It is awful.
Lowering their healing amount is one thing, infact I would even say thats fair, but you got no idea what slowing its effects down will do.
When med is packed, it is PACKED, people start screamin and demandin healing that very second or else they are gonna fuckin kill my dog and throw me out a window before whiskin my husband away because it’ll take an actual 3 minutes to heal up from pierce if you use punct.
Which by the way, if somebody has 140 slash, they will DIE before waking up if I inject them with lace.
Shit, most chemists I know would rather it was just harder to make the chems since that would provide a fun challenge.
As it stands, I would just make bic and then start chillin because what purpose would any of these other ones provide.
And for antag chemists?
Nothings changed.
They are able to face tank a little bit less, but they are just about the same as before.
All you have done is just make them have to not make punct and instead just make bic.
As someone who chems a fair amount the changes make advanced brute chems practically useless. Punc under these changes takes two and a half minutes to heal 90 pierce. This will massively reduce chem variety as medbay will absolutely become Bic only since it will be much much faster (and will also cause chem to consume way more carbon). I can totally get behind lower healing values for these chems but such insanely slow metabolism rate is going to kill chem usage. Nukies are going to be VERY effected by this since an agent will need to carry much more Bic to heal the same amounts because punc is simply unusable due to the slowness. The argument that medbay discourages using Bic is also simply untrue, Bic is commonly used to heal multiple types of brute simultaneously.
These changes ultimately serve to harm medbay and nukies alike AND make chemists have less to do which should not happen.
Well, in my personal opinion… I don’t think the PR should have even really been looked over. From what I noticed the person who has made the PR has no time within medical at all. It would upset the flow of the game entirely due to how slow every medicine is pretty much going. Along with a lot of chemists basically never going to make the advanced medicines again. We’re just gonna devolve into just the six basic chemicals like it used to be. It is why the advanced chemicals was introduced to speed up for one singular damage type. If you wanted bica used more often you could just make bica feel like derma instead of it just healing so much less then derma in its entirety. Hell, A ton of doctors still asked for bica even before this. Because it had it’s uses!
But who knows the flow of medical. Apparently someone who don’t touch it over people who actually play medical…
Just thought I’d throw my two cents in here since obviously on the PR stuffs gonna fall on deaf ears.
Also, it really just removes any amount of skill from medical. Rather then just using a mixture of chemicals in some way. You just use.. One to heal a majority of it.
- Nothing ever happens… ~Some player possibly.
It should be noted that the person who made the PR is a head game admin and a long time player of the game. Head game admins admin (observe!) rounds frequently, and they also interact with the rest of the admin team, which admin (observe!) rounds frequently. Judging the quality of their contributions based on outdated (and also private) data from a third party utility isn’t really a good idea.
These changes heavily change the flow of rounds and the crew/antags that use these chems, from nukies to traitors. Of course things will not feel the same.
I’d much rather collect feedback about this change after we’ve had a good master release cycle with them. Because the change was merged literally a day ago.
Current med main here, todays chem changes being tested “encouraged” me to learn some botany. Not all bad.
Hey medical players, instead of going full ad hominem on an admin and getting emotional on changes, let’s focus on the discussion.
Hi @AdmiralObvious , thanks for the contribution. Changes in medbay excites me, and I would love to help how to make this change align better with what the community wants. I will focus on talking about how Bica is used in the shifts, rather than the math. For math fanatics, Github is the place to go.
I noticed a couple of points of the PR after trying it out on Vulture.
Pros:
- Beginner-friendly, casual chemist players can make chems without worrying
- Take away pressure to complete 13 chems in 10 minutes
- Less jugs = less refill = more time
- Encourage role playing/having fun with the environment and players
- Encourage the experimental nature of a chemist (mixing chems in jug or jugmixes)
- Learn about other department (i.e. botany)
Cons:
- Less interesting gameplay for veteran chemists
- Heavy use of carbon
- Low efficiency (each patients takes more than two runs back and forth and 2 syringes of 15u of healing chems to get healed), which can pose a traffic problem during crisis on high pop (80 players)
- Takes time for players to get accustomed with the change, as chemists have a rigid routine to follow
- [Combat wise] Slow acting chems are a disadvantage for nukies
- Overdosing happens frequently (a nice touch to the playing experience, but a pain in the ass for medical players)
Status Quo of Bica:
Bica does not get the respect it deserves, but medical players still give Arith and Bic to patients with radiation. Bica is still needed, just not the first go-to for Brute damage types. At this point, Bica is associated with two things: Arith and mixed brute damage below 20.
What else heals damage below/equal 50, and better thanks to its wide-spectrum properties? Tricordrazine is the name. Tricor can be found in medkits and Mediborgs, making it a convenient and generally good chems to use. Bic can be found in pill form, but Tricor outshines.
Bica’s mental association with Arith and limited healing properties make it the Bica we know and love today.
Main issue:
The PR does not address the status quo of Bica usage.
I fail to see the big picture that this PR is trying to solve. There are a couple of immediate improvements that medicine can benefit from. This is not one of those.
Numbers balancing will impact how players play the game and create meta. If Bica has wider healing properties and stronger healing effectiveness than Advanced Brutes, what is a good reason to make those then?
You said it was annoying to spam Bica in the OOC chat. As a chemist that round, I see no incentive in making Advanced Brutes. The PR is working as it intended.
How to improve the situation?:
If players still use Dermaline thanks to how fast it acts, why not make Bica act faster and leave advanced brutes’s healing effectiveness untouched? Advanced brutes may act slower if you would like to balance it.
I am sure there are solutions out there that both admin and community can agree on. Feel free to leave feedback or direct message if any interested player would like to.
In earnest my biggest issue is how it will effect highpop, I really do not see any purpose for punct, bruiz or lace.
Imagine if you were psychic and you knew for a fact that someone will be wheeled in with 110 slash damage, you get the hypo filled up with 10 lace and smack em twice with it the MICROSECOND they hit the floor.
They would still die, asphyxiation out speed’s it. (Discounting slimes)
And it does make the newbie chemists life easier but it overall just impacts the entertainment of the role.
If I am on brutes, I will literally only make bic, that or it just completely dissolves “doing the brutes” and instead you just do basics plus bicardine.
I cannot see many people getting interested in chem as it wipes out an entire tree for them to restock, brutes are notably easy and influential, making a new jug of bic is extremely easy and WILL take pressure off them, but only existing to hit three buttons four times is extremely boring and basics rarely need restocks sans dex+ and dylo should it be a survival shift.
So when I say to the new chemist “do basics and bic.” they will take likely.. I would say 3-4 or so jugs of bic total and maybe, MAYBE a second jug of dex+.
I could not see myself falling in love with chem again if I had to learn under these circumstances.
That said, yeah people really gotta take it easier on newbie chemists.
So, I’ve played a few highpop rounds with the changes, and my only real issue is that chemists are straight up refusing to create advanced chems while I’m on shift (I wonder why). These were mid to high pop shifts, and we lost 0 people who came in, even when we were swamped, though chem did run out of base material, mostly because an antagonist engineer stole the chemvend one shift, and straight up ran out of carbon in another due to refusal to do advanced chems.
Earlier about an hour ago, nukeops attacked medbay while I was adminning, and the crew migrated med to cargo. Medical doctors were using advanced chems to treat people while also applying inaprovaline, such as inap/punct, or inap/lace for the people who got slashed up with energy swords.
People did heal slower, but the use of carbon because medbay made advanced chems were more efficient, and the patients in cargo were in fact getting up, and surviving. There were a few losses due to rot, but that looked to me more like a failure to triage than anything.
The nukeops themselves used bicar, omnizine, and punct with some pybic mix to cover for themselves since the crew was largely using the contents of the armory, and X-ray cannons (nukeops were mostly using elite suits).
In practice, I think that this makes getting people up faster “harder” but it also actively prevents the old abuse of using a single advanced chem to heal damage entirely in 30 seconds or less.
If this change turns out bad for the game, it’s 2 files and one button to roll it back on git.
Me and Jane Claymore were discussing just straight up nixing punct for bic omni, even though it would destroy our tc.
The main issue with punct being so slow for nukies isnt the fact itll take ten decades to heal, but the fact it clogs your blood stream as if you arent a slime or Diona, that is a slot thatll be consumed for an extensive period of time.
You need tranex to keep fighting.
My current theory for how to corpsman under this is:
Bic/omni in a bucket
Derma/pyra (unchanged)
Dex+/saline (unchanged)
A jug of TDD.
Not mentioning war chems
Shaker of tranex which I inject first before I go in with the bic.
Much of the juggling I enjoyed is gone as I no longer have to worry about hittin a fella with razorium alongside inventory management being so reduced I may just be able to bring a gun during war. (Will not have enough for a gun during stealth ops as I need to get more omni.)
This will likely remain untested as I have a hard time with new people and wouldn’t be able to preform well in vulture, unless I can convince someone I know to try it.
As for the advanced brutes and inap.
That is even more carbon than just using bic.
There is only 3 ways to heal airloss without using carbon, that being dex, not dex+, NORMAL dex, the medibot and the epi medbay starts with.
My main issue is that it uses the same metabolism rate as pyra but is significantly weaker in comparison.
With pyra you take 50 seconds to heal 50 heat with 5u, vs derma’s 10 seconds to heal 15 heat with 5u.
With the advanced brutes, you’re taking 50 seconds to heal 30 with 5u, vs bic’s 10 seconds to heal 15 with 5u.
It’s even more dire with insuzine, with 50 seconds to heal 25 shock per 5u
That’s it really, just that the times don’t seem proportional to the healing you’re getting out of it
If you want Bicaradine to be more useful, just keep the part where Bicar doesn’t make Razorium anymore. Bicar has its use, for low damage under 20 in all types or in conjunction with Arith.
If the issue is people aren’t using precursor chems, then we should
- nerf Dermaline since no one uses Kelotane
- nerf Dexalin plus since no one uses Dexalin
- nerf Arithrazine since no one uses Hyronalin
- nerf Saline since no one uses Iron or Copper
Pyra Derma dynamic works because Pyra while slow heals a MASSIVE 50 damage per 5u, they can be used in conjunction with each other, and if you need faster healing you can use derma by itself but just pace how fast you give it.
let’s break down the others
-
pyra:
5u, heals 50 heat, takes 50 seconds -
Prenerf Punc
5u, heals 40 puncture, takes 10 seconds -
Postnerf Punc
5u, heals 30 puncture takes 50 seconds -
Prenerf Bruiz
5u, heals 35 blunt, takes 10 seconds -
Postnerf Bruiz
5u, heals 30 blunt, takes 50 seconds -
Prenerf Lace
5u, heals 30 slash, takes 10 seconds -
Postnerf Lace
5u, heals 30 slash, takes 50 seconds -
Prenerf Bicar
5u, heals 20 brute, takes 10 seconds -
Postnerf Bicar
5u, heals 15 brute (evenly), takes 10 seconds -
Prenerf Sigy
5u, heals 30 caustic, takes 10 seconds -
Postnerf Sigy
5u, Heals 30 caustic, takes 50 seconds
I took all the stats from the images provided in the PR.
The PR states
The intent of this PR is to make advanced chems more in line with pyrazine while still keeping their identity of being really good for a specific wound type, making them better, but less immediately good for combat and short term use. I also buffed bic marginally because it needs it.
If my understanding of the new values is correct, I am not sure how this is “making them better” when they all take longer to heal and most of them heal less per 5u now. The only aspect in which they could be considered better is in the OD threshold, but that just means more chemical consumption, and less potent meds.
I think drastically changing the chems like this is going to upset the balance in a lot of things, like auto injectors. This will cause in increased consumption of chemistry resources while maintaining the same level of supply. If I were in medical, I would just order basic sheet crates and use topicals rather than use these new advanced chems. At this point I would rather order 3 basic sheet crates and 1 steel crate to make 36 stacks of ointment and bruisepacks than order a chemvend restock or make advanced topicals. I imagine a lot of people will retire from medical if this gets pushed through. I don’t think I would be comfortable in chemistry or treating patients anymore.
TL;DR
Making chems slower and less potent is a drain on resources, makes people wait longer and takes up time used to RP, increases medical workload, and may drive players away from the medical department entirely.
This also feels like a pretty big change and should have had a discussion in the PR reviews category before being pushed to vulture.
If you’re assuming people are metagrudging you because of a change you could just observe to watch rounds instead. Ask other admins to observe.
Hey @AdmiralObvious , I am sorry that you feel that way. The changes were uploaded a few days ago. It’s normal for players to come up with hypotheses and test it out. I hope it was a coincidence and not malicious intent from the players.
To veteran medical players who are following the thread, you can be protective of medical and stubborn, but that does not mean you can be rude to non-medical players. Your bitching without a clear solution adds nothing to the conversation. If you keep doing this, admins will cease to work on medical and refuse to listen to players ever again. Then you are going to complain about how there is nothing new in WizDen. Try to be helpful and get your point straight. Fight with love, not passion.
I read all the replies. I played a couple of games today on Vulture. There are two themes I noticed from previous replies and in-game: speed, and what it feels like playing as a medical player.
I want to focus on the long “greenshifts”. I will not discuss the combat side, as combat is short-term. The core of medical gameplay is sticking around medical doing the same thing over and over again in an hour and 30 minutes: healing.
Advanced brutes are not matching up with the pace of the shift, especially during crises. Let’s say a dragon spawns.
Injured, crit and dead crew members rushed to med.
Limited beds.
Most crew moves around until a bed is available, or attempts to heal themselves by chugging liquid chems, swallowing some colorful pills, or using bruise packs.
These actions have consequences.
At the end, doctors have to resolve it, along with treating patients who are injured from the dragon.
For the person sitting behind the computer playing the doctor role, it is overwhelming. Objects and people move constantly. There are responsibilities to keep in mind. Having chems that work fast, predictably alleviate some of that stress and fulfill their reason of playing medical: to help people.
Due to the long shift and repeating course of actions of a medical player, my proposal to improve this PR is to bump the healing speed of Advanced Brutes a bit. Perhaps faster than Pyra. It would be nice to see the progress on the health bar so medical players could do their job faster.
I say keep the change on Vulture for an amount of time, see if anything worth noting then come back to the thread.
So, having just read all the number changes, I actually like this so far! I appreciate the buff to bic. I like that it can be mixed now with the advanced brutes. Now people cannot complain that I put a jug out, and with advanced chems taking longer to heal it means people have to appreciate the inaprovaline I so helpfully always provide.
I actually like that healing might take a bit longer now, or require more monitoring. I know some replies have said it takes away time for rp but I feel like it could make room for rp DURING healing. Sometimes healing is so simple and fast it feels like getting shot or brutally injured is a nonissue, so I like that it’s no longer a single shot of punc or whatever and you’re fine in 30 seconds.
I’m not seeing where this will change my routine as a chemist? I will still be making all chems as usual…
Potential issue: The advanced chems might not be healing enough for the time they take.
Brutes: right now they have weaker healing than pyra, and a few well timed doses of bic can do the same thing. Might need more healing? 40? 50? Or perhaps in practice simply combining them with bic will be fine?
Sigynate: fine actually. caustic generally only happens when slimes attack, and it’s so hard to heal without a specialized medicine this fits thematically AND makes siderlac a more desirable commodity!
Insuzine: hmm… maybe needs more healing? Dermaline is currently more effective… though I suppose it could have a niche use for a tesloose, staying in your system for longer?
Second potential issue: Medical might get overwhelmed. We’ll see over the next few days.
Overall I like this and as a frequent chemist/emergency doctor player I don’t anticipate any major problems or unbearable changes to my playstyle. I’ll test it and come back though.
I do agree on having to can discussion about combat since that’s its own can of worms and med SHOULD focus around the department, so from here on, please consider everything I’m talking about to be entirely aimed at discussions of patients and the doctors.
In that shift we played on vulture, I took a general timer on how long it takes for an esword victim to recover from crit.
Roughly two minutes was the average to clear up 90 slash.
One guy with an esword and no prep managed to send medbay into a crisis for a solid 5 minutes.
Additionally after testing how it stacked up against my god given slime regeneration, I found it was actually slower than it.
An option that is not only just innate but constant to me can out speed it.
I am more than fine with med being slower paced, but this is just too slow.
If Tider Mcjones can just swing his funny sword and completely cause havoc on the floor by simply swinging his funny sword without preparing himself at all, is that an issue of the chemical or the doctors?
In this case, its the chemicals as it simply cannot stack up to the demands.
Alot of the more violent reactions I have noticed comes from people feeling this is without thought.
I will give it more time but I generally feel slowing it down is making it a touch tough to actually play med.
Small thing I noticed but both as an antag and as a crew aligned I would use the puncturase OD to assist in gibbing whether for borging or RRing someone. this PR removes that which sucks.
This also feels like a pretty big change and should have had a discussion in the PR reviews category before being pushed to vulture.
There was a discussion on github but it had to get locked because people weren’t behaving - you are probably right it would have been smarter to instantly lock it down and just start a form post here so it isn’t split up.
Right now this is the “official” place to leave feedback so your in the right spot 
I think this article can help us learn how to give better feedback about future PRs. I found that I did the same thing at the beginning of the article. I am sorry @AdmiralObvious I was eager to resolve the conflict that I forgot that it was more important to give you something to work with. So here is my take on giving proper feedback.
When I first heard about the change, I was curious to try it. I started inflicting self harm and treating myself as how I would do pre-PR. I was disappointed seeing how slow my health bar went up. I was afraid that buffing Bica would put advanced brutes in an awkward position: they exist to address a singular type of damage, now Bica handles all Brute damage, what is the point of using/making advanced brutes?
It was a confusing experience double-checking myself if I should use advanced brutes or just apply Bica to the patients. I ended up deciding that if a patient has around 30 damage of one the damage types: bruise, lace, or piercing, I would use advanced brutes and tell patients to walk it off. When playing as a chemist, I only make advanced brutes if nukies/loneop was reported on the radio.
I could usually predict how many units of chemicals to fill my syringe with to treat someone to 100% healthy pre-PR. But now I felt like I could not tell patients how long to wait until they are fully treated. Maybe I need time to get accustomed to the healing speed. The slower reacting rate also impacts medbay during crises.
While it was harder to navigate during crises, I felt like it was easier to treat patients when there is nothing major going on. Bica is a no-brainer for brute damage. The chems list was shorter and easy to read without scrolling. Plus I got to introduce tranexamic acid into the arsenal.
My only question is why nearly a minute for the full effects? I can see it making it easier to keep players out of their departments for more interactions and how it can benefit stealth traitors, but players optimising will always opt for the fastest solution. (Sure, now some chems can’t even out heal the crit asphyx - use dex+. If you’ve managed to add too many chems, then it’s an issue sure.)
Maybe if the weaker chems had shorter durations to match their effectiveness, it’d be fine, but what is the point of buffing precursor medicines to the point where they can cure faster than their upgrades?
If I’ve read the PR correctly, understand metabolisation right and done my maths right:
- 4u bic can outheal 10u of the specialized chems (Due to them receiving the omni shared damage mechanic, whatever it is)
- At max safe levels, each specialized chem can heal around 114 of their respective damage in about 190 seconds.
- At max safe levels, bicaridine can heal 45 in 30 seconds. With constant safe injections or using pills, they can heal around 270 of one damage type over 180 seconds.
- 1u of the only other comparable chem, poly oligomers (as mentioned on PR), heals approximately 2.4 of each brute over 2 seconds. At max OD, 30u heals 72 of each brute over 60 seconds.
- Poly oligs are only better when healing multiple brute types (246 for all 3 at the same time, and that’s fine honestly if we expect it to be the new brute treatment), but it isn’t a precursor - it’s a botany chem, and one requiring two mutations from poppies to lilies to polys.
Bicaridine might need more attention to use it, but it’s over twice as effective as any other medicine in its class if I’ve done my mental gymnastics correctly. And you can use this with those specialized chems at the same time now. If you really felt like it, anyway, and by the sounds of it people don’t.
I always want to see ultravasculine in use honestly, it’s an interesting chemical to me functionally with its interactions with histamine but not enough things have histamine for it to be viable normally. Hope the changes here help it see some use.
Sigynate doesn’t have a precursor, so why this was touched I don’t know. Even if you argue kelotane is a precursor for it, kelo doesn’t even cure caustic damage so it still won’t see more use for dealing with caustic damage over sigy or botany chems like siderlac.
My only real concern is that, even if it does require more injections, that will not stop doctors using bicaridine over alternatives because it heals quicker. Time will always be important - security wants to be able to get back to fighting nukies/revs/criminals as quickly as possible to the point I’ve seen several skip finishing touches to treatment in order to get back to fighting, and traitors need to recover from injuries as quickly as possible so they can get back to enacting their plan and gaining resources they can use to accomplish tasks.
I think a better way of balancing the brute chems would be introducing what punc has but is largely ignored currently - slight blunt damage for the pierce treatment - but change out the blunt typing for something with more permanence like cellular damage, or maybe radiation if you’re not that evil. It’s a small but permanent effect that’ll build up over multiple treatments and requires a more complex treatment method in exchange for the specialized treatments healing faster or more over the same time period as bicaridine (which is effectively faster). Sec gets back in the fight faster but is more fragile every time they head back to med, nukies have to balance the speed of treatment with their effective max health going down and traitors can weigh the pros and cons of quick treatment for less max health depending on the situation for themselves. Maybe bicaridine is safer, but it’s slower - will they heal enough to be able to take on another secoff as opposed to using a specialized chemical? Can they take out the secoff before the secoff takes them out if they have more health now in exchange for less max health after the fact?
Just my thoughts, myself.