[DISCUSSION] Medical Pharmacy vs. Chemistry

[Torchwick]

Hello hiii hey. I don't know if anyone else is going to make this thread so here it is. Discuss your thoughts on this change!

https://github.com/goonstation/goonstation/pull/25932

(u)Sord
(*)New permanent medical job: Pharmacist
(+)Pharmacist gets access to the restricted medicine locker and crate, locker moved out of mdir office
(+)Medical doctors no longer have pharmacy access

(My take is that pharmacy should be removed from medbay and we should encourage departments to interact more by allowing science to handle chemicals).

[Shiiba]

I also agree, put pharmacists in science

[yellowlemons]

Personally I agree with the intent of the PR, but hard disagree on the implementation. I don't care for all doctors being able to instant synthesize all their own medicine or the pharmacy and rarely ever use it for that purpose. I do however use a lot of the areas that are being locked up by the PR, and things in them that aren't necessarily pharmacist exclusive tools like beakers and the floor scanner screens (why have those locked in a room that only a person who makes medicine can access, it's not their job to check the health of people coming in) or the front desk on a lot of maps which is the first point of contact in a lot of cases.

The PR feels like it was pushed out the door too quickly without thought on the other effects it would have outside of the chem dispenser/chem closet access. IMO the dispenser should just be removed and pharmacist become a chemistry spawn with minor medical access or just removed altogether.

[witchkit]

overall, yeah, i think the ideal solution is just removing pharmacy from med and giving it to sci, like jay said. if anything i might miss having a glass recycler for better storing chems in my doctor loadout but i can live with asking chemistry for beakers if i rlly need em.

collecting some various thoughts i had/agreed with that were brought up on discord:
- many maps have a front-window area that is connected to/a part of the pharmacy (cog1, kondaru, cog2). waiting for patients to come in or chatting thru the window with others is just a very nice spot to have (RP!!!). limiting access for pharmacy on these maps take that away
- connected to the above, some maps have notable equipment in the pharmacy that would get locked out, including entire medivendors, the portamed bed thing (cog1), lockers w/ the extra medkits, etc.
- likely to be plenty of rounds w/o a pharmacist. pharmacy might just get bolted open most rounds. in which case, they'll turn to chemistry. why not just let chemistry have the interaction!
- advanced chems honestly dont get used that often it feels; the basic chems in the medivendors can carry you through a crisis just fine. if you really want/need them, interact with chemistry!

if pharmacy WAS removed from med, there's be a chunk of space on each map im sure could be put to interesting uses. like a staff/break room on neon, or some kind of more contained storage space for kondaru (more akin to how it is on clarion, as opposed to a lot of stuff being out in the open on tables/racks) (and also maintaining that front desk area).

[Nerkson]

The current pharmacy rooms should probably be cleared out, as some of them are used specifically as a combination greeting area, medical scanner viewer, and pharmacy.

[Emimiyu]

Wow, finally pharmacist job is no longer a gimmick job.

Not sure about locking pharmacy out for doctors/gene/roboticists. The pharmacy has limited chem dispenser. The room is not that big either. It would also locked out antagonists meds from doing their chem stuff (med doc have syringe gun as their special traitor item for example) or med related shenanigans like I dunno, custom hypospray or medibot.

Beside, isn't rushing advanced chems every round already covered by powergaming rules? I don't know.

[yellowlemons]

- likely to be plenty of rounds w/o a pharmacist. pharmacy might just get bolted open most rounds. in which case, they'll turn to chemistry. why not just let chemistry have the interaction!

This is a point I was thinking about too but forgot to mention. If it stays in as is, I kinda think that it'd just become a regular occurrence for medical (pharmacist included, because nobody wants to be the professional door holder) to ask the AI or borgs to bolt it open at the start of the round.

[Torchwick]

Okay so to include my slightly more detailed take:

I agree with the idea but I’m with Lemons on this one. Implementation feels backwards from what I’d expect. The issue so often seems to be that medical is too self sustaining, they can do it all without outside help, and they don’t need to interact with chemistry. Now, this PR just doubles down on isolating medical from science even further.

Imo, remove pharmacy’s core tools and make Chemistry the main source of chems. I do not think we need to segment medbay more in an attempt to nerf them. This just personally feels like yet another very swiftly implemented change to medical that cares little for how the actual people playing in medical (or science) will feel about it.

Again; like the idea, but I wish it was the other way around.

[Agent reburG]

Uff, yeah this won't work most of the time. 

Look, medbay appreciates the shit ton of synthflesh SCI SOMETIMES makes, but if someone is a medical supplier, it's Botany. 

The Chemical Request console doesn't work in the sense that SCI on the other end doesn't gives a shit and RD is reliably unavailable at any given moment. 

To clarify, this isn't because Scientists are aweful people or anything, but that:

A: SCI doesn't benefits in any direct way from completing the requests (And usually don't have any fun with them either and especially the bothersome longer ones are immediately dropped me). 

B: Unlike Botany, SCI is more a playground for a lot of different things, without a ridgid gameplay loop that at one end benefits someone. 
And that's okay, but is also the reason there is different mindset at hand which seconds to do requests when they are doing something important for themselves. 

SCI has already attempted cooperative tasks, you know, the Singularity could REALLY use some super cooled Plasma, but everytime you request it is either not happening or you need to do it yourself. 
Again, same reasons as above apply. 

You are effectively nerfing medbay without gain, because theoretically the very system you want to make unavoidable, is already there and absolutely not working.

EDIT: Also really not a fan of access of the restricted medicine locker being given to a role that might just take it for non-medical reasons.

EDIT 2The Electric Boogaloo:
WOW, I just realized it's already added, in the span of TWO hours without community feedback OR any testmerges, what the heck.
So additional reasons why this is a terrible change:

1. Medical has even less to do now since you can't prepare chems, especially in the downtime without patients, thanks for that.

2. The Pharmacist will definitely be used at times as +1 Scientists when the slots are full. 
Meaning even when the role is picked, medbay just gets double the neglect at times. 

3. And this one is to point out the hypocrisy, which makes me question the lack of peripheral view on the game or blatant favoritism of this change-
Why on earth has the Bar (Chef/Bartender) now the only independent unobstructed access to a Chempenser? 
At least double down see how people react to that too.

[GARGATHUGANOKSREVENG]

adding a new job is good as long as it's not taking away from anything else in the game + I'd be happy to see this add a chemical locker to the pharmacy in every map rather than just donut 2 or whatever
edit: give med back their pharmacy access and it's ok

[Agent reburG]

I just can't see why SCI needs to burdened with tasks and Medbay more obstacles, let them have their cooperation at their own volition or in the end it just makes everyone blame SCI, if the PR doesn't work as intended.

[Emimiyu]

2. The Pharmacist will definitely be used at times as +1 Scientists when the slots are full. 
Meaning even when the role is picked, medbay just gets double the neglect at times. 

Super disagree on this. Pharmacist has been a role since ages and they have limited access to sci. In my experience, pharmacist player tend to stay in pharmacy. I get this changes is not really in favour with some player, but this feels biased towards anyone who play as chemist.

[Agent reburG]

2. The Pharmacist will definitely be used at times as +1 Scientists when the slots are full. 
Meaning even when the role is picked, medbay just gets double the neglect at times. 

Super disagree on this. Pharmacist has been a role since ages and they have limited access to sci. In my experience, pharmacist player tend to stay in pharmacy. I get this changes is not really in favour with some player, but this feels biased towards anyone who play as chemist.

They will do the same as a Chemist in SCI, but in a different spot, ultimately the only difference being the location, so what hinders them? 
You can't force them in the end to stick with only making Medical Chems, so it WILL happen from time to time.

[Vandry]

I think it's very nice that pharmacist is becoming a permanent job!

As for locking doctors out of the pharmacy? The reasoning given in the PR doesn't really make much sense to me, so if that's the actual driving force behind this change then it's pretty silly. It was a nice way for some doctors to fill in downtime with topping up chems, making some new ones, or in highly specific cases cures to viruses that aren't available in the NanoMed. And I don't even wanna think about Wraith rounds with no access to the pharmacy.

This just seems like a change that relies on an ideal scenario that won't play out well in most rounds. There's a pharmacist available and working, doing their job and ready to fill out orders as needed. That's great! I love interacting with other departments and people, requesting things and fulfilling requests in return so in these cases this will be 100% a positive.

If there's a pharmacist around but they're not doing their job or wanting to fulfill orders.. or there's no pharmacist at all or they're missing? I don't really think a doctor should have to break into part of their own department or ask a cyborg/AI to bolt the door open so they can make what's needed in a time of crisis. Not to mention this limits antag opportunities for medbay.

Side note.. I don't think pharmacists need access to a locker of already finished advanced chemicals? Just seems over the top when it's literally their job to make those.

All in all it's nice to have a dedicated pharmacist role but taking access away from the pharmacy just feels like a bad change.

[Lord_earthfire]

I personally want to reqork chemistry and pharmacy.

The main problems:

1. If you are not needed for your job, you don't do it. Engineers would not set up the engine, if it wouldn't be needed, for example.

2. Chemistry or botany are not needed for medbay to function

3. Scientists have other stuff to do so they don't sit in chemistry available for requests

4. Since scientists neither sit available in chemistry to take requests nor prepare chems to send in medbay, people don't request chems.

5. Since the pharmacy exists, doctors do chems on their own.

6. 5 leads back to number 2

We got a vicious cricle here.

So, how to break this up? I want to rework chemistry for quite some time. I think it's time to write up a design document.

Basically it boils down to the following:

1. Split chemistry off science. Chemist will be it's own job. Science will loose the access to chemistry. Head will stay RD.

2. Increase the size of chemistry, make glassware more visible and give them some barrels and chempipe appliances on round start

3. Remove the chem dispenser from pharmacy, add a pharmacy dispenser that is fueled with chem cartridges. Chem cartrides hold 200u of a chem of a single type. The pharmacy dispenser can be used to fill hyposprays, menders and others. The cartridges are the same used to reguel menders

4. The pharmacy dispenser starts with 1 cartridge of each of the following: potassium iodine, charcoal, sulf, styptic, saline-glucose.

5. Give chemistry a cartridge printer. These can convert pure chems into cartridges, tamper-safe against tiders and ready to be given to medbay.

6. Increase the baseline capacity of non-beaker glasware to 200u. Or maybe beakers too with a nerf to beaker splashing.

7. Work on chemicals to enable more sophisticated reactions and medbay-mixes.

8. Rule wise, make it clear that chemists not supplying medbay is working against their job. Like with the engineers and the engine, chemistry doing jackshit while medbay falling apart should be ahelp-able.

9. As a last step, decrease the amount of chemicals available to medbay drastically. And maybe kill off pharmscists again and give medbay access to the now new pharmacy.

The chem system is deep. It is enough gameplay to fuel a single job. The problem is two departments hog it, but don't really use it as main-task.

By giving it it's own job, we would achieve the best of all worlds. **Doctors know there is one to rely on**, if they see someone working in chemistry. Chemists will be needed and habe a reason to actually do work. Glasware and chempipes are available and visible, so people will actually try to work with them (and see how busted they are).

And scientsts can do what they laways do: run from responsibility.

You can't force them in the end to stick with only making Medical Chems, so it WILL happen from time to time.

You can force them to. We do the same with engineers, medbay and security.