Cobbychem: A Separate Thread

[carshalash]

Bottom post of the previous page:

The lizardchems aren't good, the issue isn't that they heal for 1 every tick compared to trekchems 2. Nobody is complaining that they don't heal as fast as trekchems do, the issue is that there are so many downsides to lizardchems that there is no reason to make them let alone use them. People actively hunt down medibots now and smash them each round because nobody wants to be deafened or blinded from them, I honestly can't remember the last time I've seen a mediborg at all since these changes as well. If you wanted trekchems to be less potent and widely used, why wasn't the recipe just made harder to get or the healing rate changed?

[Super Aggro Crag]

because death and crit are supposed to be punishing states.

maybe ify ou and others didn't shit the bed about every fucking balance change we could feasibly look at nerfing antag damage.

but right now whoever I ask to do it is going to have titanium armoured skin because this community will put them through a full wringer of toxicity.

the following is crag opinion

punishing state means people dont want to be in it

best way to avoid being in it means beating the fuck out of people first

means more suspicion

means less people willing to communicate in fear of being typekilled

means less roleplay

[Shadowflame909]

it doesnt help that many unfinished prs are pushed through tho... dont forget its the players who have to play that version of the game. Its not fun when you're stuck with a worse chem system and need to wait for the rest of the prs to roll in and stuff.

Too bad it's always "when you code it" to fix the half-baked idea instead of "why do you merge it"

Looking at stasis over there. Laughing menacingly for making the maintainers finish its code.

Why do this to themselves and the playerbase.

[Cornarias]

because death and crit are supposed to be punishing states.

maybe ify ou and others didn't shit the bed about every fucking balance change we could feasibly look at nerfing antag damage.

but right now whoever I ask to do it is going to have titanium armoured skin because this community will put them through a full wringer of toxicity.

I know a fair few people in favour of taking antags down a few notches, and I'm far from opposed.

I think the changes to medbay are in the right direction but done in the wrong manner. A greater focus on chemistry and surgery, two very uninteresting mechanics at their core, is not ideal until they're made more engaging. You have an interesting plan for chemistry at the least, so that's a very strong step in the right direction far as I believe (and either way, this is better than gooncode was 5+ years ago so I really can't complain).

I mention the above because it ties in to how overwhelmingly strong antags are on TGstation. If you're going to have strong antags, you need to have a strong counterbalance. Originally, the symptom of this was sleepers. Life was cheap and death was sudden. Conversely, it was hilariously difficult to die if anyone brought you to medbay. Medical could easily keep up with the murder, assuming it wasn't a hole yet.

With the removal of sleepers and massive (and I do mean massive) spike in time it takes to heal someone, medbay often struggles to keep even a trickle of people in reasonable shape.

However, antags have not been restricted whatsoever, and are comparatively buffed every time it's harder to bring someone back or keep them alive.

The result is actually much shorter roundtimes, because killing is as easy as ever, but living is only possible because we still have cloning.

your buff to security seems at the least a strong idea, but the issue is placing even more power in the hands of one of the most abused jobs on the station. Security will need to be a more strictly monitored job rules-wise, or allowing a form of escalation to allow IC checks and balances.

On the other hand, antags could be restricted slightly. Again, more intensive work on the side of what are essentially volunteer workers. Simple light rules such as "no murderboning unless you have a hijack objective". Of course, people are opposed to this because they enjoy it as an antag, and moderating it is less black and white than many other instances (what exactly constitutes murderboning varies between people). This also wouldn't fully fix the issue, as medbay will still inevitably be bombed.

The last option is simply nerfing antags. Lowering numbers, changing equipment, and forcing (most) to be more stealthy. Lower the direct combat efficacy for the majority of antags (such as lings, traitors, and cult) and promote and overall more subtle game focus for them. This would be more engaging for everyone involved, as there'd be less need to powergame all the self defence objects round start if you know that there's less chance of Mike Murderbone running through your door with a stetchkin. And because murderboning overall would be a little harder, less people would die en made and there would be more engaging in a round of betrayal and distrust, as opposed to TDM. The downside here is the monumental task of rebalancing every antag, the sheer vitriol you'll receive from many players, and the fact that it still doesn't stop, say, Lexia Black breaking down your door on a secway wielding a stun baton and a fire axe. Again.

If you want round times to go longer, death has to be more difficult. The easier it is to die, the quicker the ghost pop rises, the shorter the round time unless today's mass murderer (or that tot who's still looking for the tides cap's gun) keeps recalling.

This is not about meds being a second layer of armour. This is about playing as a standard crew member feeling more and more like an NPC to the antags. You either power (bordering on meta) game all the gear you can to keep yourself alive for the inevitable attack or you die as a guy with soap to someone running noslips and a desword. And conversely to what some might think, most people aren't here for powergame noRP deathmatch (at least on Sybil and even terry. Most I talk to IC and OOC engage in a reasonable bit of RP), we have hippie and bee for that. A lot of people come for an actual LRP experience, and an overall pretty nice community. People can and do RP. Not hours of chatting like Bay, not right station delegations like a few older MRP server, but they play a character me enjoy it. The more time spent talking and doing even the slightest RP, the less time and likelihood of getting the gamer gear, the more of an NPC you are to this shift's corpse special, and the longer you spend staring with the increasing number of ghosts.

Death should be impactful. Death should be meaningful. Medbay should be engaging. Meds should not be armour. But before we can fix that, we need to actually handle the causes of these problems. Because just fixing the symptoms isn't going to make the disease go away.

I make long posts.

[Cobby]

Antags should not be the basis of core gamemode changes. Antags should be reactive to the core game because they are, by design, supplements to the core game to drive some form of story.

[Arathian]

First of all, because >it went there:

Restricting the "main" antags in ANY way is a massive mistake, should not happen and last time it happened it was massively unpopular with fucking everyone for a very good reason. There are plenty of servers that restrict antags and people who would like that can go there. tg should always allow murderbone, even when it sucks (looking at you epic gamer guy who delammed the SM and murderboned people on a 10 pop terry last night. Very epic gamer to kill a bunch of people doing pet projects during deadpop).

Now @cobby:

The game has antags. That's the reality. The game shouldn't be BALANCED around antags but it should recognize they exist and they have a certain power level. Security isn't there to just stop the occasional greytide. Security is there to stop the guy with no slips, armour and desword.

Ignoring the existence of antags and balancing as in a vacuum is not the correct answer either.

It is my belief that effort should result in power spikes. Botanists that don't just grow weed but actually try to produce useful stuff should have access to powerful weapons and tools. Scientists that play slime rancher or bother with nanites should become strong. Doctors and chemists that get "personal protection" syringes should be able to crit 1 or 2 guys who attack them with their syringe gun.

Conversely, death being relatively easy and common should mean that combating death should also be seen as common. The game is not extended and death happens a lot. The question should be focused on how to make combating death and harm fun, not how to restrict combating death and harm.

Lizardchems are fucking terrible because they are fucking unfun. They are just straight up useless and when you accidentally get injected by them, you gotta hide a min or 2 deaf in a locker taking you out of the round.

Medical should be fun for doctors and utilitarian for the patients. Medical should not be "slow" or "hard" and death/injury shouldn't be nigh-irreversible states.

Focus on improving surgery and focus on improving chemistry and how applying chemicals work. Don't focus on nerfing it. Sleeper nerf was a good one, these chems are terrible. Fuck em and fuck the guy who made them for being actively a cunt.

[Shadowflame909]

Isn't /tg/ balanced by antags? At least currently?

Otherwise rounds wouldn't be so short. They'd be boring and long without them. IE extended. But they wouldn't be short.

You could say they shouldn't be. But they are the driving force of the problems the codebase is trying to solve. Aren't they?

[oranges]

I don't know why you think any of the things you do

[Shadowflame909]

Differing opinions causes war

but without them, you lose the ability to advance.

[Cobby]

First of all, because >it went there:

Restricting the "main" antags in ANY way is a massive mistake, should not happen and last time it happened it was massively unpopular with fucking everyone for a very good reason. There are plenty of servers that restrict antags and people who would like that can go there. tg should always allow murderbone, even when it sucks (looking at you epic gamer guy who delammed the SM and murderboned people on a 10 pop terry last night. Very epic gamer to kill a bunch of people doing pet projects during deadpop).

Now @cobby:

The game has antags. That's the reality. The game shouldn't be BALANCED around antags but it should recognize they exist and they have a certain power level. Security isn't there to just stop the occasional greytide. Security is there to stop the guy with no slips, armour and desword.

Ignoring the existence of antags and balancing as in a vacuum is not the correct answer either.

I didn't say ignore them, I said don't base your core changes off them. Antags should change based off the core game, not the other way around. I'm fully aware antags exist and in fact have fostered an opportunity of more sabotage potential now that one requires more attention/trust from the doctor.

No one is suggesting no murderbone rules, not even sure how that's relevant here.

Lizardchems are fucking terrible because they are fucking unfun. They are just straight up useless and when you accidentally get injected by them, you gotta hide a min or 2 deaf in a locker taking you out of the round.

They're placeholders for the C2s. Reworked C2s will all have a downside that is health-based and meant to be more long-term, not a temporary debuff.

C2s are not meant to be good chems on their own. That is by design. That said, some of the chems are still relatively harmless since organ damage automatically heals if it's not busted.

[Cornarias]

Antags should not be the basis of core gamemode changes. Antags should be reactive to the core game because they are, by design, supplements to the core game to drive some form of story.

I agree, hence why I was looking at ways to change antags around the new system, not set my heels down and whine. If the core gameplay changes, antags also need to be changed. Personally I feel antags should be more promoted to use their ingenuity and tools at hand, and muchbof their arsenal should be utility or niche. However a lot of things are timeless staples, so toying with them without obscene backlash will be hard at the least.

As it stands, however, antags are less and less driving a story and more and more an absurdly strong force that can damage a station beyond repair with even a decent amount of game knowledge and experience. There's not much story to be told when someone trawls maint and kills half the station with noslips and a desword yet again. There's a great one to be told when a sneaky traitor bit by bit hypno flashes the entire crew to think they're actually living potatoes who are complete pacifists.

The issue lies in Death becoming a more severe consequence + being easier to die, while the raw and direct power of many antags goes unchanged.

As you said, the antags need to follow the core game, but in its current state it feels the opposite. Though I know that's not the aim.

A quick edit: it should be clarified that I don't innately think antags should be restricted. But it's important to discuss all the options available when an issue arises, and that's one of them.

[angelstarri]

as long as bruise packs and ointment are still a thing all of these changes are useless

i've never in any server have had to actively escape from a medibot to not get injected

[Shadowflame909]

Antags should not be the basis of core gamemode changes. Antags should be reactive to the core game because they are, by design, supplements to the core game to drive some form of story.

I agree, hence why I was looking at ways to change antags around the new system, not set my heels down and whine. If the core gameplay changes, antags also need to be changed. Personally I feel antags should be more promoted to use their ingenuity and tools at hand, and muchbof their arsenal should be utility or niche. However a lot of things are timeless staples, so toying with them without obscene backlash will be hard at the least.

As it stands, however, antags are less and less driving a story and more and more an absurdly strong force that can damage a station beyond repair with even a decent amount of game knowledge and experience. There's not much story to be told when someone trawls maint and kills half the station with noslips and a desword yet again. There's a great one to be told when a sneaky traitor bit by bit hypno flashes the entire crew to think they're actually living potatoes who are complete pacifists.

The issue lies in Death becoming a more severe consequence + being easier to die, while the raw and direct power of many antags goes unchanged.

As you said, the antags need to follow the core game, but in its current state it feels the opposite. Though I know that's not the aim.

A quick edit: it should be clarified that I don't innately think antags should be restricted. But it's important to discuss all the options available when an issue arises, and that's one of them.

A good fix in my opinion would be literally removing everything in the "Loud and Dangerous" part of the uplink unless you have Hijack/Die a Glorious Death/Highlander

[Cobby]

as long as bruise packs and ointment are still a thing all of these changes are useless

i've never in any server have had to actively escape from a medibot to not get injected

Yes medibots are derpy atm because they use the placeholder chem.

They're also getting changed to be fluffed as doing tend wounds as opposed to using a chemical (meaning they won't have a drawback to being used).

[Farquaar]

I enjoy the new chems, at least from the MD's perspective. Treating a patient has become more involved, especially after they taken in heavy damage.

There are still a few kinks in the system. Medikits, chemistry and cloning have one foot in the new system and one foot in the old, and should be brought up to date with the new medicines in mind.

An additional problem is the lack of doctor players. Now that doctors are arguably more necessary than before, we're in a weird transition stage where when the station is in chaos, there simply isn't enough medical staff to treat the influx of injured/dying patients. It remains to be seen whether enough players will find the new system engaging enough to meet this demand.

[confused rock]

The new toxin healty thing is so overly complex I lost all motivation to doc

[oranges]

simple minds

[deedubya]

What I don't understand is why a clearly unfinished system was ever pushed through to begin with? I'm sure if you had actually finished the entire rework you had planned that players would be bitching significantly less and there'd be actual merits to it. Or, you could have testmerged the unfinished system on a shithole like event hall until work was done on it so you could gather data on the implemented elements beforehand. Merging an unfinished system onto the main server did absolutely nothing to ingratiate the playerbase to this system or the codebus at large. Just seems like another case of "coders don't actually play" more specifically "why would they care if we have to deal with unfinished crap"

[Cobby]

What are we talking about again?

MY rework isn't even testmerged yet (well right now it's conflicted which I need to fixies). If we're talking about injectibabies, THOSE ARE A PLACEHOLDER. THOSE ARE A PLACEHOLDER. THOSE ARE A PLACEHOLDER.

Even the current conglomerate system isn't bad, I have no issue healing people. There is this guy on bagil though who I assume he enjoys doing it so much he literally refuses to do cloning, so much that he's willing to manually take longer just to defib. That or he's both a sadist and masochist simultaneously.

> Just seems like another case of "coders don't actually play" more specifically "why would they care if we have to deal with unfinished crap"

You caught me, ever since I started working on medbay I sometimes get off doctor to play virologist. Don't tell anyone please oh my god please.

In b4 "oh I bet you play on lowpop so you don't see how this REALLY affects doctors".

[deedubya]

What are we talking about again?

MY rework isn't even testmerged yet (well right now it's conflicted which I need to fixies). If we're talking about injectibabies, THOSE ARE A PLACEHOLDER. THOSE ARE A PLACEHOLDER. THOSE ARE A PLACEHOLDER.

That's the point, though. Why was the old system removed and replaced with a placeholder instead of waiting to replace it until it was all ready to go? Like I said above, I'm sure a testmerge on a shitter server would have been more appropriate if you wanted to collect data and >opinions.

Honestly, I haven't played much medical after the rework, so I won't speak to how much more fun and engaging it might be for doctors - specifically medbay mains. I have however made a habit of smashing any medibot that gets near me, in fear of the deafening silence that will soon follow. It's simply not fun to deal with as a player. "but just don't get injured, dumbass!" Try telling the world to stop revolving. You'd have more luck getting it to cooperate than to never get injured.

You caught me, ever since I started working on medbay I sometimes get off doctor to play virologist. Don't tell anyone please oh my god please.

You're actually an exception, and I respect you for it. I still think it was rubbish to remove a working system and merge a placeholder, but I am looking forward to what you come up with in the future, because I know for a fact you have a personal investment in the well being of the medical department.

[oranges]

This server has not survived 11 years by waiting for things to be perfect.

The sooner people become comfortable with some level of jank the better they will enjoy their time, but your whole post just screams overreaction, the new medical system was fine during the change and after and acting like it completely ruined the game for you is pathetic and does not make anyone amenable to your comments.

If you can't control your emotional response and provide feedback that is clear and and free of emotional appeals I will put you on post approval, and don't bother with the wall of text posts either.

[confused rock]

This doesnt feel like a step towards perfect though

[oranges]

that depends on what your view of perfect is

[wesoda25]

that depends on what your view of perfect is

whats your view?

Ideally I want a med system with minimized cloning/cryo reliance that focuses on reconstruction surgery/stasis and defibb stuff. I've been loving all the organ stuff, plus how I can now have a chance of working on someone to get them to the point of defibb so that I might bypass cloning (lock cloning behind techwebs btw). I know you guys dislike how people can pop chems and get passive healing, so I think we should have taken a direction which places importance on doctor application. I understand that tossing in some side effects encourages this, but I don't think it was done in the best way possible. I honestly don't know a better solution atm, and I know you'll probably dismiss my opinion because of that, but quite honestly some of the new chems are literally pointless. Their healing is so abysmal, and side effects so niche, literally no one is ever going to bother, ever using them. I don't see why we couldn't have just made the base level chems have bad healing rates, no side effects, unable to bring someone out of crit, and detect if chems that heal similar damage are inside (and therefore stop working). It'd address the issue of stacking healing types (one of your issues with trekchems I believe?), and put them in the slot of shitty passive heal that traitors will stock up on before a murderbone but can't rely on too hard.

[NecromancerAnne]

I felt since we don't have lizardchems except in spirit, we might as well move onto a new thread to discuss the various newly introduced chems and the impact it has on medbay as a whole. I'm not really a medical main but I am a disgusting powergamer so I do like to see exactly how these will be used in that context. (for the most part not much except for a few that enable you to be a medbay god and save people from the absolute brink)

I'll start with the two you're most likely to encounter first:

Brute and Burn

I want to preface this section by saying we have a very interesting framework at the moment with healing brute and burn damage. These chems are not the be all, end all to challenging these damage types, which is probably good because they are the most frequent you'll encounter. Tend Wounds and the new medibots (lizardchem medibots begone) are pretty good in my opinion.

Libital and Aiuri:

Spoiler:

Both of these chems are designed with the intent that they are extremely weak brute and burn chems respectively, with the expectation that they're used to keep medbay stocked until better chems are produced and work adjacent to the intended method of treating these injuries, which is surgery.

There are a few core problems with these as the baseline chem. For starters, at 1 brute for Libital and .5 for Airuri, most of the time you'd be simply better off ignoring them entirely and using some other, alternative healing solution, which makes me wonder why they exist in the first place. And by alternative, I literally mean just using milk, bilk, cream and tomato juice.

Both Libital and Aiuri require a mixed chem to produce. You can't ghetto chem these with any reasonable amount of reliability (which is weird given their description as an inferior chem). The damage they do is also debatable whether they are worth using. Libital maybe, but I've heard problems with curing the AIuri eye damage and I don't know if that's something specific to a bug with the chem or just that eye damage is a pain in the arse to fix. At a .5 to 1 ratio for Aiuri, I don't know why burns are specifically valued higher than brute despite brute being more common (getting punched in the face all the way up to buckshot and eswords) but burn usually being attached to effects that are more serious (plasma fires, being on fire in general, hot air, freezing) which are often going to be constant threats over brute damage dealing instant damage. I'm surprised it's not the other way around.

In addition to this, what you get in the nuclear operative tactical medical kit is these chems. Why on earth that is the chase is beyond me, since they don't have ready access to oculine. They don't want to use these. It's too risky and short-nearsightedness is a big detriment when they rely a lot on striking people before they can react with powerful weapons. If you can't SEE anything you can't shoot anything.

Sanguibital

Spoiler:

I didn't want to put this with Ichiyuri because I want to really call attention to the dangerous effect this chem has and how in general use it seems to be at most okay.

A brute chem that causes you to bleed more but heals more based on how much you're bleeding is kind of interesting. It means that when someone has this applied to them, assuming they've been beaten to a pulp, the chem is likely to do a really good job so long as they're having their blood sufficiently replaced, which means if they're on an IV or in cryo with iron in their system they're likely to be okay so long as they don't dip too low.

There is one monumental problem with this chem in that it is insanely powerful when paired with heparin. Heparin causes considerable bloodloss and this chem increases that even further. I tested this with a sleepy pen with the overdose and just 10 units of heparin. It drained them of blood in about a minute. This isn't 'in crit in a minute'. He had no blood. None. This isn't even accounting for any potential bloodloss caused by following up with an attack. And since it killed them before the Heparin dipped below 7 units, this means we have leeway to add in another chem which I will bring up in a bit. (It's fiziver)

Suffice to say this chem has a very high overdose threshold so the instances where this overdose threshold actually becomes an issue will be rare. At a baseline it will make heparin more deadly when mixed with it. Whether that is acceptable or not is difficult to say. It is very easily mixed and can be ghetto mixed, so as a ghetto chem it's not so bad.

Ichiyuri

Spoiler:

A chem when microdosed does a better job than if administered all at once. You could probably use a dropper to make the most of this chem. But if RNG fucks you, you just take more damage (or not much at all). It's weird. I'm not a big fan on how little this heals but how much it has the potential to deal. I don't believe this can be reasonably weaponized like Sanguibital but it does seem to be just really annoying having the damage it deals be the same as the damage it's healing. Itching from other symptoms deals brute so why doesn't it deal brute as well? It's a weird consistency thing.

Otherwise I really don't give a shit about it and generally find it be kind of okay.

You would make this instead of Aiuri since they both use Ammonia. There is no reason to not use this over Aiuri.

Instabitaluri (also known as Synthflesh)

Spoiler:

This basically does what it did before but it hurts you. A lot. 75% of the healed damage as toxins is a lot. You're likely STILL in crit if deep enough but you might barely get pulled out if you're just hovering in crit. It can get you back on your feet but you're not running anywhere fast. Simply put, this is just way better than anything else despite the toxins damage and you probably will just use this.

If you aren't negatively affected by toxins this is a huge boon.

Toxins

Unlike brute and burn, toxins is harder to treat and only have reagent healing and medibots. I don't believe there is any specific tool or treatment at the moment that medical doctors can use to treat toxins except for using the various reagents that we have.

Often you'll encounter toxins in one of several ways. Plasma in the air, you've had poisons injected into you, your liver is failing or you're irradiated/been shot with a nuclear particle. Also, you might have been shot with an ebow.

All of these are either inconsequential (plasma is pretty minor damage unless you just stand there huffing it), some are incredibly dangerous (radiation is no joke, please practice workplace safety also an ebow hurts eventually but especially if you're being shanked with an esword). So toxin healers probably need to be fairly robust. Oh, and Instabitaluri does a potentially huge burst of toxins damage if you splash enough of it onto someone so uh yeah be careful about that when you take into account these chems.

Here are the ones touched in Cobby's PR.

Multiver

Spoiler:

First time I encountered it, it was bugged. Going to ignore that.

So, as a chem that purges itself and all other medicines present in your system, this makes it really, really inefficient as a means of removing things that AREN'T medicine without first mixing it with something else. But exactly WHAT do you use? If we use some of the inferior chems, sure, I suppose that's one way to do it but then is the only purpose to those chems is to act as fuel for multiver?

I guess if there is any value to multiver is that if these chems find themselves being used as weapons, multiver will be the frontline to combating them.

Fiziver

Spoiler:

I'll address Fiziver separately but I'll simply say that it is good at healing toxins and probably too good. It heals an absolutely ridiculous amount of toxin damage. That's about the only positive thing I have to say about this 'medicine'.

Syriniver

Spoiler:

This is just thializid and thializid when properly diluted was a really damn good chem. You can't really use this in the field properly and it is fucking weird as shit that it comes in syringes. I feel like the toxins first aid kits need iv bags with a premix in them.

Can be used to kill you as a 15 unit syringe of the stuff so uh yeah that's kinda scary but the core chem itself is fine honestly. This wasn't actually Cobby's work so like I don't know if it's really worth talking about. I've not seen a bad word against it other than it's harder to use than antitoxin and that's like...not really a good excuse.

Suffocation

Suffocation damage is a mix bag because it heals itself. Actually suffocating to death is rare and only really seen by the truly misfortunate or because other things were killing you on top of that. The real killers are excessive bloodloss and effects that deal direct oxyloss damage like choking, ARDS and poisons like lexorin.

It's worth reminding you that we have a medicine that causes blood loss. These might be necessary to help if that gets out of hand.

Oxyloss can be combated with CPR, which heals a pretty decent amount of oxyloss. Medical doctors are not useless in stopping the effects of non-fatal amounts of oxyloss damage over time, but they will absolutely need medicines to pull someone out of crit and cannot CPR before the person is in crit. Oxyloss in most cases is forgiving but it is savage if the damage ticks are high enough.

Tirimol

Spoiler:

This is a chem I have major problems with in it's implementation. At only 9 units, it will put you to sleep. This means it is actually pretty good at being weaponized since it is very forgiving about chem space in your application method and since it isn't a toxin it doesn't get purged at 3 units. It also deals 2 stamina damage per tick so if you have another source of stamina damage, you don't have to worry about the stamina damage healing and will obviously stack well with that. Tirizene and Bone Hurting Juice (seriously this isn't a meme chem) comes to mind.

It has...more considerably concerning issues when paired with Fiziver. Again, I'll come to that.

How is it like as a medicine?

If someone uses this on you, they are trying to kill you.

Convermol

Spoiler:

I've had problems with new Perf for a while and Convermol is just new Perf so I'll reiterate. The damage conversion on this chem is such that it doesn't adequately combat rapid, heavy hitting oxyloss meaningfully and it also doesn't do a great job at dealing with minor amounts of oxyloss because it needs to ramp up. It's arse-backwards and doesn't do a great job and since this is the chem you're kind of expected to be using to fight heavy oxyloss before the chemist grace medbay with any amount of Salbutamol. I'm still convinced you're basically doomed if an ARDS breakout happens and someone didn't produce the cure already.

Not too bad if applied before placing someone into cryo with cryoxadrone though. But cryoxadrone itself is....really good so I don't really see much point even then.

Okay but what about Fiziver?

Fiziver is a damage amp. Whether Cobby intended it to be used in this way or not, it is at present a potent damage amplifier that makes any adjacent damage effects that much more deadly. This chem is not going to be used primarily as a toxin combatant (it is very good at that). The trait it puts on you is going to be used to kill you faster than if it didn't exist.

It takes time to ramp up but since there exists a lot of very strong damage over time effects and even small multipliers are meaningful (see: plasmamen nerfs), it does really raise massive concerns about how this chem is going to be utilized and whether people are going to use this as a weapon.

I've devised or speculated on a few uses thus far, not all of which I've actually tested yet:

Spoiler:

Lexorin + Fiziver: Ramps the oxyloss faster than if you just used pure Lexorin. If you only use a small amount of Fiziver to Lexorin, this still proves incredibly fatal since they will hit critical much faster than normal. Perf will likely safe you from this, and the fiziver will even help with Perf's damage.

Tirizene + Fiziver in a Sleepy Pen: The ramping damage of Fiziver in addition to Tirizene means that being injected with these two alone will keep you on the floor for a while. This will slow you up and paralyze you for a good, long while. Now, this has some additional variations. You CAN include 9 units of Tirimol into this mix to deal additional ramping stamina damage (and therefore floor them faster) and also knock them unconscious when the chem metabolizes out of their system. You can also use Bone Hurting Juice on top of this. I guess...kind of overkill but it's funny when they utter oof ow my bones and then their bones literally break. They will be deep in the hundreds of stamina loss in a few seconds.

Fiziver + Histimine: Histimine is hard to get your hands on as a standalone chem, and you really want to use it more for the toxin and brute combined. BUT a histimine overdose does a combination of brute, toxins and oxyloss. So if you can get 30 units of it and 10 units of Fiziver in a sleepy pen, the poor bastard is likely to melt then and there.

Omnizine Overdose + Fiziver: This kills the man. This does every base damage type, which happens to align with fiziver's damage amp so good grief this shit will kill you. But how do we get so much omnizine? It's a bit hard to really inject all that omni, gosh I wish we had some means of producing more of it at little expense...possibly in some kind of pen for-

Lavaland Extract Overdose + Fiziver: Did you know you can extract the contents of a medipen using a syringe? Did you know it takes only 3 units to overdose on Lavaland Extract and it deals 3 brute and burn per tick? Gosh It would be a shame if some bad man were to inject like 8 units of this into me with 7 fiziver so I just perish that sure would suck.

Oh what's that you can put 45 units into a sleepy pen. Why you could fit 25 units of omnizine, 10 units of lavaland extract and 10 units of fiziver perfectly. WHOA! :3c

Krokodil Addiction + Fiziver: Not only do you just melt the man literally after the massive chunk of damage caused by this chem gets multiplied, you also convince the AI he isn't human and that you saved the station! Good job chemist man!

This is entirely the chems use exclusively for chemistry. This chem carries a lot of uses when NOT just using chemistry methods. Simply put, a damage amp puts a ticking timebomb on whoever has it in their system not to get blown up because someone punched them in the face. They cannot fight or if they do they have to blow away the competition as quickly as possible. The lasers might hurt but they'll be REALLY hurting when you start taking double and triple damage and can't flee anymore. It lasts a good while too. It might not be so great in a straight one on one due to needing to ramp up, but in a situation where you're fleeing from a mob of people?

The chem is also fairly easy to make quickly, even as a ghetto chem. There is a real possibility it's Urist McGreyshit who looted a syringe gun that does you in with this and not just the chemist man who can produce all sorts of ridiculous shit to shoot you with.

Damage amplifiers are a mistake and have incredibly bad ramifications for the game as a whole if you start putting them in. I wouldn't exactly call the games combat balanced but getting oneshot is not fun and there is a real reality this will happen with fiziver in existence. It equally is the biggest offender of weaponized medicines in these new changes and I'm amazed this chem got added when we already had a long standing issue with old perf and the lizardchems on implementation.

What needs to happen?

Cobby wants to implement more complex healing methods, and I feel that's fine. But we need more tools for combating the base damage types like oxyloss and toxins. Some kind of machines or tools or surgeries to use to keep people alive in medbay without the reliance on chemistry or medical supplies except in an emergency.

Fiziver needs a new side effect. In fact many of these chems need to see their side effects altered and in general these shouldn't the standard chems. They should be absolutely the last resort shit you churn out en masse. At the very least their recipes need to better represent that.

[Taraiph]

Recently there's been many calls for changes to medbay. It's boring 90% of the time and has a lot of people just breaking in to steal what they want and go right back to the tide, as well as there being not as much for any medical doctor or even a chemist to do if a bomb didn't go off in the past five minutes. Thus, it becomes reasonable that one would want to make the shift more interesting for those who would enjoy playing medbay.

The new chemicals are the exact opposite.

They are shit.

The idea is that by adding the category healing systems to the game, the healing becomes more engaging for the player of medbay and helps improve roleplay. Each category serves a different purpose and has a different method of application, with category 1 being chemless, category 2 being chemicals that are quick and simple to make but have a non-trivial downside, and category 3 being chemicals that lack a downside. Thus, the idea is that the doctor would use category 2 chemicals to heal quickly, category 1 to heal more extensive wounds, and category 3 as an endgame solution to problems. The problem is that's not how the game plays right now. In a game where extreme amounts of damage can come from dozens of sources, healing is essential. Not just healing with whatever overcomplicated mess has been introduced, healing that is effective and meaningful without being punishment for something you may or may not have had any control over. Every single chem is either worthless or not worth the effort.

Toxin damage has gone from "troublesome, but solvable" to "pray that your chemist has pentetic". Burn damage has become a difficult to deal with effectively without having to resort to chemicals that can do more burn damage than they heal or just has you go outright blind. Heavily injured, but not quite in critical yet? Considering the changes to synthflesh? The best thing to do would be to hit you in the head with a toolbox until you reach crit and go from there.

Medbay has gone from "chems, cryo, and cloning" to "cryo and cloning and maybe surgery if you have appendicitis". Almost every single other department on the station has better ways to deal with the dying and wounded than medical at this point. Drinking milk or eating a burger is a better cure for getting hit in the chest with a bullet than going to medbay. Having the Chaplain hit you over the head with his book is a less risky measure for healing critically-injured patients than giving them whatever cocktail of chemicals was intended for healing them. Whatever endgame you have for the station after this latest batch of changes, I sincerely hope that you don't try and alienate the current community any further for it.

[oranges]

this is bait

[oranges]

why do you say oxyloss is a base damage type, what is a base damage type?

[NecromancerAnne]

I mean, it's the language cobby has been using.

Brute, burn, toxin and oxyloss. It's the four medical kits after all. And also the four damage types his chems address.

Most of the side effects are generally what are better described as secondary damage types? Like, for instance, brain damage, clone damage, organ damage in general, radiation, shit like that.

[PKPenguin321]

why do you say oxyloss is a base damage type, what is a base damage type?

i'd assume the four main ones, those being: brute, burn, toxyloss, oxyloss
non-base damage types would be organ damage and debatably clone damage i guess

[Shadowflame909]

Would you say ultimately. That it's reached the balance of being a Healing Chem and not a better poison?

That's sort of the downfall with this Negative-Medical Centered Idea line. You might just be buffing traitor-medical. Which really blows.

[NecromancerAnne]

I don't genuinely believe this needs be seen from the lens purely from a antagonist standpoint. Antags aren't the only people utilizing chems as weapons and I don't give a shit about balancing around antags. Anyone and their mother can make a deathmix. The person on the receiving end is just going to have to deal with a one hit chump in a few of these cases.

The core problem is more to do with whether having weaponized medicines as a reality is good or not. Pairing these with actual poisons, they begin to show cracks. Like with perf+neurotox, one of these was supposed to be a medicine but used primarily as a killing tool. Several of these fit that same description. They are not truly good enough to justify the powerful weaponization I feel. If a chems only real purpose then is to be weaponized, it's a poison at it's core.

Original Lizardchems was this in the upmost extreme. This is subtle.

I should also remind you that charcoal is weaker so just getting it out of your system is harder.

[Stillplant]

One thing you forgot to mention about sanguibital: Unlike heparin, it doesn't cap the bleed rate. Unless there's something else that also limits the bleed rate I'm not aware of, sanguibital will just cause the bleed rate to increase indefinitively.

So, if you're making a heparin / sanguibital murder mix, only put in a little bit of Heparin, so that the sanguibital can take the bleed rate to the moon.

[Mickyan]

Some of the new chems seem more complicated than they really need to be, organ damage is mostly fine because it's not going to be a problem unless you abuse your chems and you get plenty of warnings about it, I'm not a fan of side effects doing permanent damage (so to speak) as it just adds an extra step to healing, so for example if you're using synthflesh then you also NEED a chem for curing toxins

Before medbay became a hot topic I mulled over the idea of having most medicines having a varying amount of nutrition drain and I believe that would have been an effective additional way to discourage careless use of chems, especially as nutrition has a major effect on metabolism efficiency

In general I think side effects in most situations should be debilitating rather than damaging. Slowdowns, stamina damage, limb paralysis, vomiting, dizziness, confusion, and so on. The possibility of accidentally killing your patient should only be present when using very powerful medicines.

[Skillywatt]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say I actually like the complexity.

Doctor and sec are probably my most played roles outside of greyshirts and sillycon, but I quit playing doctor because it was getting stale. This really isn't a bad change if you have chemists that actually want to get involved in patient care. Meds that have improved effects with food and/or route difference (po vs IV) is a cool concept for ss13.

With the new chem factory thing, what are everyones thoughts on creating a "pharmacist" role in medbay that replaces the chemist areas?

Someone whose job it is to actually know the best combos of healing chems, keep a stockpile, best way to give, etc. The current chemdispenser could be replaced with a more user-friendly mechanism of creating meds if chemfactory ends up being created.

I feel like the framework of something cool has been put in now, it just needs some smoothing of the edges.

[Kryson]

Most of the chems are totally useless.

But they won't be when we remove the good chems such as salicylic, oxalandrone, salbutamol, atropine, regen jelly, survival medipens as well as brute packs and ointment.

[wesoda25]

Most of the chems are totally useless.

But they won't be when we remove the good chems such as salicylic, oxalandrone, salbutamol, atropine, regen jelly, survival medipens as well as brute packs and ointment.

lol

[Shaps-cloud]

I like the idea of common meds dealing organ damage, when properly administered in controlled amounts by doctors it won't be an issue, but you can't just slap 20 brute patches in a kit and be a one-man tank for the rest of the shift even if you're constantly getting into fights

Also, if you keep getting beaten up and having to go to medbay to get these quick fixes, eventually it's gonna catch up to you and you're gonna need some more in depth treatment once your liver starts going.

[Dr_bee]

The cat 2 blood healer that causes worse bleeding needs to be reworked. Bleeding is already a problem with serious brute damage and using a medicine that makes that problem actively worse isnt a good trade off. It is comparable to giving a blood thinner to a patient actively bleeding out.

The damage increase debuff the anti-tox chem gives is a good replacement, or a penalty to stamina damage regen for a period of time. But trading healing of brute damage for dying of blood loss isnt a good trade like organ damage is.

[Dr_bee]

Damage multiplication is not necessarily bad if it is a small multiplier for a short period of time. Basically to discourage its use as a combat chem, but also make its use as a poison less appealing.

Using stamina damage as a downside should always have a cap in the damage like Tirizine, this makes it basically a slowdown debuff without making it Chloral Hydrate Two: Chemical Boogaloo.

Organ damage honestly should be the go to for all cat 2 style chems, as it is minor for general use, but becomes an issue if you are constantly getting into fights and damaged.

As Mickyan said, for side effects not related to organ damage, debilitation is better than damage. You would be surprised how shitty a little screen shake can be.

[Timonk]

Why does every chem have to do anothet damage to heal the damage you want to heal? I thought meds in 2200 were more advanced than this

[oranges]

game vs reality

[Stillplant]

How about a drug where the effectiveness depends on the ammount in the mob's bloodstream? Then you could make the positive effect ramp up linearly, and the negative effect quadratically. Would make it so that the drug is safe to use for healing, but you can't just pump people full of it and forget about them.

[deedubya]

Honestly, I think the entire point of this is to shift people towards using tend wounds surgery for major injury treatment, as opposed to stuffing them full of chems and kicking them out. Which I would be fine with, if the failure rate of ghetto tend wounds didn't make it so fucking annoying.

The one change I'd like to see is one that'd shift perception a lot if it was implemented. Make tend wounds surgery have the same success rate on a roller bed as it would on a surgery table. It would encourage it's use a lot more, and make medbay a lot more efficient and engaging all at once. You'll still need a doctor to treat you if you come in looking like you just stepped out of 'nam, and that doctor will be held up for a bit...but it'd shift public perception away from the "give them patches and tell them to fuck off" meta that we're used to. It'd also encourage doctors to carry roller beds on them for potential field treatment, and maybe even make the public roller beds a contested item. There's potential here, but restricting it to the two roundstart surgery beds is a bit much.

[deedubya]

The cat 2 blood healer that causes worse bleeding needs to be reworked. Bleeding is already a problem with serious brute damage and using a medicine that makes that problem actively worse isnt a good trade off. It is comparable to giving a blood thinner to a patient actively bleeding out.

The damage increase debuff the anti-tox chem gives is a good replacement, or a penalty to stamina damage regen for a period of time. But trading healing of brute damage for dying of blood loss isnt a good trade like organ damage is.

Simple response: Use the roundstart bloodpacks to solve the issue, rather then chems. Those things are never touched in 95% of shifts. If you're at all serious about playing medbay, learn to use them.

[NecromancerAnne]

Damage multiplication is not necessarily bad if it is a small multiplier for a short period of time. Basically to discourage its use as a combat chem, but also make its use as a poison less appealing.

Timing it to do the most damage is hard but there is a good amount of time where the multiplier is pretty significant and will have a noticeable effect in a fight. It is obviously best employed with DoT poisons to ramp their effects up. Lexorin and the stamina damage chems are the biggest cases for this, especially since Tirizene does 13 stamina damage at base.

Using stamina damage as a downside should always have a cap in the damage like Tirizine, this makes it basically a slowdown debuff without making it Chloral Hydrate Two: Chemical Boogaloo.

Hilariously tirimol might be a very good alternative to Chloral Hydrate. Not a toxin so it doesn't get purged, the slow is still pretty decent and stacks well with just fiziver. It takes a bit to knock you out but it's not too terrible. Not as good as chloral hydate for speed but actually very good if utilized in a sleepy pen compared to chloral and you just want to subdue, not potentially hurt. Like for instance, as a contractor. Kind of more efficient to make lots of it as well, so it can be potentially rather useful in sedation smoke mixes if you can get that mix just right.

[Dr_bee]

The cat 2 blood healer that causes worse bleeding needs to be reworked. Bleeding is already a problem with serious brute damage and using a medicine that makes that problem actively worse isnt a good trade off. It is comparable to giving a blood thinner to a patient actively bleeding out.

The damage increase debuff the anti-tox chem gives is a good replacement, or a penalty to stamina damage regen for a period of time. But trading healing of brute damage for dying of blood loss isnt a good trade like organ damage is.

Simple response: Use the roundstart bloodpacks to solve the issue, rather then chems. Those things are never touched in 95% of shifts. If you're at all serious about playing medbay, learn to use them.

No, you fail to understand what I was talking about. I DO use the blood packs. the problem being is you have to use an entire one to heal serious brute damage cases due to the excessive blood loss, typically because people drag all the blood out of people.

That plus blood types means that I run out often. There are typically only a few O- packs for the O types. And only ONE L type pack and electricity pack, so if I have to heal the blood of more than one lizard or ethereal Im screwed.

[wesoda25]

After playing as med doc on lowpop, I've come to some conclusions regarding new medical system. It is, in its current form, overly complex and very punishing to new players. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but I think way, WAY too much thought has been put into our chem system.

I quite literally would never use chems, because A: my chemists didnt make me any good shit, and B: to do so would either make them go blind or kill their liver. Throughout the shift I relied solely on bruise packs and ointment. The one chem that I did enjoy my experience with was Syriniver. Round start I poisoned myself so that I could figure out a good mix, and went from there. I enjoyed working on dead people via surgery so that I could bypass cloning.

Basically, long story short, our new chem system is overly complex with too many drawbacks. I cannot accurately rely upon chems to heal a distribution of 5 damage across multiple limbs, since the drawbacks of said chems are huge. Relying on chem never has and never will work, certainly not in any of the shifts I have played doctor. And, above all, cryo needs to be balanced. At a certain point I just started chucking people into cryo because its safer, easier, and faster. Our new chem system is quite literally rewarding this shitty gameplay, and something needs to be done about it.

What I suggest is: remove the horrible side effects from chems and just make them shitty at healing. Like, im talking C2 chems heal 0.25-0.5 damage type a tick, don't work if a similar damage healer is inside the patient, and are without OD. Something you give to someone with 5 of a damage type and send them on their way. These chems would be unable to bring a patient out of critical, and are designed for small, thoughtless use, for small, thoughtless injuries. Not something a traitor could use in battle, just shitty chems without side effects.

[wesoda25]

To illustrate what I think a better chem system would be, I made this:

Effectively speaking, I think it addresses what coders want, and maintains simplicity. Roundstart chems would no longer enable a traitor, or anyone, to take some and get passive, safe healing.

Tier 1 chems are to be used if someone has 5 burn damage spread across their entire body. Something doctors can give a decent amount of and send you on your way. They provide terrible passive healing, and do not work if you have chems that heal a similar damage type in your body.

Tier 1.5 chems are last resort chems for quick, dangerous healing. I say debatable on their heal rates bc im not sure if that would be too OP. They cause immense liver damage, especially in higher doses, thus making them dangerous to be used freely.

Tier 2 chems are safe, strong chems made by chemistry.

Not pictured are the bizarre, specialty chems that have been added in as of late. Ones that require a specific type of application to work. I'd prefer for those to remain, but just as chemistry made chems.

[Arathian]

I would like to make a special mention on something that really bugs me.

The names are utter fucking shit.

Maybe it's personal preference, but I can't take those names seriously. What the fuck's a multiliver or a friuli or whatever.

Previous names were either real chemical mimicking real(ish) effects like charcoal or were common scifi trope chemicals like synthflesh. You basically knew what most of them were pretty much by reading their names.

What the fuck is an instabitaluri? An Aiuri? An Ichiyuri? Libital? Convermol?

I have to read the wiki for each one of these. Maybe in a year I will have learned what those names are supposed to represent but it's completely unintuitive and an extremely weird choice.

It's confusing for us and we play this game autistically much. Imagine a new player joins and sees a multiliver pill and a aiuri can. Will he even know these are meds?

[confused rock]

what's wrong with keeping the new chems called bicardine and kelo etc