Goonhub
11-10-2021, 01:26 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-13-2021, 03:06 AM by Crystalwarrior. Edited 3 times in total.
Edit Reason: new pull request
)
RELEVANT PR: https://github.com/goonstation/goonstation/pull/6659
First off, I want to preface by saying this is not a rework or an overhaul - to make these changes work should be trivial and easy!
With that being said, after a lengthy discussion over the discord I think current surgery has a good foundation that is sometimes betrayed for no benefit. Lots of room for skill expression and robustness by gaming the fail checks, but problem is communication to the user is poor, some elements are completely inconsistent and break established core, and at least one tool only exists for one specific surgery and nothing else.
Onto the changes:
1. Change "You messed up!" messages to be more informative - tell me why I messed up, so I can mess up less. For example, "step failed - patient squirmed due to extreme pain!"
"step failed - you're not trained for this, you'll have to try again!"
2. Make eye surgery behave exactly like the Lung and Kidney surgery - only the final step decides which eye I change.
3. If the patient starts bleeding, suggest what I can do to stop it.
"Your patient starts bleeding - you need a hemostat in your off hand to clamp the bleeders to reduce this!"
"your patient bleeds a little - your hemostat helped reduce the severity."
4. Give me fail chance as a visible percentage if I'm using an operating table. Either by clicking on the table or with a visual pop up under the patient like the health scanners, tell me exactly how likely I am to succeed, and why I have less than 100% success so I can try fixing the issue or simply risking the penalty. I don't want to go skimming through the code just to understand why I'm failing with no feedback why.
5. Make all surgeries consistent.
For intent, it is mostly consistent like so:
Help intent - precision, care
Disarm intent - carelessness, sabotage (100% fail chance)
Grab intent - only used for chest implants, presumably grabbing.
Harm intent - strength, aggression (Dismemberment, decapitation, butt removal)
Another convention is your active hand matters but only for the final step of the surgery (left lung vs right lung, left kidney vs right kidney). You can do the whole surgery with your right hand, but take the organ out with your left hand - it'll take the left organ out.
Most of surgeries follow this convention, except for...
* Limb surgery - intent doesn't matter. This makes sense because that's the only thing you can do with a limb... Currently. If more surgeries are added though delimbing should be HARM intent.
* Eye surgery - intent doesn't matter. Must only use one hand for the surgery or your character will get "confused" - doesn't happen anywhere else. Why isn't it like lungs and kidneys? Shouldn't only the final step matter which eye it is? Another issue - this is the only surgery that needs the spoon. Cog1 also has no spoon by default, you have to fabricate it and know to do so - why is there a tool that a grand total of 1 surgery uses? Doesn't it make more sense to just replace it with a more useful tool like the scissors?
* Chest item - only surgery to use grab intent. Guide is terrible and fails to mention how to secure the item (must use sutures in HELP intent). Unlike every other surgery, bafflingly you must use sutures in GRAB intent to sew the chest shut. Breaks every single previously established convention... Why, exactly? Can't it just be HELP scissors - GRAB item - HELP suture (No securing) , or HELP scissors - GRAB item - GRAB suture - HELP suture? Shouldn't it always be "HELP suture) finish surgery"? I think it should be scissors instead of scalpel because the scalpel is already used to remove shrapnel, implants and head spider.
Fix all this, and the surgery becomes more consistent and less frustrating.
First off, I want to preface by saying this is not a rework or an overhaul - to make these changes work should be trivial and easy!
With that being said, after a lengthy discussion over the discord I think current surgery has a good foundation that is sometimes betrayed for no benefit. Lots of room for skill expression and robustness by gaming the fail checks, but problem is communication to the user is poor, some elements are completely inconsistent and break established core, and at least one tool only exists for one specific surgery and nothing else.
Onto the changes:1. Change "You messed up!" messages to be more informative - tell me why I messed up, so I can mess up less. For example, "step failed - patient squirmed due to extreme pain!"
"step failed - you're not trained for this, you'll have to try again!"
2. Make eye surgery behave exactly like the Lung and Kidney surgery - only the final step decides which eye I change.
3. If the patient starts bleeding, suggest what I can do to stop it.
"Your patient starts bleeding - you need a hemostat in your off hand to clamp the bleeders to reduce this!"
"your patient bleeds a little - your hemostat helped reduce the severity."
4. Give me fail chance as a visible percentage if I'm using an operating table. Either by clicking on the table or with a visual pop up under the patient like the health scanners, tell me exactly how likely I am to succeed, and why I have less than 100% success so I can try fixing the issue or simply risking the penalty. I don't want to go skimming through the code just to understand why I'm failing with no feedback why.
5. Make all surgeries consistent.
For intent, it is mostly consistent like so:
Help intent - precision, care
Disarm intent - carelessness, sabotage (100% fail chance)
Grab intent - only used for chest implants, presumably grabbing.
Harm intent - strength, aggression (Dismemberment, decapitation, butt removal)
Another convention is your active hand matters but only for the final step of the surgery (left lung vs right lung, left kidney vs right kidney). You can do the whole surgery with your right hand, but take the organ out with your left hand - it'll take the left organ out.
Most of surgeries follow this convention, except for... * Limb surgery - intent doesn't matter. This makes sense because that's the only thing you can do with a limb... Currently. If more surgeries are added though delimbing should be HARM intent.
* Eye surgery - intent doesn't matter. Must only use one hand for the surgery or your character will get "confused" - doesn't happen anywhere else. Why isn't it like lungs and kidneys? Shouldn't only the final step matter which eye it is? Another issue - this is the only surgery that needs the spoon. Cog1 also has no spoon by default, you have to fabricate it and know to do so - why is there a tool that a grand total of 1 surgery uses? Doesn't it make more sense to just replace it with a more useful tool like the scissors?
* Chest item - only surgery to use grab intent. Guide is terrible and fails to mention how to secure the item (must use sutures in HELP intent). Unlike every other surgery, bafflingly you must use sutures in GRAB intent to sew the chest shut. Breaks every single previously established convention... Why, exactly? Can't it just be HELP scissors - GRAB item - HELP suture (No securing) , or HELP scissors - GRAB item - GRAB suture - HELP suture? Shouldn't it always be "HELP suture) finish surgery"? I think it should be scissors instead of scalpel because the scalpel is already used to remove shrapnel, implants and head spider.
Fix all this, and the surgery becomes more consistent and less frustrating.