Make dying less deadly

[Superlagg]

Continuing what I'd posted in the Crit Fixes patch...

Death should be something you have to work at to inflict on someone else. People are oddly durable, and I think it makes for a much more interesting situation where someone is brutalized and left for dead, only to just barely survive and carry out act II.

If anything, I think that crit should be extended further, at least if who or whatever put you in crit stops trying to kill you. Maybe have a narrow stage between heart failure and arrest where you're more or less comatose; you'd be helpless, but crit would apply its damage at a slower rate.

...I think that crit should be less of a reliable killer. Or, more accurately, going below -100 HP or getting Cardiac Arrest shouldn't be almost certain death even in medbay.

Let me take you on the journey of a spaceman's transition from life into death. Our spaceman, we'll call her Dan, gets jumped by a traitor and toolboxed down to -51 HP before getting bored and leaving.

Each lifecycle she spends in crit, she'll take 1 oxy damage.

While she's between -51 and -79 HP, every lifecycle there's a 10% chance of entering Shock and a (HP * -0.08)% chance [~4%-6%] to develop Heart Failure, with some random fainting and paralysis thrown in for good measure. Over the course of this stretch of crit, there's a ~79% chance for her Heart to Fail, and a ~95% chance to catch Shock.

This isn't much of a problem since, even if she does develop Shock, it's not that bad until Stage 3. Then, all it does is occasionally stun her or increase her Losebreath, which for the life of me I can't find any evidence that it does anything other than make her gasp like an idiot. Same with Heart Failure, it only starts dealing damage at Stage 3.

Story's about the same from -80 to -99 HP; 4% chance per lifecycle to Heart Fail and paralyze her (briefly?), which if it hasn't already from the previous level of Crit or evolved from her almost-certain Shock, gives her a ~76% chance to catch Heart Failure. Not too bad, not too pleasant.

But then we get to Deepest Crit. Once Dan's below -100 HP, shit starts to get real. Every lifecycle, there's a (HP * -0.2)% chance [20%+] to develop Heart Failure, but more importantly there's a (HP * -0.1)% chance [10%+] to develop Cardiac Arrest. And now, in addition to taking damage, she's paralyzed until she's healed above -100 HP or she dies.

Cardiac Arrest, in most cases, assured death. Every lifecycle, Dan takes 20 oxy and 3 brain damage, and she's weakened the whole time. Also +20 Losebreath, for what it's worth.

And there's also a (((brainDamage * -5) + (HP + (oxyDamage / 2)) * -0.01)% chance per lifecycle to outright die. This starts at about 0.5% at -100 HP, with 100 brute and oxy damage, and goes up as Crit and Flatline progresses. Once she reaches -500 HP (with oxyDamage weighted half as much as everything else), or she's taken 120 points of brainDamage, she's dead for sure.

Of course, Perf and Mannitol will stabilize a Flatline, and a good solid ZAP has about a 50% chance to shoot it back into good old Heart Failure (while still below -100 HP...). Usually isn't the case in practice; Perfannitol isn't widely used, and shocking a heart back into rhythm is a gamble at best.

By the time the doc's realize that their patient is Flatlining, it's usually too late to do anything. Often, I won't even bother trying to save a heart-stopped patient, opting just to wait a few seconds for them to die, then jam them through the cloner. Efficient, but super boring.

So, what do I think would change this to something I (and only I) would find more interesting?

Tone down Flatlining. Maybe reduce the chances to get it, or lessen the damage it causes. Something where it's more practical to treat the patient, rather than to resurrect them.

Remove the random death chance, or have it start to kick in deeper into crit where it's more likely that help isn't coming. That, and Flatlining is already deadly enough to kill someone dead without a dice roll helping it.

Remove the permastun at -100 HP. Leave it to Flatline (or random stuns) to totally incapacitate someone.

Maybe even have Crit only able to induce Shock, forcing Heart Failure and Flatline to occur through the typical progression (or poisons). Sure, you (I) could easily cheese it with gallons of Saline, but then Hypertension could just as easily cheese you (me) back.

This isn't to say that it should be hard to fuck someone up! The purpose of all this is to make actually killing someone more of a hands-on activity. If something (traitors, critters, the engine, space) wants to kill you, it should have to make sure it damn well finishes the job.

I dunno. I mostly just want to have to do something other than Cryomix and Clone fucked up hallway turkeys.

[NateTheSquid]

it is kind of lame that all those things that instant crit/deepcrit you are almost always going to be permastunned until you die.

2 hits from c saber. 2 shots from spacker. 2 shots from old hunting rifle. enough punching.

why can i survive (and walk away to heal myself) standing 3 tiles from a maxcap TTV but I can't survive two puny bullets to my arm

[Sundance]

Honestly?

I agree that flatlining should be less deadly but I also feel you should be as just as helpless. Paralysis at -100 should be guaranteed, but there should be an indication to doctors that you reached this stage, i.e: with a deathrattle.

My reasoning is that stuff like cardiac failure (and to a greater degree, ascondment) gives doctors with a very small window to work with. When you are at this stage, you should be helpless, but not hopeless. 

This is an crapshoot, but I also feel the cryo chambers could be changed to act as sci-fi cryo chambers, in that it will halt the progression of any ailment. Someone with gibbis or missing heart? Run out of time with someone who has flatlined? Stuff em in there. All forms of injury will be paused, while you prep or get the necessary meds. 
This alone would be quite a powerful tool for medical.

[Zafhset]

If the crew got any more durable they'd be supermen, not spacemen.

From my personal experience with medical in game your description of medical scenarios is pretty exaggerated and sounds dramaticized to support your own points. Cardiac and heart stop situations really aren't that difficult to treat with the right tools and medical drugs.

[Nnystyxx]

If the crew got any more durable they'd be supermen, not spacemen.

From my personal experience with medical in game your description of medical scenarios is pretty exaggerated and sounds dramaticized to support your own points. Cardiac and heart stop situations really aren't that difficult to treat with the right tools and medical drugs.

more than anything, once somebody's in crit including yourself, you have VERY little awareness of when they will die
i've pumped people with drugs and shocked them and had them die, right after finding them, or manage to bring them back from what seemed like certain death

right now the cryo chambers are glorified 'chill out pills' à la dions dopamine, they're just cryostylane + cryoxadone + more annoying immobile setup

on the flip side it takes an almost irritating amount of time to kill stuff like monkeys when you're wailing on them with a giant surgical saw

[Vitatroll]

I rarely have a hard time saving someone with a single medkit. Epi and CPR are often enough, as it's usually OXY that's the biggest killer. What kind of logheads we got on the station that can't hold their breath for two minutes vs. death?

On cryomix: easy way to fix that is to nerf cryoxadone and make cryopods into something that is useful and not chem based.

[Lady Birb]

What the fuck.

[NateTheSquid]

What the fuck.

it's nerf or nothing

[Frank_Stein]

I dunno. In my experience, being in crit, no matter how you get there, is massively bad. A big killer for me is very short, suitless exposures in space when I've had to get out of pods near airlocks or to grab someone.

Which makes surviving actually really easy provided you've packed yourself meds to keep you from going into crit or taking you out of it quickly. I've watched a lot of people rampage reliably with some epi, salbutamol. Keeps em going long enough to take something to treat the burn and brute they have and keep going.

Which means people who powergame by grabbing those things beforehand end up doing better than anyone responding to things as they occur. It's not my style to carry around a bunch of shit like that ahead of time, but seems like a legit enough strategy.

All in all, I'm in favor of being in crit being a thing that you can stay alive in for quite awhile, but have it be something that keeps you real vulnerable for something else to finish you off. I'd like to see Medical be more about arriving to the scene and responding there rather than dragging everyone you see off to medbay.

[atomic1fire]

Dumb balence suggestion. Make crit easier to get out of solo, but entering into crit at any time should reduce your total stamina level. Representing total wear and tear.

That way you don't want to go into crit repeatedly because it becomes much harder to superman your way out of death without cloning.

Eventually you can't horror villain your way out of death no more because your body can't physically fight it.

It also rather creepily makes an in game form of torture possible.

[Zafhset]

It sounds like there's a lot of fixation on the cryo chambers/cryo pills as the go to solution for patients in critical conditions. That is very much like using the strongest antibiotic for every ailment and should not act as a crutch over proper medical procedure/knowledge. It's nice and all to have a seemingly OP thing that can treat most crit conditions, but there are at least a dozen other ways you can do it with more readily available supplies.

More often that not, I find that people die from crit quickly because they were properly wailed on in the first place. Sure they might've been taken out with relative ease with spackers or sabers, but wouldn't making people even harder to kill from those devalue the telecrystal cost of those items? Kind of takes away the whole idea of them being powerful-as-fudge weapons otherwise.

[Boon Yoon]

I disagree. Maybe I'm going against the spirit of Goon here, but after playing on other servers, I feel it's so easy to live here. You can't even break a limb, tear an artery, have internal bleeding, or take crazy organ damage. All you have to do here is defib someone a few times, hypo them maybe with epi, and cryo pill them. With non-cryo it's trivial as well. I think a more severe medical and damage system would be better than going in the opposite direction.

And how many saber hits should someone survive? I mean, will I have to hit someone 5 times in the arm to delimb? It's a fucking energy sword. It's deadly, and so is disarming and having it used on you. How is this a problem? Buff literally all weapons and nerf spacemen.

[Roomba]

Honestly, this seems more like an argument for nerfing cryostylane/cryoxadone pills than anything else.

[ferriswheel1]

.

Honestly, this seems more like an argument for nerfing cryostylane/cryoxadone pills than anything else.

As someone who regularly uses cyro pills, nerf them. Nerf them into the ground. They're cool and an interesting application of chemistry, but I feel it makes almost all other healing chemicals obsolete. They're also incredibly easy to make from roundstart. Starting as a doctor, you can immediately grab a spare cyro beaker, whip up some cyrostylane in 30 seconds and have a source of reliable omni-healing that'll last the entire round.

I'd really rather cyro be put to a more interesting use, like suspending critical patients like people have suggested. If nothing else, the healing from cyro should be slowed way down, to ensure other medical chemicals have a chance to be useful. I'd really rather we didn't have "magic button" healing chemicals that require so little interaction from doctors.

[Nnystyxx]

I still maintain one thing:

Salbutamol is too fucking rare. I don't mean that you can't get it out of med dispensers; I mean public vendors and, even more critically, medical borgs(!!!) lack any of it. Granted, this makes Medical valuable, but not so much for treatment as it is for stealing the most useful drug in the whole game (since it's often oxy damage that finishes you off).