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

[github_bot]

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[FEATURE]
About the PR
Does what it says on the tin, really. Reactivates and cleans up the somewhat stagnant broken bone code that's been sitting in the attic and lets bones in limbs (arms and legs only) break under extreme circumstances. These broken bones, depending on the severity, either aggravate your wounds (inflicting more brute damage to you) if you try to use them, or are completely useless, as if you had no limb there at all. The broken bones are then healed slowly by putting a splint or cast on the limb in question and waiting (or throwing them in the sleeper). They won't heal until some kind of brace is attached to the limb to 'hold the bones in place'.
In a secondary addition, to deal with loss of function in a leg, crutches are being added (wheelchairs of course already exist). Holding one in a hand, even if not actively selected, lets you move around at normal speed (although you stand a chance of tripping if you sprint everywhere like a lunatic), letting you move around better while injured or amputated.
Why's this needed?
It's a neat idea, the framework was already there, and my main goal was to have some kind of treatment which can't be solved instantly but actually requires checkups and takes longer than the time it takes to shove them in cryo/hold an automender to the wound site. Great for RP of course, and for classic players, this gives a roboticist one extra job to do, as it's predicted that most people won't bother healing a limb and will just amputate.
Changelog

Code:

changelog
(u)Tyrant
(*)Bones can now break under extreme circumstances. Heal broken bones by putting the affected limb in a cast or a splint!
(+)Crutches have been added to the game. They increase mobility when held in hand if you're suffering from a broken leg, or a lack of leg.

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[Lord_earthfire]

I really like it. We need deeper medical systems badly that make fights have more long-lasting consequences. And i love the RP opportunities that result out of this.

This is maybe sonething for later, but we can akso think how chems interact with it. Like milk being able to help strenghtening/gealing your bones or funny shit like this. But that nay be out of scope of the PR.

[Tyrant]

I really like it. We need deeper medical systems badly that make fights have more long-lasting consequences. And i love the RP opportunities that result out of this.

This is maybe sonething for later, but we can akso think how chems interact with it. Like milk being able to help strenghtening/gealing your bones or funny shit like this. But that nay be out of scope of the PR.

That sounds quite doable. Could even have some kind of medical chem that's made from primarily milk which speeds up bone repair, meaning that to a well equipped medbay, fixing a bone could be as simple as splint on, inject chem, splint off. Worth further consideration, but I think I'll add it to the main design doc.

[TDHooligan]

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

i'm personally against sliding into the muck of making life difficult 'just because it should be' like every other server that has more surgery etc. I think doctoring would benefit more from extra surgery features (like more-complicated limb augmentations that players WANT to get) than extra surgery requirements (yet more surgery tools to clog up the table, because people MUST roleplay being injured even if they hate it)

why would i want to have a splint and wait when i can have my arms replaced in 10 seconds?

if your answer is 'well maybe arms shouldnt be replaceable in 10 seconds', well. perhaps i should just die if the cloner's ready. so on so forth.

[Tyrant]

what's wrong with having arms replaced in ten seconds? I'm personally for it. A lot of the controversy seems to arise from classic vs rp mindsets, which is why limb replacement via robotics should remain as a quick slapdash option.

ALSO
i forgot to post the design doc

https://hackmd.io/@Tyrant/Bones

[Katzen]

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.

[RelentlessGarbage]

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. We're in the future, for crying out loud; while splints and casts should be the default options for healing broken bones, there should be other better options as well, either being more expensive or requiring more effort to obtain. The frequency at which cats purr seems to enhance bone regrowth, so why not make a purring splint that is load bearing and heals your fractured bone much faster? (Or something else like that, the sky is the limit.) Maybe add a genetics perk that make your bones fix themselves without needing casts, or maybe have it be that you can get a mutation that prevents your bones from breaking at all. Just some more ways to manage the system besides what's been proposed in the document and PR.

Speaking of drugs, chemicals that can speed up bone healing or improve/strengthen your bones are also a must. Just like every damage system has drugs and other items that interact with it either to heal or harm you, so too will bones. It's definitely scope creep for the PR, but I think fleshing out the system around bones (beyond crutches, splints, and casts) is necessary before dropping it into the game. Even the kind of depth that the blood and circulatory system have would be acceptable, where there are a variety of interactions with the system and various ways to address having lost a lot of blood - even if a lot of it boils down to "blood transfusion" or "take drugs."

Also, the concerns brought up by other members are valid. Goon's culture is one where people are regularly chain-stunned by being thrown into vending machines. Aggression is rewarded and playing defensively is not. If someone can break your kneecaps out of the blue and cripple you, that's going to reward aggression even more, and for powergamers (or just regular players), that's going to encourage getting full limb replacements. I'm all for giving robotics more to do, but I don't love the thought of being at a serious disadvantage for not getting these replacements. And people breaking into robotics to do self-surgery to get robolimbs is just going to piss off the poor roboticists.

So yeah. I'm not opposed, but I think this idea needs some more time to bake before it's implemented.

[Kotlol]

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.

I agree with Katzen for this.

Players in Goon want to stay in the battle longer and less time in medbay.
This is reflected in Classic's main problem of being a doctor in medbay.
Classic players don't want a doctor, they want the medicine and run off to continune 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.. wich neither wants.

People barely get to do normal doctoring.

[Ikea]

This would be a pretty big buff to people who can dish out more damage then there opponent, as now the person with the c saber has a much higher chance of preventing someone from using there limbs, and I dislike reducing the underdogness of goons combat.

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

[nefarious6th]

yeah, seconding the tonal/speed shift that TD and katzen pointed out

recurring brute damage dealing from broken bones that aren't fixed proper will probably also confuse players; I play on a server with that mechanic and it takes some time usually to diagnose the problem

notably cryo fixes broken bones on some other servers, so there's still the potential for the fast-act fix without splints and time. maybe there's something worth considering in that.

[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.

---

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.

[Soleil]

As a RP medical main, I'd definitely love for there to be a more expanded medical system and for us to have more to do, but I have to agree with the previous posters that this is probably not the way for Goon.

I've never understood why the framework is in the code, I personally haven't really felt like bones would add that much to the medical gameplay. Punishing players further for injuries is very tricky, and bones would essentially force a large amount of players to Medbay to get their bones fixed when they previously just needed patches and some medicine. I'm really not sure how you'd add bones and have them be a positive gameplay element. Being slowed or having damage over time are both not very fun.

Anytime there's a radstorm and people come barreling in for mutadone or anti-rad, it's not exactly the most interesting gameplay and it's not that conducive to roleplay either. Having to instead slap people into sleepers or cryo-tubes them slows that down even more. And of course if Cyborg parts nullify this system, there's going to be so many more people running to Robotics round start and begging for upgrades. Which is great if there's Roboticists and they're not busy, but pretty crappy otherwise.

(this would be such a huge buff to strychnine though holy crap)

[Lord_earthfire]

A thing that we should keep in mind when making long lasting injuries is the differences in damage types. While security works with stuns, which are inherently extremly spiky in their effect, traitor and crew weaponry often times deal brute damage.

Long lasting injuries have a very important gameplay implication: they make reengaging far less possible. And i think this is important. With nukies or traitors, the station in in the number advantage, so people blindly rush in, get pummeled, and drag their ass back to medbay to get fixed up and run in again. Even worse with cloning. This is firstly extremly annoying, secondly this forces kills. Since if you don't kill, the person is on your back 2 minutes later.

Personally, i think reengagements should not happen that fast. Which is why i think punishing them taking avoidable injuries should be a way we should pursue further.

This is already done with cloning defects, shrapnel and crit debuff, bones would build on top of that for very heavy beatings.

[Kotlol]

Personally, i think reengagements should not happen that fast. Which is why i think punishing them taking avoidable injuries should be a way we should pursue further.

This is defitinatlly a good plus of the bone system, but I still like to discuss the cultural idea of it all.
"My bones are broken and take time to heal... better risk being cloned"

If anything a trial run wouldn't be a bad idea on RP, but on classic, people will hate it.

In my opinion lasting effects aren't bad, but if there is a faster way... players will take it.
If anything... breaking bones will just make antags focus on that.. as it disables someone from the fight and cloning won't unless they mass murder.
Also.. this will also bounce back in return to the antagonists.
Since.. while people in droves will jump on antags, die and respawn or heal and return... antags will get their bones broken AS WELL.

I can see this HEAVILY backfire for Nukies where their bones will break will be a huge handicap then "Random staffy number 21"
So not only will security and random staffies pounce nukies to break bones so they can't use their stuff or move around safely...
The nukies are now in a BIGGER disadvantage then before.
Unless you make em immune to bone breaking....

If anything to slow down re-engagements, I recommend other ways of doing so.
Maybe focus more on organ damage maybe? Weapons and chems that do more organ damage and slowly kill enemies.

But I think the problem with re-engagement is the fact that letting someone die SLOWLY and keeping them in crit for 5 minutes is more BENEFICAL then straight up death... And I don't think broken bones is the right way as it's a two way street.
Insted I just recommend more weapons that do lasting effects then expanding the damage system.

ESPECIALLY if cyborg limbs and skeletons rolling in calcium are gonna be counter plays.

[Lord_earthfire]

In my opinion lasting effects aren't bad, but if there is a faster way... players will take it.
If anything... breaking bones will just make antags focus on that.. as it disables someone from the fight and cloning won't unless they mass murder.

Well, the first can be taken on by nerfing cloning further. The same problem exists for organ damage amyway, so it isn't sonething new.

And antags breaking bones instead of killing is something that should be encouraged. Killing takes someone out if the game, breaking their bones does not.

That's why the katana is such an awesone weapon. Just go in, cut off the persons arms and gloat and let them go/gloat about theur puny defeat.

I can see this HEAVILY backfire for Nukies where their bones will break will be a huge handicap then "Random staffy number 21"
So not only will security and random staffies pounce nukies to break bones so they can't use their stuff or move around safely...
The nukies are now in a BIGGER disadvantage then before.
Unless you make em immune to bone breaking....

That was why i was talking about damage types. Bones suffer damage after a damage treshhold. That means all melee weaponry the crew does have access to (safe for piwered power hammers and high quality spears) should not damage bones at all because if nukies high armor. So the only things that could deal bone damage to nukies are explosives and sec lethals. In contrast, the nukies weaponry would probably dish out tons if it.

Of course, thus depends very well on the numbers how yhey will be done.

ESPECIALLY if cyborg limbs and skeletons rolling in calcium are gonna be counter plays.

That is not really different than organs right now and i don't think this is a problem. Preparation should be rewarded. And if powergamers want to waste 5-10 additional minutes getting their limbs replaced, i couldn't care less.