I have recently been using cryo; it really is a criminally underused and very effective medical system, even just using the basic and very cheap Cryox. One thing I did notice that is particularly clunky however was the chemical injection system, and I’ve thought of a change that would improve it a lot, both making it more intuitive to use and able to be properly used by Medical Borgs.
Current system:
With the current system for injecting chemicals into cryotubes, the intended method is to use a normal or large beaker, fill it with the chemicals you wish to imbue into the patient, and insert it into the active cryopod along side the patient. It injects at a rate of 1u/s, while the person inside metabolizes at 0.5u/s. You can work around this system if you are unable to hold a beaker (Say, as a medical borg) by first cooling the patient down, removing them from the tube, injecting them with the amount of required medicine, and reinserting them.
Issues with this system:
The beaker transfer system is clunky to say the least. Beakers break easily, it’s an unintuitive method, and a much better method could be implemented. Forcing medical Borgs to use precooling of the patient, then injection of medicine, then reinsertion, removes much of the benefit that cryo can provide: Normally a huge plus from it how low maintenance it is: there are no OD limits to worry about, so for even a severely injured patient you can just stick them in, add the required medicine (found with a quick calculation), and walk away for an easy to calculate period of time. Requiring doses to be given manually prevents Medborgs from benefiting from this, and changing the beaker system would make this benefit easier to apply.
Proposed Change:
I propose replacing the beaker system outright, replacing it with an internal chem tank in the Cryotube. Tubes already have a UI for viewing the state of their patient, and replacing the two buttons for injecting/ejecting a beaker for the system with a small UI that displays (at a minimum) internal storage capacity and how full it is would be great. Giving the internal storage the capacity of a large beaker (or jug, capacity is up for balancing), or using a non-removable large beaker (Similar to the integrated beakers that Medborgs can get a module for) that can have chems added to it. The UI could require medical access to open to prevent undue tampering. This would allow for more controlled and faster additions of chemicals to the cryochamber.
Alternative Proposal:
If a full UI is not worth adding for cryo, or as a simple temporary solution, replacing the beaker slot in the cryotube with a non-removable integrated large beaker that can be added to, or allowing a beaker already in the cryotube to be added without removing it would fix the core problem. While not the optimal solution to this issue it work; allowing med bots to properly use a cryotube, and enabling more convenient fluid storage and addition to be used to cryo for those with hands (Jugs).
Potential Additional UI features:
Other ideas for what having a UI could provide. Tangential ideas that are not important:
Outside of improving the basic functionality of the cryotube, the UI could also serve to give additional, non-existent as of now utility to cryo. A button to toggle injection of chemicals would be simple, and while functionality to do so exists right now, it requires the cryotube itself to be deactivated. Having this feature in the UI instead/in addition to the right-click menu would be an improvement.
Changing the rate of injection would also be very useful, making micromanaging the doses of certain drugs like Opporozidon, the rot reversal chemical, easier by making the rate of injection identical to the rate of metabolism. It would also make it easier to not waste unnecessary chems for the doctor not wanting to do doseage calculations.
Alternatively, having a toggle to set injection amounts could also be a useful feature, especially if the internal capacity of a cryotube is made to be quite high.