Radiation is a terrible mechanic

angelstarri · Thu Sep 05, 2019 12:46 am

As a general concept, radiation is okay in the sense that it is the drawback to using powerful clean energy methods such as the super matter or fusion. In practice, however, it's become one of my least favorite mechanics in the game to deal with even before the Cobbychem merge.

Having more than 200 rads is basically a guaranteed death sentence due to the toxin damage involved with it, as well as to any people that wish to assist you due to spreading rads to your body. It's one of those situations where kill and clone definitely isn't a joke and is an actual procedure to restore players into the game.

The fact that an Engineer with radiation damage from the supermatter/performing fusion can absolutely devastate a station by just walking out to the halls and Medbay to contaminate everyone and everything with rads is too harsh and definitely needs to be toned down or, at the very least, the effects of potassium iodide and pentetic acid should be tuned up, or a new chemical to treat severe radiation damage should be added to fix severe levels of radiation contamination.

Super Aggro Crag · Thu Sep 05, 2019 2:43 am

Don't get irradiated just let the station run out of power and call the shuttle

Sandshark808 · Thu Sep 05, 2019 3:19 am

Wear a radsuit/hardsuit and take a shower before leaving engineering.

Post by **oranges** » Thu Sep 05, 2019 3:48 am #512606

Your contaminated items generally won't contaminate your other items enough that it matters. It's just that showering isnt very effective at removing ALL the radiation. It gets rid of the high numbers quickly, but the small numbers will take forever. The way radiation works, if a very contaminated engineer runs into medbay your items will generally not get contaminated. You will get irradiated though.

Just to reiterate, getting rid of the contaminated items and using the radiation chems correctly is key.
As a test case, I irradiated myself on fusion. 40000 irradiated, 25000 contamination, which you have to agree is a worst case scenario while not also dead. By the time 30u pentetic was done metabolizing, with my items on, I was down to 3k irradiation. My items were already down to 1700 contaminination just by themselves, no showering. Taking my stuff off and eating 20u more pentetic has me at 700 irradiation which is getting to the point where PI will be more effective. Mind you, the pentetic outhealed the toxin damage from the radiation so in this time I have been a functioning member of station society. I havent stood around in a shower staring at the wall. So just passively letting chems metabolize for around 8 minutes almost got rid of everything.
Around 20 potassium iodine reduced the rest of the radiation below the level where it affects me. No problem. All the other test mobs I put in medbay got some irradiation, but no contamination. So they get sick, but don't spread it around. And by the time I was free of rads, my items were down to less than 200 contamination. Not enough to irradiate me or anyone else around me anymore, as it is very low per-item. I could have also put them in an SSU to immediately get rid of the contamination and speed up the initial chemical radiation drop.

Could showering decontaminate faster? Yeah, I wouldn't have a problem with that. It just doesnt really matter all that much.

Okay then, so how do you deal with an irradiated engineer? Strip their shit in a remote location, on meta the maint storage is fine. Then go heal them, noone else got hurt and everyone is happy. Teach them about the dangers of radiation contamination, move on with your day. Take some pentetic for good measure, you probably got a dose of rads since you took charge of the situation like a boss instead of turning them away.

Post by **Cobby** » Thu Sep 05, 2019 5:06 am #512621

This was the original K/C situation tbh.

If I see 40K radiation without understanding how rads work, I'm just going to lolnope that lmfao.

Post by **Atlanta-Ned** » Thu Sep 05, 2019 2:50 pm #512685

I think the issue is that radiation is too hard to detect. Right now it's just this thing you find out about only after you drop dead. It needs to be a Big Fucking Deal™ like that scene from Red October:

[youtube]wzKXGKfqGzU[/youtube]

CPTANT · Post by **CPTANT** » Thu Sep 05, 2019 2:59 pm #512687

medbay doesn't even have geiger counters.

CPTANT · Post by **CPTANT** » Sat Sep 07, 2019 10:57 am #513027

I think all sources of significant contamination should have the visible green glow.

Perhaps its not realistic, but its a lot better than the invisible death spreading everywhere that we have now.

Stickymayhem · Wed Oct 13, 2021 6:17 pm

CPTANT wrote:I think all sources of significant contamination should have the visible green glow.

Perhaps its not realistic, but its a lot better than the invisible death spreading everywhere that we have now.

This is 100% the best solution. It's just seriously unapproachable from a game design standpoint and this makes it actually give reasonable feedback

Calomel · Post by **Calomel** » Mon Sep 09, 2019 9:01 am #513435

One way to deal with this is to make the Health HUDs show radiation.
I mean, they can identify diseases, why not radiation poisoning?

CPTANT · Post by **CPTANT** » Mon Sep 09, 2019 11:54 am #513453

Calomel wrote:One way to deal with this is to make the Health HUDs show radiation.
I mean, they can identify diseases, why not radiation poisoning?

Engineering scanners actually have that setting.

CPTANT · Post by **CPTANT** » Tue Sep 17, 2019 3:34 pm #515167

Does the radiation setting on engineering scanners even work?

Reyn · Post by **Reyn** » Tue Sep 17, 2019 7:55 pm #515204

Maybe the CE shouldn't be carry around rediculous ammounts of radiation on them when leaving engineering and walking into medbay when there's a crisis.

Honestly that happens WAY too often.

Sandshark808 · Tue Sep 17, 2019 8:24 pm

CPTANT wrote:Does the radiation setting on engineering scanners even work?

It protects you from radiation (stops SM hallucinations), it doesn't show you radiation.

Reyn wrote:Maybe the CE shouldn't be carry around rediculous ammounts of radiation on them when leaving engineering and walking into medbay when there's a crisis.

Honestly that happens WAY too often.

Well now radiation has more sources and fewer cures, since miners will also be tracking radioactivity around the station. Thanks c*derbus.

CPTANT · Post by **CPTANT** » Tue Sep 17, 2019 10:10 pm #515229

Sandshark808 wrote:
CPTANT wrote:Does the radiation setting on engineering scanners even work?
It protects you from radiation (stops SM hallucinations), it doesn't show you radiation.

Every scanner setting protects from the supermatter and the Radiation setting literally claims it is for showing sources of radioactive contamination.

TheMythicGhost · Thu Sep 19, 2019 4:34 am

Reyn wrote:Maybe the CE shouldn't be carry around rediculous ammounts of radiation on them when leaving engineering and walking into medbay when there's a crisis.

Honestly that happens WAY too often.

Whoever plays Cato, the CE on Bagil does this insanely often (both as antag and as non-antag), and it's really fucking suspect that they claim they don't do it intentionally when they're near the SM for minutes at a time soaking the shit up. It then becomes Chernobyl as they go to medbay or walk the halls as they shouldn't, and the entire crew suffers at this point because it's a basically invisible killer that spreads insanely fucking fast. With next to no viable solution on the sheer amount of affected personnel.

Shadowflame909 · Thu Sep 19, 2019 4:55 am

Engineering,

like most jobs that realistically deal with radiation

Need to go through a forced radiation shower before leaving engineering.

With those blaring alarms and shutters and everything.

Sandshark808 · Thu Sep 19, 2019 4:58 am

Shadowflame909 wrote:Engineering,

like most jobs that realistically deal with radiation

Need to go through a forced radiation shower before leaving engineering.

With those blaring alarms and shutters and everything.

There's even a decon corridor but nobody uses it

CPTANT · Post by **CPTANT** » Thu Sep 19, 2019 11:17 am #515512

Sandshark808 wrote:
Shadowflame909 wrote:Engineering,

like most jobs that realistically deal with radiation

Need to go through a forced radiation shower before leaving engineering.

With those blaring alarms and shutters and everything.
There's even a decon corridor but nobody uses it

Because showering is actually pretty shit against contamination.

Sandshark808 · Thu Sep 19, 2019 6:24 pm

CPTANT wrote:Because showering is actually pretty shit against contamination.

Right, but I mean it's clear someone thought that this would be a thing people had to care about. There's room on every station for a special decontamination device that's currently held by 2-4 showers, so the addition of this sort of thing wouldn't even upset station layouts.

Hell, just making showers clear clothing contamination more thoroughly would solve it. Anyone not showering then would be self-antagging.

Reyn · Post by **Reyn** » Thu Sep 19, 2019 7:12 pm #515575

Buff showers!

Xeroxemnas · Post by **Xeroxemnas** » Thu Sep 19, 2019 7:39 pm #515581

I remember rads taking forever to flush out even with potassium iodide or whatever that anti-rad chemical was. Anti-rad chems need to be better is honestly my only complaint. I've no problem with radiation being deadly as fuck since that's kind of the point you know.

Reyn · Post by **Reyn** » Thu Sep 19, 2019 8:27 pm #515590

Additionally, this is more of a policy comment than a coding one, but some policy. Rule lawyers time!

Rule 1, Rule 1 precedent 1, and Rule 5 precedent 4. In respective order.

Don't be a dick.
We're all here to have a good time, supposedly. Going out of your way to seriously negatively impact or end the round for someone with little IC justification is against the rules. Legitimate conflicts where people get upset do happen however, as detailed in the escalation section of the rules.

Random murders are not acceptable nor is the killing of other players for poor or little reasoning such as ‘My character is insane’. Each unjustified kill is normally met with one 24 ban.

Abuse of position; as in being deliberately incompetent or malicious in their position is not allowed. Deliberate incompetence or malice can result in warnings or bans, depending on severity. Example would be a chemist constantly abusing the position to make space lube and lubing hallways, they may be warned and then jobbanned if further abuse happens.

If someone's going around with a fuckton of radiation knowingly, fucking over everyone on the station, as nonantag or just frequently, ESPECIALLY as CE, Ahelp that shit. If you have issues with engineering bringing radiation around with them, Ahelp it so an admin knows what's going on, and can look into it. Additionally, Geiger counters can be printed at most lathes and can be found in maint, engineering, and other places. Clicking on something will scan for the object's radiation. If Walking vaguely close the ce, who's nowhere near the engine, Causes your geiger counter to have a stroke, Investigate further by approaching or with a direct scan, then ahelp if it's the CE or an engineer who DEFINITELY should know better.

But, As of rule 0, that is up to admin discretion.

deedubya · Post by **deedubya** » Fri Sep 20, 2019 7:44 am #515653

So, after checking all the feedback as well as my personal experiences with the issue, here's how I think we can make radiation better:

1: Put geiger counters inside the medical lockers at roundstart. This would let doctors detect radiation far before they get effected by it.
2: Replace the showers in the decontamination halls with special anti-rad showers that dispense a new liquid made especially for anti-rad purposes. Make it 3-5x as effective as water at decontamination.
3: Add a light green glow to anyone that has dangerous levels of contamination, as a visual indicator so other people know to give them a wide berth. I think 600+ rads would be a good level.
Optional: Add a nuclear symbol to the health scanner HUD. Make it so that medbay holobarriers refuse entry to anyone that's over 600 rads.

Anti-rad medications aren't the worst at dealing with the issue, but right now they're basically the only way of dealing with the issue. On top of that, rads are just an invisible killer that will very swiftly put an end to the entire station if weaponized, with very little you can do to stop it. We should make it able to be spotted more easily, as well as give engineers a way to realistically decon themselves without spending half the round under a shower.

Sandshark808 · Fri Sep 20, 2019 8:11 am

deedubya wrote:Anti-rad medications aren't the worst at dealing with the issue, but right now they're basically the only way of dealing with the issue. On top of that, rads are just an invisible killer that will very swiftly put an end to the entire station if weaponized, with very little you can do to stop it. We should make it able to be spotted more easily, as well as give engineers a way to realistically decon themselves without spending half the round under a shower.

To add to this, one of the other major problems is that not only does the engineer get dosed, but every item that's nearby has a chance to become irreparably radioactive. There's no real solution for decontaminating suits, bags, the contents of bags, medical implements, etc. I'm not sure if the hardsuit locker decontaminator removes rads, because literally nobody ever uses it except to cremate people, but it would be nice to have something that does. Like an autoclave that will decon anything you put in it.

Reeeee · Post by **Reeeee** » Fri Sep 20, 2019 9:28 am #515672

Point of order, radiation glow is blue, not green.

inb4 clown walking around with glowstick of certain color and is promptly lynched and spaced for it. That's at least step in right direction, everything else somehow warns you it's gonna kill you even if it is just 20 seconds of sneezing until you hit the floor from RNG enough miasma disease. It's a silly game after all, imaginary glow would help, i imagine nu-engineers don't even KNOW radiation is a thing from "magical crystal that makes power" and wear rads suits for the RP value rather than any need for it.

Dunno about rest of it, you can get rid of rads if you want to, just add glow. Hell make it a red glow to really scare people to get rid of the thing.

Dr_bee · Post by **Dr_bee** » Fri Sep 20, 2019 9:46 am #515675

Chernokov radiation is just a particular kind of effect. Plus we arent talking realism here, this is purely cartoony for gameplay readability.

Also can showers just instantly remove all contamination or at least very rapidly remove it? It would make dealing with radiation actually possible, fuck realism.

Reyn · Post by **Reyn** » Fri Sep 20, 2019 4:29 pm #515715

Dr_bee wrote:Chernokov radiation is just a particular kind of effect. Plus we arent talking realism here, this is purely cartoony for gameplay readability.

Also can showers just instantly remove all contamination or at least very rapidly remove it? It would make dealing with radiation actually possible, fuck realism.

You're assuming the fucking morons in engineering Aren't Nurgle worshippers who find taking a shower sinful don't WANT to run around with 100k rads or some shit to "Accidentally" kill everyone. As nonantag. On a greenshift.... If you don't know by now I've had some bad fucking experiences with engineering

Dr_bee · Post by **Dr_bee** » Fri Sep 20, 2019 6:30 pm #515749

Reyn wrote:
Dr_bee wrote:Chernokov radiation is just a particular kind of effect. Plus we arent talking realism here, this is purely cartoony for gameplay readability.

Also can showers just instantly remove all contamination or at least very rapidly remove it? It would make dealing with radiation actually possible, fuck realism.
You're assuming the fucking morons in engineering Aren't Nurgle worshippers who find taking a shower sinful don't WANT to run around with 100k rads or some shit to "Accidentally" kill everyone. As nonantag. On a greenshift.... If you don't know by now I've had some bad fucking experiences with engineering

If there are actually ways to reliably remove contamination from items you could start adminhelping those assholes.

And no the suit storage units dont count. its a shit method.

Reyn · Post by **Reyn** » Fri Sep 20, 2019 6:46 pm #515751

Dr_bee wrote:
Reyn wrote:
Dr_bee wrote:Chernokov radiation is just a particular kind of effect. Plus we arent talking realism here, this is purely cartoony for gameplay readability.

Also can showers just instantly remove all contamination or at least very rapidly remove it? It would make dealing with radiation actually possible, fuck realism.
You're assuming the fucking morons in engineering Aren't Nurgle worshippers who find taking a shower sinful don't WANT to run around with 100k rads or some shit to "Accidentally" kill everyone. As nonantag. On a greenshift.... If you don't know by now I've had some bad fucking experiences with engineering
If there are actually ways to reliably remove contamination from items you could start adminhelping those assholes.

And no the suit storage units dont count. its a shit method.

Agreed, We need to do that first so they can deal with radiation AND dont have an excuse to kill the entire station through proximity.

Anonmare · Post by **Anonmare** » Fri Sep 20, 2019 7:34 pm #515773

My suggestion would be to add a machine that's specifically designed for decontaminating items, a la SSU, but can do many items at once. Preferably a wall mouned machine that won't mess with layouts too badly.

In addition, adding radiation resistant windows and replacing the regular reinforced windows in engineering with them. As well as making to so that the glass can be put into glass airlocks so they can inherit their radiation blocking (if they don't have that already).

Sandshark808 · Fri Sep 20, 2019 8:16 pm

Anonmare wrote:My suggestion would be to add a machine that's specifically designed for decontaminating items, a la SSU, but can do many items at once. Preferably a wall mouned machine that won't mess with layouts too badly.

In addition, adding radiation resistant windows and replacing the regular reinforced windows in engineering with them. As well as making to so that the glass can be put into glass airlocks so they can inherit their radiation blocking (if they don't have that already).

Really we just need to make plasma windows impenetrable to radiation. They're already supposed to protect from the supermatter, they just don't.

FloranOtten · Post by **FloranOtten** » Fri Sep 20, 2019 8:50 pm #515792

>Having more than 200 rads is basically a guaranteed death sentence

you know, besides that radiation starts to do toxin damage at 500 radiation points

SkeletalElite · Sat Sep 21, 2019 3:15 am

Just make it so things that have tons of contamination glow green so if a stupid CE starts walking down the hall contaminated as hell because they couldn't be bothered to decontaminate so someone valids them faster than they can say help maint for starting chernobyl 2 electric boogaloo

CrazyClown12 · Sat Sep 21, 2019 9:43 pm

I am sick and tired of griefers abusing rads. Again and again I think an antag has been making it their gimmick to affect as many people with rads as possible only to reach the end of round screen to find that it wasn't an antag at all, or it was a conversion antag that contaminated all of their allies with near fatal rads. When I play Engineer I refuse to go near the SM once it is activated because of how awful a mechanic that rads are, yet somehow I still end up with fatal levels of rads from nonantags 'accidentally' spreading them. The only counter is for me to build a chem dispenser and deal with it myself because medbay refuse to treat me if they know I am irradiated (if they are new enough not to refuse then they don't refuse then chances are they have no idea how to fix it anyway) and I don't think I have ever met a useful chemist.

Radiation is a drawback for powerful engines in the same way that school shootings are a drawback to an education system. It's a griefing tool. It's very rare that a nonantag will 'accidentally' do something to fatally contaminate the entire station (outside of fusion fuck ups, but I think that is a different topic) yet they can consistently irradiate the entire department with no risk of a bwoink because of the lack of logging. I'm tempted to start maining a plasmaman engineer just because of how consistently people manage to contaminate the entire department.

This post was prompted by a large proportion of my shifts being ruined by radiation contamination from other people. I just played a round on Bagil where the CE decided to make a large area by atmospherics entirely uranium and, as a result of this, I got a fatal dose of radiation whilst in the brig. The CE was non-antag. I don't know if the admins are banning these people but honestly I think the majority of the time rads are a griefing tool that don't affect the people who it's supposed to (If people are fucking with rads, they wear protection) so it should just be removed as a fundamentally bad mechanic.

FloranOtten · Post by **FloranOtten** » Sun Sep 22, 2019 6:49 am #516058

CrazyClown12 wrote:snip

"I keep getting bombed by nonantags, so we should remove bombs"

Have you considered ahelping it? If a person is doing it so consistently as to warrant a salt thread, maybe the admins would take notice?

CrazyClown12 · Sun Sep 22, 2019 7:50 pm

FloranOtten wrote:
CrazyClown12 wrote:snip

"I keep getting bombed by nonantags, so we should remove bombs"

Have you considered ahelping it? If a person is doing it so consistently as to warrant a salt thread, maybe the admins would take notice?

I ahelp it and in all but the most egregious cases the response I get is that radiation logging leaves a lot to be desired and so it's not fair to bwoink someone who may have left incredibly radioactive items (often the bluespace RPED with lots of smaller contaminated smaller items inside) laying around when its not certain who it was.

Sandshark808 · Mon Sep 23, 2019 6:50 am

CrazyClown12 wrote:
FloranOtten wrote:
CrazyClown12 wrote:snip

"I keep getting bombed by nonantags, so we should remove bombs"

Have you considered ahelping it? If a person is doing it so consistently as to warrant a salt thread, maybe the admins would take notice?
I ahelp it and in all but the most egregious cases the response I get is that radiation logging leaves a lot to be desired and so it's not fair to bwoink someone who may have left incredibly radioactive items (often the bluespace RPED with lots of smaller contaminated smaller items inside) laying around when its not certain who it was.

This may be a shit thing for me to say, but the more it happens the sooner it will get fixed. Cobbymed's worst side effects got changed after a few rounds of a guy syringing medkit aiuri and sanguibitol syringes into arrivals and killing fresh players with "medicine." R-windows got nerfed slightly after a bunch of people (including me) got mime or clown and windowed off whole swaths of the station as a prank.

The more people are inconvenienced by radiation the more they'll complain to coderbus or the more likely they are to fix it themselves.

Calomel · Post by **Calomel** » Mon Sep 23, 2019 11:42 am #516247

Maybe the solution shouldn't even be in medbay; maybe hav some "decon" showers that remove radiation faster. This way showers
become a useful asset to be remembered, and you alos make the bathrooms a relevant set of rooms, instead of easy antag-murder-central,
and it also spares medbay form irradiation contagion, since the affected will go to the closest set of bathrooms instead.

Dr_bee · Post by **Dr_bee** » Mon Sep 23, 2019 2:17 pm #516274

Medbay could use a couple of radsuits as well. considering they have to deal with irradiated patients.

Reyn · Post by **Reyn** » Wed Sep 25, 2019 7:19 pm #516718

Medical scanners should also read how much radiation is on one's person. Partially so we can know who needs help, and who fucked up. Medical huds should see that soo.

Anonmare · Post by **Anonmare** » Thu Sep 26, 2019 3:41 am #516806

We really need some kind of inverse square law on radiation and make it so that irradiated objects can't have more than a fraction of a nearby radiation source's rads (1/ for 1 tiles away, 1/4 for 2 tiles and so forth).

It is getting very tiresome from dumbass engineers walking into medbay, up to their gils in rads, staring in unblinking compehension at the bald people vomiting blood around them.

Reyn · Post by **Reyn** » Thu Sep 26, 2019 5:39 pm #516879

Anonmare wrote:We really need some kind of inverse square law on radiation and make it so that irradiated objects can't have more than a fraction of a nearby radiation source's rads (1/ for 1 tiles away, 1/4 for 2 tiles and so forth).

It is getting very tiresome from dumbass engineers walking into medbay, up to their gils in rads, staring in unblinking compehension at the bald people vomiting blood around them.

One of the many reasons I hate engineers aside, Being able to decontaminate equipment at a reasonable rate, and enforcing decontamination (Aka, If the CE goes in medbay with Enough radiation to make chernobyl look completely fucking safe, they get beaned for gross incompitence) So that we dont have engineering becoming walking WMDS.

Dr_bee · Post by **Dr_bee** » Thu Sep 26, 2019 6:05 pm #516883

Reyn wrote:
Anonmare wrote:We really need some kind of inverse square law on radiation and make it so that irradiated objects can't have more than a fraction of a nearby radiation source's rads (1/ for 1 tiles away, 1/4 for 2 tiles and so forth).

It is getting very tiresome from dumbass engineers walking into medbay, up to their gils in rads, staring in unblinking compehension at the bald people vomiting blood around them.
One of the many reasons I hate engineers aside, Being able to decontaminate equipment at a reasonable rate, and enforcing decontamination (Aka, If the CE goes in medbay with Enough radiation to make chernobyl look completely fucking safe, they get beaned for gross incompitence) So that we dont have engineering becoming walking WMDS.

With the new suit storage change the CMO can just shove them into the storage in their office, cut the safety wire, and cook the radiation off those idiots.