Tweak/remove the recipe for Strange Reagent

[RubberRats]

Almost every round I have played recently, medbay has taken it upon themselves to make strange reagent to revive corpses. As I have seen multiple doctors do this independently, I do not think it can be blamed on any one person. However, I do not think it is a good trend for the game long-term both for gameplay and setting reasons and earlier precedence.

Overwhelmingly, the reason I am given for using SR as a doctor is to bypass the weaknesses of the cloner. While this is understandable, I don't think it being too difficult to bring dead players back is a very common sentiment. Medbay really doesn't need it, and I only ever see SR used in the context of being a "cleaner" way of saving someone.

Additionally, it feels way too common for what it actually is. In lore, strange reagent is linked to secret and almost-certainly-unethical research performed by one of NT's highest-ranking scientists. I don't think it makes much sense for medbay to casually have Horace Jam's Awful Mad Science Potion on-hand as a miracle drug. It cheapens the whole thing, especially when it's the majority of times it is used.

I think that the source of the issue is that SR is relatively easy to make. All three of its ingredients can be readily found on station either trivially or with minimal cooperation. Making it rarer, either by changing the recipe to be more involved or making it uncraftable, would both uphold its status as the product of mad science and justify potentially making it more effective without rendering the cloner redundant. If you absolutely must have SR for a gimmick, the faint signal merchant still sells it.

[Nerkson]

I think with the direction cloning is going in, SR will continue to stand out more and more. Aside from issues where the person is braindead and dies immediately upon revival, it seems to have little issues - you just gotta heal their wounds before you revive them and hope they're not chem stuffed. In many ways SR does require specific corpses to work best, though broadly speaking that includes a lot of corpses that die from simple things like bleeding or gunshot wounds.

We can either look at it as a creation-method problem, a game-function problem, or a use-limited problem.

Creation method is that it's only three chems and Omnizine is probably the 'hardest' to find, if you can't find donk pockets or bug the captain/medical director/ai to open the chem locker for you and wine is a bartender away. One could balance SR by adding in more exotic ingredients that promote cross-departmental cooperation, or chemicals with precursors that take time to manufacture.

Game Function is that it revives corpses so long that they aren't : A. Braindead, B. still so damaged they die instantly, C. Puritan or other defects. Corpses can't process chemicals so if they're already full of a chemical then you'd need to purge it via removing the heart and squeezing it, but at that point the person could have been cloned. Adding more downsides to the revival process or limiting the corpses viability is something worth considering - could always give it the side effect of puritan cloning where the person has random organ failure.

Use Limited problems is simple: You only need 1 unit of SR to revive someone. You can make a LOT of SR with extremely limited amounts, 12 units of SR is enough to make 12 pills, thats 12 people revived in an extremely short time so long their wounds allow. Simply increase the threshold of SR required or possibly require a second chemical in combination with SR, much like how Atropine and Synaptizine together form a potent anti death drug.

[Gomp]

Every time I use strange reagent I just feel bad because it takes longer then cloning someone if I don't pre make it and that implies the round is calm in the first place (which I think is the underlying issue here).

[Lord_earthfire]

With how easy cloning is, i feel this is a non-issue.

SR is an upgrade to cloning, but it's in the grand scheme of things minor. It dodges cloning defects, but requires more work.

When we make cloning limited, we could take a look at SR. But right now it's a gimmick for medbay and its main use is reviving dead capybaras or making killer tomatoes.

[Egregorious]

I will agree that strange reagent is a thematic failure at the moment. The name and creation is alchemical, while the usage is space-age medicine - but that's fairly trivial, and the same mechanic could work better in the setting just by saying "nanites, son" or explaining that it repairs neural pathways damaged by recent braindeath.

However I do not think SR is a straight upgrade to cloning, frankly. The cloning defects were added to make cloning require more work to keep someone in pristine condition, since no work has to be done during the actual revival process. While SR has all that work frontloaded, you have to fix all the problems that caused the person to die in the first place. That's not a strict upgrade, that's just changing where the effort is involved.

[JORJ949]

I like SR over cloning because it means the doctors heal the patient rather than the cloning pod and that they have to find the body instead of just "oh blinky light click the clone button". I personally think SRing should be available to anyone with medical training using a defib WITHOUT SR, SR remains as a way for anyone _without_ medical training to revive the dead (e.g. Mediborgs). I think SR is actually much weaker than the current "clone them the moment they die and the light blinks" meta because you need their body and some time to repair it.

In fact i logged onto the forums today to make a post about making SR basekit for doctors using defibs (not any other shocks and you need the medical training trait)

[Munien]

Mechanically or from the point of people using it a lot, I don't personally see any problem with any of that, but it *is* kinda strangely easy it is to make the weird re-animator goop, especially when botany can mass produce it incredibly quickly. I think a more complex recipe would be fine, as long as it's not punishing enough to make it not really worth doing.

[Waffleloffle]

might be difficult to pull off, but at this point I think it might just be necessary to split strange reagent into two separate chems: a variant that's equivalently easy to make as the current one, flavored as a medical-grade resuscitator, and not strictly better than the cloner... and the real shit, which is much MUCH harder to make, much more effective than the cloner, and a lot more fucked up if you get things wrong

for the medical-grade version, some sort of reliable downside might balance it out nicely against the cloner's inconsistent downsides. maybe it's guaranteed to leave the patients in need of some minor medical attention after they're back up? I dunno, I think there's design space there

[Kotlol]

I kinda hate SR as the go to fix. I feel like it is a secret chem but it's not.
It requires things that aren't scienetific but yet it's so common among science and medical.

While cloning is easier, I hate SR route due to the fact it's just not good theming.

THAT SAID, I have NO PROBLEM with a SR like. Aka.. medical being able to revive people who <DEATHGASP>
Nothing is more frustrating to a doctor then a patient showing up and then <DEATHGASP> right away in the middle of stablizing.
Infact it's annoying for players to <DEATHGASP> within seconds in some case, but in others... it can take 3 mins of gasping for it to take effect.

SR being the only way is the second reason it bothers me. Infact... we have technology to revive anyone who's been dead for a day technically but they would be a vegetable on machines. So why not have like a 2 min grace period of reviving someone before cloning/SR being the way to go.
Someone with medical training should be able to revive someone in medbay. And after 2 mins it will say if attempting: "The body has gone cold."

Feels more appriorate.

[Angel]

Honestly, I fully agree, with the lore SR has, it should be a secret chemical, and a little harder to make.

[WyrdDoe]

As "the SR gal", this criticism makes me nervous.

It doesn't have a meaningful advantage over cloning, it's a thematically interesting alternative that has its own upsides and downsides. It takes somewhat longer, it's a more involved fix than just chucking someone in the cloner, and in my opinion its recipe is currently well tuned in difficulty relative to its power.

Since I feel an unpleasant prickling, I'd like to address a concern I anticipate, which I've discussed before on discord but I'd like to pin it here.
The character gimmick I do involves PRIORITIZING sr resurrection over cloning, for in universe in character reasons that have nothing to do with it being easier or harder. It's a minor pain in the ass, yes, I recognize that some players might be frustrated at me using the option that takes more time, but I am aware of this and make sure to give it up and clone them if things are taking too long or if the round is heated up too much and we need to keep things running.

This character gimmick has been, anecdotally, very well received by my fellow medical staff and by the people I'm resurrecting. Necromancy is cool and fun and thematic, and there are a great many recipes in this game that are CARTOONISHLY simple for what they are representing. Because it is a video game. In my opinion the current recipe's difficulty is in keeping with the general pain in the ass curve this game operates on.

SR is a sidegrade to cloning, not a straight upgrade. We start the shift with a full cloning setup, making SR takes interdepartmental cooperation and/or cooperation with department heads.

And as for the thematic, have you read the description for omnizine on the MD's bottle? Omnizine is by its description the part of this recipe that is, in fiction, super advanced and sci fi. There is also plasma involved in the unstable mutagen, and plasma is used as the go-to touch for making impossible shit possible in this setting. The experimental high tech angle for SR is handled by its current recipe, the fact that it's not miserable to make in the video game we play for fun oughtn't have any bearing on this, in my opinion.

[RubberRats]

I would like to preface this by saying I did not intend for this thread to be an attack on any single person. It is based off of my thoughts and observations on both the current trend of its use and how it was treated by doctors in the past. Very recently, I have seen more than one doctor make SR "just in case". While I understand where they are coming from, I do not think that is a healthy play pattern, as it makes sabotaging the cloner significantly less impactful and, in my opinion, does not treat the chemical with an appropriate amount of gravity.

The interdepartmental cooperation needed to make the reagent is rudimentary at best, amounting to asking people to give you the chemical precursors that spawn in their department. Additionally, most of these steps can be bypassed: the MD has all the access they need to make it themselves.

As for your point on thematics: yes, I have read the description. It is still mixing three moderately uncommon chemicals together. Omnizine could be literal unicorn tears, but getting your hands on a bottle is still as easy as buying it off cargo. They put that stuff in Donk Pockets.

I don't want SR to be gone, I just don't want it to be treated as something medbay just does, like perflourodecalin. Something like, as an example, making the recipe have slightly less rare ingredients but need to be mixed in a dying mob would strongly reinforce its identity as the product of mad science while also making the act of creating it more involved.

[RSOD]

Something like, as an example, making the recipe have slightly less rare ingredients but need to be mixed in a dying mob would strongly reinforce its identity as the product of mad science while also making the act of creating it more involved.

the idea of having to mix it in a mob that's at critical / very low health is already a good start for a way to make it a bigger hassle, though eventually doctors would just grab a monkey, bash it a bunch and use it like a makeshift chem barrel by stuffing it with salb, synaptizine and other medicine

[Emimiyu]

Making it an easy secretchem would be good for the sake of novelty. I unno.

People have complained about how easy SR is since more than years ago, so why not.

[Kotlol]

Not gonna copy the whole thing but responding.

"I HAVE NO OBJECTION TO YOU PLAYING THIS AS ITS UNIQUE"

No really I do not mind this and if you feel if it's a side grade fine.
But... if it's just you doing it as a gimmick. No one minds it.
It's more or less it's "Standard procedure" at this point that bothers people.