[DISCUSSION] Medical Pharmacy vs. Chemistry

[Brainrot]

I will add a comment here as I myself believe that the Pharmacist as an actual role, not a gimmick role, is wonderful. 

This comment is not directly replying to anything sent here already, it is simply my thoughts on it. When it comes to chemicals that medical needs, I have in the past attempted to request these directly from Research with the console, and I do not believe even once I have managed to have an order filled for the chemical(s) requested. They were not difficult ones either, they were chemicals such as Diphen, Perf, or Salicylic Acid.

More often than not, Research has their own projects that they are involved in and even when I have played  in chemistry myself? I hardly see the request console used. I feel it is good to mention this as some people may suggest to remove the pharmacy entirely from Medical and migrate those needs solely to Research... which, given the issue mentioned, might not be good either as they might just get no chemicals at all during the shift.

Having the Pharmacist role available is beneficial. Medical Doctors are able to focus more on treating the patients rather than running back and forth between the pharmacy to make medications while there are critical patients wandering into the lobby that need immediate attention. With a Pharmacist, they are able to take these requests and focus on those without worrying about what is necessarily going on out there. This means that the Pharmacist can perform their job without interruption, and the Medical Doctors can have their energy directed to healing and revival of the crew while being supplied by the Pharmacist themselves.

Having the Pharmacy access locked is debatable as I understand. However, I think it is fair. There is a Pharmacist for a reason currently, and allowing all of Medical to access this will encourage anyone and everyone to go in there rather than.. you know, asking the person who has the job to make those chemicals for you. That would lead to the Pharmacist being out of work, that is a concern of mine when it comes to having the access unrestricted between them. Also, the MDir still has access here. If the Pharmacist is absent or not assigned during the shift, they can take on the role as they inherently have this access.

When it comes to equipment? I think that what we currently have is...fine. If there needs to be more heavy-duty chemical work, that's when I would say it's chemistry's job and not the pharmacist's. I would like to mention, Pharmacists do have access to both the Medical and Research frequency. If you are a Pharmacist and you need more advanced items, asking on the radio for spares from chemistry couldn't hurt.

With this said, I think this was a great change. I do think improvements could be made, but most of what has been added is fine the way that it is. Those are my current thoughts on the matter simply from what I have experienced between both departments and the concerns I have about some things that may be brought up!

[Lord_earthfire]

• atropine, really important for remote deep crit situations, nothing can cure cardiac failure besides it below -65 health and not having the Atropine Synaptizine combo means patients are more likely to die outside of medbay resulting in less attempts to treat it outside, resulting in RNG gambling to rush them to medbay, resulting in more cloning in case you lose. Also atropine has this saxi purge effect based on real life usage, don't just randomly chuffle something like this. 

Just a misconception: the connection between atropin and saxitoxin IRL doesn't exist. It was a thing when sacotoxin was still sarin. With the name change, that purge effect is only on atropin for historical reasons.

When i read that part, i'm honestly thinking that it is the perfect candidate for a removal from the medivend.

It's important enough that doctors will ask botany (black venne) or pharmacy/chemistry to make it. When it is missing, it will not cause the department to break down, it will only cause more death outside of medbay. And that's not necesarily a bad thing.

Honestly? That is the perfect chemical to be called an optional upgrade to medbay instead of a baseline requirement.

• Diphenhydramine: This is basically a required chemical on any shift. There are many hyper-allergenic crew who will not be fixed solely by epinephrine and the dialysis.
  
• Robustissin: Required chemical. If someone has lungrot there's no other way to fix it. 
  
• Salicyclic Acid: Not on your list but honestly it's one of the ones that should be. Mostly used to make perf quickly or speed up cloning and there's FOUR bottles of it in each NanoMed.
  

Yeah, i think diphenhydramine needs to stay in the nanomed.

The argument with robustissin and lungrot makes sense. I think we should need some, but i am not sure it needs to be 3 whole bottles. Maybe 2 would suffice.

Salicylic acid is a compelling argument... i just didn't wanted to touch it since its a fairly important chem in baseline med vendors to enable normal personell to reach medbay. The slowdown removal is its greatest asset. But maybe medbay itself could do with less of that.

Also, Pharmacopia needs a rewrite! Much of the information is extremely outdated(pre-rework), so if we want pharmacist to be a job where people can learn how to do medical chemistry, we should also probably make sure the guidebook is actually useful.

I'd be willing to help with that, but I'm not sure how you'd write a book for a PR. If anyone is interested in PRing a "Pharmacopia 2nd Edition" or something for helping with chemistry and especially pharmacists, please reach out! I'd love to help you out and research/write for it.

Oh heck yes! I would love to help with that. Hit me up on dm's or the discord.

[Agent reburG]

• atropine, really important for remote deep crit situations, nothing can cure cardiac failure besides it below -65 health and not having the Atropine Synaptizine combo means patients are more likely to die outside of medbay resulting in less attempts to treat it outside, resulting in RNG gambling to rush them to medbay, resulting in more cloning in case you lose. Also atropine has this saxi purge effect based on real life usage, don't just randomly chuffle something like this. 
  

• Just a misconception: the connection between atropin and saxitoxin IRL doesn't exist. It was a thing when sacotoxin was still sarin. With the name change, that purge effect is only on atropin for historical reasons.
  
  When i read that part, i'm honestly thinking  that it is the perfect candidate for a removal from the medivend.
  
  It's important enough that doctors will ask botany (black venne) or pharmacy/chemistry to make it. When it is missing, it will not cause the department to break down, it will only cause more death outside of medbay. And that's not necesarily a bad thing.
  
  Honestly? That is the perfect chemical to be called an optional upgrade to medbay instead of a baseline requirement.
  
  

  • Diphenhydramine: This is basically a required chemical on any shift. There are many hyper-allergenic crew who will not be fixed solely by epinephrine and the dialysis.
    
  • Robustissin: Required chemical. If someone has lungrot there's no other way to fix it. 
    
  • Salicyclic Acid: Not on your list but honestly it's one of the ones that should be. Mostly used to make perf quickly or speed up cloning and there's FOUR bottles of it in each NanoMed.
    

  
  Yeah, i think diphenhydramine needs to stay in the nanomed.
  
  The argument with robustissin and lungrot makes sense. I think we should need some, but i am not sure it needs to be 3 whole bottles. Maybe 2 would suffice.
  
  Salicylic acid is a  compelling argument... i just didn't wanted to touch it since its a fairly important chem in baseline med vendors to enable normal personell to reach medbay. The slowdown removal is its greatest asset. But maybe medbay itself could do with less of that. 
  

No? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxitoxin
Yes, Atropine doesn't work, thought that their similarities would deem it. 

If Atropine really comes on to the chomping-bord (still wouldn't recommend it though) could it for the very least finally become whitelisted? 
Double burdening it would really hurt it. 
A chemical not whitelisted and not immediately available to doctors might gives the wrong signal to especially a newer player. 

Honestly, all other three could be reduced to 2-1 bottles, you have usually three vendors PLUS the Port-A-Nano, refills through cargo are accessible for high-pop (again, considerably more, if medbay gets their own budget) and I can't imagine a low-pop round that burns through these while having no options to get a single refill.

[Lord_earthfire]

Honestly, i would be down to whitelisting atropine.

[hermos]

hello i am here to sound my opinion on this change as a person who does doctor alot, i like the idea but i think the execution is bad, for the summary go to the bottom of this text wall, i will now engage in Primo Objectifying and thorough thinking, do not take my criticisms and wording for personal insults 👍
feel free to leave feedback on the big opinion aswell, preferebly with quotes and specific details where you can

how do i feel about this change?
in my opinion, while the change is definitely an attempt to add a role that needed to exist for a long time, the effects of this implementation are lack luster, as it crosses lines with already existing-capable roles (scientists working at chemsci, doctors wanting to be good at their job) yet does no more to allow for the job to be easier for them other than hinder mechanics, paths and access that were already well established pre-emptive to this change
what further adds to the obfuscation of this change's true effects is the fact that it is taking place in the middle of another recently added major change to medbay, that being the enzymic reclaimer no longer accepting bodies and the increasing-but unfortunately necessary practice that is the piling of bodies in one container in the morgue aswell as the generally increasing neglect to cloning as a location

but to "properly" critique this change and its theoretical effects, its also important to understand where it comes from, cause my shitass isnt gonna sit here to fully digest and comprehend an alteration for nothing
i say "properly" with quotation marks because due to the nature of SS13, in that it is a sandbox with RP elements (in the rp servers) events and approachs to all things, while generally possible to guess, is never truly foreseeable, this is also without mentioning how significantly will someone RP out their antagonism and/or how commited will they be to their "bit", and it is in accordance to this nature of the game that i will try my best to do my essay here under three specific prespectives
1. the RP perspective
2. the tryhard perspective (i will admit i personally have a bias to this one and alot of this is written with "wanting to be good at my job" as the underlying behavior ingame)
3. the new and learning

but firstly, why is this change happening?
the listed reason under the github repo outlines it very simply, intuition and realism is why its happening, but i dont think the listed reasons reflects well why this conceptually as a change, was popular/wanted in the first place and honestly i think the listed reason is a fundamentally bad reason
so this then leads me to speculate: what are other reasons that it would be implemented?

medbay's starting chems are capable of handling things on lowpop very reliably, but in highpop it isnt irregular to see doctors pay a visit or two to the chem dispensors to stock up, top up and concoct chemicals that would make their life easier
and history proved ofcourse, as any well-established doctor is well aware by this point, that sci's chemistry (or scientists in general really) is extremely unreliable for requests
and so, the pharmacy as a location plays an excellent role for doctors looking to be competent beyond their starting gears and beakers
but medical doctors as a role and in their current form, are very diverse in their capacity
if a patient comes in missing an organ or limb, its not difficult to repurpose a monkey for the patient
dead body? cloned, done and dealt
chemical warfare? complex concoctions and controlled injections of purgatives serve as a proper knowledge and skill test for a doctor to save a person in difficult conditions
this is ofcourse not to mention how easy it is to be hurt in this game in the first place, if ur looking to have an easy time with medicating people, then on highpop the starting beakers will deplete quickly
this diversity in capacity for the one role often allows for alot of uncommunicated crossover between robotocist, pharmacist and doctors in that doctors will often do those jobs if it is convenient for them, this is also not to mention that roles that arent "needed" for the station will often go neglected such as a robotocist not being in their place when needed ETC

with all of this in mind, the intention behind the pharmacist as a role then starts to become clear
the already mechanically complicated, needed and diverse role that is the medical doctor, gets some of its "burdens" more convenieniantly lifted with the presentation of this role
and ofcourse, with this room lifted off the shoulders of the doctor, this would then require socializing in order for the pharmacist to give you what you want, allowing room for RP and delegation to take place more coherently
in theory, this addition is the best of both worlds
but by locking the entire location to the unique-single slotted role that is the pharmacist and only the pharmacist.... this then leads... to other issues...
(o and also the MDir, i forgot to say MDir too)


1. The RP Prespective
RP, in my opinion, is at its best when the people involved are charismatic, well dressed and have a coherent-visible reason behind their actions or is simply a hilariously comedic situation
ofcourse such a role that is highly social, in part due to the lack of any GUI related request systems such as the cargo request puter for cargo, has alot of room for socialiizng and in turn leading to any form of RP stories unfolding
it also has alot of room to miss radio messages which will inevitably happen to the role that has to do alot of reading the wiki in the first place
but since pharmacist as a role, has access to a full chem setup (except on clarion, reagent extractor is missing on clarion from medbay) the main unique opportunities for RP here is primarily going to be in the form of pills and other forms of chemical substances
this ofcourse has alot of opportunity for hilarity such as a pill labelled "stop feeling bad pill" which instead of curing your various physical ailments turn out to be weed in a pill
it is worthy to note aswell that the pharmacist has access to the MDir's restricted medicine locker, due to the limited quantity of medication in the locker this is sadly not a massive detail, but it is atleast a unique detail for an otherwise "scientist+" type of role, and perhaps with time it will lead to some very unique antag scenarios taking place, (heres a free idea, Solipsizine sleepy pens or chembombs)
another form of RP that i think might be more common for the pharmacist would be "prescribing" things to people at the front desk of medbay, though it would be cool if they get a "cool" medical analyzer to be able to analyze people over the countertop rather than having to meet them face to face everytime
the opportunities arent few and possibly even transactional, but the lack of unique mechanical details for the pharmacist here is most certainly the most unfortunate element to me, they do get a headset with access to sci but im not sure what this is supposed to add other than perhaps knowing some gossip, i think i read somewhere that it was to help coordinate with sci on chemical stuff but that's definitely a niche scenario, in my experience ive almost never seen sci actually do things for the benefit of the station beyond passing out artifacts and even that has very limited RP and effects from what ive seen, usually people are too afraid to touch the labelled doohickeys from sci (they're also clunky to inspect so its not intuitive)

i suspect though that the RP potential of the role might not get many chances to shine through since its an important role and as such people might spend more time working than talking due to the creative demands of the position


2. the tryhard prespective (im biast here)
A good doctor already has a bunch of different medications in their belt and bag, the field is full of niche medication for various conditions and nothing feels more satisfying than saving the life of someone who came in with -300% health
wether its a careful, controlled insertion of PerfNapTropine (perf + atro + synap), or saving the life of an unfortunately styptic-allergic crewmember, the field is vast and diverse and no better way to engage with its diversity and practice/display your personal style and skill than to go to the pharmacy and create your own concoctions for the job
.... alot of what i just said becomes "locked" with the addition of the pharmacist
and will the pharmacist really listen to my specific instructions about "big beaker with 1  third atrop, 1 third synap, 1 third perf and a touch of saline"? will they listen when medbay is running low on charcoal and/or had their beakers stolen? will the pharmacist help out when theres an aggressive wraith in medbay?
the sad and real answer is: Hopefully.
its not considered a "high" responsibility job so there is no real guarantee that they will do their job
even more annoying is when you get referred to the vendors instead of getting your own beakers, im well aware you can get synap and atrop from vending machines, but its hard to put it all in a syringe without a properly sized beaker! which sadly i have to go talk to a person to get now
theres usually some work around for every part of medbay for a willing doctor
patient needs organ/limbs and the robotocist has gone missing? grab a monkey and get cutting, someone got a little too honest at the genebooth and regret their actions? mutadone, chemical warfare? controlled injections of calo to get it out then insert careful amounts of atrop followed by charcoal to preserve the limited charcoal that medbay gets, or if your overthetop like me then you dont even use charcoal at all for tox
looking for specific medication? your only workaround is the vending machines and glass bottles that you empty from the juice vending machines will be your containers
there is, as always, the command staff member that is supposed to help in situations like these but for medbay these things get out of control quickly, am i really expecting the mdir to follow my exact-carefully calculated measurements for the Zane Panic BeakerMix™(AllRightsReserved) when a wraith is terrorizing medbay?
the real and honestly sad answer is: Maybe, Maybe i will get to engage with the full diversity of the medical chemistery system, Maybe the pharmacist will actually be competent, Maybe they will be there and disappear when we need them the most
but what is for sure, is that the my knowledge in chemistery will never be so useful to me as a medical doctor anymore, not without me getting to do some self service that is

the uncertainity of having no workaround if the pharmacist is kablowy and the MDir is something else, makes the chemical robuster in me sad
by the way i hate to pull stats in a game like this since theres sadly no known good way to get stats but, the last 4 times i requested something from a pharmacist at the start of the round as a medical doctor got ignored, cool role... i guess my loadout will never be the same...


3. the new and learning
everyone has to learn at some point thats for sure, but what if a new person takes this unique and important role?
well.... i think this one is pretty intuitive
before one can become a train, they must become a train wreck, good luck learning a social-unique-complicated-single slot-needed role, this one's probably gonna have a difficulty spike and involve alot of reading the wiki, not to mention there is no payback for doing something so creatively demanding, you cant even get the chemical barrels yourself and the beakers and bottles, other than being a finite resource that would need replenishing via creative means, is also perhaps too small for a dedicated role to work with



Low Budget™ Conclusion
i understand that my three-way-prespective critique here most certainly does not cover the many and infinite situations/scenarios that could unfold within the game and may very well be criticized through that lens
but my intent and as i believe it, my cause with this selected perspective, is to cast a net in expectable and common behaviour/outcomes, and within that net then proceed to analyze and understand, based on theoretical, anecdotal and definitely selfish experiences (I WANNA BE GOOD AT MY JOB, LET ME BE GOOD AT MY JOB AAA) whether or not the effects of a change are positive or negative in whatever form they may take in "the big 3" (that is RP, Skill expression and humor which are the three aspects that ultimately symbolize ss13 to me as a whole)

i do believe, that a fundamental change or addition to the game is at its best when it is additive to the current sandbox or overhauls certain aspects entirely, rather than taking away, its always much more entertaining to see the various possibilities play out in different ways round to round
but pharmacy, as a concept and location, exists and is accessable to any doctor for very good reasons, and to take it away from doctors entirely is equivalent to forensic work being completely and entirely exclusive to the detective for security, and such exclusivity is fundamentally subtractive to the sandbox and adds no additional possibilities for both antag and crew, other than possibly yelling threats at the pharmacist in the radio to get your order done and dealt with or else


The ™hermos™'s summary
the WRITTEN intent behind the change is lackluster and should be rethought and the execution is bad
the ASSUMED intent is good, but doesnt fit well into the current stance of things
locks things away from crew and antags, in my opinion if were gonna lock things away this much then we may aswell make this role ahelpable since its such a restricted and needed role, unlike detective as a role for security, if this one doesnt do its job, the station will feel it as the doctors fail to save lives in their own workplace

overall it gets a 3/10 from me, im feeling a strong No without major rework or redo to the current structure and capacity of pharmacy on probably all maps, speaking of which i think lord_earthfire is unto something with his essay, some of the ideas in there are definitely worth conceptually checking out

on the bright side, not being able to run anything close to my usual loadout for medical doctor has made me feel alot more ok with neglecting my role, i spend more time outside medbay and i started doing things like having a chat with the -50% guy instead of rushing to heal him, it sometimes results in dying? but i mean if the skill in me is unable to express itself, i may aswell have some fun with the RP and humor
it has atleast been getting boring for me to have to use the same 3 chems everytime for doctoring, that being styptic, silversulf nd charcoal and im not quite sure how im gonna get creative around this one
maybe time will tell


Completely Unrelated
the intrusive thoughts decreed that i put in here the idea of a round where everyone is a clown and we all turn into a 3min nuclearbomb at minute 30

[GARGATHUGANOKSREVENG]

reimpliment ignichem and add it to pharmacy lol

[Agent reburG]

What if, the Pharmacist could produce custom (injection amount) Auto-Injectors with high cap like the Nuclear Operative Field Medic has? 

That would definitely make them a lot more unique in their role.







EDIT: Is the wiki not updated or do these still look like the old ones?