[MERGED PR] Cloners no longer give people health implants

[github_bot]

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About the PR
This PR makes it so clonescanning people no longer gives out free health implants. In order to receive death alerts you now need to implant people manually. If you want people's health status to show up in the cloner computer you'll need to implant them before scanning them.

Made at the request of @mybluecorners

Why's this needed?
A while ago there have been changes to cloning which make it possible to clone people instantly which is good because staring at a black screen while being cloned sucks. However, especially with the addition of multi-pod cloning it is now very easy to just keep instantly cloning everyone that dies with little effort. This often leads to antagonists being ratted out immediately after dying by the fresh clone which is not great! This PR aims to make it so it is still possible to do this but it requires more effort on the part of the cloning staff. You either need to produce your own health implants to implant people with or you need to be checking the cloning console periodically without having the handy death alerts.

Changelog

Code:

changelog
(u)pali
(*)Cloners no longer automatically implant people with health implants on scanning.

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[THISISANICEGAME]

Good change imo. Health implants are a big enough thing that they shouldn't be granted for free and with no effort

[Varali]

Not a bad change at all but I'm curious about this line: "If you want people's health status to show up in the cloner computer you'll need to implant them before scanning them.". Will it not work if you implant them afterwards, and why not?

[pali6]

Basically the cloner record stores the implant's id which it uses to display health and stuff, the records currently only get updated when the person is getting scanned. Fun fact: I'm pretty sure you can remove the record-bound implant from someone and stick it into a different person / monkey to make the clone show wrong values for the first person.

[Varali]

Fair enough, assumed it was a technical reason and not a balance reason but wanted to ask anyway. Medbay will just have to follow procedure!

[Cal]

What if we just update health implants to not give off a death thing either immediately or some time after death? Alternatively, give them rotbustec implants instead of health implants?

[Brixx79]

Considering how rarely rotbustsec is used, having it replacing health implants could be handy.

[Splints]

I really dislike this change, but looking at the tone of the thread already, I expect it will be merged. Considering that, I'd suggest modifying the manufacturing requirements and/or the initial materials loaded into the medbay fab. The health implant costs 6 materials and takes 40 seconds to print, and that is the only way to get the health implant after this change. The medbay fab starts with 20 materials of the relevant types while other fabs get 50. It's already easy to run out fast if a few doctors print hyposprays or menders. So that's only 6 implants before needing a refill if the doctors don't use the materials for anything else.

I'd rather not see the doctors jealously guard their materials, so I'd suggest boosting their initial materials to 50 of each type bringing it in line with other fabs. 40 seconds is also a really slow print, so I'd also suggest lowering that to maybe 10 or 20 seconds.

[coolvape]

giving rotbusttec would be nice, and i agree - mat requirements for health implants should be lowered if they're going to need to be manufactured exclusively by fabs as well as implanted prior to clone scanning

[zjdtmkhzt]

I don't see how the clonescan giving rotbusttec would have any point at all? You're already clonescanned in that case, so who cares if your body rots?

Everyone getting a health implant on scan is maybe a little op, but I don't mind a small bit of op if it keeps more people in the round, so I don't like this change.
If we feel a change is necessary, we could make it so that the cloner shows the status of health implanted people (maybe it already does?) but no message is given (or delayed).

[aft2001]

So, I dislike the idea of making it harder for people to stay in a round. However, I also dislike the idea of how quickly everyone is alerted to when you kill someone with a health implant. As such, I propose the following:

Either nothing is done, which is honestly fine - killing people should be a challenge anyways - or two kinds of health implants should be made available. The current health implant should be an 'upgraded' version of sorts, made by fabricators, whereas the scanner implants a patient with a cheaper implant that has the same features, minus the PDA death alerts. Same ability to track health, both from the cloner and medical records, but no alerts at all.

I personally would prefer for this to not be merged and things to remain unchanged; however, this is a compromise if there is enough pull by the community to reduce how much of a guarantee to stay in the round clone scanning is.

[babayetu83]

why not make it so that it's ranged based? have it go off on a timer, and have the timer take longer/shorter depending on how far away you are from the scanner.

[nefarious6th]

range based or tiered ones sound good; death alerts are nice for sec or silicon work. i wish the implants in the fabs were more useful though, so i get the idea behind this.
i do like keeping people in a round and being able to help them though, and i think that kinda outweighs balance concerns for me rn. i'd be happy with something like nex said though, with a low-tier cloner health implant.

i just dont want people to be forgotten; i know it happens and it has to, but it really sucks and i've liked the pda health alerts since the changes to pda messaging groups a lot because it made me feel minimally more like i could do something for those people, and it's been nice when people recognize i might need help too.

[Cal]

Yeah I didn't think about cloning and rotbusttec. Dunno why I suggested that.

Just make the cloner implants not call out deaths. Simple.

[Lady Birb]

If the problem is people getting cloned instantly after the PDA death alert, then yeah just make it so the cloner gives budget health implants that don't send PDA messages.