Replace IPC Box Items

[xeroxide]

When you start your shift You begin with a O2 box inside is an emergency medical pen, O2 tank , Glow stick and A breathing mask.As an Ipc these items are completely useless for an IPC thus i suggest we replace these items with something more useful to an IPC.I propose we Replace the mask,o2 tank, and medical epipen with an upgraded or normal welder and 2 Spools of wire.

Coding difficulty Wise I dont think its very difficult as voxxies and plasma men have different items within their boxes so we can copy and modify the code from there

Balance wise Its quite balanced as all other species have starting healing items we are just giving the IPC theirs.ITs also quite easy to obtain these healing items for IPCs as they are common Items.

[LiberatedWaveMan]

Honestly not a bad idea; I'd prefer to give them the IPC equivalent of epinephrine, but such a chem does not (to my knowledge,) exist in the codebase.
They're already made of tinfoil as is, and self-repairs require you to stand still so a short amount of time so... why not I suppose

[Mitchs98]

While I don't disagree on it, this has already been suggested many times and shot down for various reasons. And even PR'd once or twice if I recall correctly. While logical, I unfortunately doubt it will ever pass.

[Esenno]

1 hour ago, LiberatedWaveMan said:

but such a chem does not (to my knowledge,) exist in the codebase.

It doesn't.

[Crazyhair]

As a new found IPC player I agree.

[Viz]

The issue is that they'd need welders and cable in their starting box which is NOT what you want. You can't give people roundstart tools, that's just OP as shit.

Best way to tackle it I can think of would be to make some sort of item that's a weaker form of nanopaste, and give them that. Have it come in robotic repair kits also.

[AffectedArc07]

8 hours ago, xeroxide said:

with an upgraded or normal welder and 2 Spools of wire.

Absolutely fucking not. 

 

Given how much IPCs heal from these (40 units of welding fuel and 2 entire spools of wire is enough to res them from being entirely dead) compared to how much a medical epipen does is far too much, not to mention you're giving them roundstart tools. This is essentially the same as giving a human an advanced trauma kit and advanced burn kit at roundstart.

 

I have mained IPC for the past 3 years and just dumped my box contents roundstart. I would honestly be fine with an empty box. Yes IPCs get damaged easily, theres no doubt in that, however they shouldn't be given tools at roundstart, much less tools that outclass what robotics are given at roundstart. 

[Spacemanspark]

Honestly I'd leave it as is, I get use out of the box not for myself, but for those pesky organic things that 'breathe oxygen'. I don't know why anyone would want to 'breathe' instead of converting to glorious synthetic race, but they do. 

[Longpipe23]

Personally I think replacing the pen with like 10 spools of cable coil is perfectly reasonable. No reason that they can't just walk up to ArtVend and get more themselves roundstart. Seems more like a QoL change. The welder however... 15 burn damage melee weapon that can weld doors together roundstart is a tad goofy, especially on highpop where all the welders have magically fucked off, cargo is asleep at the wheel, and engineering is lounging over their dragon's horde of tools. Maybe I could see some kind of nerfed emergency welder seeing as they're everywhere and it is an emergency box. 

[SabreML]

11 hours ago, LiberatedWaveMan said:

I'd prefer to give them the IPC equivalent of epinephrine

This seems to me like the best solution for this. The chemical doesn't actually exist yet as Esenno mentioned, but it would pretty easy to add it.

Having a little 'Emergency repair injector' which could heal a small amount of damage if they're below a certain health threshold like epinephrine does would give the emergency box an actual use, wouldn't involve giving IPCs tools at roundstart, and most importantly, wouldn't be able to be abused at all.

[ItsMarmite]

If you were going to give them anything, give them an emergency degreaser pen or some shit like that.

Wires and Welder aren't hard to acquire, they don't need them round start.

[xeroxide]

Any Kind of healing chem for ipcs would work too.Just something equivalent.

[Spacemanspark]

IPCs really don't need roundstart welding tools/ cable coil/ beneficial chemicals. 

IPC is meant to be hard mode, and you most certainly can put use to the internals box you start with in helping your fellow coworkers (provided that's something your character would do lmao) 

It's not hard to obtain these items anyways, just ask cargo. Or science (robotics is literally dedicated to you). Or even engineering.

[necaladun]

Oh it's this thread again.

 

The emergency kit is not meant to be able to heal yourself with. It's meant to be short term protection from space and stabilization in an emergency. If you need to get repairs, go to robotics, or get the tools from one of the many, many places you can get them. 

[SabreML]

24 minutes ago, necaladun said:

The emergency kit is not meant to be able to heal yourself with. It's meant to be short term protection from space and stabilization in an emergency.

I think the problem at the moment is that it doesn't provide either of those to IPCs. More often than not the contents of the box are just dumped out at roundstart to free up some extra inventory space.

I can't remember having any real issues with that myself when I used to play IPC, but this issue has been brought up a LOT of times by separate players (and those are just the ones I could find), so there's clearly something wrong with it in its current state.

[necaladun]

2 minutes ago, SabreML said:

so there's clearly something wrong with it in its current state.

The problem is those players expectations. 

[Esenno]

You could always use it to save others and not just yourself. I've done that quite a few times. Or just give the contents to some one so they have two pens.

[AllStickySocks]

The empty box idea has my vote.

[Krossarn]

Free toolbox? Meta!

[Sweaterkittens]

My only input here is that people are both saying that roundstart tools are OP, and others are saying that they're available everywhere so why put them in the IPC's starting box?

If roundstart tools are OP, then why can I take a quick trip to tool storage (or a number of other places) and vend/get two welders and several stacks of cable coil within the first 30 seconds every round? I would imagine those things would be more difficult to secure if they were completely busted. Additionally, we're not talking about roundstart tools, we're talking about roundstart tool and cable coil. On top of that, there's already a horribly downgraded version of the welding tool - the emergency welding tool, which is pretty much awful at anything except light repairs, once. That seems perfect for a starting item.

If roundstart tools aren't OP and are available everywhere, then why not simply include them so the beginning of every IPC round isn't "go grab these same two things"? What's the major opposition to including something that's so readily available, that it makes such a change effectively just a QoL one?

 

I would only add that I don't think this tantamount to every human having brute/burn kits in their starting box. Those things are only available in advanced medkits and in medbay, while basic welders (not even emergency welders) and cable are practically ubiquitous. The difficulty in playing IPC doesn't come from not being able to heal yourself - in fact, that's one of the easier parts. It's the fact that you go into oldcrit the moment you encounter a stiff breeze, your limbs explode off like an old Bionicle, and the horrifyingly common EMP basically kills you.

Edited July 25, 2021 by Sweaterkittens

[destinycall]

I was going to suggest the emergency welder as a good alternative for an IPC emergency kit.    For robots, a welder is not just a tool.  It is equivalent to a medical device for borgs/IPCs.   They do not need oxygen, so a tank of air and face mask are useless to IPC players.  Why would Nanotrasen waste corporate funds giving them useless supplies for free?  And why would they completely neglect IPC crew by giving them nothing?  Crew are expensive to replace and space is a dangerous place.

A few cable coils, an emergency welder and a glowstick does not seem particularly over-powered to me and would provide similar support as the emergency epi-pen and oxygen gear for fleshy crew members.

[AffectedArc07]

11 hours ago, destinycall said:

A few cable coils, an emergency welder

A *few* cable coils and emergency welder.

 

Again, this is like giving every human an advanced trauma kit and an advanced burn kit on roundstart.

 

It’s not happening 

[Viz]

11 hours ago, destinycall said:

would provide similar support as the emergency epi-pen and oxygen gear for fleshy crew members

Epinephrine does not do what you seem to think it does. It can't even take you out of crit if that crit isn't caused by oxy damage.

[Sweaterkittens]

1 hour ago, AffectedArc07 said:

A *few* cable coils and emergency welder.

 

Again, this is like giving every human an advanced trauma kit and an advanced burn kit on roundstart.

 

It’s not happening 

That's just not true though, which was stated above. Trauma/Burn kits are effectively only available to medbay staff and in advanced first-aid kits. Additionally, organic crewmembers have the advantage of having a signicantly larger healthbar (and effective health) than IPCs. One of the main advantages of IPCs is that they can self-repair easily, if whatever is doing damage to them doesn't just dust them completely on the spot.

Welders and cables are ubiquitous around the station. You can get cable coils from the art vendor. If you think that welder/cable are equivalent to advanced trauma/burn kits, then perhaps we should be discussing why IPC's can get a duffel bag full of advanced burn kits for free any time they want from almost anywhere on the station.

I really don't see the harm in putting an emergency welder and a cable coil in the starting boxes.

[Viz]

12 minutes ago, Sweaterkittens said:

Welders and cables are ubiquitous around the station.

Further negating the need for roundstart tools. IPCs simply do not have a reason to own an emergency internals box to begin with. The fact that they spawn with one is already free unneeded stuff. They do not breathe.