/tg/Station 13

Full-body augmentation is a tedious and time-consuming process where, by the time you're done with it, the shift is often over. Perhaps there's a place for some chamber-based automation for this, since it's largely cosmetic and honestly is detrimental until you get deep down the upgrade tree?

Surgery is pretty quick when you get used to it.

BTW when you have fully auged parts you can heal yourself with a welder. It's pretty great for miners.

Sandshark808 wrote:Surgery is pretty quick when you get used to it.

BTW when you have fully auged parts you can heal yourself with a welder. It's pretty great for miners.

The surgery is fairly quick once you get used to it, but I feel bad asking for it due to the time and effort required. It's like "hey, stop what you're doing and gratify me".

I'm only talking about the cyborg part level augmentation, mind. All the upgrades and module augmentations would need to be manually installed.

Roboticists are always willing to aug you. It's a boring job if nobody asks for surgery and nobody is signing up for posi brains.

there have been numerous requests for a programmable auto-surgeon style machine that just does the surgeries while the doc waits and cant be interacted with by the patient, so this is pretty much a case of "when you code it" sadly.

Hell, removing one step from the aug surgery would be wonderful.

Dr_bee wrote:there have been numerous requests for a programmable auto-surgeon style machine that just does the surgeries while the doc waits and cant be interacted with by the patient, so this is pretty much a case of "when you code it" sadly.

Hell, removing one step from the aug surgery would be wonderful.

I'd also like to see more styles for aug parts, but it would probably be difficult to match the sprite work.

Sandshark808 wrote:Roboticists are always willing to aug you. It's a boring job if nobody asks for surgery and nobody is signing up for posi brains.

They aren't, though. Often they only took the job to make themselves 5 DNA-coded exosuits. Or they put the shutters down and don't accept any borging or aug requests. Or they get blown up.

Go take a jump into cyborg factory you nerd

OFQ wrote:Go take a jump into cyborg factory you nerd

I would if I could, but we can't build that unless the AI is malf. And then it's usually just murderboning with plasma.

You can do 9 surgeries at once with enough tables

confused rock wrote:You can do 9 surgeries at once with enough tables

You can do 54 surgeries at once. The issue is in the time they take, the resources, queues, and what the person who has to do the surgery actually wants to do or is assigned to do by the game. Slaving someone to doing cosmetic surgery isn't fun.

Perhaps it could be added as a starting trait if no other workable solution was found. Full-Body Prosthetic where you start off functionally made of glass but can upgrade yourself. 0 point trait.

On the topic of the argument that augmentation has benefits, only past the 40 minute mark. You're last in priority for research because nobody aside from that one weird guy does augs due to the time involved. So most games you'll be lucky to get welding shield eyes. You give up your ability to naturally heal or be easily healed and get nothing unless you have the access to steal research points for your own gratification.

Sandshark808 wrote:Roboticists are always willing to aug you. It's a boring job if nobody asks for surgery and nobody is signing up for posi brains.

Auging surgery is easy but tedious, and I will tell the person to go to medical with a borg shell if any doctors are on station. I have other things to do than tie myself to upgrading one single player for 10 minutes, especially when they're not even a borg.

zxaber wrote:

Sandshark808 wrote:Roboticists are always willing to aug you. It's a boring job if nobody asks for surgery and nobody is signing up for posi brains.

Auging surgery is easy but tedious, and I will tell the person to go to medical with a borg shell if any doctors are on station. I have other things to do than tie myself to upgrading one single player for 10 minutes, especially when they're not even a borg.

This is precisely it. It's 10 minutes at least per procedure. It feels selfish to even request it unless you're good at surgery and are offering to reciprocate.

And whatever job you have, you are out of the game along with the roboticist for that time. It derails things.

Don't get every augmentation then.

oranges wrote:Don't get every augmentation then.

We're talking purely about the body piece augmentations. The core 6 cyborg part replacements that let you then perform the implant surgeries on yourself. If the implants are ever researched.

People seldom utilize implants or augmentation due to the hassle involved and the fact that the downsides overshadow any benefits. One or two people out of 90 in a packed house may play around with them because nobody wants to be on the table and miss a chunk of the shift unless they're getting the instant feature and gear set offered by getting borged. And because 1 or 2 out of 90 are using it, you're not getting people researching implants or cybernetic organs. Because they'll just kill and clone if the organs are bad. I've had people in medical beat me to death just to clone me quicker.

Augmentation has a lot of cool kit and you become far more formidable if you ever get a complete set of upgrades, but that's looking at a 2 hour game minimum where people are doing their jobs. Because otherwise you're stuck until at least the 40 minute mark without any implants where you're just getting mistreated medically because people don't understand the welder/cable healing system used by augged parts.

The balance of power should be compared to cyborgs. Cyborg surgery is one surgery and then being plunked into an assembly like chassis. You gain instant benefits. Instant loadouts. The most people have to do after that is a reset or the odd singular upgrade where they slam every module possible into you. They also have single-click one-part healing unless their wires get damaged. You have to abide by the Lawset, but that's a minor inconvenience unless people are abusing the laws where-in you're likely to get Malf laws. But because of the enslavement involved it makes sense to have this be manual.

Full-body augmentation starts you off as a functional cripple. And it takes 6 surgeries to get there. And if it ever took off and became more popular with people starting to realize what your upgrades were Sec would keep an axe handy to cut the arms off of augmented individuals before jailing them. Regardless of if they had those upgrades or not.

Borgs also lose the flexibility of hands, and cannot pick up or use most objects. The modules come with tools, but you can't easily multitask like a human can. Trying to compare them to augmented humans just because some surgery and metal parts are involved doesn't work so well.

Augmenting is powerful (get to ignore cobbychem, get to self implant) with some good downsides (EMP stuns you for as long as it would a borg). It's biggest drawback is requiring a bunch of time from another player (while you're pretty much free to alt-tab during the process). But I'm not really sure what the best way to fix that is; an auto-surgeon would probably push it too far in the other direction.

zxaber wrote:Borgs also lose the flexibility of hands, and cannot pick up or use most objects. The modules come with tools, but you can't easily multitask like a human can. Trying to compare them to augmented humans just because some surgery and metal parts are involved doesn't work so well.

Augmenting is powerful (get to ignore cobbychem, get to self implant) with some good downsides (EMP stuns you for as long as it would a borg). It's biggest drawback is requiring a bunch of time from another player (while you're pretty much free to alt-tab during the process). But I'm not really sure what the best way to fix that is; an auto-surgeon would probably push it too far in the other direction.

I just had someone ask to be augged only to get off the table, rush the research console, and spend the entire department's budget on toys for only them to enjoy. Because out of a full server only they went full aug, and they were aware that was the only way to get their toys.

As it stands, augmentation is a liability to flow due to the nature of the process. It's one step away from researching upgrades for Security cyborgs. You'd think Sec and the Heads would be thrilled at the prospect of being flashproof or at having the ability to not drop their weapons, but that means them letting someone operate on them. 9/10 times that's not happening. At all.

Most shifts during primetime are under 30 minutes. That means that you are tethered. 10 for printing parts and a surgery. Each time. Each augjob. So every round you do the same thing and then never get to enjoy the results. And it's worthless for Nuke Ops. You're never going to get anything out of augmentation in the one game mode where it'd be a definite asset. In Revs it just means you're immune to flashing if you have the eyes implanted by that time, but even if you're full-aug that just means they need to put in a little more effort as they're lynching you.

For a department called robotics, robotocists sure hate doing anything involving the actual robots. Big down vote on this.

carshalash wrote:For a department called robotics, robotocists sure hate doing anything involving the actual robots. Big down vote on this.

Well, it's more that the baseline augmentation of replacing someone's body with robot parts is an indulgence. You have people who want to be cyborgs. They take precedent. And then you have the cyborgs and the AI who you are also working with. They take more precedent. So you have 2 roboticists, possibly just 1 depending on the shift, and having people demanding you make 6 parts each and perform 6 surgeries each for something that does not benefit the station at all is not exactly a cool thing to do. You end up stuck down a rabbit hole where you have to tune out everything else that's happening, and then the station's burning down from a plasma fire you didn't notice because you were focused on doing surgery after surgery like a machine.

I don't like asking other roboticists for it because by the time it's done the shift is over. Or there's a line of people waiting to be borged, and cyborgs are actually useful.

You're accusing roboticists of not wanting to work with robots. Each borg augmentation surgery suite is 3 bots not prowling the station. It's a person not getting a limb replacement. It's one less cyborg by the nature of the raw parts required. Something like 50 sheets of iron consumed for cosmetics. All for someone to indulge themself if the tech is ever researched.

And then there's the matter of math. Borg augs + Implants is 6 surgeries + 6 surgeries minimum. Implants is just 6 surgeries.

I'm not saying it should be some free, automatic process, but I feel there's room for streamlining. Maybe a machine that lets you perform surgery on yourself that can be loaded with parts? Something to alleviate the burden you place on others. Because I can't help but feel that I'm just a big metal piece of shit afterward. Because there are more valuable things that could've been done with that time and those resources.

Perhaps instead of an autodoc, augmentations becomes more pre-work and less installation. make augmentation one surgery, have it be installing a pre-built rig with the parts you want on it instead of every part individually. so it becomes a matter of building the rig before the surgery similar to how you build cyborgs.

Hell if you make adding to the rig a simpler process after installation you can have starting with an empty rig as a perk.

making it similar to building cyborgs would also make augmentation not require as much of a wiki dive as well.

What if you could prep a cyborg shell, then have a surgery that installs all of it at once into a person? I think this would move it into the right direction at least.


having played a roboticist before, I know the fact that it takes ~10 mins looking at a surgery table for minimal benefits is why I am disinclined to do it, and the fact that it requires the cooperation for two persons, when you never know if this is a shift that is just about to end.

How about making production line. Similar to

no autosurgeons, there's a lot of downtime for docs that this is great for.

most implants/organs DON'T require robotics tho.

Cobby wrote:no autosurgeons, there's a lot of downtime for docs that this is great for.

most implants/organs DON'T require robotics tho.

Roboticists often don't really enjoy doing them and so they'll often refuse. Because they'd rather be doing other things. Like tending to the cyborgs. Or doing nothing and standing around waiting for something to happen so they can take part in the greater events during the shift.

It's a difficult question to answer or overcome and what it comes down to is who the active roboticists are. And the reality is that 2-3 people in a packed house bother with implants. Lots of research points and materials at play for something nobody uses, even when it's advertised as being on offer. It's a similar issue as most advanced surgery procedures. Also general medical treatment, to a degree. A lot of people just don't trust others to work on them in anything beyond simple and predictable ways.

Perhaps this in part a map design issue. Surgery theaters and robotics tend to be out of the way or capable of locking themselves down. And with things like changelings roaming around, they're not the sorts of places you want to be naked and laying down. That's one good thing about Kilo's design. The Robotics operating theater is at a window facing the dining area and a high traffic corridor. Versus others where it's on the opposite side of the map from Sec in a dark and shady corner where nobody can see you if the Robo decides to bash your brains in. Then again, that also means if someone's on the table that happens to be an assassination target, pew pew pew they're dead.

Cobby wrote:no autosurgeons, there's a lot of downtime for docs that this is great for.

most implants/organs DON'T require robotics tho.

Augmentations however do, which is the issue being discussed. If you want doctors to do augs, add basic borg parts to the medical protolathe.

Good day chaps.

https://github.com/HippieStation/Hippie ... pull/12128

That is all.

GuyonBroadway wrote:Good day chaps.

https://github.com/HippieStation/Hippie ... pull/12128

That is all.

for the record, we don't have an autodoc because we like to make surgery the tradeoff for the powerful things it gives, not because nobody could code it. there being a PR for it doesnt change this

The issue people seem to have is the time investment, along with the fact you can't pre-assemble like you can a cyborg shell.

Make directly slapping a cyborg head onto a cyborg chest start a creation of an augmented chest+head, with a timer for you to cancel out of it incase that was unintended. Have the chest be set to species human by default for streamlining. The augmented chest then has prosthetic replacement already started for all limb zones (arms/legs) and begins on the last step so that all you have to do is attach the limbs.

To keep this from being a waste of time. Have all organs are basic robotic versions. In addition, make robotic parts not decay or produce miasma. The body gets a blank, generic name to start with but inherits the UI of the first brain to be put in it.

When someone does come, if you pre-assembled, all you have to do is an organ manipulation from one body to the other, reducing it to a singular surgery (you did prep the robo head for organ manip ahead of time, right?). May require a defibriliator to get the juice flowing to start with.

PKPenguin321 wrote:

GuyonBroadway wrote:Good day chaps.

https://github.com/HippieStation/Hippie ... pull/12128

That is all.

for the record, we don't have an autodoc because we like to make surgery the tradeoff for the powerful things it gives, not because nobody could code it. there being a PR for it doesnt change this

Yes but you could just steal it and black/witelist surgeries it can do and save some hassle.

Interestingly it has three uses that people bother with on hippie,

1: Self augmentation (most common)
2: Tend wounds (Sometimes)
3: Brain surgery (rarely)

I saw a guy use it to deck himself out with implants a grand total of twice (and I was one of them) and once someone used it to revive a dead body. Heck sticking one in the medbay lobby tends to not lead to mass cases of transhumanisn because for implants or borg limbs you either need to A: Break into robotics or sci which tends to result in a screwdriver lobotomy or B: Break into the medbay autolathe room which is a good way to get a napalm enema and a syringe full of chloral.

Oh and there was that time a clown kept slipping people, pushing them inside and mashing the "pacification" surgery button, that was a hoot.

It shouldnt be self activatable. It should still require trusting another person to press the button not to kill you. The ease of use should also mean an increased risk of someone murdering your ass with it.

no auto surgeries

oranges wrote:no auto surgeries

How about a chamber with a neural interface where you preload what you'll need as far as parts/organs and then perform the surgeries manually through said interface?

I'm just throwing thoughts at the wall now to see if they have any merit.

Make this a nukeop item

Tarchonvaagh wrote:Make this a nukeop item

Nuke Ops already have CMO-style autosurgeons for implants. Which isn't what I was talking about with this thread. Really, I've just stopped playing Robo for the most part, because it's a job where you're the robot. If you make borgs it's more of a burden on you. And you can research cool shit that you can never get for yourself. So it isn't worth playing the job. It's misery.

Augmentations are pretty strong, so I think people shouldn't just get an item that augs them instantly, maybe a late game machine that takes 5-10 mins out of your round to make you a semi-robot wouldn't be such a bad idea

Ahem: https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/47721

This should help alleviate your problem without introducing a craftable automated (automatic?) surgeon into the game.

ATHATH wrote:Ahem: https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/47721

This should help alleviate your problem without introducing a craftable automated (automatic?) surgeon into the game.

It doesn't help at all with the issues regarding the roboticist being unable to indulge himself and of roboticists not wanting to do the surgery. Roboticists often want compensation to do that for other people because it's a procedure of empowering that one person. Some like myself don't mind doing it if there's idle time, but others hate doing it with a raw passion and will refuse. And sometimes there's shit going on and even those who are generally willing will tell the person to fuck off.

It isn't about the steps. A good roboticist can do the surgery in 3 minutes. It's about the very nature of what's being done. It's "hey, stop doing what you want to do and give your attention to me". And over the course of many shifts it just becomes a thing where the roboticist closes the shutters and goes silent.

Roboticist is a job where you succeed by not doing your job. Don't make cyborgs, because all the cyborgs will expect you to nanny them. Don't make exosuits for others because they may kill you with them later. Don't even interact with the outside, because everyone will want something at the worst time.

What it all boils down to is that the roboticist job offers the roboticist himself one avenue of indulgence, and exosuits get old. The way augmentation is would be like if exosuits required two people to install every part every step of the way during construction.

If the robo is not an asshole and you're not an assistant they'll probably help you

Tarchonvaagh wrote:If the robo is not an asshole and you're not an assistant they'll probably help you

Like I said, roboticists don't even like making cyborgs for the most part. Some charitable ones do, but overall? No.

build your own fab or take theirs, it's not like chemistry where they can just make bombs with the other one you didn't steal lol.

So i imagine you want context for why OP is like this.

He robotides?/validhunts in a mech every round and tells people that he doesnt do borgings at the start of the round, and indeed he doesn't do borgings.

Im not quite sure honestly why one would make balance ideas if they dont actually use anything relating to the ideas. I've played roboticist for well over 100 hours and i can safely say borging still remains something i will do on a dime.

Find the surgeries too long? Get a surgery toolset implant or advanced tools.

Bring back self surgery but it's slower and has an inherent failure rate higher than the 20% you can alleviate with that spray

Critawakets wrote:So i imagine you want context for why OP is like this.

He robotides?/validhunts in a mech every round and tells people that he doesnt do borgings at the start of the round, and indeed he doesn't do borgings.

Untrue. I don't play Robo anymore at all because I don't like being buried and then being helpless when I need the assistance.

Listen, this is all I'm asking for.


That's a joke, but yeah. I'd really just like some advanced surgery table with a neural interface.

no