Give Medical Back Its NanoMeds (Engineering Sidenote) - Scarcity and Supply Chain PR

[Acetrea]

The "Scarcity and Supply Chain" PR was merged 4 days after it was opened, which didn't leave much room for suggestions and critique about the many implementations that came with it, one notably being the downsizing of medical's NanoMeds. Since it was merged so quickly, I thought it best to give the PR a shot.

After the mini-event round today, I believe that Medical should get its NanoMeds back. The two remaining NanoMeds were out of inaprovaline bottles by the one-hour mark.

https://imgur.com/a/HVHW52G - Both NanoMed's statuses.

Luckily, this round had two pharmacists who could make more inaprovaline, but I don't think it's practical to rely on a pharmacist every single medium-high intensity round (once this DDOS stuff is over ;-;) to replenish what is essentially a medicine that should always be available to medical players. There will not always be a pharmacist to make more.

The reason for the removal of the mini nanomeds from surgery was that they were supposedly unused. On my Surgeon character, I always use those nanomeds for the autoinjectors and the bandages, and I've seen many other surgeons use them too for setting up their space.

 

Extra note:

I know a lot of engineer mains were also upset about the removal of that two-in-one wrench/screwdriver. It was discussed in the Discord that either this change would have engineering go to Operations/Science to get the item, or they'll end up doing without, making the change relatively useless in terms of creating more engagement. I think it would be worthwhile for Engineering players and mains to discuss this aspect as well in this forum.

Edited May 24 by Acetrea
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[CourierBravo]

A possible solution, at least during peak times such as events, would be to enlist janitors for refilling those vendors. I dont think its common knowledge (given my lack of seeing anyone ask a janitor to top off a vending machine), but janitors do have a vending machine of their own that dispenses resupply canisters. These canisters allow for the refill of the corresponding vending machine, straightforward enough.

[Shimmer]

I'll be honest I don't believe inaprovaline is that big of a concern as it currently stands - every nanomed contains 4 inaprovaline bottles, that's 8 for the entire department right now. In addition, every red medical kit, with which certain medical roles spawn, and two of which are in the departmental storage, have inaprovaline pills in their assorted pill bottle you can dissolve into your own inaprovaline bottle when running low. That's what I personally do. There's six pills in those which is a whole bottle, so 2 extra bottles in storage plus a bottle each for every role that has the red medical kit spawn on them.

 

The white medical kits have a dedicated inaprovaline bottle with them, 7 pills each, which is 10 units over a full bottle. That's an extra two bottles on top of the other two, bringing the amount of inaprovaline medical has to 12+

 

I don't think medical is hurting for inaprovaline even with the nanovendor missing, the point of the PR is to get people to make use of their supplies more diligently, including using the rarely opened medical storage and relying on a barely used mechanic like dissolving pills.

 

I won't comment on the nano minis since I don't play a surgeon character. However, I would prefer it if the pneumalin inhalers came back into the medication storage. I'm not sure if cryo can treat punctured lungs, and while there are 2 doses of pneuma on the Spark and Intrepid, it's more intuitive to have one in the medbay for annoying lung punctures. It's only two doses anyways.

[Acetrea]

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every nanomed contains 4 inaprovaline bottles, that's 8 for the entire department right now.

Yes! Shimmer you are absolutely right that 8 should be enough for the entire department if everyone just took 1, but a lot of players take more than one. In the round I'm referencing, there were 2 Paramedics, 1 Surgeon, 1 Physician, and 2 Pharmacists (one being me). I did not take a bottle of inap from the dispensers. So 8 bottles were distributed to at least 5 other medical players. When every single bottle of inap is gone, you can't really dissolve pills into anything unless you do that really gross 1 water : 59 inap in a beaker thing which really triggers my tism if I'm being honest.

I'm all for dissolving pills (you should see the admin logs I used to make for spiking beakers) but in this round you also could not do that because most of those kits were taken to the Intrepid for the expedition so everyone left on the Horizon was left with not a lot to work with.

I know what you're thinking: ''well why don't you just tell the others to only take 1 bottle each and to leave the kits in the storeroom?'

Everyone has their own play-styles and you shouldn't be telling players how they are meant to play and what they should and should not have in their bags. People also aren't very receptive to that.

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A possible solution, at least during peak times such as events, would be to enlist janitors for refilling those vendors.

I didn't know that was a thing! I'll definitely try that out during the next peak round I join.

[wowzewow]

Voting for dismissal. The point of the PR was to avoid departments becoming complete autarkies that basically can shut themselves from needing to interact with other departments for their needs.

 

Speaking of - since this was a mini-event, I'd liken that it'd expected that there'd be more action, and therefore more resources to be used. I'm going to chalk it up as inexperience due to the recency of the PR, but I think at least someone should've ordered something from Supply at the very least. 

[Melariara]

As one of the pharmacists in said round, yes, we could make more, but we also use two bottles of inaprovaline to make the mortaphenyl so needed as well by everyone in the round. Its the cheaper option as well, to use inaprovaline already sitting there rather than using acetone and everything else and cost the ship more by ordering it from Operations.