[PR] Medical borgs now have a new, hypospray like tool with regenerating medicine

[github_bot]

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[FEATURE] [BALANCE] [FEEDBACK] [WIP]

- [x] Code compiles

- [x] No ingame runtimes

- [x] Injects people

- [x] Doesn't bug out

- [ ] Chem names look good

- [ ] Has a good sprite

- [ ] Has a way to limit chem spam

About the PR
This PR adds a hypospray containing regenerating basic medical chems for medical borgs. Epinephrine, charcoal, potassium iodine, saline, salicylic acid, salbumatol, antihistamine, proconvertin, and atropine. These chems regenerate at a rate of around one unit per 2 seconds.

Why's this needed?
I think this fixes a commonly seen problem with medical borgs where, because they only get charcoal and epinephrine in limited quantities, are at a severe disadvantage in situations such as radiation storms. And also ensures that they're able to assist their department at a level approaching that of a normal doctor. I however do accept that this PR, in its current form, is likely overpowered and could use some trimming down to ensure medical borgs aren't the end-all of medbay.


Changelog

Code:

(u)CodeDude:
(*) Added a neat new tool to medical borgs, allowing them to administer better first-aid. Try it!

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[fosstar]

I've made a terrible mistake by trying to code and make a PR while tired. I'm very sorry, can someone fix the title and change it to "Medical borgs now have a new, hypospray like tool with regenerating medicine"?

[KikiMofo]

MAIN CHANGES

[Wisecrack34]

What did MAIN ever do to deserve changing? Rude and disrespectful. 5/5.

[TheMaskedMan2]

Well funny name. Either way in regards to the mediborg stuff I really don’t see how it’s that OP. I always felt that borgs should be rather specialized and at least as good as a normal member of their department. Tale the Engie borgs insane RCD for example.

The slowly regenerating method means it can’t be spammed even as much as a competent doctor with a nanomed so yeah. If anything maybe a few of the more useful chems would have differing levels available so they are slightly more scarce?

Either way to me this just feels like making medi-borgs feel more like real doctors and not just an automend machine. Now they just need an omnitool of surgery tools.

[nefarious6th]

Hm. I'm torn on this. I saw the PR on github and some comments from Tiggy saying that this removed beakers, and wanted to clarify 1.) if that was true (I assume it is?) and 2.) some thoughts I have on it:

I really liked having beakers when I play mediborg. Not every chemist cooperates with making meds, or sometimes the need for charcoal/epi during a round is much greater than whatever the chemists can produce on their own and between their own projects and recipes. I also used the beakers all the time in medbay to clean up ants, water, blood and vomit. The only thing more frustrating than an overwhelmed Medbay is an overwhelmed Medbay where no one can stay standing because there's too much blood/water on the floor. When I play mediborg, I'm happy to pick up some of the smaller janitorial duties like that. I also routinely use the beakers to salvage blood from the floor to then reinject into emptied blood packs to save some credits and hassle for the QM (sorry if you've ever been one of my patients).

At the same time, I see what you're trying to do with the injectors for particular events or antag types and making mediborgs better than just automending machines. I personally find enough to do in Medbay without total functionality of what a human might be able to accomplish, and have been able to run robotics surgeries myself before. I don't feel like I'm particularly missing anything from my experience, but I appreciate what this tries to add. In my view, playing a cyborg is accepting a downgrade in some capabilities and playing a supporting role.

I wish we could have both! I think for the sake of balance it really is a "one-or-the-other" decision here, and if that's the case, I think I would prefer beakers, but the idea of regenerating injectors might be something to consider in the future and couple with some other ways to rework mediborgs.

[fosstar]

Hey! I can see that removing the beakers is a bit contentious and once I'm able to edit the code (on my lunch break rn), I'll change the number of empty beakers from one to two. Thanks for the feedback!

[Studenterhue]

fosstar more like smellstar

also thread title has been edited to "Medical borgs now have a new, hypospray like tool with regenerating medicine" instead of "Main changes"

[BatElite]

EDIT: I started writing this post before fosstar's beaker reply, so it's already somewhat outdated.

Looking at the code I think it's necessary to point out mediborgs don't lose all their beakers, just the epi and charcoal reserves. You're left with 1 beaker and 1 regular hypospray.

Some thoughts from me, lukewarm about the PR:


For the contents:
-Proconvertin is an odd choice on it's own, given heparin isn't listed. Filgrastim might be a more commonly useful chem, but that'd compete with the blood bag for functionality.
-The ordering is a little wierd - salb and epi generally go together, and mannitol probably too.
-While I don't think it's necessarily a wrong choice for this, atropine is a relatively heavweight chem to put on equal footing with epi and the likes.
-Also, putting atropine in a borg hypo means rogue med borgs can hit-and-run people with atropine injections. I'm not opposed to the idea, but it's maybe worth pointing out.
-25 charcoal + 25 potassium iodide is probably not going to be nearly enough if you have a steady stream of tox patients, like those cherished rounds where a quarter of medbay patients have dead livers.
-Teaching people what appropriate amounts of charcoal for a situation is because of supply rationing might be a nice side effect though

Otherwise:

-I feel like this would make the hypo + syringes + dropper somewhat superfluous - you're not ever going need 4 things to administer if you only have 1 tank on hand to keep reagents for them in.
-While I admit I've not ever done so as a medborg, this limits the capacity for mixing medical chems.
-Cycling through 10 options could get painful.

[Tiggersaurus]

To add to what I posted on the PR (couldn't reply earlier here for some reason?) it would very much limit mixing medchems. I, and a few other borg peeps I know, regularly do our own mixes for the hypos, I didn't see you would lose a hypo too so losing 2 beakers *and* a hypo would be insanely restricting especially as the hypo-like you get in exchange is even more restrictive than the normal whitelist. I use 1 beaker for pentetic acid let alone other on the fly mixes, or as Nefa said, picking up ants/random liquids etc.

You'd also drain medbay resources slightly more I think, currently you start with 100u of epi/charcoal, even if you set the hypo to one of them, the other hypo would likely be needed to filled with the other via nanomed.

I would also say a hard no to atropine as that would be better than humans with it, except traitor emagged hypos.

[vampirate]

Mediborgs rn can refill their epi whenever, same with charcoal. Spawn some. Clickdrag from the epi beaker to your epi beaker. Repeat til filled. I usually take refill opportunities to make mixes instead

---

To add to what I posted on the PR (couldn't reply earlier here for some reason?) it would very much limit mixing medchems. I, and a few other borg peeps I know, regularly do our own mixes for the hypos, I didn't see you would lose a hypo too so losing 2 beakers *and* a hypo would be insanely restricting especially as the hypo-like you get in exchange is even more restrictive than the normal whitelist. I use 1 beaker for pentetic acid let alone other on the fly mixes, or as Nefa said, picking up ants/random liquids etc.

You'd also drain medbay resources slightly more I think, currently you start with 100u of epi/charcoal, even if you set the hypo to one of them, the other hypo would likely be needed to filled with the other via nanomed.

I would also say a hard no to atropine as that would be better than humans with it, except traitor emagged hypos.

Humans get atropine injectors in the portable nanomed. Borgs supposed to be best in class. Borgs with atropine hypos kinda like the bottomless RCD borgs get.

[Tiggersaurus]

Mediborgs rn can refill their epi whenever, same with charcoal. Spawn some. Clickdrag from the epi beaker to your epi beaker. Repeat til filled. I usually take refill opportunities to make mixes instead

Humans get atropine injectors in the portable nanomed. Borgs supposed to be best in class. Borgs with atropine hypos kinda like the bottomless RCD borgs get.

I know about epi/charcoal currently, I'm talking about the PR which will REPLACE the epi/charcoal beakers leaving you to wait for the chems to tick up in one rather than quickly refilling from a beaker/bottle and bottle means less available for humans. Also currently in an emergency you can get your module reset for more epi/charcoal, this wouldn't be the case with the PR.

Atropine hypo is nothing like the rcd given the rcd uses cell charge as apposed to waiting on the lifetick. And from a rogue point of view, autoinjectors at least have an inhand sprite to semi give someone a headsup, borg obviously has nothing. Why should atropine (not on the hypo whitelist) be fine for one hypo-like but not the other. Synaptazine also helps in crit, this could be an alternative?

[nefarious6th]

Thank YOU Fosstar for staying active on this. I am excited about what it could bring, and I'm glad that we're able to all give some thoughts on the balance of it. I just want to make sure that whatever is given to improve the role doesn't result in us taking too much away from other parts of it (which is now fixed!), or from others playing in the same departments (or as Bat mentioned, balance for emagged borgs).

For atropine, I would skip it since I also just don't tend to use it often? I kind of agree with Tiggersaurus and Bat on letting that be something human players can use. As a borg, if I have an unlimited epi or charcoal hypospray, I'm not sure I'd need atropine as much since I can just spam epi until I get to Medbay or someone can take the patient without worrying about running out and having to extend a crit for me to go get more. If I wanted to use a chemical while rogue, I would then have beakers to go mix up something really fast, so I think the idea of an accessible chem for rogue borgs is covered without atropine!

[fosstar]

I can see that removing two beakers is a bit controversial, so I've added an extra one in that starts empty, that brings the total number of beakers up to two, a nerf, but much less of one than before. I've also cut atropine and proconvertin, while reorganizing the chems a bit. Current order is:

Code:

"epinephrine" = 25,
"salbutamol" = 25,
"mannitol" = 25,
"saline" = 25,
"charcoal" = 25,
"anti_rad" = 25,
"salicylic_acid" = 25,
"antihistamine" = 25,

Thoughts?

[TheMaskedMan2]

I kind of liked having atropine available, even if it's in lesser amounts - especially for rogue borgs. I always found borgs in an odd place when rogue - they're useless against flashes but also don't really get any neat tools otherwise - honestly a small part of me feels like rogue borgs should get special tools to them but THATS beyond the scope of this PR. I just like the potential to do bad things beyond just bolting doors. How about some haloperidol?

Apologies, slightly off topic from the maint point of the post. I would also like synaptizine but maybe that should remain more of a niche chemical they keep in beakers? These feel like the essentials anyways.