[CLOSED PR] Broken Bones, Casts, Splints, and Crutches

[Tyrant]

Thanks to everyone who replied, I appreciate the thoughts and feedback a lot, especially from classic players (I primarily play RP myself).

i do believe that 'fights having long lasting consequences' is a pretty significant tonal shift for goon.

I think our combat system is just too fast to this and players generally hate the lingering negative effects from things like shrapnel. Suspect gamers would all get cyborg limbs to avoid the negatives.

Classic players don't want a doctor, they want the medicine and run off to continue their fights.
Doing this will just add more annoyance to combat. While fun and realistic.
All you are doing is stacking up more work on Doctors and making players wait.. which neither wants.

[...] and I dislike reducing the underdogness of goons combat.

There is definitely a point to be made about the robustness balance of goon's damage/heal system at the moment. In terms of balance, there is a lot to be discussed and worked out so that we can reach a solution both RP and classic enjoy, without having to have any code changes between the two (because i've been informed that parity is good and code differences are bad).

Bone breaking becoming the meta may just be an unavoidable fact (I hope not), but by having bone damage only occur when the brute damage of an attack being over 30 (like how de-limbing is), I hope to stop people having fractured wrists from getting slapped and such, and only stuff that feels really significant (vending machine throws and explosions primarily) causing bone damage. This is the current approach that I'm coding in, but the number itself and the circumstances upon which they happen are still, as always, up for discussion and changes by the community.

This is maybe something for later, but we can also think how chems interact with it.

I'm not opposed to this in theory, but I think there need to be better options than just splints and casts to deal with these injuries.

The healing itself, while my original goal was to have something long term, is something that I agree is a bit tedious in a game as fast-paced as this. I now intend to have cryo and the sleeper repair bone damage, and to introduce two new chems for bone related injury: One which speeds up the rate of bone repairing when in a cast, and another which forces a bone to repair, at the cost of inflicting large amounts of brute damage to the surrounding tissue (sort of like BONE +2; BRUTE -3 or along those lines). The primary ingredients for these would of course be space milk and/or calcium, and would provide a well intentioned pharmacy or chemistry lab with another medicine worth preparing, depending on how common the injuries are. Other suggested chems/traits/genes are those that weaken and strengthen bones.

Also instead of a new super bandage item, just give the functionality to regular bandages to make casts. Those things are pretty useless anyways and its a lot cleaner.

This is an interesting idea. In my view, the reason why it's using fibreglass bandages is because they harden when applied (in real life anyway) which provides bracing support for the limb. Regular bandages doing this would be a bit weird, and wouldn't have the same visual effect as a limb fully encased in a white cast (possibly with signatures on it, which would be a pain to code but quite funny). It's worth further discussion (i seem to be saying this a lot) but I personally am leaning toward it being a separate item.

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I'm going to continue work on the PR, because even if it's eventually agreed that broken bones on the whole are bad, at present the framework that this is built upon is already in the code, and is currently toggled to FALSE, so we can just, idk, leave it set to false and have it there as yet another admin gimmick. The crutches (and  their subtype: walking sticks) I think are a welcome addition to the game even if limbs don't break (for amputees, for instance, or just for aesthetic). I'll update the design doc shortly to reflect these discussions.