Request For Comments
Version 1.3
Change Notes (1.3)
- Moved the XLMS design out so it doesn’t intrude on the important mechanical changes.
Change Notes (1.2)
- Updated the explanations, as this was missed in the 1.1 update.
Change Notes (1.1)
- Made it clearer what the sections of the RFC are.
- Clarified language.
- Reworded role of the XLMS to not stamp on current intentional Security design/balance.
- Improved the role of the XLMS by clarifying its resource requirements and fragility.
Responsible Strike Team
Team Body Builders
Proposal
Reworking Implants/Implanters to better fit the universe and future development
- Implant as a concept is removed from Space Station 14.
- Implanter as a concept is removed from Space Station 14.
- All current implants are refactored to be Organs.
- Organs can be surgically added to a Body via an Auto-Surgeon. The Auto-Surgeon functions as the replacement for the Implanter. Syndicate Auto-Surgeons are purchasable via TCs, are small enough to be hidable in potted plants, etc.
- In the future, these Organs will interact with Surgery and other Medical gameplay.
- Auto-Surgeon implant removal is framed as using a set of EEG-like probes attached to the user’s brain to mentally command the Auto-Surgeon. If the Auto-Surgeon then malfunctions - i.e. the deduced organ was not present - this will fry the user’s brain, dealing them severe genetic damage directly to their brain (ow).
- At roundstart Security will have one of these “controllable” Auto-Surgeons available (left over from the Brigmed’s stuff when she quit). The medical department’s Fabricator can make more for a reasonably low cost.
- The “controllable” Auto-Surgeons are visually distinct from implant-only Auto-Surgeons, resolving the lingering design issue where “implant-only” Implanters are not obviously as such.
Explanation
- The current state of Implant code is that it’s a side-car of Body Organs. Implants work on a completely separate messaging relay to Organs.
- Removing Implant code means unifying around Organs. See other RFCs for other discussions of Organs.
- Implants and Implanters, given the above changes, stop making much narrative sense and need to be explained to players better. There’s already a bit of an issue with the explanaton (e.g. when is an implanter able to be used to extract?
- Implants MUST change with the addition of Surgery, because the Surgeon’s schtick is messing around with people’s insides. Doing work prior to Surgery is essential to avoid slowing down that project. It’s best to get a run-up on those changes in advance.
- Implants cannot currently interact with medical systems meaningfully because they’re a sidecar. This blocks future design.
- Implants currently hold several interesting ideas for Organs hostage.
- Implants have caused repeated lengthy discussions - it’s best to have a long-term plan rather than try and make tactical balance changes and hopefully arrive at something that integrates with a finalized medical system.
The below was part of the above RFC and I’m keeping it here because I might end up making this once the above is done as a fun project.
The XLMS as a reason for Sec to interact with Medical
- Until Surgery is added properly, a standing machine called the XLMS (original meaning unknown, nicknamed the eXtremely Large Man-Scanner) is added to the Surgery room of each Medical Department. When such a room is lacking, it is mapped to the CMO’s office.
- The XLMS is marked as medical property and contraband proceedure prevents it being removed and put in Security immediately on roundstart.
- The XLMS is sold to players as an out-of-date piece of junk only used by NT due to the lack of surgeons on staff. It makes weird beeps and throws sparks as it works.
- It takes a long time - about 50 seconds - to actually scan someone. It requires a high amount of power and cooling that can only be provided by the same cyro chemicals that are used for cryo tanks.
- It spits out a list of the person’s contents on paper at the end - a complete list of their organs, the state of those organs, and if any “foreign objects” have been found during the scan. This does NOT indicate what those objects might be.
- The XLMS can then be fed this information back for it to attempt to perform an auto-surgeon job to remove the “foreign object”. This requires a guess of what that object is. If this fails, the machine is catastrophically damaged beyond repair. This catastrophic damage MAY include exploding, but only bad enough to be funny, not actually to kill anyone.
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Just to add a sidecar here:
What about Revs?
Mindshields can be removed via the XLMS or a specific auto-surgeon device designed for the process. This would need further design to get right: comments welcome.
Why rename the Implanter?
It allows us to unify the game’s language around Surgery, and “auto-surgeon” is a much cooler name.
Why invent a new machine and stick it in Med?
This is a stop-gap and reflects future design iteration towards adding surgery.
The CMO is the chief surgeon on staff so the fallback option at the moment makes sense.
What’s wrong with the current metagame/etc?
It’s not great but this is not a RFC to change the current metagame. Implants and Implanters cannot co-exist with a functioning Surgery job role and design needs to move in the direction of adding Surgery.
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i like this, except point 10. harming the patient is punishing for the patient, but the true party that is supposed to be punished for using an intrusive procedure is security in this case; see current de-implantation procedure. Delegating this to “AI and borgs will be mad about this” isn’t a good solution, because then regular surgery could be considered as harm, too.
This is a slow and painful process that will require the prisoner to be dragged over to Med under guard, watched for a minute, and then patched up afterward. Security doing this means they’re either EXTREMELY bored or EXTREMELY confident.
Again, this is not about the current meta. The current gameplay CANNOT work within a Wizden medical system that has Surgery. Having to perform surgery on prisoners with dodgy bodyparts WILL be a thing that happens. This is inevitable design. We either do it without waiting for Surgery and we implement a feature that allows for mapping/player meta/the role of the CMO/etc to be better understood, or we block Implants behind Surgery. In the latter case I would advocate for traitor implants to be removed entirely.
It’s by no means a blocker, I’m just highlighting that it may lead to negative (although more logical) interactions.
On an unrelated note, this might be more of a question about organ interconnection, but would an implnat just get assigned to whatever is the most convenient spot is in the body or as a standalone organ (for example, would a cuff-breaker implant be assigned as a sub-organ of arms or as a single organ somewhere in the human body?)?
tbh if each implant had a “targeted location” where it adds the organ. sounds good. (why would a mindshield be in the chest?)
Yup, that’d be the idea. The Body has Organs, the Body may have an internal structure (see other RFCs) and if so an “impanted” Organ would be put onto that internal structure. But a Slime wouldn’t have a particular location for an implant, and a Diona would have it specifically in the “head” of their brain nymph.
Which would lead presumably to a Diona being able to reform with a new Mind but implants from their old body, which sounds fun.
ofc one downside of putting it somewhere is… where do we put the storage implant. lower/upper body?. Lungs? Stohmach? or somewhere else. as anywhere ceartain implants are put does have RP implications (looking at you “storage implanter goes in the ass”)
Target locations for implants sounds cool, I like that.
- Points 1-4 seem largely irrelevant; that’s just renaming things to be more thematically appropriate and aligning implants with whatever system exists for organs.
- Points 5-9 reads to me as a structure version of the old implant extraction mechanics we had; have a long do-after, get the ability to extract any implant you want. With point 10 this seems a bit more precise but the effect ends up being the same, where you are able to “implant-check” someone without knowing if they have one and not really losing anything if you’re wrong.
- This goes back to why we used to have such stringent implant-checking rules; if Security’s bar to implant checking is too low, they will do it in excess. While being landlocked to Medical helps the XLMS a bit compared to the portability of implanters, it reads to me as still being “inexpensive” for Security to utilize.
- Integrating implants with medical systems rather than as a parallel sounds like it would be nice, but I am not quite seeing it with the proposal as-is.
Some off-the-cuff suggestions:
- A chemical of some kind that is required during surgery to locate specific implants.
- Detecting an implant exists during routine surgery but not what it is (if you poke around in its area; operating on a leg =/= finding a brain modification).
Minor: clarify that they are still called implants, and implants classify as Organs. Just to avoid confusion that implants are strictly equal to organs in common parlance.
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The main thing atm is trying to get to a half-way house between a surgery system and the current implant design. The trick is to be able to rebuild the system internally, change the “universe logic” so to speak so it communicates the fiction better to players, without either crossing the current maint-backed implementation, massively infuriating players, and without guessing too much about how a future surgery implementation actually works.
Nice and simple as a task I’m sure you agree 
Basically the changes can be broken down into:
- How to communicate what implanters are and how they work to players better than “green magic gloop” inside a universe where organs are kinda gameplay relevant.
- How to move the work of “security getting an implant out of someone” from being a Sec thing to being a thing they do in co-operation with Med.
- Making it possible to hope from (2) to being something driven by doing surgery on people.
To spitball, it could be that Sec have some accursed horrible extremely risky machine in the Brigmedic’s room (or wherever) which puts the operator at massive risk, and a less risky option (that consumes chems/power) in Med that they’d have to drag the prisoner over to. Maybe the XLMS explodes if the secoff guesses wrong, so it only ever gives you one ““safe”” test.
Med departments atm already internally run off the logic of “if there’s space to set up cryo it’s a good day” so Security showing up with a murdering tot who they think has a bomb in their stomach and asking for all those vital chems to be spent instead on their prisoner feels to me like a good opportunity for interaction.
At the moment Implanters are these weak little syringe things with green gloop, and it just doesn’t feel good as a system. You’re implanting yourself with horrific equipment! Let’s have a bit of body horror.
I think one of the things with a Syndicate-implanted organ is that it’s probably booby-trapped, so that would explain why these organs are so dangerous and hard to remove.
Saving this noodling here
This makes perfect sense for some implants like the storage implant, which is just a hole in your body to put things.
However, making implants into organs raises some question about modularity and surgery that should be ironed out. Are electronic parts organs? Would we add an organ component to some of the existing electronic parts? Or would we make it so there are “Man-Machine” organs which can link other organs to electronics.
I mainly ask this because a lot of implants can be worked down into a modular workflow of “Receives signal → Does thing” and those implants could be made into a “Signal receiver/sender implant” that comes automatically linked to an installed “Does the thing” thing.
For example, the bike horn implant would be a “Neural signal” (Aka action implant) linked to a bike horn somewhere in your body.
EMP implant would work the same as would any implant you could activate with an action. It installs a neural signal chip onto your brain which you can link an action to and comes with a device in your body already linked to that chip. (I’d also suggest a limit of one action per chip that way you can’t have a single action that EMPs, and injects hyperzine, and makes you explode or w/e).
Deathrattlers and microbombs would have a “Biomonitor implant” they’re linked to since they activate at certain wound states.
This would mean that some implants would have to be linked to or stored within certain organs (which I think was already a planned feature). But I ask, would these be their own devices that interface with organs? Or would these be generic electronic devices that you just surgically attach to a person and work just fine outside the body?
Biomonitors are already in your suit sensors, although they can’t send signals.
Also in regard to revs.
Could make it so some implants have “anti-tampering measures” (a component that means if it’s removed it activates) meaning trying to remove the implant is equivalent to trying to remove a bomb.
Some implants, like CC and Captain mindshields, could just be straight up unremovable (this system is too integrated into the subject’s brain to be removed without killing the patient)
Expanding on this: Other implants like the macrobomb and acidifier, could have wires or something you need to cut similar to a syndiebomb before you can safely remove the implant which could add some much needed tension to the surgery and have it so some implants can’t be removed with an auto-doc.
Also gives traitors counterplay to implant removal that isn’t bullshit since they’d be putting themselves at risk of being round removed. (Sure captain you can try and remove my storage implant, but I have a bomb linked to the anti-tampering mechanism).
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