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Iām opening a discussion thread mostly because I donāt see how an item like this is encouraging powergaming?
Chem goggles are of limited supply and in times where Iāve had to step in for chem as CMO I often didnāt have chem goggles and had to rely on my drilled in knowledge of chem.
This is just a good change for any new CMOs who may have to step in for chem, relabel jugs, or do anything else that involves chemistry.
Unrelated but I also think this ability should be put on the agentās goggles as well since Iāve seen a number of new agents forget their special goggles after putting on the chem analysis goggles to make chems.
Iād get it if they had flash protection, or if they enabled valid hunting through being given a sechud, or if they could be crafted into something stronger but right now chem goggles arenāt a super desirable powergamer item and this is just good QOL for the head of the medical department.
For reference, here the link to the discussion thread and poll of the previous PR (itās from before review threads were made public).
To summarize my own thoughts on this:
- I donāt think we should give a large amount of arbitrary items to department heads unless they add something significant to the game.
- This is just a straight-up upgrade to the other two goggles. I would rather avoid having obvious best-choice loadouts options.
- I would not want to go into the Terraria-style ācombine all the items into a single one to have more inventory spaceā direction, which is a trend I would not want to start with as it is just power-creep.
- The CMO already has enough special items.
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atp you really have to debate what the actual meaning of QOL is. Ultimately, the CMOās job is not to mix chemicals, even if its an action they occasionally do. The PR itself has genuinely no justification for why the CMO should receive a pair of combo medhud and chem goggles.
Chem goggles are of limited supply and in times where Iāve had to step in for chem as CMO I often didnāt have chem goggles and had to rely on my drilled in knowledge of chem.
If chem goggles being too limited in supply is an issue, then they should be added to a restock, made printable, or made cargo orderable. All of these things would add more nuance to the issue of supply without simply resorting to just giving the CMO exactly what they need.
I think calling it QOL is a little bit silly as well: itās not even making the item more accessible, itās just giving the CMO a buffed Best-In-Slot option.
They can be printed at the lathe at round start.
Personally a bit tired of moving goalposts as to what people get at roundstart in the name of āQOLā - this happens a lot in mapping where people try to give departments things that they should really be seeking/getting from the places where the item should be found/retrieved, and I always shut it down.
If you QOL an entire department the gameplay youāll have at the end of the day will just be boring tedium.
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I have no strong feelings either way, flip a coin since it doesnāt really much impact.
That being said, I lean against giving them combined goggles since eyepieces in general are supposed to be specialised. I would put a pair of chem goggles inside the chem locker, CMO locker or chemdrobe instead.
I have no hard opinion on the PR, however, here are some facts to consider:
- Medsec hud is still in the game as far as I know;
- Usually people donāt swap rapidly between making chemicals and healing people (unless they are making a specific chemical for a person, which is rare);
- Some heads have a āregular staff and side staff but betterā approach (CE, HoS), some specifically do not (HoP, QM).
To throw in my two cents:
Part of the reason that Externals access for paramedics was denied was, to paraphrase, āstaff should not have stuff their dep head doesnāt round-start.ā
Yeh chem goggles are printable from lathes (specifically, the least stocked on average), but why should a CMO have to go through that? Especially since the main use case for chem goggles for CMO is āno one rolled chem, I guess I gotta make chems FASTā. We donāt, for example, keep the holofan/gas analyser from the CE, and why should we?
Obviously, based on my views above, there are a few other acceptable options, each with their own drawbacks:
- Add chem goggles to CMOās locker (locker bloat)
- Add chem goggles to the chemist lockers (locker bloat, and also adds dependency on mapping)
- Make the chemmed goggles only use one mode at a time, switchable between them. (possible, but why would you ever do this)
Iāve played on a fork that has these, and theyāve come in handy a few times. There are definitely scenarios where a CMO has to do chemistry- such as if the chemists are traitors/dead, if theyāre inexperienced and need assistance, or if its lowpop and there are no chemists to begin with. In those cases, being able to bounce back and forth between doing chemistry and healing patients was definitely a boon.
The other use cases I can recall are extracting some blood from a patient to see what chemicals are currently affecting them, and identifying unknown compounds on request of Sec.