Hey hey this item is really slow to pull! Fix it!

[Mordent]

I'd be down with it getting removed and re-added in the future when it's fully fleshed out and there are dragging alternatives for every role effected.

• Medical Staff:
  • Port-a-Med (or whatever it's called) to transport people to medbay. If you're dragging them there anyway this is not significantly slower. You also can only drag one person at a time anyway, so transporting one person at a time isn't much slower (transport one, drag another some of the way if you're worried about recharging - this is actually faster than pre-Port-a-med).
    
  • NanoMed remote in PDA to treat people on-site.
    
  • Getting people out of hazardous areas (normally ones that are depressurised/on fire), "first response". This problem did not really exist before, and now does. Be more robust in your own gear (i.e. able to deal with the hazardous environment yourself) and treat the other person while dragging. More people may die because of inability to get them all out of the area at once, but so what? Come get them after and get them to the cloner. Alternatively, have a cyborg come help you out. Your synthetic buddies can now actually help rather than just be a sub-par human doctor in basically every way.
    
• Security:
  • Port-a-Brig remote in PDA to brig transport people to security (requires you to get there fairly quick, but you were going there anyway, right?).
    
  • Alternatively, just cuff and pull them - cuffed drag speed isn't overly slow, and if you've got the right person that's one less antag so odds are you aren't needed to deal with things as much.
    
  • First response has same issue as medical staff.
    
• QM:
  • Moving things around in cargo: a bit slow, but you're not moving things far. It actually gives you something to do now rather than be idle for half the round.
    
  • Sending things to other departments: you have plenty of options, just takes a few more seconds to get going than simply pulling the crate there yourself.
    
• Mining:
  • You don't have far to drag crates. You have a cargo transporter/pipes to transport stuff. Marginal problem at best.
    
• Engineering:
  • Dragging air/O2 canisters around is a bit of a pain. Cyborgs can speed this up a lot. Repressurising areas takes ages anyway, the drag speed isn't the limiting factor here.
    
  • Dragging canisters around in engineering is a bit slower. No big deal, you'll only be staring at the engine output and drooling over the increasing numbers otherwise anyway.
    
• Changeling
  • Dragging folks off to go and absorb them actually requires the element of surprise, else any observing crew can keep up with you and report your location constantly. Plan your ambushes better, or drag off into space where they can't easily follow. If they can follow: you're a changeling, you're tougher than them. Robust them then eat them too/scare them off. Bonus: crew have a harder time outrunning you to drag your victims away, so I'd say this balances out.
    
• Traitor
  • Dragging people away after you've stunned them somehow is harder. Oh no, you actually have to think a bit more now rather than just stun/drag/kill. I've seen way more traitor gimmicks that don't involve stun/drag/kill since the change. Again, you also benefit in that crew can't just drag your victims away without the risk of you engaging them and bringing them down too.
    
• Nuke ops:
  • Doesn't the nuke have wheels? I can't say I've bothered checking, but I don't remember significant slowdown when dragging it around as a crewmember after unscrewing it. Also comes with the "nuke ops can now catch you rather than you just disappearing in the direction of the crusher with it" caveat.
    

Anyone I've missed? I agree that the biggest new issue is getting people away from hazardous situations (depressurised areas, fires, antags dragging them off to be eaten/killed). In the last of those three cases: for medical, call in backup (it's not your job anyway); for security, deal with the dragger rather than trying to save the victim.

The "hazardous environment" issues do lead to more deaths due to people not being able to get others out of there fast enough. As medical staff, I appreciate the higher skill ceiling involved in treating folks on the scene/triaging. It beats the "drag everyone to safety, apply patches/epi" approach of the past. If you want to save everyone you need to be better prepared (have some better medchems, ProDoc glasses as standard to allow you to quickly assess who to treat (do you try to save the person who's already in crit, or get the few who aren't out of there and then go clone the person who you might not have saved anyway?).

For what it's worth, I've played all of the above roles both before and after the change, albeit not extensively for some. I haven't found any issues which cause me serious problems, save for having a harder time saving folks from exploded areas, in which case I just call in more help and have upped my medchem game to compensate (feed someone a cryo/perf/mannitol pill to give you some time to deal with others first, then get them in a bit).

Security as a first responder is trickier, as you probably don't have better medchems than what you can find in a first aid kit. It's not really your job to bother with that, though - save who you can and/or yell for medical folks to come help. I also can't emphasise enough the benefit of having a cyborg on speed-dial - any time I'm playing one and someone calls for help, I'm there pretty damned quick and dragging people from the scene to relative safety, and I've seen cyborgs do the same when playing as a crewmember.