Medbay changes: Under Needle and Knife
Posted: Fri Mar 16, 2018 3:33 am
Foreword
Hi friends, truth be told I wasn't planning on chipping in with any ideas on how medical could be changed since I enjoy the current status of medical, but since there seems to be a fervor growing saying that some changes should happen, I grew anxious about the changes that people were suggesting. I feel, in my own probably overinflated opinion, that most people miss the concepts that make playing medical personnel on /tg/ fun, and a little bit of grounding in reality is needed to protect gameplay from overenthusiastic and well meaning, but ultimately detrimental changes.
First and foremost, when discussing how medbay should change, there's a sentiment that medical procedures should be kept inside medbay Rather than restricting medicine to doctors, and those doctors to medbay, I say we should encourage crew members to be able to patch up any with first aid, and let doctors seek out patients to take care of the rest outside of medbay WITH FIELD SURGERY. And from there, anything that isn't really threatening per say but still presents a hindrance, like losing a limb or getting severe brain trauma can still be relegated to operating theaters with nice shiny facilities and a full array sterilized implements.
Doctors would be provided with Emergency Trauma materials in their medbelts that they now spawn with rather than having to grab one from a locker. For now these kits would be fairly sparse, just one suture kit and one spray bottle of disinfectant, but there are many possibilities that can be expanded upon as new options get added.
What I'd be willing to implement
One of the first additions for the system would be expanding on bleeding. Currently, the system is pretty shallow: If you have a certain amount of brute damage on a single limb, you start bleeding. The amount of blood you lose increases the more damage you have on that limb, and if you heal yourself below that threshold, the bleeding stops immediately. You can use gauze to halt the bleeding temporarily, but honestly you may as well just treat the brute damage itself first.
I propose that bleeding be tied to medical conditions that are applied when large amounts of brute damage are taken in one limb as before, but instead of instantly stopping the flow when the brute damage is healed, the flow only begins to slow once it falls below the threshold. Smaller wounds and cuts would be able to be handled by simply applying bandages which would still be available in public medkits (which would now temporarily staunch the flow of blood, helping the cut close itself rather than simply stopping the bloodflow completely for a few minutes) until the wound is fully healed, while receiving several chops to the chest with a fire axe would require extensive sutures to clear.
Similarly, I propose that severe burns that accumulate on one limb too much gain an infection status condition. This would (slowly!) progress once gained based on how bad the burns are, and at more advanced levels would begin dealing toxin damage and even risk limb loss if a serious wound was left alone for something like upwards of 5-10 minutes. First aid treatment would involve splashing water on it and applying bandages to halt the infection, or pouring potent alcohol on it to provide minor relief depending on how potent the alcohol is. Doctors would have disinfectant spray or rubbing alcohol that would quickly be able to treat the infections or fucked up skin, and only if the issue is repeatedly ignored for a long time would it need full on surgery to treat.
I'd be down to start implementing these if this got enough support, although I'm unsure how that would interact with the feature freeze starting next week with relation to it starting right before then. These ideas are fairly modular and don't require ripping up large parts of how medical works in order to implement, which has the benefit of being fairly quick to learn and make use of effectively.
Going forward
The common theme here is that sustaining too much of one damage type leads to status conditions which can be treated in a few different ways. Light to medium statuses can be handled by ghetto means or means commonly available in medkits (here, bandages and water/alcohol), more middling severity can be handled by doctors with specialized gear outside of medbay (providing suturing or sterilization outside of medbay), while letting the status condition fester too long without treatment requires more heavy intervention to cure (blood transfusion and necrotic flesh removal surgery). This could be expanded on for a number of different statuses, ideally even adding some basic forms of field surgery to the job by providing field surgery kits with implements like a field scalpel, bone setter, flesh grafter, medical tarpuline to act as a makeshift table, and whatever else people think of down the line. Letting doctors do simple 3 step surgeries in the field with these tools to pull shrapnel or other embedded objects out of people would be an interesting extension of this philosophy that someone could add in later if they so desired. Allowing doctors to leave medbay to find their patients and provide treatment in the field would allow said doctors to do their jobs in the field on the spot where the violence is happening (treating someone who was slashed up by an axe on the spot with sutures first rather then just dragging them to medbay) would add a new level of engagement for them since they're encouraged to get right into the thick of things rather than sit in medbay and wait for patients to come or be dragged to them.
Of course, spare trauma kit supplies could be found in medbay, and if someone outside of medbay desired and no one stopped them, they could take a set for themselves and be just as effective as a doctor at treating wounds out in the field if they so desired, but I don't really consider this a flaw. Just the same way that people will first look to engineers to hack open doors since they spawn with the needed tools, people will first look to doctors to get these simple treatments since it's much easier than going out of their way to break into medbay and treat themselves, then carry around that gear for the rest of the round.
Thoughts? Ideas?
I had sawrge edit it and shorten it without actually checking to see what he changed so hopefully this all still makes sense (ignore anything about any person with Q in their name, that was sawrge)
Hi friends, truth be told I wasn't planning on chipping in with any ideas on how medical could be changed since I enjoy the current status of medical, but since there seems to be a fervor growing saying that some changes should happen, I grew anxious about the changes that people were suggesting. I feel, in my own probably overinflated opinion, that most people miss the concepts that make playing medical personnel on /tg/ fun, and a little bit of grounding in reality is needed to protect gameplay from overenthusiastic and well meaning, but ultimately detrimental changes.
First and foremost, when discussing how medbay should change, there's a sentiment that medical procedures should be kept inside medbay Rather than restricting medicine to doctors, and those doctors to medbay, I say we should encourage crew members to be able to patch up any with first aid, and let doctors seek out patients to take care of the rest outside of medbay WITH FIELD SURGERY. And from there, anything that isn't really threatening per say but still presents a hindrance, like losing a limb or getting severe brain trauma can still be relegated to operating theaters with nice shiny facilities and a full array sterilized implements.
Doctors would be provided with Emergency Trauma materials in their medbelts that they now spawn with rather than having to grab one from a locker. For now these kits would be fairly sparse, just one suture kit and one spray bottle of disinfectant, but there are many possibilities that can be expanded upon as new options get added.
What I'd be willing to implement
One of the first additions for the system would be expanding on bleeding. Currently, the system is pretty shallow: If you have a certain amount of brute damage on a single limb, you start bleeding. The amount of blood you lose increases the more damage you have on that limb, and if you heal yourself below that threshold, the bleeding stops immediately. You can use gauze to halt the bleeding temporarily, but honestly you may as well just treat the brute damage itself first.
I propose that bleeding be tied to medical conditions that are applied when large amounts of brute damage are taken in one limb as before, but instead of instantly stopping the flow when the brute damage is healed, the flow only begins to slow once it falls below the threshold. Smaller wounds and cuts would be able to be handled by simply applying bandages which would still be available in public medkits (which would now temporarily staunch the flow of blood, helping the cut close itself rather than simply stopping the bloodflow completely for a few minutes) until the wound is fully healed, while receiving several chops to the chest with a fire axe would require extensive sutures to clear.
Similarly, I propose that severe burns that accumulate on one limb too much gain an infection status condition. This would (slowly!) progress once gained based on how bad the burns are, and at more advanced levels would begin dealing toxin damage and even risk limb loss if a serious wound was left alone for something like upwards of 5-10 minutes. First aid treatment would involve splashing water on it and applying bandages to halt the infection, or pouring potent alcohol on it to provide minor relief depending on how potent the alcohol is. Doctors would have disinfectant spray or rubbing alcohol that would quickly be able to treat the infections or fucked up skin, and only if the issue is repeatedly ignored for a long time would it need full on surgery to treat.
I'd be down to start implementing these if this got enough support, although I'm unsure how that would interact with the feature freeze starting next week with relation to it starting right before then. These ideas are fairly modular and don't require ripping up large parts of how medical works in order to implement, which has the benefit of being fairly quick to learn and make use of effectively.
Going forward
The common theme here is that sustaining too much of one damage type leads to status conditions which can be treated in a few different ways. Light to medium statuses can be handled by ghetto means or means commonly available in medkits (here, bandages and water/alcohol), more middling severity can be handled by doctors with specialized gear outside of medbay (providing suturing or sterilization outside of medbay), while letting the status condition fester too long without treatment requires more heavy intervention to cure (blood transfusion and necrotic flesh removal surgery). This could be expanded on for a number of different statuses, ideally even adding some basic forms of field surgery to the job by providing field surgery kits with implements like a field scalpel, bone setter, flesh grafter, medical tarpuline to act as a makeshift table, and whatever else people think of down the line. Letting doctors do simple 3 step surgeries in the field with these tools to pull shrapnel or other embedded objects out of people would be an interesting extension of this philosophy that someone could add in later if they so desired. Allowing doctors to leave medbay to find their patients and provide treatment in the field would allow said doctors to do their jobs in the field on the spot where the violence is happening (treating someone who was slashed up by an axe on the spot with sutures first rather then just dragging them to medbay) would add a new level of engagement for them since they're encouraged to get right into the thick of things rather than sit in medbay and wait for patients to come or be dragged to them.
Of course, spare trauma kit supplies could be found in medbay, and if someone outside of medbay desired and no one stopped them, they could take a set for themselves and be just as effective as a doctor at treating wounds out in the field if they so desired, but I don't really consider this a flaw. Just the same way that people will first look to engineers to hack open doors since they spawn with the needed tools, people will first look to doctors to get these simple treatments since it's much easier than going out of their way to break into medbay and treat themselves, then carry around that gear for the rest of the round.
Thoughts? Ideas?
I had sawrge edit it and shorten it without actually checking to see what he changed so hopefully this all still makes sense (ignore anything about any person with Q in their name, that was sawrge)