Additional Basic Brig Phys. Equipment on Roundstart

[Sweaterkittens]

Hello all!

Brig Physician has quickly become one of my favorite medical roles. I've noticed, however, that there is a decent amount of busywork at the start of the round. Primarily, you will generally want to go and take a freezer full of blood products and a defibrillator, as Medbay has plenty of both and they're both important, basic medical tools. I typically also take a few other odds and ends such as spare splints, chems, etc. I have no problem with using my downtime to expand my area in meaningful ways, but having to spend time running the same banal errand every shift is a bit tiring. While the task itself doesn't take particularly long, it does when it's combined with the other things you typically do at roundstart, meaning I am often finding myself still doing "roundstart" things at 20-30 minutes into the round, when combined with basic RP with other crewmembers.

My goal: For Brig Phys to not have to spend the first 10 minutes of the round going and grabbing blood and a defibrillator just so that the Brig Medical Bay has more than the absolute bare minimum.

What I would like to avoid: Giving security a free mini medical bay. Completely negating the need for security to go to medical is not something that should be present at roundstart, every round. It should only be the basics. In fact, I would argue that without a Brig Physician on staff, this stuff shouldn't even be present there.

Additionally, I understand that having things to do is not a bad thing. Doing basic organization, gathering specific items that you personally make use of, doing the basics for your job (setting up engine, cryo, etc.) are all important. However, I think there are many better goals for a Brig Physician to aim for, such as their personal kit, Body Scanner, full OR, cloning (as well as RP!) that give you a sufficient amount to do.

My proposal: Add a check to see if a player has been selected for the role of Brig Physician at roundstart. If the check succeeds, add a defibrillator (and Hand Defibrillator?) and blood product freezer (with IV pole) to the brig medical area. 

This would eliminate two of the largest items you immediately seek out during any brig physician round, allowing you to focus on stocking your personal kit, and pursuing personal goals like gathering chems and expanding/enhancing your treatment area as you see fit. 

The roundstart check (if possible to implement) would ensure that security isn't getting extra medical equipment for free every round, unless there is a player filling that role (who would then likely go get that equipment right away anyway).

 

I feel like this is a modest change that would improve the QoL of the Brig Physician role without being a big buff to security, or the role itself. Please let me know what you think!

EDIT: I would like to add that the Brig Phys. locker is one of the few (only?) medical lockers that inexplicably doesn't contain a medical duffel bag, which would also be a welcome addition.

Edited July 25, 2021 by Sweaterkittens
Added postscript

[Viz]

Setting up the brigbay is what's fun about the role for a lot of brig doc players including myself.

[MattTheFicus]

Echoing Woje, half the fun of Brig Doc in the early parts of the Shift is setting up your BrigBay. That and making a "check" to see if a slot is there seems unneeded when the Brig Doc can just go walk and grab the tools they need.

[TheYeetster]

Would probably be better to have the extra starting equipment come in the brig physician's bag rather than have mapping spawns for each map.

Also has the advantage of not making it critical to be there round start.

Things that are too big to fit in a bag normally maybe should spawn in hand like the similar to doctor's medkit...

[Sweaterkittens]

Thanks for all the quick feedback!

 

8 hours ago, Woje said:

Setting up the brigbay is what's fun about the role for a lot of brig doc players including myself.

5 hours ago, MattTheFicus said:

Echoing Woje, half the fun of Brig Doc in the early parts of the Shift is setting up your BrigBay.

 

Just to be clear, I too really enjoy setting up the brig medical bay at roundstart. In fact, setting up my space is one of my favorite aspects of the job. However, it's the actual act of setting it up and organizing the space that I really love, not the banal errand that is going to medical to get the bare necessities. I like going to cargo (interacting with another department) to order a surgical crate and get it sent up there. I like getting a toolbox with a welder for self-repair and the tools needed to do IPC surgery. I like getting a duffel bag full of various edge-case chems and stuff to be almost entirely self-sufficient. The issue for me is that when you combine all of your personal roundstart tasks with samey errands like taking a freezer of blood and a defib, it can really add up, especially once you factor in actually performing your duties, conversation, RP, waiting, etc. I was just hoping to cut down on that a bit.

 

5 hours ago, MattTheFicus said:

That and making a "check" to see if a slot is there seems unneeded when the Brig Doc can just go walk and grab the tools they need.

20 minutes ago, TheYeetster said:

Would probably be better to have the extra starting equipment come in the brig physician's bag rather than have mapping spawns for each map.

Also has the advantage of not making it critical to be there round start.

Things that are too big to fit in a bag normally maybe should spawn in hand like the similar to doctor's medkit...

 

Admittedly, I have no idea how difficult and/or code-intensive it would be to have a check like that, although TheYeetster brings up a good point in that it would have to be added to every map, which is a pain even if if Boxstation is played almost exclusively.

I don't think there's any reasonable way to make the Brig Phys. spawn with a freezer, but they could start the round carrying a defib. Or, if people didn't think it was too much of a buff to sec, simply adding one to the Brig Phys. locker. I get the sense that a lone defib in sec wouldn't make a huge difference without an actual medical practitioner there to treat and stabilize patients, but I also haven't played sec seriously in AGES, so others may have to weigh in on that.

 

My intention here is just to cut down on busywork a smidge, not entirely eliminate any sort of setup or expansion of the brigbay.

 

Edited July 26, 2021 by Sweaterkittens
Forgot a bit at the beginning

[Viz]

Quote

The issue for me is that when you combine all of your personal roundstart tasks

What else are you even going to do with the first 30 minutes of a brig doc round? This would just remove the delay on the brig doc cryoing which normally happens 1h in right now. Again, that setup is what's fun about the job. A blood pack crate is easily ordered from cargo - order that instead of ordering a surgery crate that contains nothing cargo can't print, medbay has like six anesthetic tanks and masks in areas you have access to. So is a vendor, actually - and cargo can print you boards for that, too. If you just want stuff delivered to you, you can do that. Medbay starts with FIVE defibs, not counting CMO's personal high-risk one which nota bene you could ask for aswell. They only reasonably need four of them. 

[TheYeetster]

I would be in favor of reducing the busy work if it some how discouraged sec medbay and mass implants, because it is truly annoying to spend 1/4th of the round preparing and

A) not being ready to help sec or prisoners because you're out and away grabbing stuff. Wizard and blob rounds especially

B) over preparing and having nothing to do for the entire shift like on extended, lowpop or robust sec rounds

The most fun i have is a mix of rp and action, setting up brig bay is fun but a little time consuming and gets repetitive, i would rather shift to more rp here... 

someone might say that setting up brig bay is power gaming because you're preparing for an unknown threat but you literally need all the stuff mentioned just to stablize anyone in crit.

Propose adding

 defib and 2 bags of O- blood to brig docs spawn in equipment

Then see how it effects security and antags and revise if needed

On an unrelated note, maybe brig bay should be adjacent to maint so antags can get meds and mess with security more

[ZN23X]

18 hours ago, Woje said:

Setting up the brigbay is what's fun about the role for a lot of brig doc players including myself.

Echo.

I like the fact that brig bay is fairly bare bones and I can set it up however I like. 

You could say this stuff with lots/most of jobs on the station. Why doesn't the mechanic start with a space pod? Why aren't the solar's wired? Why does the engine have to be set up? The list goes on and on. Most of the jobs on the station are all about doing the same repetitive round start routine again and again. It's just a matter of which one of those routines you find entertaining for you.

[WingedYordle]

I would like to see at least 2 morgue drawers.

[MattTheFicus]

8 hours ago, WingedYordle said:

I would like to see at least 2 morgue drawers.

Anatg bodies go to the Morgue with DNR labels, give the evil nerds a chance to revive their buddies. Security that leaves bodybags in execution are not fun.

Edited July 27, 2021 by MattTheFicus
i cant spell "not", apparently

[Viz]

32 minutes ago, MattTheFicus said:

Security that leaves bodybags in execution are now fun.

I don't even understand why that's acceptable. A lot of sec players nowadays don't even bother morguing, they keep everyone in execution just in case. It's becoming meta.

There is literally never a case to do this, even if medbay has been proven to revive antags that round, because you can simply destroy EoC bodies via the crematorium, which is both more permanent, and actually makes sense ICly. And preventing revival with more than a DNR tag when such a thing isn't even proven yet fits the definition of powergaming like a glove as provided by the advanced rules - "Playing to “win” should not be done with the exclusion of all other considerations".

So I really don't want security to get basically an ok to do this in the form of brig doc having morgue trays.

[Spacemanspark]

Is it not in SoP

 

Maybe it should be 

[DevL]

3 minutes ago, Spacemanspark said:

Is it not in SoP

 

Maybe it should be 

Pretty sure its in execution SoP, one moment will edit this

Yea under Legal SoP, but who fucking follows SOP

 

"Prisoner must then be borged, fired into space via mass driver, cremated, or placed in the morgue with a DNR Notice, at the discretion of the Magistrate, Captain or Head of Security."

Edited July 27, 2021 by DevL
legal SOP

[necaladun]

The brigbay isn't really meant at all to be a full treatment centre. It's intentional that they are lacking in many supplies - the kits and sleeper are enough to stabilize people and get them to the real medbay. It's meant for boo-boos and stabilization most of all.

It's meant to be more of a medic role than a doctor/surgeon/etc. While you can set it up to do more, that can be said of any role or department. We have no intention of increasing the healing power of the brig phys at all. 

[Viz]

7 minutes ago, DevL said:

"Prisoner must then be borged, fired into space via mass driver, cremated, or placed in the morgue with a DNR Notice, at the discretion of the Magistrate, Captain or Head of Security."

Mhm! I wish that was something that players and admins alike paid more attention to. Because as everything that we let gamers exploit, it is something I keep seeing more and more often. And it sucks, because it really is just a play to win mentality. And I say this as someone with crew antag off most of the time.

[PacifistDalek]

2 hours ago, DevL said:

Pretty sure its in execution SoP, one moment will edit this

Yea under Legal SoP, but who fucking follows SOP

 

"Prisoner must then be borged, fired into space via mass driver, cremated, or placed in the morgue with a DNR Notice, at the discretion of the Magistrate, Captain or Head of Security."

Sounds like an IC project for IAA

[Sweaterkittens]

Wow, I appreciate all the feedback, everyone! Although I am a bit disappointed that it seems like most people are opposed to the idea.

I just want to address a few common points I see being brought up:

 

Prep is part of the fun, and it gives you something to do:  I really like preparation work in general, but I think it should be at least semi-skilled and player-driven, otherwise it's just busywork. In medical, for instance, stocking the cloning tube with matter and preparing a cryomix are things you don't have to do. But it is good to do them, there's an element of skill to it (especially with cryomixes), and the medbay isn't gonna burn down if it doesn't happen. Preparing the ORs helps you more efficiently handle patients, and allows you to organize it to your personal liking (another thing I really like). However, imagine if all of the machines in the medbay came incomplete, and you had to go around screwdrivering them all to finish them? Or if the Surgical ORs were unbuilt, but all the supplies were in the backroom, so you had to build them yourself? It would just be time-consuming busywork that serves no purpose other than to be something to do. That is how I view gathering the most basic supplies from medbay and why I would prefer to focus on more interesting tasks. If people are just going to cryo as soon as there's no busywork to do then they shouldn't be playing an RP-heavy role to begin with. 

Just as an additional note on this: This is especially shitty if you're a latejoin. I joined a game yesterday as brig phys at about the 1 hour 10 minutes mark, and I was STILL scrambling to get stuff set up at close to 1 hour 40 minutes. Luckily, I wasn't desperately needed, but it did take time away from RP'ing with the security staff, and checking in on prisoners and whatnot. That's what I really like about the role, and I would enjoy being able to do that more. 

The brigbay is only meant to stabilize, not to heal: I understand that this the intention behind the role, but that's just not how SS13 works in reality. Were this a different, more modern medical system where it took a whole team of people and a week of recovery to get people on their feet again, I could see it. But even on Paradise's more in-depth medical system, the only thing a decent medic can't heal with stuff just in their backpack is severe internal injuries, or edge-case injuries like radiation poisoning. And if you're playing brig phys, you should be a decent medic who is capable of doing that. The only people who aren't going to be fully healed walking out of the brigbay are people who's insides have been turned to soup, or people who are already dead.

 

I get that people are pretty opposed to this idea, which is a shame, but it would be nice if we could address the fact that literally every brig phys. round starts with going to the medbay to raid it for supplies, take a Nanomed, and/or a freezer full of fluids and a defib, etc. I've not yet seen a single brig phys. that doesn't do that because there's no reason not to, and I don't blame them. You'll still end up with people who are so long-dead that they need to be cloned, people that have busted bones and a ruptured lung who need surgery, and those will get shipped to medbay.

In regards to the morgue drawers comment - I agree with the general consensus that bodies should be going to medbay. Not only to give antags a chance to be revived or otherwise, but also because Coroner already isn't a role with a ton to do, and I wouldn't want to take stuff away from them. 

 

And @Wojebecause you asked, here is my typical Brig Physician roundstart routine. I'm gonna spoiler it so other people don't feel obligated to read a wall of text.

Spoiler

First, I introduce myself to the security and medical staff, organize my personal outfit, strip my jumpsuit (droids don't wear clothes!) put all my extra bits in my emergency box and throw it in the closet. I clean up the counters and throw all extraneous stuff in the closet as well, leaving only the kits and my stuffed trauma animals on the tables so that my backpack is empty.

Optional: Then I beeline for cargo so I can get an order in quickly, and order a surgery crate for the brig. You can also get them to print tools, but I find that to be dicey as cargo tends to not want to spend that many resources, they may not HAVE that many resources, and most cargo techs don't know all the tools you need, which ends up being a hassle. Also, Brig Phys doesn't start with a duffel bag in the locker so that complicates that as well.

Then I go to secondary tool storage and take the emergency toolbox, go to tool storage and fill it IPC maintenance tools, cable, a real welder, as well as a welder and cable coil in my backpack for self-repair. I grab a flashlight if it's available. Then I go into maint and torch my way into the abandoned surgical suite, dismantling the OR table for the plasteel and a glass table for the parts. I grab the O- blood in there too. 

Optional: I often take the chance being down near the aft hallway to ask the AI to let me into tech storage so that I can take a body scanner card. 

Then I go to medbay for the fun part: robbing them blind. I kid, but I will get a duffel bag, a pill bottle, and go stock up. I stock my belt and backpack with my standard MD kit. I throw some extras of key stuff in the duffel that I might need later in a pinch, like gauze, splints, as well as edge-case chems like Oculine, Ether and Potassium Iodide, as well empty syringes, a beaker (for dialysis, and more importantly midochlide application) as well as a dropper. I like to hit secondary medical storage, because almost no one uses it, and grab some antibiotics, emergency Nitrogen and Plasma tanks, and take some of the salb and charcoal pills out of the kits since they never get used, and it's easier than carrying a bottle and syringes full of charcoal until Pentetic is available. Then I go check chem just in case there's a legend on who has already made Pentetic or Perfluorodecalin (although typically not), and grab some Salicylic Acid pills for emergencies. Then I grab a full-size defib, a hand defib for my personal kit, throw everything in a freezer full of fluids and go back to set up the brig medical bay.

Optional: Depending on where I'm at in the station, if I get called for an emergency or what have you, I'll swing by escape to get the octopus plushie, the arcade to get the random plushie that spawns there, and the deer plushie in the maint dorm by sec if B.O.O.P. isn't playing.

Then I set everything up, organizing it all so it's ready to treat patients efficiently, which tends to take a while because it's a lot of stuff, and because mixed in to all of these things are RP and dialogue and whatever happens to come up. 

Optional: If I picked up a body scanner board, I can go get a scanning module from RnD to build the scanner. I can dismantle the sleeper to make the infinitely more useful body scanner (base sleepers are trash don't @ me). If I'm in no rush at all, I'll just ask AI to let me into EVA or get a few pieces of metal + glass to build it in the place of one of the beds in the back of the treatment area. You never use both beds and having the scanner is way more important for surgery, as well verifying internal injuries. 

From there I'm mostly free to assist in medbay, roleplay, check in on prisoner's wellbeing, be an advocate for them when they're brought in beat to shit from being harmbatonged, and wait for my surgery crate to arrive. 

 

Edited July 28, 2021 by Sweaterkittens
grammar

[Spacemanspark]

Brig physician is one of the few ancient things I probably wouldn't miss if it was outright removed. It's meant to be a simple nurse role for injured prisoners, yet often turns out being a safe space for security officers, complete with cryo cells, surgery tables and gear, and a bunch of other medical bits. 

[Sweaterkittens]

18 hours ago, Spacemanspark said:

Brig physician is one of the few ancient things I probably wouldn't miss if it was outright removed. It's meant to be a simple nurse role for injured prisoners, yet often turns out being a safe space for security officers, complete with cryo cells, surgery tables and gear, and a bunch of other medical bits. 

I would genuinely be very sad if it was removed. It's an opportunity for some of the most unique roleplaying experiences I've had within the game, and most importantly, an opportunity for people who get thrown in isolation, or get treated like shit by security to get a little compassion. 

Perhaps it's during the hours I play, but I have rarely, if ever, seen my treatment area turn into a holdout/safe space for sec officers. I think this is partially due to the fact that this server doesn't often see the entire sec team getting wiped out due to murderboning rules that are not present on other servers, but also due to the fact that the role often goes unfilled so sec officers don't immediately retreat to the brig when injured because they often can't expect to get patched up there.