/tg/Station 13

Right now if you get a deep-rooted trauma the only way to 'properly' remove it is to get a lobotomy, which not only requires advanced surgery, but also quite often gives another permanent trauma which may or may not be worse that the one you just got rid of. At this point your only option is to just kill yourself and get cloned which is far from ideal and since some people want to move towards removing cloning entirely I think it may be worth taking a look at how this could be done better before it just becomes an unstoppable round ender.

Now assuming people still want deep-rooted traumas to exist, what would be some better ways to handle this? Ideally it should still be difficult to remove, but not permanent

Honestly just remove them. Performing brain surgery is effort enough.

And yeah the lobotomy surgery is complete bullshit. Spend research on the procedure and time to perform it and then the patient is worse off so you have to kill and clone them anyway.

Either that or make the lobotomy surgery only gives normal brain trauma's.

it's a bit odd that the lobotomy has side effects.

It should maybe occasionally fail and give shallow rooted brain traumas but deeprooted ones should be solveable through surgery.

oranges wrote:it's a bit odd that the lobotomy has side effects.

lobotomized post.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobotomy#Effects

I like that there is actually more stakes and consequences to the medical system.

However I wouldn't mind another alternative surgery that doesn't cause any new trauma but that requires some kind of rare reagent or consumable.

im aware that IRL lobotomy is dangerous, but this is a spacestation in the year 2525

oranges wrote:im aware that IRL lobotomy is dangerous, but this is a spacestation in the year 2525

Severing the connection between the prefrontal cortex and the rest of the brain is never not going to be debilitating.

You could add an advanced surgery that injects an advanced medicine(I have an upcoming PR to introduce a suitable medicine) into the brain to cure deep rooted traumas without introducing new ones, but i think lobotomy should stay asthe main treatment.

First, I'd like to correct a misconception: Cloning does not fix brain traumas. It copies all of them over. See line 234 ff of cloning.dm

I think lobotomy is nice. I especially like that it forces you to make a choice: Do you live with your deep-rooted trauma, or do you take your chances with a lobotomy?

Stillplant wrote:I think lobotomy is nice. I especially like that it forces you to make a choice: Do you live with your deep-rooted trauma, or do you take your chances with a lobotomy?

Exactly the design decision behind it. If you get a deep rooted trauma, something happened beyond common brain damage, which at worst causes severe traumas. After that, you can keep it, or test your luck with lobotomy, which could worsen your situation, but most likely will improve it (25% no trauma, 25% non-removable special trauma (!), 25% mild trauma, 25% severe trauma).

EDIT: Additionally, there is also the option of a thresholded brain-healing virus, which can cure deep-rooted traumas with no penalty beyond the virus itself.

you could bring the harmonic nanites lower on the tech tree. that way science could get it earlier if a wizard fucks everyones brain. its another neglected toy at sci that could see more use

I think the compromise here is it guarantees removement of the severe trauma and has a high chance of leaving you with a smaller one that's treatable by other means.

I'm not sure how to check this so I'll just ask. Does the Spontaneous Brain Trauma random event have a chance at giving deep-rooted traumas?

Aside from the fact that I hate that event for unrelated reasons (I once got monophobia while space exploring), having a permanent debuff that you can't do anything to avoid would be really unfair and unfun.