Injuries (medical system rework)

[4dplanner]

Posting here to gauge interest:

I believe the current state of medbay is extremely lame, and stasis beds haven't really made much of an improvement. The main problems as I see them are:
1) Overreliance on chemistry. Worse, obsolescence by chemistry - most of the time, a chemist is just a better doctor if they want to be (barring the rare surgery).
2) Overly simplistic - most of the time you're just considering the three basic damage types and using the right type of patch.
3) Too easy to do yourself - breaking in and using ointments is almost always better than waiting for the ERPing doctors, unless you're actually in crit.

My proposed solution to this is an injury system. Injuries would be similar to traumas for bodyparts and organs, with the exception that there should be "ghetto" ways of fixing injuries, so you're not entirely ruined if no doctor turns up. Injuries would have a corresponding "pain" that is used for damage slowdown and going into crit.
For example, one possible injury would be a broken bone in the arm. Upon breaking the bone, the arm would become totally nonfunctional. You'd then have 3 main options:
1) Take a pill. This will reduce the pain from the injury, making it harder to go into crit if you get further injuries and reducing damage slowdown.
2) Surgery. This will fully cure the injury and any accompanying pain.
3) Splint, crafted using wood. This means the injury will heal over time, but much more slowly than if you had gone to medbay. It's also recommended to take a pill to reduce the pain until it heals.

This helps solve our previous problems as follows:
1) since surgery is now more important, doctors with their easier access to chemistry (and possibly a starting belt of surgical instruments?) will be much more vital.
2) Injuries would be a far more extensible system, and will allow for some more interesting effects. It also allows for the potential of a more interesting diagnosis system.
3) Having a doctor surgerise you will usually be better, though you'll have the option to go solo if you want to.

One major potential problem is how this will interact with murderboners. I believe it's likely to reduce the effect of murderboning, since if each victim deals an injury to the murderboner they'll have to wait for the slower self-treatment methods to work rather than simply using a couple of brute packs on themself. However, I can see the potential for the harder treatment making it harder to recover from a murder spree. It's hard to tell without actual observation.

Further, I wouldn't want this change to ruin TG's fast-paced feel. I still think as long as the surgeries aren't made pointlessly complex it'd be a fun change to the game, but I'm posting here for feedback because it'd be a large undertaking, and I wouldn't want to put that much effort into a system that wouldn't actively make the game better.

edit: to clarify, surgeries would be kept short. No-one wants to just lie on a bed for three hours while every single injury is fixed.

[kopoba]

No GOD no. This shit alredy implemented on other servers its TERRIBLE.
You just die or medics heal you half an hour in medbay. So its easy to just kill you and clone.
Play and hunt traitors not lay dead in medbay morgue. You wasting players time that they can use to validhunt/greytide on stupid laying in medbay.
Same shit with stasis beds LAY AND WATCH FUCKIN ceiling until you just ragequit.

[Shadowflame909]

We'd need some surgery tool-belts and hard temporary counters against lings.

The way lings are on other servers with an injury system. They're pretty much not an antagonist at all and will be severely antag-banned for going against their objectives even a little.

Otherwise, it's just armblade to the knee hell, and all of the security team is out of commission.

[Mickyan]

I feel like we get threads about this like once a month

But yes this would be the best option to move away from the current medical system being so mindless and based entirely on magic chems

I'd also add that most non-severe traumas should self heal even without treatment, very slowly, so that medbay visits are only required for meaningful injuries rather than every time you burn your finger with a lighter

[4dplanner]

'd also add that most non-severe traumas should self heal even without treatment, very slowly, so that medbay visits are only required for meaningful injuries rather than every time you burn your finger with a lighter

Yeah, that's probably the direction I'll go in if this receives sufficient support.

[cedarbridge]

No GOD no. This shit alredy implemented on other servers its TERRIBLE.
You just die or medics heal you half an hour in medbay. So its easy to just kill you and clone.
Play and hunt traitors not lay dead in medbay morgue. You wasting players time that they can use to validhunt/greytide on stupid laying in medbay.
Same shit with stasis beds LAY AND WATCH FUCKIN ceiling until you just ragequit.

This is a terrible post. If you want a high speed run and gun BR experience go play Fortnite.

[Qustinnus]

No GOD no. This shit alredy implemented on other servers its TERRIBLE.
You just die or medics heal you half an hour in medbay. So its easy to just kill you and clone.
Play and hunt traitors not lay dead in medbay morgue. You wasting players time that they can use to validhunt/greytide on stupid laying in medbay.
Same shit with stasis beds LAY AND WATCH FUCKIN ceiling until you just ragequit.

This is a terrible post. If you want a high speed run and gun BR experience go play Fortnite.

if you dont want high speed run and gun BR gameplay then why are you trying to change TG instead of just making your own server

[tinodrima7020]

One major potential problem is how this will interact with murderboners. I believe it's likely to reduce the effect of murderboning, since if each victim deals an injury to the murderboner they'll have to wait for the slower self-treatment methods to work rather than simply using a couple of brute packs on themself. However, I can see the potential for the harder treatment making it harder to recover from a murder spree. It's hard to tell without actual observation.

[cedarbridge]

One major potential problem is how this will interact with murderboners. I believe it's likely to reduce the effect of murderboning, since if each victim deals an injury to the murderboner they'll have to wait for the slower self-treatment methods to work rather than simply using a couple of brute packs on themself. However, I can see the potential for the harder treatment making it harder to recover from a murder spree. It's hard to tell without actual observation.

He's right though. The ability to land a lasting wound on an antag that can't just be smudged away with a bandaid on his booboo is a substantial issue for that antagonist. This is mitigated for everyone else because if they can escape they can receive medical treatment that the antagonist is unlikely to get.

[Shadowflame909]

No GOD no. This shit alredy implemented on other servers its TERRIBLE.
You just die or medics heal you half an hour in medbay. So its easy to just kill you and clone.
Play and hunt traitors not lay dead in medbay morgue. You wasting players time that they can use to validhunt/greytide on stupid laying in medbay.
Same shit with stasis beds LAY AND WATCH FUCKIN ceiling until you just ragequit.

This is a terrible post. If you want a high speed run and gun BR experience go play Fortnite.

if you dont want high speed run and gun BR gameplay then why are you trying to change TG instead of just making your own server

>Points to mood

Why you do dis Qustinnus

Edit: Also, everyone's forgetting about the Murderboner that is the changeling

You shouldn't forget about them.

Also maybe one Murder-Boner. But not a group of murderboners AND changelings that is traitorlings.

Lastly, I propose that this idea would make stealth antags, specifically Nightmare and Assimilator worse.

First, they knock you out, then they bust out your knee caps. Bam now your spending 45 minutes in medbay because your knees are broken by a shitty stealth antagonist who snuck up on you.

You gotta counter the counters 4dplanner! Counter the Counters! Or else stealth antags and Lings will be a hell of a lot worse!

[gum disease]

I thought the main reason why sleepers were nixed was to make inter-departmental co-operation (chemistry having to make more healing chems/cargo having to order medical supplies) more commonplace? Now you're saying that medbay is overly reliant on chemistry? Most chemists (from what I've seen, anyway) have little interest in treating injured players directly if there are doctors around, and spend most of their time making chems or dealing with botanists trying to nick their dispensers.

I would like doctors to get a surgery belt. As someone who plays mediborg often, having all the tools on me at all times is very useful. With regular doctors, you usually find that the toolset that spawns on the station usually gets pieces nicked and not replaced. This can be a pain in the arse if you're having to do multiple surgeries (prime example would be a wizard hacking limbs off left and right with the spellblade).

[Kryson]

While i think the removal of the sleeper have made doctor(or at the very least CMO) a lot more fun to play, there is still a lot of room for improvement.

I 4d's idea is a good one as long as the implementation is not too oppressive.

In addition we need to take a look at the medicines.

A lot of the fun of playing doctors comes from choosing the right medicine for the job this in practice means using chem mixes or using more advanced chems such as calomel, atropine, salicylic and perfluorodecalin.

The problem is that the selection of advanced medicines is quite limited. More medicines could be added in the current system, but we also need to create more design space by making the trekchems unmixable and adding new ways a spaceman can get hurt.

A new way to hurt spacemen could be organ trauma.

Here is a thread where i suggest what organ traumas could look like, using the liver as an example:

https://tgstation13.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=22124

There are fairly non-oppressive but still significant enough to warrant treatment or a liver transplant if you have the time.

[cedarbridge]

Organ damage was discussed in the "what if we removed cloning" thread oranges made as well. Internal damage of different types requiring the appropriate surgery would be nice. It would allow superficial damage from greyshirts slugging it out without having to worry about severe injuries and still give MDs predictable treatment options for the various types of stacked damage resulting in complex injuries.

[Shadowflame909]

I'm forever worried about this new mechanic being abused and leaving me with busted kneecaps.

[cedarbridge]

I'm forever worried about this new mechanic being abused and leaving me with busted kneecaps.

Shouldn't have tried breaking into med storage.

[Tlaltecuhtli]

i had an half idea of adding a damage var to all organs (damage is applied by gunshots/high melee weapons/drug usage/eating bad food) which uses prob(1) fire on process() for various bad effects ( higher damage unlocks worse things) which could only be healed by replacing the organ ( more usage of those upgraded organs/surgery)
and chems could only be used to lower the severity of the effects ( like corazone preventing you from rolling heart attacks) but idk if just adding more surgery would make the med system better

[zxaber]

Preface, copied from the stasis thread:

Spoiler:

I've said this in other places, but I feel like the relationship between robotics and the borgs is what our medical system wants to be.

You know who repairs borgs when the robo isn't around? Fucking nobody. Engiborgs can keep the borg fleet free of physical damage, but when when wires are in need of a replacement, you either find a robo that's not busy dicking around in a mech, or you don't get repaired. This makes wire damage a bit of a pain in the ass for borgs, but it also makes the robo player feel more needed, and solidifies the notion that the borgs are in their care. Because if the robo doesn't look out for the borgs' well-being, nobody else will. It's actually a large part of why I love playing robo so much; the difference between a competent roboticist and a clueless one is staggering, and it feels good being a robo who knows enough to be appreciated by the silicons.

Now that we're talking about more of a proper rework, here's my idea;

Split brute damage in half, call it soft brute and hard brute. Working from the numbers in my head, it's 100 points of damage to enter crit, and then another 100 for death. We split that first 100 into two 50s. Do the same for burn damage.
Taking damage (either brute or burn) gives you soft damage in the appropriate category. Soft damage can be healed using first-aid kits, patches, chems, whatever. Once you max out on soft damage, you start taking hard damage. Hard damage is healable only through surgery. If you've reached the point of taking hard damage, you can still heal the soft damage like normal, but the hard damage does not go away without proper surgery.

I don't actually recall if we already have brute/burn healing surgery. If not, when designing the new surgeries, they should be short, perhaps no more than three or four steps per limb (though the exact steps for brute healing need not match those for burn healing). Newer doctors would presumably still use the surgery room because the computer there will help them with the step order, but experienced doctors who have it memorized could fold up a roller bed with them and heal on the go. This is important: a level of skill is established, allowing for players to grow and feel accomplished that they are better doctors than when they first started the role. As people rack up play time in the role, they'll be doing surgery quicker, wherever it's required, and getting patients out the door sooner. As a patient, you may find yourself at the mercy of a rookie surgeon and suffer through an extended attempt to heal some hard damage, but when you get that 300 hour doctor that whips through the surgery, you'll feel more appreciative. And as the doctor, actually earning the gratitude that you know your job well and can patch people up in a hurry would feel great.

This system acts as a sort of compromise. Small bruises, random hits, the occasional failed door hacking shock, all would be pretty much self-heal. The individual can find a medkit, patch themselves up, and move on with their lives. Anything substantial, like a few shots from a firearm or a somewhat singed escape from a plasma fire, and their max health is basically dropped. They can patch over the soft damage and perhaps get their movement speed back, but that hard damage is still hanging over their head until they can get to a doctor or someone willing to treat them. And while these surgeries could be completed by any random other crew member, they would need the tools that doctors already have ready.

Couple this with Gum's idea for doctors to have surgery gear in a gearbelt. They ought to start with these, similar to how Robotics and Engineering all get toolbelts full of tools. As a bonus, if the option to cut cloning out completely ever gets realistically discussed, we can consider instead having cloning carry over hard damage. This still allows people to come back into the game without making it a flat replacement to healing them.

[cedarbridge]

I don't actually recall if we already have brute/burn healing surgery. If not, when designing the new surgeries, they should be short, perhaps no more than three or four steps per limb (though the exact steps for brute healing need not match those for burn healing).

Its called "reconstruction." It uses a number of initial steps, but the actual healing step is repeatable and spammable until you complete the operation. It also works on corpses to allow revival past the deterioration line.

[confused rock]

hurr durr lifeweb has injuries and it's great

but it's also frustrating

[cedarbridge]

hurr durr lifeweb has injuries and it's great

but it's also frustrating

Being injured is supposed to be something you try to avoid. That's the point.

[confused rock]

yeah well sadly cedarbridge your brain isn't the only small one around here so most people would whine for days if it was hard to fix shit

[Whoneedspacee]

I talked about this in the other thread too but I guess that got glossed over.

If you want to make medical a better job you need to reward medical for doing medical things. As of now it's more of a just checking a task off the list thing instead of actually having long term benefits.

As of now every other job in the game has skill, depth, but most importantly rewards for doing a job better, and the ability to do it faster if you're creative and good at your job. Medical pretty much has none of these. Some surgeries are hard-locked behind techwebs with no other way to even attempt them. Surgeries are mostly just time spent waiting as well with basically no skill involved. The rewards are mediocre as well, pretty much being surpassed by literally any other job with anything decent. Anything atmos, chem, genetics, xenobio, robotics, mining can churn out takes less time and is pretty much always better than any surgery, which costs a ludicrous amount of techweb points as well.

Having the wiki page on another monitor is not a skill.

Besides surgery there isn't much depth to medical doctor after that. I can think of a handful of things you might end up doing that is pretty much in the same complexity as shoving someone into a locker and welding it. Click on the guy with healing stuff, and put them into healing stuff.

How can we add more depth and reward good medical doctors is what you should be asking, not how we can make it harder since medical doctors already struggle with their entire workplace being bombed into nothing half of the rounds since they're the weakest department straight power wise.

Basically my point is, as much depth as an injuries system would provide, this wouldn't encourage anyone to actually play medical doctor or have fun with it (especially compared to other slower paced roleplay servers where this is more fitting).

On the topic of the borg thing, 50 injured people is different from a couple borgs that heal with some screwdrivers and new cables.

[Shadowflame909]

That's a very good topic.

To give Medical something to work towards, what if they could train in live time. We add in some "Locked" surgeries with no way to research them. Medics have to do in-game training and testing to master them without error. So they could then do it flawlessly.

Sort of similar to real life. Or maybe I'm just thinking of someone getting Dental Work done through dental schools.

Dental Surgeries added when

[CDranzer]

I think we need to draw a distinction between complex medical and slow medical. You can have an intricate skeletal system and then have bone healing juice that repairs you from head to toe. You can also have elaborate surgeries for healing seven brute damage. I think a complex system of health is going to be necessary regardless of the "pacing" because really, what can you even do with the current system?

It's going to be necessary to actually start modeling humanoids with greater complexity. Bones and tissue and limbs and individual minor traumas and bloodstreams with oxygenation and compounds and stomachs and livers to ingest and process those compounds. As it stands there just isn't enough complexity in our health system to do anything interesting. Though this probably also means reworking combat damage. It would touch a lot of systems, and I think the real issue isn't "there are no good ideas" so much as "nobody wants to touch the complex hell-web that is Player Health".

[Kryson]

As of now every other job in the game has skill, depth, but most importantly rewards for doing a job better, and the ability to do it faster if you're creative and good at your job.

Having powergaming loot does not make a job good.

Genetics and robotics have plenty of loot but need no skill at all and genetics is even worse because the gameplay is digital aids.

While several medical subsystems lack complexity, doctor takes more skill than many other job in terms or time and resource management.

[Whoneedspacee]

Nobody said anything about powergaming loot, just rewards for doing a better job and skill involved.

Engineering using the supermatter to generate research points for the station has no direct benefit to them but still rewards them in some form. Medical doctor lacks unique rewards and every other job can do their job better.

[wesoda25]

Lock cloning behind techwebs, make revival/reconstruction roundstart, move chemistry to science, give doctors a miniature chemical lab.