Clone Removal

[PPI]

Clone removal has been a commonly discussed topic for the past 5 years on Discord, the problem has always been a lack of alternative systems, or at least a polish of said systems, and there are a few issues that remains to be fixed before a solid clone removal can be viable done.

• Stasis pods: What the label says, puts someone in stasis, we used to have one-time use stasis bag in the code ages ago, and at the time instead of taking brute, fire, toxins or oxy damage, you took clone damage instead, stasis pods would be mostly used to prevent death, to require less use of defib, especially in cases where you got someone who is very hurt, and requires a lengthy time in surgery to fix.
• Anti-coagulants: This comes along with stasis pod, as it won't help if you just straight up bleed out faster then you can be transfused with blood, currently, in my personal opinion, bleeding can be really strong, and you can bleed out everything really fast, an anti-coagulant that could fix, or improve on IB would be a huge QoL, as corpses without blood tends to be cloned rather then defibbed.
• Increase/remove or change defib timer: Currently we got a 5 minute defib timer I don't really agree with, but considering how fast 5 minutes can pass between you dying, being found, dragged to medbay, and healed up beyond the defib treshhold is quite easy, which means you have to rely on the crutch that is SR, so changing it away from a timer into a decay based system instead would be a huge improvement, that way with surgery and patience, you could get anyone back on their legs.
• De-husk surgery/chem: Currently we can only dehusk those husked by fire, while cling husks have no active way outside of cloning to fix, and having a way to fix that via either surgery or chemistry, will make it possible to still revive husked cling victims if found within a reasonable amount of time.
• Improved surgery to fix decayed or dead organs: At one point, you removed the organ, and washed it in the sink to fix it, those days are long over, and it is now remove the organ, splash with mito, and put back inside, and the organ removal is a super clunky way to do it.
• Remove or change most forms of ingame gib/dust/devour: Most people wanna play as the character they spawn in as, they care about their own character, and their persona, gib/dust/devour are all things that destroys that, and prevents that outright, unless you got prescanned.
• Make SR harder to make: SR is a huge crutch, it's one of the chems that makes being fast and efficient irrelevant.
• Make Rezadone Easier to make: Rezadone is the chem thats been buffed a few times, and works like a super cryoxadone, rezadone could be one of the chems that fixes cling dehusking.
• Make Formaldehyde important: Formaldehyde purpose is to prevent rot, if defibing becomes reliant on organ decay, then formaldehyde becomes mort important.
• Chemical Purging: Currently the only way to purge a corpse of reagents is via the sleeper, which is less then optimal, having a surgery that could do this would be a far better approach.
• Pre-scanning: Hands down, this is some hot garbage that is just makes all death irrelevant, killing a powered vampire after chasing them for 90 minutes? Bam cloned, they click one button and got a new face as well. It also makes murder harder then it is, as just hidding a body in a locker is usually enough to 'perma' kill most people, but bam, they are back and you don't know, so both as an antag and otherwise it's trash, infact the only good use is for miners, and thats mostly due to the many ways they can easily die on lavaland

Cloning is bad, that we can all agree on, if any non-vox or non-slime comes into medbay dead, you can just clone them, heck, you can just wait for them to die, and with a couple of button presses you can fully heal them without having to put in an iota of time, infact you probably just drag the body into cloning and let someone else deal with it. Cloning removal will make ungabunga plays rarer, it will make security be more carefull about running in blind or alone, cause there is no easy way back to life if they die, ontop of that everyone else will have a certain fear of death, there is not guaranteed get-outta-jail-free card, and this alone can create even hostage rp.
As a medical doctor/nurse/cmo/surgeon, your job is to fix people, heal them up, and kick em outta medbay when at 100%, thats their job, that is the job you choose to do in this rp game.

Edited July 16, 2021 by PPI

[Spacemanspark]

Remove cloning, remove SR, remove cyborgification being a common occurance. 

Yes. I'm serious. 

[AffectedArc07]

2 minutes ago, PPI said:

Clone removal has been a commonly discussed topic for the past 7 years on Discord

I already feel like this thread is full of exaggeration. Write one properly then ill read it 

[PPI]

Oh sorry, it was 5 years not 7, was the oldest mention of clone removal on the discord i could find dated 03/29/2016

[dearmochi]

• IMO, sleepers should be made to actually slow down a person's biological function, like bleeding, reagent processing and such. Right now they are just glorified, infinite chem dispensers. That way, they would be a valuable tool to provide a buffer while the more urgent cases are treated.
• We have Heparin, but it's seldom used and pretty much a noob trap. In fact in code I believe all it does is treat crit.
• The defib timer is fine IMO. Only thing I'd change regarding it is that I would make CPR extend the defib timer, that way someone can keep someone from perma-death until help arrives.
• While not entirely obvious, copious amounts of Synthflesh can be used (and that since a few months) to dehusk a body.
• I agree, it's very clunky to have to remove the dead organ in order to fix it. I believe the Organ Manipulation surgery allows you to drip Mitocholide onto organs, but has otherwise no effect on dead organs. Could probably very easily make it so they get fixed without having to excise them.
• Not sure how I feel about this. While most species have a "monkey" version that can be evolved from through genetics, species like Vox or Slime People are kinda screwed in that regard and the removal of SM made it worse. I'd personally like gibbing and such to stay.
• Hard disagree. I would definitely not miss Strange Reagent if it was removed out of the game. It is such a wildcard, poorly designed reagent that makes death trivial alongside cloning. One should accept that this is a game and that dying (and not coming back) is part of it.
• Don't have much to say about Rezadone.
• Formaldehyde makes more sense for corpse conservation than keeping someone away from perma-death, but that's just me. See what I suggested about CPR extending the timer.
• Not just the sleeper. Charcoal, Calomel and Pentetic Acid also work fine for that role. That being said, I think it would be cool to have a portable dialysis machine that would take an IV bag instead of beaker. Like dialysis, blood and reagents would get sucked out of the person's body, the reagents moved into the IV bag and the blood reinjected into the person directly, as opposed to the sleeper's dialysis which doesn't reinject the blood back (in my experience, dialysis beakers are just splashed on the floor for convenience)
• Agree, pre-scanning (and cloning in general) is problematic but the removal of that and SR would have consequences on how Medical plays out in the hands of both competent and new players.

[Gatchapod]

You want to remove cloning. That's something I can get behind.
However, you also want some things that make cloning removal rather pointless. Keeping SR while making treating dead organs easier? Reduce the impact of husking? Remove gibbing and dusting, which would also remove SR's only significant drawback?

People will still ignore all sense of self-preservation, because medbay can fix them.
Your suggested changes are not really solving the problem of suicidal players. Sure, you punish them with more time spent in medbay, but what you would actually achieve is an unnecessary medbay nerf. Doctors would have less means of reviving people, yet expectations will not change one bit. They will still be expected to save people and failure will just lead to more dchat salt or, worst case scenario, victims LOOCing instructions on how to revive them.

To prevent that, you would have to take away medbay's ability to revive people under certain conditions completely. Ghosts can't whine about it if doctors can literally do nothing to help them anymore.
Though realistically speaking, dchat will instead salt at maintainers and heads of staff for removing the ability in the first place. Hardly a win, but as people get used to it, they should stop salting. People who were here during introduction of newcrit know this firsthand.

Basically, it's a lost cause. Half measures make everything worse and a paradigm shift would lead to a massive uproar.
Given how I've never seen a head of staff being particularly supportive of the idea, I've come to accept that cloning is one of those things I'll have to accept as a part of my favourite server.

Edited July 16, 2021 by Gatchapod

[Spacemanspark]

45 minutes ago, Gatchapod said:

Though realistically speaking, dchat will instead salt at maintainers and heads of staff for removing the ability in the first place. Hardly a win, but as people get used to it, they should stop salting. People who were here during introduction of newcrit know this firsthand.

My friend the ban hammer will be happy to talk to the most toxic of these fools. 

Screaming and bitching at the coders in a non productive manner solves nothing. 

Edited July 16, 2021 by Spacemanspark

[Charliminator]

Removal of cloning(and other such tweaks) is something that would massively impact the game, imo, positively. However I do feel it should be either testmerged  for a long while or/and done piece by piece. Removing prescanning first and such.

[Viz]

Rezadone is already very easy to make. The pet vendor is right there. 

[Longpipe23]

Medbay "Main" here. 
 

• Removal of cloning: I can definitely get behind that. I feel as though for a server that encourages agency and player choice it doesn't really give the bad guys-- you know, the role meant to be MORE fun and rare-- much agency about how they go about successfully leaving someone killed rather than behead this guy or hope he's a shit chicken or jelloperson and medbay is stupid and incompetent. 
• Stasis pods: Honestly, just have it freeze the timer for doctors to get tided up. They have this on /tg/ in the form of a bag and it works just fine on there; this would be a dream for chaotic medbay rounds like nukies that everyone seems to bitch and whinge about. 
• Anticoagulants: I think you meant coagulant... as the opposite would cause them to bleed out faster. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of the idea. Like sure, give medbay more stuff to mitigate internal bleeding, but you also give people internally bleeding a thing to mitigate internal bleeding. Hell, why even visit medbay as a botanist when you can just munch on some blood tomatoes and hop in a pod for a few seconds and be fine. 
• Increased defib timer: Yeah, sure. I think removal is a bit extreme but I can get behind a two to five minute bump up. 
• Dehusk Surgery: No thanks, there's already a method implemented to dehusk people without cloning. However, it requires chemistry to be competent enough to make 100u of synthflesh. 
• Decayed organ surgery """improvement""": God no, mitocholide is fine as is and doesn't need to be made any easier. Maybe having debridement for organs similar to debridement for limbs or the repair of damaged organs. I would be fine with that. 
• Removal of Gib/Dust/Devour: No, that seems like an awful idea. I share the sentiment of wanting to play the character I spawned in as, trust me. However, I also realize that the game does not revolve around me wanting to play the character I spawned in as. There are other people playing the game and sometimes you gotta eat shit and sit in dchat or play as a monkey. 
• All of your chemical shit wrapped up into one bullet point because me lazy: No. No. What? What?! Strange Reagent is in a perfectly fine state as is. It's essential for reviving non-cloneable races or those who have gone past their best before date. Rezadone is already piss easy to make. If you don't have the social awareness to ask people for a multitool or prodding botany for some carpotoxin should you really be playing on an MRP server? Formaldehyde is already fine. I, among others, use Formaldehyde on SR patients to make sure they don't crust up on me too much. The last one is just straight up incorrect. There are literally chemicals which serve to purge chems, I also KNOW that you know about these things because you were talking about how garbage calomel is in comparison to pentetic acid. Granted, they don't process whilst the person is dead but neither do the other reagents that you want to purge. Just load them up with the chemical and revive them, simple as. This seems disingenuous. 
• Prescanning: Yeah, agreed that's so bullhonkey. However, if a powered vampire/any antag is cooking up in the vat you can A. delete their records beforehand and B. ask AI to cut power while they're cloning and buckle them to a chair. It's not rocket science.