Surgery Overhaul

[Stillplant]

I would like to try my hand at reworking the surgery system.

What I have in mind would be replacing the current step-by-step model with a
more free form model, inspired by Baystation's surgery system. Especially, this
would allow doing several surgical tasks in one surgery, for example,
replacing the patient's lung with a donor lung, and crafting a coronary bypass
onto their heart.

I aim to accomplish this by introducing surgery statuses on the individual
limbs, and replacing the current surgeries with "surgical maneuvers". Surgical
Maneuvers would be what single step of a current surgery is. Which maneuvers
can be executed would depend on the surgery state and type of the limb and the
species of the patient.

Surgery states represent, well, the current status of what you're performing
surgery on. The exact number of surgery states still needs to be determined. At
the moment, I think there will need to be states to represent what layer of
patient you're on (outside -> muscles -> organs), whether you've severed the
patient's bones (needed for augmentation), and whether the patient needs the
bleeders clamped or not (it always bothered me that I have to clamp bleeders on
somebody I'm borging, or who's dead).

Say, for example, that you want to give somebody cybernetic organs, and augment
their torso. Under the current system, you'd need to perform organ manipulation
surgery, then augmentation surgery. Under the proposed system, it would go as
follows (Everything still subject to change, of course):

1. Target the patient's chest, with help intent.
2. Place surgical drapes (optional).
3. Use scalpel on patient. The current surgical state is that your outside the
patient, hence the only maneuver is making an incision. After the incision, the
state is "Next layer incised".
4. Use retractor on patient. The patient loses "Next layer incised", and gains
the state "muscle layer".
5. Use the circular saw on patient, since we are targeting the chest. The
patient gains "Next layer incised".
6. Use retractor on patient. The patient loses "Next layer incised" and
"Muscle layer", and gains "Organ Layer" and "Bleeders".

At this point, there's several ways to proceed. I'll examine one.

7. Use circular saw on patient. The patient gains "Bones severed". He would also
gain "Bleeders", but he's already got it.
8. Use hemostat on patient. If there are other steps possible at this point with
the hemostat, there would be a window asking us which one we want to perform. We
chose "manipulate Organs". We remove the heart.
9. Use donor heart on patient. Heart is inserted into patient.
10. Repeat steps 8 and 9 for each organ we want to replace.
11. Use cyborg torso on patient. Patient becomes augmented, and loses "Bones
Severed.
12. Use cauterizer on patient. Patient loses "Muscle Layer". Surgery done.

Since we forgot to clamp the patient's bleeders, the patient now suffers from
internal bleeding, and will die unless either treated with another surgery, or
the blood loss is treated another way. I want there to be more ways for
surgeons to screw up and accidentally or purposefully harm their patients,
since it should be trivial for a surgeon to murder the person they're
operating on.

Expanding on the last point, I also propose adding 'sabotage maneuvers', which
look like other maneuvers to bystanders, but in addition rig an organ to fail.
For example, "sabotage brain" would appear as "Surgeon begins fixing patient's
brain", to bystanders, but 4 minutes after the step is performed, the patient
suffers an aneurysm and starts gaining massive brain damage until he or she
is cured. I'd make the tell be that the step takes longer than usual. That way,
most players would not be able to tell that something foul happened, but
somebody who mains medical doctor could potentially tell that the step took a
bit too long.

Part of the reason why I'm making this post before I start working is that I
want feedback on my ideas. I also hope that potential pitfalls are pointed out
to me. I'm also aware that the medical system is currently undergoing an
overhaul, and I want to know if there is already another surgery overhaul in
progress before I start working on mine, or if mine wouldn't fit into the rest
of new medical system.