MedSci discussion

[Kotlol]

The problem with Medical having to work with Sci to keep people alive...

Has one fundamental flaw.. and it's very easy.

"Chemistry blew up and we got no money to replace it"
"We cannot treat the wounded scientists cause we are out of chems"
"The bar tender has a chem dispenser / heater so I guess he has to do it"

That's the situation if pharmacy wasn't around.

Remember that people complain: "Medbay got bombed again..."
So now chemistry gets bombed and suddenly no one can get the chems they need to run medbay.
By having two medical chem locations makes it harder for antags to take out the chem supply wich is both good and bad, since it also means the antags have two/three places to get chems from. (And normally you don't even have to bomb chemistry, you just have to make sure a chemist makes a mistake and it takes itself out or hope artsci messes up)

And on donut 2 chemistry will have a nightmare getting chems to medbay.

And while I am fine with removing chemical dispensers out of medbay... I think it's better to turn pharmacy into a storage facility for easy to use medicine and have the medical storage contain the heavier chems most doctors want like perf.
So insted of doctors being in pharmacy making enough synthflesh and perf to last a round. Have a supply be there from the start, move the chem dispensers out. Increase the storage available from the start and have people self medicate from stuff from the dispensers and pharmacy!

[glowbold]

Chicken and egg problem. I've sat around on 90-minute RP rounds begging on radio for people to put in chemical requests and only gotten Staffie McStaffie asking for meth. It did not make me thrilled to play another chem-focused round as someone who prefers external goals.

I think if you want chemistry to be a more impactful supply line for medical, you need to make their interactions much more direct:
1. The round-start dispensary should be the first place medical staff stock up from. It should start with basic-basics (e.g. stypic, sulfadine, charcoal, epi), replacing some of the medical jars out in the open. It might be worthwhile to review NanoMed stock counts considering there are 3-4 in medbay and one in the medical booth on most maps.
2. There needs to be feedback to science when things are running low - not empty, but low - in the dispensary. Allow chemistry to be proactive to medical needs, instead of 100% relying on requests, because medical will always try to be proactive for themselves.
3. There needs to be some attaboy bonus or benefit for sci to keep the dispensary stocked. Something light like end-game round-score (% of dispensary stocked at round-end?), or a credit bonus on refilling low-supply meds.
4. It should be possible for chemists to supply auto-mender refills via the dispensary, since they're commonly used in medical and otherwise have to interact with cargo to resupply.

[Lord_earthfire]

The thing is, I don’t dislike the concept of medbay relying on other departments. The issue is that those departments are impossible to be relied upon because there is rarely anyone willing to take your requests. I’m almost never able to get science to make anything for me, even with features that are supposed to make such a thing easier (request consoles and chem interlinks).

Outside of cloning, I don’t see how the any of the things you’ve stated make medbay “overpowered”. Well, I can see the issue of people treating themselves, but I feel that usually only happens then there are no doctors around.

If neither cargo, nor chemistry, nor botany provide you with anything at the time you could reasonable expect a shortage to come up (i would aim around the 60 minute mark on a semi-stressfull round), then there are more things at disarray than just medbay running out of chems.

Keep in mind, the reason you cannot rely on these departments is: 1. them having learned that their help will get ignored and 2. Them not getting forced to do their job

It's like complaining that engineering doesn't set up power. If they feel like it's a job they have to do or they feel recognition doing it, they start doing it on their own. This is only a problem you could face in lowpop. With chems holding longer the less people there are, i don't even think it will ever become a problem in low pop anyway, if balanced properly

Chicken and egg problem. I've sat around on 90-minute RP rounds begging on radio for people to put in chemical requests and only gotten Staffie McStaffie asking for meth. It did not make me thrilled to play another chem-focused round as someone who prefers external goals.

I think if you want chemistry to be a more impactful supply line for medical, you need to make their interactions much more direct:
1. The round-start dispensary should be the first place medical staff stock up from. It should start with basic-basics (e.g. stypic, sulfadine, charcoal, epi), replacing some of the medical jars out in the open. It might be worthwhile to review NanoMed stock counts considering there are 3-4 in medbay and one in the medical booth on most maps.
2. There needs to be feedback to science when things are running low - not empty, but low - in the dispensary. Allow chemistry to be proactive to medical needs, instead of 100% relying on requests, because medical will always try to be proactive for themselves.
3. There needs to be some attaboy bonus or benefit for sci to keep the dispensary stocked. Something light like end-game round-score (% of dispensary stocked at round-end?), or a credit bonus on refilling low-supply meds.
4. It should be possible for chemists to supply auto-mender refills via the dispensary, since they're commonly used in medical and otherwise have to interact with cargo to resupply.

I fully agree with you there and i like these suggestions. Partially merging together Medivend and dispensary interlink in some way could go a long way.

[TDHooligan]

honestly put way more thought into it and it just condenses to this:

as an ex-sci main, if i'm doing something interesting and i recieve a non-basic requisition, it's too much effort and time to make medbay's hottest chems. they can live without them.
and if i'm not doing anything interesting in chemistry, i'm not doing chemistry. may as well hop to artlab etc.

only time i really get reqs done is when i can chemicompile whatever i need making.

credits/more bweeping things/gimmicks will not change this for me.

[klushy225]

Well put. I dont play science nearly as much anymore, but I also used to main science. Sometimes I enjoyed helping out medbay by making miracle drugs, but other times I just wanted to make monkeys drink my newest hellchem.

[Lord_earthfire]

I would say there are msinly three different motivator for doing chemistry:

1. Puzzle solving. This is there at the beginning. You got a chemical with different reaction paths, fail-states (called by some wrongly "noob-traps") and other conditionals. You want to get there optimally. You optimize the way it works for you at best (or actually just get there for some stuff like secret chems). Like some people do chemicompiler scripts, while e.g. i do chemmacros. Other people like bulk-crafting in barrels. There are whole ganes which scratch that itch, like opus magnum.

2. Interaction with others. This means doing the chem gives you RP-moments with other people or throw you in whacky situations. Or they simply make you leave your departments and open you up for situations. This is mostly what we are talking about when we talk about "interdepartmental cooperation".

3. Mechanical rewards. This is mostly the chems themselves. For non-antags, this is very often an enabler for gimmicks, but beyond that trying out your chemicals on a monkey is a neat dopamine rush, which has not much of repeatability.

I think looking at this three motivators can describe why different people have different interests and opinion with chemsci. Some people just want the chems to use them themselves, and the chemgroup removal and chemrework made that more involved. They also don't want to bother with medbay or other people's requests.

Other people want chemistry to be involved/gimmicky, so they can map out their way for optimising it. Like "it's about the way, not the result". I have an excel file with chem-macros for many chemicals, like one which turns 20u of welding into ~30 perfluorodecalin with a single press. These people don't care about the chemicals really, they jusy want the problem-solving aspect. Chem requests are at that point simply applying the routes quickly.

The other group of people want others to interact with them. Very often, you simply don't find them in chemistry, because noone needs them for all.the reasons in this thread. If the other two motivators don't get them into chemistry, they won't play it.

And the last grouo not playing chemistry is the reason why you cannot rely on scientist.

[TDHooligan]

(called by some wrongly "noob-traps")

when's the last time you've seen a capable chemist actually realistically mess 99% of these hoops up. i only see them get newbies. and when they get newbies, newbies are also the ones having the hardest time crafting the reagents they just wasted.

[Lord_earthfire]

when's the last time you've seen a capable chemist actually realistically mess 99% of these hoops up. i only see them get newbies. and when they get newbies, newbies are also the ones having the hardest time crafting the reagents they just wasted.

Interestingly, fairly often, once you try to chain multiple reaction steps together. Smelling salts or random potassium in some recipes (so you cannot chain the sulfuric acid reaction into Fluorosulfuric acid) ruined a few more chemgroups than i like to admit.

It begins as a complication you run into when you try to synthetize the chems the first time, and then keeps on giving once you try to optimize them.

Of course they stop being an issue once you got your chem procedures finished, but at that point the puzzle-solving aspect of chem is over and reactions turn into a mundane time gate.

But if its only about getting the chems and reactions are timegates, we could return to copy/pasting chemgroups and make the end result just take/waste time. But that is, like prior to the chem rework, an uninteractive and unrewarding system.