Remove/nerf/change menders + hypospray suggestion

[NanoDano]

Everytime I play as a doctor I can't help but think how it would be if we didn't have menders, it seems like medbay could totally still be fine without them. And injecting people with a slurry of meds you made and slapping a pack on top to get them back in shape seems like it would be a lot more fun/involved than clicking them with a mender and standing still.

I think I've heard that medbay didn't always have menders so Im not sure for what purpose they were added but I think making them a worse but optional tool for new doctor's instead of being better than chems would be cool. On top of that, with the focus on chems for healing, giving hyposprays an increased capacity (50?) but making them rarer and/or more expensive would complement the new doctor playstyle nicely.

Obviously I can't see into the future but I expect removing or nerfing the menders would also make chemsci and botany interact more with medbay, whenever I play botanist I like to send medbay healing chems but they aren't used by a lot of doctors simply because menders exist.

[cyberTripping]

So, menders are for topical application, right? Traditionally brute or burn, sometimes synthflesh for both. Before menders, the meta was still styptic/silver sulf/synthflesh, but just in patch form. It was essentially the same level of involvement for brute/burn, except you wasted a billion reagents on overapplying patches and had a more annoying time fiddling with stuff in your inventory rather than actually helping people. I don't think removing them would be beneficial for the md experience.

[Kotlol]

I really DO NOT RECOMMEND removing menders, as it would only do a different cascade effect.
"Put people in the cryo tubes"

Heck I do that when I am playing doctor and I am getting swarmed or someone is critical.
Cause by putting them in the cryo tube I just have to apply some chems but they will 95% surely not die.

If you remove menders or nerf them.. It will either cause a waste of chems or people just stuffing everyone into the cryo tube over and over.
The reason I barely see cryotube use lately being done is because critical people need to be constantly monitored and treated.. and guess what helps the most with critcal patients? THEY GET MENDED, cause other wise the doctors will be constantly saving 1 life while letting 5 others die from the Antag attack that happened recently.

Menders aren't there to make Doctoring easy, it's there to free up time for when it's crisis time. When it's quiet.. menders make it boring, but when you get 8 patients that will die at any moment... you will use cryo tubes and menders to save em all. Cause without... Atleast 3 of those patients WILL DIE from their treatment being too slow and other chems will run out.

[babayetu83]

menders are what prop up doctors and prevent it from being a miserable slog like it once was, allowing fast and quick treatment of patients who have simple brute/burn damage. my advice is if the stuff you send medical supplies from botany is to actually let them know what it is and why, and presumably not wordlessly launching a pile of white weed leaves through the mail chute and then acting surprised when people don't know what it's for

[Judobum]

Removing menders wont really solve the "Just hit them with this" issue. As stated even without menders medbay is still functional. Its likely it would fall into just slapping patches onto people with burn or brute. Doctors could just make a bunch of patch boxes for burn or brute in pharmacy and it would substitute for a mender with the downside of it being a bit more cumbersome if patch boxes are used or consuming a lot of inventory space if taken as single patches

[TDHooligan]

menders are what prop up doctors and prevent it from being a miserable slog like it once was, allowing fast and quick treatment of patients who have simple brute/burn damage.

quite the opposite really, menders' first purpose was to limit resource wasting and made healing less instant.

since then the devs have balanced medbay around them, namely through:
 - balance changes to stop instant healing with styptic beakers etc.
 - making it harder for people to raid medbay into destitution by locking medicine in cartridges
 
as brute/burn healing is now mostly monopolised by the menders, it also means they can be adjusted if healing with them is too fast/slow (like how they ramp up now to prevent combat heals)

[Kotlol]

menders are what prop up doctors and prevent it from being a miserable slog like it once was, allowing fast and quick treatment of patients who have simple brute/burn damage.

quite the opposite really, menders' first purpose was to limit resource wasting and made healing less instant.

since then the devs have balanced medbay around them, namely through:
 - balance changes to stop instant healing with styptic beakers etc.
 - making it harder for people to raid medbay into destitution by locking medicine in cartridges
 
as brute/burn healing is now mostly monopolised by the menders, it also means they can be adjusted if healing with them is too fast/slow (like how they ramp up now to prevent combat heals)

Never knew the original reason but this makes alot of sense. I seen many medbays develop insta heals (cryoblock pills) and such.. so yea. No removing the menders...if anything they are fine to me as it is.

It fast, effecient and snappy. It doesn't waste time on the doctor or patient.

[Goat_Real]

I really don’t agree with the idea of changing menders. This wouldn’t improve or make medbay more engaging since all you would be doing in increasing the amount of tedium by making medbay either sit there and watch you in the cryotube or sit continually hitting you with their scanner while they wait for the patch to do the work. For medbay, menders are just way more convient and responsive for both the doctor and the patient. The sound of the automender alone just feels a lot better than sitting in silence waiting for a patch.

[Dhaidburt]

I've honestly ran into the same thing as botany, making patches or other healing medicine and medbay just.. does not care. I think your efforts could be better used elsewhere, such as sending out patches to other departments who may need it or just in general. They don't have menders, and depending on the map they could be too far away from medbay to heal up before they die.

[RelentlessGarbage]

Given how useful menders are in crises, I'd say we probably shouldn't touch them.

I've honestly ran into the same thing as botany, making patches or other healing medicine and medbay just.. does not care. I think your efforts could be better used elsewhere, such as sending out patches to other departments who may need it or just in general. They don't have menders, and depending on the map they could be too far away from medbay to heal up before they die.

That said, I concur with this comment; sending any kind of medical produce to Medbay is something that, at best, will get you a response of "oh, cool," from the doctors on staff. And by that I don't mean stuffing it in the mail chute wordlessly - I mean literally walking into medbay, telling a doctor on staff what I brought, dumping it on the floor to show them and then putting it in the Reagent Extractor, and telling them that they should use it for things and stuff. There's, uh, not a lot of appreciation for it, at least outwardly. I guess I'd have to ask, but I doubt any of the synthmeat or varieties of Venne that I've sent over (the former of which is perfect for menders) ever actually gets used. And forget about making synthorgans - organ transplants are the stuff of RP, I don't think I've seen one happen a single time in classic. Unless you're trying to make wacky food (heartburgers, brainbread, etc.) it's better to stick to synthlimbs for when you invariably come across someone poor soul that's been delimbed by a katana wielding maniac or the crusher, since there's a fat chance anyone else will help 'em.

Patches do end up being useful for anyone that is caught outside of the sphere of influence of medbay and the medical borgs, but they're generally far inferior to menders. Same goes for hyposprays, simply because their chemical capacity is laughable (and you also can't get them from a Chemaster).

On the flip side, it's worth noting that the limit for the number of patches that can fit in a patch box is really high - a patch box can contain more medical chems in it than a single Automender could ever hope to have. (A box with 40 patches in it has a maximum 600u of chemicals that it can apply to patients, since patches only apply half of their contents to the patient, and I think the limit on patches held is higher than that.) However, having to manually click to take patches out means that it's rather cumbersome compared to a mender, so I'm sure a doctor would not favor patches over menders in nearly any situation.

[babayetu83]

well, getting rid of automenders isn't going to solve this issue

if anything i think it would be a good idea to add a chemmaster to botany on all maps (unsure if it is or isnt already) to process their stuff into patches/bottles/pills

i also think that it goes unused due to how most docs (on rp at least) make a big stock of perf and pent at the beginning of a round, so most doctors are capable of making what they need on their own very quickly which i think is a good thing since you dont want to come in and be told "oh well actually none of the botanists have sent us anything so we cant really deal with more severe injuries and the like sorry "

[Lord_earthfire]

i also think that it goes unused due to how most docs (on rp at least) make a big stock of perf and pent at the beginning of a round, so most doctors are capable of making what they need on their own very quickly which i think is a good thing since you dont want to come in and be told "oh well actually none of the botanists have sent us anything so we cant really deal with more severe injuries and the like sorry "

I actually am for this reason an fan of the removal of pharmacy. Medbay got science, botany, QM, heck even the bartender to make them chems. I would like to come in and get told "sorry, help yourself, we are out of chems"

[Kotlol]

i also think that it goes unused due to how most docs (on rp at least) make a big stock of perf and pent at the beginning of a round, so most doctors are capable of making what they need on their own very quickly which i think is a good thing since you dont want to come in and be told "oh well actually none of the botanists have sent us anything so we cant really deal with more severe injuries and the like sorry "

I actually am for this reason an fan of the removal of pharmacy. Medbay got science, botany, QM, heck even the bartender to make them chems. I would like to come in and get told "sorry, help yourself, we are out of chems"

Same Pharmacy is suppose to be just this: "The place where medicine is stored"
Other wise it's just another chem-sci spot...

I seen several times (not common), to see borgs and doctors just do chemsci and not treating patients.
I even seen a "pharmacist" ignore a dieing patient I carried in, no other doctor was at hand and I had to do it myself as the detective to make sure they didn't die.
Then again that pharmacist may been afk.

Eitherway... I see no point for doctors to dive into chem-sci. Just remove it. Have it be the place where you can get menders/beakers of chemicals and such.
And just have it be the place pharmacists will give medicine or something.

Also it gives Chem-sci something to do with the chemical orders and makes Science and Medbay communicate again.

[RelentlessGarbage]

I actually am for this reason an fan of the removal of pharmacy. Medbay got science, botany, QM, heck even the bartender to make them chems. I would like to come in and get told "sorry, help yourself, we are out of chems"

Same Pharmacy is suppose to be just this: "The place where medicine is stored"
Other wise it's just another chem-sci spot...

I seen several times (not common), to see borgs and doctors just do chemsci and not treating patients.
I even seen a "pharmacist" ignore a dieing patient I carried in, no other doctor was at hand and I had to do it myself as the detective to make sure they didn't die.
Then again that pharmacist may been afk.

Eitherway... I see no point for doctors to dive into chem-sci. Just remove it. Have it be the place where you can get menders/beakers of chemicals and such.
And just have it be the place pharmacists will give medicine or something.

Also it gives Chem-sci something to do with the chemical orders and makes Science and Medbay communicate again.

I know we're a bit off-topic here, but I'd be willing to support a removal of the pharmacy's ability to make chems. However, I'd be against their ability to extract chems from other things, such as produce. If medbay has its own ChemDispenser and heater/cooler, then an experienced chemist medic can supply medbay with nearly any medication they need - great if the Science department is incompetent, but that cuts out any need to interact with science or the other departments for supplies, which sorta stinks. However, if a botanist or the like comes down to botany with a load of produce, being unable to extract that produce into useful chems in Medbay would pose a real problem, or at least be a massive inconvenience. (Not helped by the fact that it's way easier to transport large amounts of produce then it is an equivalent amount of chems from said produce, and that many plants have more than one useful drug in them that Medbay might want to extract selectively.) 

Anyways, I think menders are OK - the cost of making them was already increased in the past as a nerf. I might suggest making Hyposprays slightly more readily available to non-medical personnel (perhaps as a hidden option from hacked medical vendors), both because it give antags another fun tool to work with once emagged and helps regular crewmembers with healing chems act as supplementary doctors. That would help "level the playing field" in terms of a regular crewmember's ability to heal while still giving medical personnel more effective equipment in the menders.

[TDHooligan]

I'd be willing to support a removal of the pharmacy's ability to make chems. However, I'd be against their ability to extract chems from other things, such as produce. If medbay has its own ChemDispenser and heater/cooler, then an experienced chemist medic can supply medbay with nearly any medication they need - great if the Science department is incompetent, but that cuts out any need to interact with science or the other departments for supplies, which sorta stinks.

all doctors did before pharmacy was ask chemists to make chems they need to do their jobs, get ignored, then break/sneak in to do it themselves. the key thing is to -encourage- interaction, not force it. as of late it seems goon is finally shifting towards this idea.

doctors still regularly ask chemistry for things, but at least now they dont need to rely on chemists having the patience to make more basic meds every 5 minutes