/tg/Station 13

This idea is targeted towards MRP servers.

Life on Space Station 13 can be quite dangerous, and everyday many of its crew members must undergo brutal surgeries in order to stay alive. But most of these surgeries happen without any use of anesthetics, with doctors and patients alike seemingly ignoring the tremendous amount of pain they're supposed to inflict.

Right now, the only reason to use anesthetics is to make sure someone is completely incapacitated while you're doing surgery on them. And if you just need somebody unable to move, it is easier and safer to handcuff or straightjacket them. This makes anesthetics almost completely pointless.

That's why I propose that doing surgery on a patient who is awake and not under the effect of any numbing substance becomes more difficult. Being subject to surgery should be something painful, and the pain should affect your mental state and make you convulse in agony, making it harder for the doctors to successfuly complete each surgery step. This would add a layer of depth to surgery, making it more immersive and interesting.

Being unconscious should make the person not experience any pain, therefore not decreasing the chance of success of the surgery.
Alternatively, being under the influence of alcohol may decrease the amount of pain someone experiences, depending on its concentration in someone's blood. This should work as a ghetto replacement for anesthetics.
Otherwise, performing surgery on someone who's being subjected to unmitigated pain should be considerably harder.

Also, for quicker and simpler surgeries (such as tending wounds), there could be a liquid anesthetic substance (morphine?) that can be injected into the specific body part that is receiving surgery. This would have the same effect of using an anesthetic tank, but restricted to a specific body part, and avoiding the need for the patient to be unconscious.

I agree with this but still think you should change back to the trash panda picture

the MRP doctor can just put anaesthetic on the dude for the RP reasons already if they dont want aneasthetics ahelp them for fail rp

Counterpoint: i have to remain conscious to walk the knuckledragging atavists that populate manuel medbay through the surgery.

Super Aggro Crag wrote:Counterpoint: i have to remain conscious to walk the knuckledragging atavists that populate manuel medbay through the surgery.

Crag isn't even wrong but goddamn how hard it is to use the fucking handhold computer

I thought it already speeds up the surgery.

NecromancerAnne wrote:I thought it already speeds up the surgery.

Nope, absolutely no benefit. Even if it sped it up surgery is so fast it wouldn't be worth the time of procuring the anesthetics to begin with.

it speeds it up in the instance where the user wont stop moving.

Cobby wrote:it speeds it up in the instance where the user wont stop moving.

If they won't stop moving the usual ways of applying aesthetics won't work since they have to stay still for them to apply. Unless you're running around gunning people around with sedative syringes, but that's a fringe case.

Doing surgery is already pretty easy. Most of the time all it takes is to use drapes, select the kind of surgery you want, then try using every surgery tool on the patient until the game accepts it. Rinse and repeat. There's barely any punishment for mistakes, and the worst thing that can happen is you leaving a tool inside someone's belly by accident.

If someone who's playing as a doctor isn't using the many tools the game offers them (such as health analyzer) properly, let them be punished for it. And yes, you might argue that the one who gets punished is the patient who's being treated by a complete fucking moron, but that's just the nature of a cooperative mmorpg. And it is also in the nature of a cooperative mmorpg to be socially punished for being incompetent at your role. If people see a doctor constantly fucking up, they should complain about them to their superiors. And if those complaints are ignored, they should take matters into their own hands, and that can be done in many interesting ways:

creating their own alternative medbay in maintenance;
starting a riot;
planting false evidence on those people, incriminating them;
kidnapping them and breaking their fingers;
or just fucking mudering them
etc.

The most memorable and fun stories happen because of the social aspect of the game. Leaving room for social punishment is important, and makes things more interesting than just increasing the difficulty of game mechanics. Reacting to people performing their jobs badly, and wanting to have them replaced should be part of the roleplay.

Super Aggro Crag wrote:Counterpoint: i have to remain conscious to walk the knuckledragging atavists that populate manuel medbay through the surgery.

Wouldn't this be quite an interesting scenario though? You, drugged and half-numb, trying to explain to a moron how to save you?

Also, I've played quite a few times as a doctor in Manuel, and it is definetly not as bad as you guys are implying.

NecromancerAnne wrote:I thought it already speeds up the surgery.

If it does, the amount by which it happens is negligible. I like using it whenever I do surgery, for roleplaying reasons, and I don't feel any difference.

It can be pretty bad in Manuel, but hey, I agree with most of what you're saying. I straight up dislike the handhold computer and the fact we have no more fail-states in surgery when using the wrong tools, but if people are already fucking up without those I don't know how it'd be otherwise.

It might help if applying the anesthetic was easier. Perhaps it could be built into medical surgery tables, so all you'd need to do is press a button on the table or console to lower a mask and knock the patient out.
Otherwise the time and fiddling needed for anesthesia will never be worth it to save a little time on the operation.

XDTM wrote:It might help if applying the anesthetic was easier. Perhaps it could be built into medical surgery tables, so all you'd need to do is press a button on the table or console to lower a mask and knock the patient out.
Otherwise the time and fiddling needed for anesthesia will never be worth it to save a little time on the operation.

This isn't a bad idea, plus it'd make fighting in the medrooms kinda interesting. Knock someone onto a table, press the lever kronk, they get at least woozy before they can get back up.

XDTM wrote:It might help if applying the anesthetic was easier. Perhaps it could be built into medical surgery tables, so all you'd need to do is press a button on the table or console to lower a mask and knock the patient out.
Otherwise the time and fiddling needed for anesthesia will never be worth it to save a little time on the operation.

That's why I also proposed localized anesthesia by injection. quicker to do, useful for the simpler surgical proceedures.

But I do agree that applying full anesthesia should be easier.

the codebase does not distinguish

oranges wrote:the codebase does not distinguish

Then it doesn't need to be localized anesthesia, but just a weaker kind of it. Something that makes the person groggy, but not asleep. Just having morphine in someone's blood should work, I think.

Anyway, the main point is to make anesthesia useful for surgery and to consider the effects of pain on a patient.

I want this to happen. Of course it would need playtestig and a lot of fiddling around to integrate it and making it the norm, but really, I've always found the lack of sudden screaming, involuntary pain impulses and/or resulting trauma from being operated or amputated while awake extremely awkward and inmersion-breaking. Sure, you can RP it, but scream emote doesn't even have sound and it gets kind of stale to be screaming and yelling random bullshit when you're in pain (and I've done it). This pain and impulses are not something you should decide to RP, and it should work the same as when your character screams automatically for losing a limb to an explosion or such.

Everytime this idea pops up I keep asking the same thing and so far no one can give me a good answer

how would this be fun or improve the game

doing things for the sake of immersion is fucking stupid. You cant point a magazine at the ground in real life and have all the unused bullets magically fly into it. It may not be immersive, but its a lot more enjoyable to not have to manually pick up every single bullet and put it into the gun

Frequently the skull dented morons that play medical have fucked up basic surgery that I had to end up guiding them through. Not only that, but its also surprisingly not fun to sit and stare at a blank screen. People having surgery done on them would just have to alt tab

how does the game benefit from forcing people to stop playing for no reason

NoxVS wrote:Everytime this idea pops up I keep asking the same thing and so far no one can give me a good answer

how would this be fun or improve the game

doing things for the sake of immersion is fucking stupid. You cant point a magazine at the ground in real life and have all the unused bullets magically fly into it. It may not be immersive, but its a lot more enjoyable to not have to manually pick up every single bullet and put it into the gun

Frequently the skull dented morons that play medical have fucked up basic surgery that I had to end up guiding them through. Not only that, but its also surprisingly not fun to sit and stare at a blank screen. People having surgery done on them would just have to alt tab

how does the game benefit from forcing people to stop playing for no reason

You talk like this would increase the time it would take for surgery to happen by a lot, but it shouldn't. It's just an extra click or two, and has more to do with having the resource (anesthetic tank, morphine or alcohol) available than making it harder.

And Manuel rounds usually last between 50 minutes to 2 hours. What's the problem with being out for a couple minutes? The MRP experience isn't supposed to be super fast-paced and action-packed.

It is about creating interesting and diverse scenarios, where people have to adapt both their decision-making and roleplay to different situations.

Space Panda wrote:You talk like this would increase the time it would take for surgery to happen by a lot, but it shouldn't. It's just an extra click or two, and has more to do with having the resource (anesthetic tank, morphine or alcohol) available than making it harder.

And Manuel rounds usually last between 50 minutes to 2 hours. What's the problem with being out for a couple minutes? The MRP experience isn't supposed to be super fast-paced and action-packed.

It is about creating interesting and diverse scenarios, where people have to adapt both their decision-making and roleplay to different situations.

Not playing the game isnt an interesting or diverse scenario. If anything this will just lead to people getting silently murdered with no chance for counterplay.

how does the game benefit from forcing people to stop playing for no reason

NoxVS wrote:

Space Panda wrote:You talk like this would increase the time it would take for surgery to happen by a lot, but it shouldn't. It's just an extra click or two, and has more to do with having the resource (anesthetic tank, morphine or alcohol) available than making it harder.

And Manuel rounds usually last between 50 minutes to 2 hours. What's the problem with being out for a couple minutes? The MRP experience isn't supposed to be super fast-paced and action-packed.

It is about creating interesting and diverse scenarios, where people have to adapt both their decision-making and roleplay to different situations.

Not playing the game isnt an interesting or diverse scenario. If anything this will just lead to people getting silently murdered with no chance for counterplay.

how does the game benefit from forcing people to stop playing for no reason

You could ask the same question about the thing that caused the person to need to have surgery, which is usually getting injured by some antag. Why have antags with murder objectives then? Your argument makes no sense.

Also, most surgeries that would require total anesthesy happen because someone has got their health in a very bad situation, meaning most of the times they'd be already unconscious or barely able to act.

And the reason why I'm proposing partial anesthesy (making people groggy instead of asleep) for simpler surgeries is exactly to avoid getting people unconscious all the time.

This is mrp not hrp, I dont trust either being taken under for 30m because something happened and they forgot or they're a traitor and kill me.

The reason i like pushing for surgery anesthesia is because it gives a plusibly deniable reason to knock out the patient and do anything you want to them without them knowing. If anesthesia becomes the norm, then traitor surgeons become able to do gimmicks like planting bombs in their patient's chest cavities, or other surgeries that would raise alarms if the patient was able to see them.

here's what I said about it in a PR

I guess my concern is that even if you make it desirable to the player from a cost:benefit pov, the reality is the mechanic encourages the player to do something short of alt-tabbing.

From a medical pov, I think there is a delicate balance because you have to appease both doctors (what I tend to focus on) AND patients (sleeper/trekchem era). As someone who has moved towards surgery, I will be the first to tell you it is not terribly enjoyable for either side even if it does a lot of things right for balance.

Forcing your living patients to be in a situation where tabbing out of the game watching runtime videos on y*utube is more tasteful than being tabbed into the game because of a number slider, regardless of how great that number slider is, feels like a design failing to me.

Yeah, the lack of gameplay for anyone unconscious is the main issue against this. The only solution i can think of that would make unconsciousness (and the antag gimmicks that would follow) acceptable is to add some kind of minigame while you're knocked out.
As a bonus, it would most likely prevent the player from seeing their surroundings as they currently can, which would make it possible for the player to potentially wake up without knowing where they were dragged.

bring back the old panda

Cobby wrote:here's what I said about it in a PR

I guess my concern is that even if you make it desirable to the player from a cost:benefit pov, the reality is the mechanic encourages the player to do something short of alt-tabbing.

From a medical pov, I think there is a delicate balance because you have to appease both doctors (what I tend to focus on) AND patients (sleeper/trekchem era). As someone who has moved towards surgery, I will be the first to tell you it is not terribly enjoyable for either side even if it does a lot of things right for balance.

Forcing your living patients to be in a situation where tabbing out of the game watching runtime videos on y*utube is more tasteful than being tabbed into the game because of a number slider, regardless of how great that number slider is, feels like a design failing to me.

maybe anasthetics could send you to dreamland where you can thunderdome against ghosts or something

PKPenguin321 wrote:

Cobby wrote:here's what I said about it in a PR

I guess my concern is that even if you make it desirable to the player from a cost:benefit pov, the reality is the mechanic encourages the player to do something short of alt-tabbing.

From a medical pov, I think there is a delicate balance because you have to appease both doctors (what I tend to focus on) AND patients (sleeper/trekchem era). As someone who has moved towards surgery, I will be the first to tell you it is not terribly enjoyable for either side even if it does a lot of things right for balance.

Forcing your living patients to be in a situation where tabbing out of the game watching runtime videos on y*utube is more tasteful than being tabbed into the game because of a number slider, regardless of how great that number slider is, feels like a design failing to me.

maybe anasthetics could send you to dreamland where you can thunderdome against ghosts or something

it’s literally the same as VR we had before there was a ghost role there you could spawn in and fight others n shit
the problem is that you’d have to be deleted from your body as long as you are there and it’s vr so naturally it would be broken and exploited

Cobby wrote:here's what I said about it in a PR

snip

Program in a rhythm game that slightly speeds up surgery when you get it right.

Sheodir wrote:

Cobby wrote:here's what I said about it in a PR

snip

Program in a rhythm game that slightly speeds up surgery when you get it right.

As long as lag and time dilation exist it's probably best to avoid anything based on timing.

XDTM wrote:

Sheodir wrote: Program in a rhythm game that slightly speeds up surgery when you get it right.

As long as lag and time dilation exist it's probably best to avoid anything based on timing.

I was mostly memeing. I think injured parties just have to accept they won't be talking for a while doing a surgery. The only other suggestion I have is that surgery beds specifically can have a feature where the patient is put down but can speak through the machine and see their surroundings, unless the station is emagged which immediately raises suspicion.

Sheodir wrote:

XDTM wrote:

Sheodir wrote: Program in a rhythm game that slightly speeds up surgery when you get it right.

As long as lag and time dilation exist it's probably best to avoid anything based on timing.

I was mostly memeing. I think injured parties just have to accept they won't be talking for a while doing a surgery. The only other suggestion I have is that surgery beds specifically can have a feature where the patient is put down but can speak through the machine and see their surroundings, unless the station is emagged which immediately raises suspicion.

maybe not see their surroundings, but to communicate their thoughts through the machine. maybe even have it connected to the common radio frequency