Thoughts and suggestions on medical department

[Egregorious]

Actually no, at this point you want a shuttle call.

You want cloning for the few dozen deaths that happen at round start when antags gather their first blood/charge/bounties/feasts and you were not there at in time to get them to medbay. Or to clone the chef thst accidently suffocated in the freezer during a brawl with a monkey.

If shit finally hits the fan, you want the people to die and stay dead.

Cloning should be there to take care of the accidental sub 20 minute death. It should not be a crew-dispenser during an end-of-round rampage or a nukie-attack.

I think I haven't managed to be clear, because your examples are prime for what I mean. I shouldn't have accidentally suggested the cloner be more powerful at any point, when all I really mean is that it should be creating problems when they are manageable.

If there a few dozen deaths at round start you don't want all defects to be so debilitating that everyone who was cloned has to sit in an extra queue for 20+ minutes waiting to be fixed up so they can continue playing. You also don't want the cloning of the chef to mean so little that "stick him in the cloner" is the only interaction that happens in that scenario.

I'm not suggesting the cloner be any better than it is now, I'm saying that from a game-mechanic perspective making sure the downsides to it are at their highest when they are managable promotes the best interaction. If using the cloner is only much of a detriment when doctors have other things to do, the detriments are more of an annoyance than interesting problem; if using the cloner has trivial detriments, like it does now, it discourages medical interaction. The detriment to using the cloner should be highest when no other problems are present, to encourage other medical interactions.

In my opinion getting people to die and stay dead with respect to cloning is less about the mechanics of the cloning process itself - assuming it's not easier than it is now - and more about antagonist's abilities to subvert the cloning machine, whether directly or otherwise.