Medbay Suggestion #9000 "Dynamic Health"
Posted: Sun Mar 17, 2019 9:01 pm
So I was thinking about medbay as well as looking through some of the posts on here and I think we can boil down all of our problems with medbay to two:
1.) Medbay is not engaging for people who play as doctors
2.) Any suggestions to make medbay more engaging cannot increase complexity too much due to TG's short round time
Alright, so what do I propose? There's about a 95% chance nobody is going to care so I'm going to be light on the details in this post, in the off chance someone thinks this is a good idea I'd be happy to flesh it out. I think that we need an opt in system I am calling "dynamic health." It would be a setting that people can turn on that would open up their character to chronic health issues but also allow for health improvement. For example, your character would be able to exercise and take vitamins (from specific foods or made in pills by chemistry) which would increase your characters hit strength or running speed. However this setting would also give your character a chance to spawn in with a genetic predisposition to something like high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, etc. Perhaps your character grew up at home, so there would be a chance they would get a popup at the start of the round saying their Father had high blood pressure, maybe they were an orphan so they'd have to get tested in genetics. Nonetheless the person can share this information with a doctor early in the round (or later if they want) and undergo some kind of physical exam (blood pressure cuff, heart rate, blood test...). The main part of the exam would be the blood test, which would only require the player to give blood, the doctors would have to go through a specific protocol for different tests but the player would not have to wait around in medbay because these diseases would be long term and not start causing problems until later on. After the tests are complete the doctor would determine what the patient has, or at least, is at risk for and can suggest foods to stay away from or prescribe some kind of medicine (for cholesterol e.g.) to be taken on occasion. These problems could eventually lead to heart attack, fatigue, loss of sensation (diabetes) and whatever else.
In short: opt in system, benefits for opting in but potential risks, identifying potential risks requires doctors to talk to the patient about their history, blood testing would be an in-depth system for doctors and chemists that does not require the patient to sit out half the round in the doctor's office (rarer diseases would have more complicated tests)
1.) Medbay is not engaging for people who play as doctors
2.) Any suggestions to make medbay more engaging cannot increase complexity too much due to TG's short round time
Alright, so what do I propose? There's about a 95% chance nobody is going to care so I'm going to be light on the details in this post, in the off chance someone thinks this is a good idea I'd be happy to flesh it out. I think that we need an opt in system I am calling "dynamic health." It would be a setting that people can turn on that would open up their character to chronic health issues but also allow for health improvement. For example, your character would be able to exercise and take vitamins (from specific foods or made in pills by chemistry) which would increase your characters hit strength or running speed. However this setting would also give your character a chance to spawn in with a genetic predisposition to something like high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, etc. Perhaps your character grew up at home, so there would be a chance they would get a popup at the start of the round saying their Father had high blood pressure, maybe they were an orphan so they'd have to get tested in genetics. Nonetheless the person can share this information with a doctor early in the round (or later if they want) and undergo some kind of physical exam (blood pressure cuff, heart rate, blood test...). The main part of the exam would be the blood test, which would only require the player to give blood, the doctors would have to go through a specific protocol for different tests but the player would not have to wait around in medbay because these diseases would be long term and not start causing problems until later on. After the tests are complete the doctor would determine what the patient has, or at least, is at risk for and can suggest foods to stay away from or prescribe some kind of medicine (for cholesterol e.g.) to be taken on occasion. These problems could eventually lead to heart attack, fatigue, loss of sensation (diabetes) and whatever else.
In short: opt in system, benefits for opting in but potential risks, identifying potential risks requires doctors to talk to the patient about their history, blood testing would be an in-depth system for doctors and chemists that does not require the patient to sit out half the round in the doctor's office (rarer diseases would have more complicated tests)