[Discussion] BrainMed

[Woodrat]

Shamelessly stolen from the staff side thread:

After a lot of deliberation, I think we should switch to BrainMed, in more or less the same way that Baystation has done. It’s a slightly more involved, realistic, and sensible system than what we have, but from what I’ve played with, and what I’ve heard from people who played with it for more than a day, it actually isn’t much more complex to work with than ours. Basically, the goal is to keep the brain alive. When the brain dies, the character dies, and most organs work together to keep oxygenated blood flowing to the brain. Damage doesn’t directly kill, but instead will have effects on how the brain receives blood. There are a few specific changes I would like to make to their system. As an example, in my mind they’ve gone a bit overboard with obfuscating medical machine outputs. The only thing I specifically want to be obfuscated, at least if/when this is first implemented, is suit sensors. Everything else will function more or less as it is.

… The Bay wiki has complete guides, as far as I can tell, and copying those over will be an immediate priority to ease the transition.

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Potential Benefits:

- More in-depth than our current system

- Makes CPR great again

- Step away from chemicals fix all

- No longer beholden to is at 200+ brute and is forever dead

- We can muck with what we don’t like (we’ll keep cloning)

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Potential Concerns:

- Chemical stacking is nerfed in BrainMed. We’ll have to go through and fix or modify this to suit our needs

- Concerns about how it effects laser weapons and ballistics. Concerns that it makes ballistics less damaging than lasers. Either lasers have to be brought down, or preferably ballistics brought up to lasers. Either way, another item that needs to be modified or fixed.

- Entire new medical system that people need to learn. This could be quite annoying, (thankfully we can liberate and modify Bay guides as needed

- Concerns in regards to FBPs and such and being hard to kill with the new system. Can hopefully be adjusted and sorted by our developers.

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Other comments, likes, dislikes, concerns, things we should look out for? Put your thoughts below.

[lolman360]

Here's my take on this.

Overall, I believe a switch to a new, more involved medical system wouldn't be that bad. There's the case of people having to learn the new med system, but people adjusting to new features is a consequence of when features are added, removed or changed. If the wiki guides are bring copied over, then I personally see no problem, at least from the new-system-being-introduced-and-how-people-adjust-to-it side. Of course, the fact that sometimes nobody on lowpop able to use the new system due to unfamiliarity is a problem, but there are significant problems with low department staffing and functionality (dead person and nobody who can clone/defib them, antag but no sec to apprehend them, etc.).

The "Chemicals fix all" mindset is one we need to step away from. Why have surgery if we can just give then peridaxon for organ damage, alkysine for brain, and imidazoline for eyes, osteodaxon for broken bones and myelamine for IB? The only real reason people go to surgery is to grab nanopaste or a bonesaw to reattach limbs. Personally, I'd like to see damages above a certain number require reconstructive surgery to fix, because at the moment one can simply take some bicardine/kelotane and tricord, bandage the wounds and wait. Now, for a person who's just been, for example, hit with a heavy-duty laser multiple times, this isn't really that great.

Now for ballistics versus energy weapons. It would be good to see ballistics become on par with laser weapons, seeing that lasers get benefits that ballistics don't (shooting through windows, easily-recharged universal ammo, less armor values to contend with ) In my opinion, ballistics should be stronger, at least damage-number wise, or increase the damage an embedded bullet has the capability to do. Otherwise, there aren't any other problems immediately visible with ranged weapon balance.

FBPs are currently balance-wise fine compared to humans, needing surgery to fix any damage over 30 (or nanopaste). However, with a significant change to medical, observation of balance between synths/organics would be the best solution. Pre-emptive balance might make the problem worse than it could be, while listening to player opinions of balance while a new system is in effect may gain better insights into problems (if any) and how they might be solved.

[Wickedtemp]

No. I don't play on Bay because I hate their system. Polaris and downstream servers are the only ones I bother with now, and if those switch to Brainmed, that's pretty much the day I stop playing Medical.

Lolman is drastically overstating "chems fix everything".

Chems fix damage types. Surgery fixes the side effects of damage, such as internal bleeding, organ damage and fractures. There ARE chems for those, but peridaxon for example is only meant for 10 damage or less. Its literally faster to use surgery to heal 7+ damage than it is to rely on peridaxon.

I honestly hate their system, that, along with their military style rp, are literally the sole reasons I haven't logged on there in years.

[ZekeSulastin]

Rebalancing weapons should really be its own thread, since it's going to start it's own arguments and can be implemented separately from any medical rewrite before being patched later. That said, you could just remove that whole lasers cause blood loss as a quick and easy nerf if it's really needed; I've kind of been under the impression that ballistics were still in general scarier because of causing internal damage and generally requiring surgery to heal.

Aside from that, I haven't regularly played medical in years and frankly nothing I've seen from players or staff gives me any desire to start so I guess my opinion isn't that meaningful. That said, the post doesn't actually say much. It would have been nice to go into a bit more detail about how stuff actually works in the system with an example or two - how is CPR great again, how are sensors obfuscated, what are the steps and recovery time to heal someone who got bit, what about defibs, is expected lethality/maiming intended to go up or down or neither, how will critical work, that sort of thing. I am going to specifically refute lolman's "more reconstructive surgery" thing though, because surgery and medical cryo are the two most boring/AFK inducing parts of the entire game (and we got rid of speed surgery!) - please when you add this system do not add more staring at a black screen!

What's the timetable for this changeover, since it's pretty much foregone? That's probably my second biggest concern: we're still low on population with a handful of med regulars (I usually see Sona, Qui, or Seraphiel) with the kick-explorers-shit-in update looming. Do you expect more people to start and keep playing medical with the change? Will it alleviate or exacerbate the "I can't act outside my title" BS that got us started on autocloning (and, coincidentally, is why we have chemical ways to do some things)? Is the intent to work on one system at a time or change everything at once?

And last, but not least, make damn sure the wiki is completely updated the exact moment the update is made and keep it that way. That includes any changes we make to the instructions we copy. If the documentation isn't ready for our implementation on our wiki, the feature isn't ready. Full stop.

[Woodrat]

Since explaining it in detail will just end up having me rewriting this entire page. I'm just going to link the page.

Link

Weapon re-balance was in regards to a staff commenting that under BrainMed a person can survive being shot repeatedly in the head so long as they're rescued and brought to a surgeon for treatment and be back up and running. Where as with lasers apparently it is often very lethal. The concern was that this makes ballistics less damaging than lasers, when it probably should be the opposite. In short, no it can't be a separate thing, as we have to adjust the weaponry to the notion that the way health and medical works will be completely different.

CPR being great, see above link or Link. Compared to right now, where nobody does CPR because for all intents and purposes its bloody pointless.

Timetable for this change is, like all big changes at a minimum a few months. Judging from how this normally goes, I'd argue 6 months. But Anewbe would have to be the one to state what they are exactly. It'll probably be a all at once thing, since again. This is a entirely different medical system. As for the title BS stuff, not a clue. We'd have to see how it pans out.

Wiki thing is known and we're quite aware of.

[ThoughtSynapsis]

I've never used this system before, So my interactions with it are mostly unknown.

On one hand no one likes learning a new system, And as was stated above we have no idea how it effects combat. On the other hand, the current medical system has a massive amount of flaws/bugs. After having some very tedious rounds of my char being in medical I'll could swung either way.

[TheSleepyCatmom]

I've played brainmed on bay extensively during my time there. I'd like to add it's one of the most redundant and "Put tape on wounds you'll survive" medical systems out there. There's been times where I've been shot repeatedly by both lasers and ballistics and been fine outside of paincrit. Where it only took a few advanced kits and some shrapnel removal to get me up and running.

All in all, I don't personally like the system and I'd definitely not be playing medical if it was implemented. Not unless some major changes are made to everything. Everyone wouldn't fear for their life with how it is currently, and could safely run towards someone with a high-caliber assault rifle and take half the magazine to the skull and keep running. I've used this to my advantage several times.

Anyway, my two cents out of the way. -1, no bueno, nicht gut, Je ten prie non. Though I'm just a single person, and with the amount of people who play medical anyway, its likely not to make a difference as people would need to learn it anyway.

[Keekenox]

I am in the camp of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

I can also say that the current medical system is one of the reasons I actually like polaris, it doesn't seem overly complex, it has a lower barrier of entry as far as learning it as well.

I think what we stand to gain from it is far less than what we would gain.

[Anatidaephobic]

ehHHHH

Iiii don't like Bay. If you can overhaul that system to work very differently than it does on Bay, that's great, that's fine- maybe put it through a bit of a trial period, make sure people understand that it's a test, see how it goes, see what medical mains think. Maybe make it an ongoing thing. In fact, if we've wanted a medical overhaul for a while, why not try and perfect this as a more long-term thing? Iunno, I'm not a coder, I don't know how that goes.

But.

I've played medical- I'm not exactly Sana or Ameliara, what with their raw omnicompetence but I'm okay, and one of my constant challenges has been the lack of Chemists, especially with the recent lowpop. But- but. Get this.

Not having a Chemist has actually felt just fine and stimulating for me most of the time. You got shot in the head? Iiii- think I have some dexplus here, you'll live, let me get that IB for you with surgery, of course after I patch up your head... I still need a bit of bicardine for the brute on the head, yeah, but the point is that I don't need chems for everything. There's no problem having them be good if they're a limited resource that's only necessary sometimes- not a very limited resource, mind you, that'd be positively hellish for highpop. But that's just my opinion on that particular facet of the issue.

(There's also cryo. Cryo fixes a lot of problems. It's actually kind of awkward. Iunno what to do about that, I just don't use it most of the time)

Most problems, I feel, come from incomplete or incompetent medical teams, or other pervasive issues in the community. The new system might make it better, it might make it worse, but Iunno. I like how things are, kinda. We'll see. Feel free to yell at me if this is dumb, I don't have any super strong opinions on it.

[EDIT: It should also be noted- and I don't know if this is just me- that I have literally never had fun doing my job as Chemist. It's just... mechanical, unless I'm trying to kill someone or doing something wacky, or doing some RP related to the job. Chemistry is great for the F U N T H I N G S, but maybe feels boring if you're just stocking med. It's just. Pressing buttons. And doing fractions sometimes.]

[Wickedtemp]

TLDR: Keep our medical system, make changes to it, instead of going to Bay's system and making changes to it. Everything listed in the 'pros' of the initial post can be done here, with our system. Those aren't unique bay-specific exclusives.


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To add on to my post before:

Even with the changes, I don't think this is the best idea. Polaris doesn't have much of a population as it stands, and while changing medical systems may cause a temporary increase in players giving it a try just because it's new, they'll likely go back to their preferred roles within a few weeks, and the medical mains run the risk of disliking the system and simply stopping altogether, lowering overall population even more. Another thing to consider is that this change will head downstream to Child servers of Polaris. I know, "Why should we give a shit about servers that aren't us?", the answer is "Because it's the not-dickhead thing to do.", simply put, so I've been attempting to get a few of them to voice their opinions on this as well since it'll end up affecting them.

I know that one persistent argument for the change is "But muh realism", but to be honest, I don't care about realism. If I cared about realism, I wouldn't be playing a sci-fi game. Realism works decently enough for things like roleplaying, which ties in to the RP aspect of the game, such as Regulations, SOP, procedure, Command, etc, but it tends to step on a few toes when it's shoehorned into game mechanics. Virgo's change to syringes to make them cause infections after one use is one such example - I personally enjoy it, but others were so irritated by it that they decided to play other departmlemts instead.

As for why I don't like the medical system directly? I don't think it fixes much. We'll be trading one set of flaws - which are the reason for the change to start with - for another. The fact that we're having to cherry-pick from this system is evidence enough. I personally don't think that crew deaths are an absolute necessity - if Medical's on the ball, people don't die and the ones that do are more likely to be back in the game. A system that's more surgery intensive means more staring at black screens and going AFK while the surgeon works on you, and while some people only spend around twenty seconds per surgery, all it takes is a few fractures for that to add up to 80 seconds at the minimum, add on time if the surgeon isn't absolutely amazing at the role. Which, to be honest, would be most players. There tends to be maybe one, two or three characters per departmlemt that are actually really, really good, a fair percentage being 'mostly okay', with the rest either in or hovering around 'might want to skim the wiki a few more times.' I'm especially not a fan of the useless suit sensors. Bay's sensors are effectively Binary. Set to max, it's Binary with Location. It isn't as useful, it's a general downgrade to something we already have and have had for years, and it turns "Someone is injured" into "Somebody has a slightly higher-than-average pulse, which could mean they're hurt, or maybe they're just exercising", because from an IC standpoint, the Medical team isn't expecting to actually handle anything more than the uncommon workplace injury. They're not going to think anything of a slightly elevated pulse because it's far more likely Joe McCargo is just lifting a heavy crate.

Bicaridine and Tricord mend incisions, which is stupidly irritating. Toxins being related to organ failure is neat, but having it solely be organ failure takes away a lot of the fun you can do currently with poisons. It's more surgery intensive, which sounds great on paper until you realize that surgery is the most boring thing a player could go through. The system is generally more complex from a gameplay perspective which can be a turn-off to newer players seeking to learn the department. People get turned off from medical with OUR system because "Wow it's too much". Switching to a more complex system would only result in this happening more frequently. On the flip side, our medical system is why I play here and other downstream servers. It's generally easy to pick up, but there's a difficulty curve. Being "mostly decent" doesn't take too much effort, which I consider to be an overall benefit in a game with 20+ roles, but being "super robust" takes a little more dedication. It allows a player to be overall good, to be helpful and ultimately have fun in the role, without having to endlessly study the wiki.

I'm all for making brain damage more lethal, giving it more of an influence in general, but I like our system because it makes sense from a "This is a video game" perspective. Human mobs have 200hp. If they get 200 damage spread among five damage types, they die. And in practice, that's how it works. Yes, it's centralized around chemistry, because chemistry is the primary means of lowering damage types. You can't lower toxin or oxy to without chems, and you can't heal brute/burn that's at 53 or above per limb without chems. It's an issue, people have complained about it, and yet at the same time, suggestions to fix it got nowhere. The surgical option for brute/burn? The forum thread died, the general opinion was "that's neat, but we don't feel like coding it", GG RIP. I personally don't think it's that big of a problem to start with, chems could use a slight nerf, I already have something in mind to help balance everything out, and I've suggested that before as well, but like before, it never picked up interest.

And going back to the wiki, I know you guys are saying that you'll have it sorted out, but Polaris has been a server for a couple years or so now, and this is what we currently have for our general medical section, having had more than a year to work on it.

Guide to Medicine: https://doku.ss13polaris.com/doku.php?i ... es:medical

The wiki has nearly thirty links that are empty. Nonexistant. From guides to job descriptions, our wiki is absolute trash, so forgive me for saying that I really don't think that it's going to be kept track of when the medical changes come through. Even the job descriptions that ARE there are mediocre, many of them are one to two sentences in length with no real information about the role. Even some of the forum links to the wiki are out of date and don't exist, I really think that if we DO go through with this, regardless of what's said, the wiki's going to fall behind again.

I really don't think this change is going to go well, I think that whatever you want it to accomplish can be accomplished through other means, and I really don't think I'd bother with this server anymore if it's added... After all, if I wanted to play Baymed, I'd...be on Bay instead.

... also as far as chemistry not being fun, I do personally think it's fun. It's the main job I play. I love it.
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EDIT: Apparently, the link in the "Useful Links" bit in the forums is the wrong wiki. This is the right wiki for Medical: https://wiki.ss13polaris.com/index.php? ... #Diagnosis

Which looks great, until you read it. Nearly the entire thing needs to be re-done because there are errors in every single section, ranging from "No, that chemical doesn't do that", "No, that thing you listed doesn't even exist in the game", "No, 'L' is not a blood type", and "No, you can't defib someone with a total amount of 358 damage split between brute/burn." and many, many more. I posted them all in the "pages in need of review" section in the forums. The state of the wiki still only reinforces my opinion that this server wouldn't be ready for a change in medical system, given that we've had over a year to get a medical wiki up and done, and it's... still the absolute worst medical wiki for this entire codebase across every server that uses this medical system.
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EDIT EDIT: It seems shining a spotlight on the horrible wiki resulted in a fast, decent fix! It's no longer absolute trash, which is great. The initial point, however, still stands. It took over a year for this to get done, after being done incorrectly time and time again. That's worrying.