(4 hours ago)Frank_Stein Wrote: To me, it seems like the easier to have a role like Pharmacist that can go between medical and science, like a liason
But there's definitely something to be said for the fragmentation of roles. It's simpler and more open ended to just have "Doctor" than it would be to have "Pharmacist" or "Surgeon" or "Anesthesiologist"
I dunno. We already have the systems in place to modify a job title and access, but maybe you could streamline things with something like job tokens, where you could spec a general job towards something more specific.
I intended to make my own comments first after reading through the thread, but I do really like something along these lines. I know it was mentioned previously also having chemstry being given it's own role and area, and something I've been thinking personally is that it makes far more sense to give chemists their own general role / dedicated area (As Jay said, I think letting scientists still access the dispensers/lab area is the best case scenario) and having general access between medical and science both. Medsci (at least in my opinion) is already somewhat married or coupled as departments as they have some overlap and depend on one another for different things.
Personally, I think it would work better that medical didn't have chem dispensers, and I would much rather not have a pharmacy than to specifically try and shoehorn a specialized job into a niche responsibility that doesn't actually see much use aside from a few players who sign up to use the pharmacy in particular. I play medical almost exlusively, because it's my favorite, and very very rarely do I ever use the chem dispenser -- When I do, it's to make more space cleaner, because we usually only have one bottle and medbay gets bloody. Chemmaking, especially with the past rework, is a whole other science (ironically enough) that I'm not interested in tackling as a doctor when base chems work just fine so long as you know well enough what each of them does.
I think the point about medical being isolated enough is something that's really important to me as well, mostly because I think there's a misunderstanding in some cases that medical LIKES to be isolated, or that it's intentionally cliquey or something. Personally, I don't enjoy it, but given SS13's usual gameloop is "Do your job -> get shot at -> get fixed up -> get shot at some more -> maybe die and get revived," medical is in a position where it's very easy for an intense round to coop doctors up in the lobby waiting for the next bullet wound or corpse to be cloned. I don't know if that's an issue that can be solved by moving chemistry, but further incentivising a specialized role that makes med self-reliant just further decreases a doctor's need to branch out or leave.
There have been multiple times in the past that I actually disliked the pharmacy because it felt like it made the chem request system sort of useless, and other times when there are no scientists who can or want to make what I want and I was grateful to have a backup so long as I figured out how to use it. Ultimately, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink, and I think in that sense trying to revoke access from either science or medical will come with it's complaints because the applications for both are always met with "what-if" and "Just in case" scenarios.
TLDR;
- A specialized chemist / pharmacist role would be neat, but I think it should be bridged between medical and science (with general access to both) for the best of both worlds.
- Science should retain a majority of the custody over chemmaking, I do personally agree that if chemists / pharmacists are a specialized role, regular medical doctors shouldn't have access BUT regular scientists should be allowed.
- If chemistry is it's own category, ideally I think it should stay located either in science or between both departments.
- Incentivising chem requests is a sick idea, I liked what was said about boxes giving chem equipment or artifacts in return.
Generally my biggest gripe with this is that it's another specialized medical role that's likely to be underused as it currently stands, and it would be better to merge it with science and bridge medsci in a more concrete way while diversifying science roles instead of having 5 doctor roles versus "scientist, research trainee."
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