Give Nukie Medic an SMG to shoot assistants with

[Mopcat]

Had a convo on Discord about why Nukie medics are more rare than they really should be, and we concluded that picking medic means giving up the fun of filling the crew with lead. So I propose we give them a real gun other than their starting revolver and slow-acting Syringe Gun poisons, like an SMG. Something like a futuristic Nukie-themed MP7 that they can shoot assistants with in-between telling their smooth brain teammates to stop dying.

[Drago156]

More kinetic weaponry!? HELL YEA! Although I think it would have to run "low caliber" so as to still carry lethal capability but not take away from the medic's task of keeping their team alive in the firefight.

[Mouse]

The one problem I see is that the medic has basically no free inventory space.

[aft2001]

A one-handed automatic gun would be good to hold people off as you heal people, honestly

[Dickles]

I feel that medic is the sacrificial lamb so everyone can get a donkpocket. Those are some good donkpockets.

Maybe they could get a faster acting poison for their syringe gun like a little bit of pancuronium instead of the neurotoxin?

[Gerhazo]

Killing Floor medics get guns that as an alternate fire can also shoot healing darts, for potential inspiration.

[Drago156]

Killing Floor medics get guns that as an alternate fire can also shoot healing darts, for potential inspiration.

some of those guns are honestly better killing power than their teammates in some circumstances :shelterfrog:

But I do like this idea, something like a healing dart attachment to the weapons that you can just click on the gun in hand sprite to cycle between. While we're on the topic of killing floor and medics, healing grenades could be an interesting item too, have them use old or new smoke for area healing, for the lazy, just with the downside of healing any crew also inside the radius.

[Dickles]

Killing Floor medic smg would actually be sick. I don't know how other people see it, but if I'm picking medic it's so everyone gets one of those donks. The donks are really nice to have for the team. You get a lot of great meds too, but I never find a time to use them. If someone's injured you don't really have time to pull them back and heal them up, there's people rushing you and more are coming soon.

I don't know if it would be overpowered but maybe it could synthesize synaptizine instead of you having the donks? Having more than one ammo type would probably be too much. You already have a lot of stuff crowding your backpack as medic like Mouse said.

Maybe use rubber bullets for it instead of lethals? Does damage to stamina? Would make it so you still need to rely on your teammates for lethal damage, but gives you what you need to keep people off your back. Also, if you shoot your teammate with the wrong mode you won't mirk them. I mean it would probably be funny, but I think nuke ops already have a lot of friendly fire going on.

[Mouse]

I feel that medic is the sacrificial lamb so everyone can get a donkpocket. Those are some good donkpockets.

Maybe they could get a faster acting poison for their syringe gun like a little bit of pancuronium instead of the neurotoxin?

The poison was very briefly curare but I didn't bother to actually calculate how long 15u of curare would KO for when I suggested it so it ended up being ridiculously overpowered.  I did feel like neurotoxin might have been a bit too weak when the change was made but I haven't really played with it so I can't really say for sure.

One major problem is that 15u of a given poison tends to be either ridiculously lethal/debilitating or not that dangerous, so it's hard to balance.  A cocktail might work, however, maybe I'll do some experimentation the next time I roll traitor bartender and can play with poison bottles to get the exotic ones.  The coniine/curare/cyanide mix grinches use has potential, but even 5u of curare and/or coniine may be too dangerous.

[saccharineChampion]

Speaking from experience as someone who's usually gone combat medic whenever the rest of the team green-lights doing so - by spreading the meds around, particularly the donks, you can free up both inventory space and some responsibility. It's important, of course, to keep on-hand some of the meds, particularly to help stunlocked teammates.

After you distribute a few meds, I usually find it easy to ask for teammates' spare revolver bullets, or even the revolver itself. With just one teammate's revolver and extra ammo, you usually have enough firepower to hold off enemies while you wait for your teammates to require your healing.

I think the combat medic is already strong enough, with one caveat - the rest of the team is willing to properly function as a team. Which is, imo, the ideal position of the medic; trying to heal a disjointed team usually takes up enough time that you won't burn through your starting ammo anyways.

[Mopcat]

Killing Floor medics get guns that as an alternate fire can also shoot healing darts, for potential inspiration.

This would actually be a pretty dope idea. Basically combine the SMG and Syringe Gun and switch between the two by using it inhand. Fill the gun with bullets, fill the syringe gun with meds. No clue if it'd work in code, but it's a good idea nonetheless.

[Technature]

Perhaps TF2 isn't the best comparison, but people like to make it so I'm gonna go from there I guess?

The medic in TF2 is in charge of keeping people alive, but when caught in a bad situation, a good medic can fight their way out of it.

Now, this certainly isn't TF2, but considering every person is just as, if not more, essential in taking on the station, limiting any one persons effectiveness in combat is a MASSIVE disadvantage. The medic should either:

A. Be capable of fighting just as well as the next guy on his team in most situations, or
B. Needs to have their healing be SO worth having that the team will be fine losing some of their fire power.

Doing either option can be a balancing nightmare sadly, and so it's something that will probably not be viable (or too viable) for a long time.