surgery zips to the top of this list if their activity is anywhere close to thirty percent and their oxy isn’t stable yet. If it was light brain damage (Activity over 50% still) use Inaprovaline while the oxy is over 85%, just like if they’re human.

7.       Okay, we got the two worst offenders dealt with, and their brain is safe. We’re on to less pressing problems now. If it’s a burn, hit them with theta, doesn’t matter what else is going on, if the bug is infected, it much more likely to die from the toxin damage and the cascade failures that can cause. If they’re in a talkative mood, try to RP with them, since at this point, they’re largely stable and time isn’t as important as it used to be.

8.       All right, assuming the first aid you did before hasn’t cleared these, or you haven’t done this already, hit them with butazoline and dermaline as needed to clear up their non-life-threatening injuries/get them ready to have fractures and torn ligaments repaired.

Last Minute Thoughts:

So, if you got this far through my wall of string and pins, you’re either hopelessly confused, angry I forgot something, or some combination of the two. On the off chance you learned something, and haven’t gotten bored yet, I have a few parting thoughts I couldn’t fit easily into the rest of the guide. Mostly, don’t be afraid of stasis bags. We have cryotubes for a reason (AND THEY WORK NOW!), so don’t worry about the genetic damage. Once they get hurt, Vaurca are on the clock, at least, more so than most other people. I would say that if they’ve lost a lot of blood, and have a ridiculously high heart rate, its time for the bag, while you get everything organized. Frankly, this could also apply to any other species since that’s a pretty bad situation across the board.

 

All right, hopefully you crazy guys and gals of Medical have a better understanding of this stuff, I'm going to go burn down the conspiracy board I needed just to make this.

Edited November 11, 2021 by Pedantic
Proper Dexalin RE-update, not to mention eyes, proper credits for contributors, and a few minor rewordings and bits of (probable) wisdom compared to before.

[Cnaym]

Not a bad starter but you may want to speak this through with one of the species lore staff, they usually are up to date on the mechanics as well.

The biggest oversight I found on my first read through is that you missed out on the fact that vaurca have three frequently played subspecies Ka, Za and Ta which all have different resistances and such.

For mechanics like sulphur and iron you may wish to test them before publishing them. There is a lot of headcanon going on with the species and even mechanics described through lore may not be implemented or functional. My suggestion would be to buy a vaurca proto corpse from cargo. It's basicly the full thing without a player and helps a lot with medical experimentation

If I get killed by Dex one less time this guide already was a success though and I thank you for writing it up! My vaurca usually have medical records to indicate the basic mechanics in hopes new people stumble over it and give it a read before I need treatment. Should add that you can quickly destroy a vaurca internal tank by spaming kois products on them while they are passed out.

[Pedantic]

Gotcha- didn't think to add in the separate sub-species. I'll see about getting those up to date.

Also, I had no idea about the k'ois and the tank, going to add a disclaimer to that part and the iron until I can verify how much is too much. 

Also-Also, thwocking myself for forgetting to add in Cardox, should be in there now.

Edited April 9, 2021 by Pedantic
Forgot to mention Cardox again

[DatSamTho]

Not getting any credit for being the Vaurca that died to inspire this, smh

This looks really good, and will (hopefully) save my bugs from death in the future! Nice work!

[Pedantic]

Finally got around to testing the butanol. Holy crap is that strong, repaired the liver and prevented death by dexalin (Dunno about dex plus). IF I hadn't gotten too curious and pulled off the mask, could've seen what else it could handle. So, yeah, if there's a lot of bugs on shift, I guess keep a bottle of Unathi wine handy.

[Pedantic]

Not bumping, just added in eye damage to it. Somehow, missed it the first run through.

[Desven]

Turns out dexalin and dexalin plus aren't dangerous for Vaurcae. Well, they are in the same ODs for other species (think the added effect is blurriness), but other than that you can inject them the blue juice.

[Pedantic]

Oh God, why? Is this something from a new PR?

 

Well, in any case, made the updates to the guide, going to toss this into the back of my brain for another few months until we get another major bug update.

Edited November 4, 2021 by Pedantic

[Kaizr]

3 hours ago, Desven said:

Turns out dexalin and dexalin plus aren't dangerous for Vaurcae. Well, they are in the same ODs for other species (think the added effect is blurriness), but other than that you can inject them the blue juice.

So my first responder bot got arrested for nothing... 😔

[Pedantic]

And, now, its actually in line with the current build. Mostly. Probably...

 

 

I'm gonna get a DM in six hours with something I missed.

[Pedantic]

Okay. Fixed the Dexalin part, since that was confirmed by Admins to be unintended and exploit-ey. Also added a few more recommendations to the general plan, since I figure if you have enough time to read through that, the bug is probably fine. At least, for an extra second. Also, reworded the eyes part to make sure it didn't mislead people into thinking oculine works on necrotic eyes, and included a reference to steramycin.

 

Okay, I'm done now, leaving this as is.