Slow down medical code

[Lady_of_Ravens]

The way things are now, not-immediately-lethal injuries can often kill rather absurdly fast if you don't get medical care, and when you do get medical care you heal up rather more absurdly fast. Which is great for a lower-RP server, but it here it means missing out on the opportunity for a lot of RP related to injury and recovery. It also results in medical emergencies generally being handled with a lot less RP than they ought because there's simply no time to emote, or check medical records, or any of that stuff we ought to be doing.

If we reduced the rate for bleeding out, processing medicine, getting organ damage from too much toxins, getting infected, and so on by a factor of five or so I don't think it'd hurt much in terms of game balance, but it would mean medical got a lot less DOAs... and who knows, the recovery ward might actually be useful once in a while.

The timer on surgical operations could be increased as well... maybe double for most things, but up to the same 5-times for stuff like repairing organs and doing facial reconstruction. Though if bones and organs went through a somewhat lengthy healing phase where they were dramatically more vulnerable to damage, that'd be really awesome.

The same logic could also be applied to food, and even more so, booze. A slice of pizza shouldn't make you fat, pounding one drink shouldn't make you slur horribly... though when you do get that drunk, it should last more than 30 seconds (and maybe come with blurry vision and other related side-effects). Actual liver damage should be reserved for people who spend half the round in the bar.

[Garnascus]

Increasing the timer on surgical operations would probably be the most infuriating change you could make to medical. When shit hits the fan the surgery room can be in constant use and there's usually a line of people waiting to get surgery so that they can get back into the round. Artificially lengthening procedures is going to pissed off the patients and its going to pissed of the surgeon whose already getting screamed at by LITERALLY EVERYONE.

I think damage is applied fine, in fact maybe its TOO easy to fix someone up with the plethora of med packs and medicine bottles and sleepers available. Its abut funny that one of the most dangerous states you can get in is blood loss and even then medbay comes stocked with plenty of blood packs.

[Lady_of_Ravens]

Oh, it's definitely too easy to fix someone up, that's half the point I'm making. Both healing and dieing need to take longer so that people have time to generate RP around it. You may have a point about surgery... at least, most surgery. I maintain that facial reconstruction should not be one of the quicker procedures.

As for blood loss... unless you do a blood drive (which happens, but not so very often), there isn't really that much blood in medbay. One bloodpack isn't always enough for one patient, and depending on their blood type there may only be one or two packs you can actually use on them.

[keinto]

Yes, please. Make multiple punches and laser wounds not heal after 20 seconds as well.

[Garnascus]

This is only going to generate more RP on extended rounds or when atags aren't causing a mass of injuries. If I'm playing a doctor and my medbay is full of injured people then there is no RP. There's no time.

Toxins takes longer to heal? You spend more time in the sleeper....

Recovery from cuts/burns takes longer to heal? You get to spend time sitting in the lobby....

Oxygen/clone/genetic damage takes longer to heal? Have fun role-playing while you're unconscious in the cryo tube.

Your changes MIGHT make RP a bit nicer so long as shot hasn't hit the fan and medbay only has one or two patients. Second medbay starts really filling up with people and people start coming in faster than doctors can get am out then they are just gonna rage quit.

[TechnoKat]

I honestly disagree with this, as it'll keep said players/antags out of round most of time.

Let's play how SS13 is supposed to be, yeah?

[keinto]

Let's play how SS13 is supposed to be, yeah?

 

Let's stop being a "Heavy RP" server then.

[TechnoKat]

Let's play how SS13 is supposed to be, yeah?

 

Let's stop being a "Heavy RP" server then.

 

gr8 passive attack there but w/e

Heavy roleplay can be played with/without realism. You'd be crying why you keep dying after two laser shots, or fire axe to the chest. That's why balance is put in.

[cobracoco007]

Please for the love of god no when I play cmo I already have to deal with a shit ton of idiotic doctors who don't know surgery and a shit ton of broken limbs it is insane the amount of surgeries I have to do in a round please either slow death or speed up surgery as it would leave doctors with more rp time.

[Killerhurtz]

Honestly - that only applies to when shit hits the fan.

I say increase the medical timer and add one or two extra surgery rooms.

[Nikov]

Add two uses of gauze and two uses of ointment to the Box, Emergency Use, Cardboard. Incidents of bleed-outs and infections would drop dramatically. What's the price of a few drug-store bandages and packets of antibiotic-laced Vaseline compared to an oxygen mask and tank?

InB4 IPCs decry racism, even though they don't bleed or get infected.

[Guest]

No.

Medical needs to be intuitive enough for new/inexperienced players to hop in and be able to do a reasonably good job.

It doesn't need to be time-consuming. Due to the nature of cryo, the after-effects of trauma are not normally sustained afterward. Psychological trauma is an exception.

Most people are typically moved to the recovery room after being discharged from surgery. Not always, though, and for obvious reasons. Most people WANT to get back to their job ASAP.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

I don't think you understand how busy medical is during antagonist rounds most of the time. Artificially lengthening medical procedures will make me hate whoever implemented them with a burning passion. I need to get you in and out as fast as possible. With the general lack of coordination by the doctors under me, the fact supplies like cryo are limited, and there's a single OR room, you can already be expected to sit around and wait.

There's no "rp" in recovering. You sit there and complain and emote. That's it. That's not rp, that's filler. You're not having fun doing it, you're waiting to be fixed up by the overworked doctor who has 4 other patients.

[Lady_of_Ravens]

Yeah, because RP is all about getting back to chasing antags as fast as possible. >.<

Some people won't coordinate no matter what you do, but for the rest of us, lack of coordination is mostly a matter of lack of time to do so... particularly when medbay is flooded with casualties from whatever disaster just happened.

There are plenty of ways to keep people alive while waiting for treatment, particularly if blood is made more easily available as is being suggested elsewhere. I'll concede that surgery could probably be left at more or less the same speed as it is now, and maybe slowing things down medicine by a factor of 5 is a little overkill... but then again, maybe not. Right now most injuries that don't require surgery can be completely healed in a minute with time to spare.

The other side of this is that dying is slower, so your chances of actually surviving to get to medbay are higher. And being cloned is even more of a delay than delayed medical code... assuming you even get cloned, which is not guaranteed.

[Nikov]

My big interest is making it easier to stabilize a patient with two bits of gauze and two bits of ointment (not the full six-use stacks mind you) in everyone's Box, Emergency Use, Cardboard.

On top of that, is one's local oxygen partial pressure in any way related to taking less suffocation damage from low blood or collapsed lungs? You could stabilize patients by giving them an oxygen tank and mask, then turning the dial up to 50 or so. No smoking.

[jackfractal]

Part of the issue with slowing down how quickly you snuff it is that it will lead to knock-on behavior that is hard to predict.

Remember when you could use coffee to space walk? That kind of thing.

To keep this from getting silly you'd have to extend the period of time where people are non-functional but alive, which while more interesting for medbay, is less interesting for the wounded people. Once you die, you get to see deadchat and float around, while you're unconscious and dying you're able to see and hear nothing. In this game, it's almost always preferable to be dead then stuck perpetually dying.

[Nikov]

I believe it is easy to fiddle with the soft crit/hard crit numbers, which more or less determine how long you spend screaming in agony. My view is that the code should tick by just fine, its just means and methods to stop taking more damage should be more readily at hand.

Cable coil tourniquets anyone?

[jackfractal]

Ah! Better trauma medicine that doesn't heal you but stops you from dying? I am all over that.

It does need to be looked at carefully 'cause otherwise you could end up in the coffee-powered spacewalks situation, but yes. This is good plan.

[Guest]

Yeah, because RP is all about getting back to chasing antags as fast as possible. >.<

Some people won't coordinate no matter what you do, but for the rest of us, lack of coordination is mostly a matter of lack of time to do so... particularly when medbay is flooded with casualties from whatever disaster just happened.

There are plenty of ways to keep people alive while waiting for treatment, particularly if blood is made more easily available as is being suggested elsewhere. I'll concede that surgery could probably be left at more or less the same speed as it is now, and maybe slowing things down medicine by a factor of 5 is a little overkill... but then again, maybe not. Right now most injuries that don't require surgery can be completely healed in a minute with time to spare.

The other side of this is that dying is slower, so your chances of actually surviving to get to medbay are higher. And being cloned is even more of a delay than delayed medical code... assuming you even get cloned, which is not guaranteed.

 

Likewise, because RP is all about moaning about your injuries and ensuring you spelled and phrased that /me right.

It's not necessary. It's filler. It's not necessary to RP pain in the medbay since they're the ones treating you already. Almost nobody does it anyway, and not for lack of trying. It's been done before and people don't want to make a habit out of it to the point where RPing it is just... drab. Boring. Uninspired.

Slowing down the rate of injuries healing up isn't gonna force people to pain RP. You know what it's really gonna do? It's gonna make people pissed off and angry enough to the point where they'll search for mechanics to bypass the changes and get dem heals anyway.

Players are very determined. Moreso than the depicted determination of characters. They'll find a way around the 'nerf' anyway.

This suggestion wouldn't really add anything to gameplay. You make the assumption that people will want to RP recovering from their injuries as a result of medicine working at only 1% its normal rate or something.

No, they won't. They'll probably just alt-tab to watch Netflix instead while they wait until discharged.

[Lady_of_Ravens]

Yeah, I totally said to reduce the medicine processing speed by a factor of 100, didn't I? I have difficulty respecting such a blatantly hyperbolic argument.

What I actually said was a factor of 5, and I have already conceded that the number could go a little lower. How is taking more than than a minute to heal up from life threatening injuries such a big deal? Being bedridden for a few minutes after an injury may not be as ego gratifying as being the badass who boards the nuke shuttle and kills all the operatives, but it can be every bit as interesting from a roleplaying perspective.

[Guest]

Rounds hardly last past 2 hours anymore due to the nature of votecallers who seem to have ADD.

Less things would happen and things would escalate even slower due to the nature of how easy it is to get grievously wounded or even die. Antags would be affected by this, too, and I'd argue they'd lose even harder from this.

Except changelings, because kek.

[Lady_of_Ravens]

We obviously both enjoy very different elements of this game... which is fine, I guess. I'd like to think we could find a compromise that doesn't ruin things for more combat oriented players while still letting those of us who prefer more involved RP (including stuff like talking to patients rather than silently hauling them around, stuffing them into machines, gassing them, cutting them open, and moving on to the next one). Hell, I think I even like paperwork... at least, to a point. Particularly with the request consoles making it so very easy. I don't think there's any reason we can't accommodate both play styles.

Now, I don't have anywhere near your experience playing antags, but I'm fairly sure that the rapidity with which various ailments take effect is a lot worse for them. They don't have a whole department of lesbians medical professionals dedicated to pumping out miracle drugs, sending out mech-wearing EMTs, and patching them back into a combat-worthy state for another round of validhunting.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

We obviously both enjoy very different elements of this game... which is fine, I guess. I'd like to think we could find a compromise that doesn't ruin things for more combat oriented players while still letting those of us who prefer more involved RP (including stuff like talking to patients rather than silently hauling them around, stuffing them into machines, gassing them, cutting them open, and moving on to the next one). Hell, I think I even like paperwork... at least, to a point. Particularly with the request consoles making it so very easy. I don't think there's any reason we can't accommodate both play styles.

Now, I don't have anywhere near your experience playing antags, but I'm fairly sure that the rapidity with which various ailments take effect is a lot worse for them. They don't have a whole department of lesbians medical professionals dedicated to pumping out miracle drugs, sending out mech-wearing EMTs, and patching them back into a combat-worthy state for another round of validhunting.

 

The time spent chatting to a patient is time spent I could be kicking him out and going to the next patient. Your job as a doctor > small talk. I don't just cut out all paperwork; label body scans and actually put notes in records when you treat someone. I try my best to delegate medbay, but the nature of medbay being either understaffed or the staff itself being understaffed in the qualifications means I have to jump in to prevent people from dropping like flies a lot of times.

And yes, antags have it bad. Despite my best efforts to enforce medbay-neutrality (because denying anyone medical care is a war crime; lesbians are war criminals by now) but medbay still very much helps you as much as they want to.