Cloning Preference

[TortoiseGaming]

There have been some discussions of removing cloning in the past, namely this one 

 from 2017... so, its been a while since this has been brought up from what I've seen. My thought is a bit different from this topic, however, I do agree with the ideas Wolf brought up in this one. 

 

My thoughts would be to not entirely remove cloning but allow people to make a preference on the character screen whether they want to be clonable or not (has to already be a clonable species obv.) It would be something you can only change between rounds but allow you to mark yourself as Do Not Clone (DNC) which would show up on a health analyzer. It would also display a message on the cloning console when you tried to clone someone that was DNC (something similar to unclonable species now). 

 

I think this would allow for more RP than just "Oh, defib doesnt work anymore, let's clone em" cloning itself is just a boring deus ex machina of BAM you're now alive again magically. It is a process of course, but its such a bad RP element that adds nothing to the game. It also does not allow for new medical players to actually learn how to play med well. If you all you know is, "darn, the patient died, guess we just clone", you come out worse off as you now aren't learning how to TREAT people. 

 

Needless to say, this suggestion is here to find a middle ground between completely removing cloning as it is, and leaving cloning as it is. It allows players the choice that we sometimes wish we had. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

[Spacemanspark]

I've brought up the topic of removing cloning several times within the Para discord, and each time it was a clusterfuck. My (albeit now very irrelevant) opinion still stands; Paradise would do well to remove cloning and strange reagent entirely from the game. Leave defibs, FBPs and borgification as the remaining methods in which someone returns to life. 

[McRamon]

You can already choose to not get cloned

[Generaldonothing]

https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/18908

Mira tried this but couldn't get something technical related down. Was a pretty cool concept though imo

[TortoiseGaming]

6 hours ago, McRamon said:

You can already choose to not get cloned

You sure can! By not being revived at all :) This however would notify players that "Hey, this person can't be cloned, find another method" :)

[TortoiseGaming]

6 hours ago, Generaldonothing said:

https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/18908

Mira tried this but couldn't get something technical related down. Was a pretty cool concept though imo

Yeah, this is pretty much what I'm looking at right now. I am with spark on this, cloning should go away, its a terrible RP mechanic for the game

 

[TheBadPerson]

I see a lot of people say to remove cloning, yet I’ve never seen a good argument for its removal. The rounds are two hours long, and medbay is totally bald about 75% of the time. The threat of permanent round removal at round start due to bad luck or medical incompetence would discourage experimentation, encourage massive power gaming for protection, and would just be bad for overall gameplay. 
 

There are also very often total chaos rounds that are a lot of fun because people get rotated back in to the fray from cloning. I have never had cloning negatively impact my experience, and I think it’s a pseudo issue that people make a fuss about for no reason.
 

I also question if people who advocate for its removal ever play high risk roles where round removal is likely, or if they are medical/assistant mains never at high risk. 
 

 

[CinnamonSnowball]

IMO, cloning as a common form of revival is fine. It could use a bit of rebalancing to make setting it up and using it require a bit more thought than just asking Chemistry for some Cryoxadone in an IV, sticking it into an LRP monkey murderbag, then pressing two buttons on the machine, though.
There have been ideas floating around to make cloning slightly more involved - using stuff like new coroner-only tools which would extract something along the lines of the patient's DNA (husking or otherwise rendering the old body unrevivable) that the cloning machine would then require to begin the cloning process - but if I recall correctly some technical difficulties stopped the attempt. Alternatively, cloning could maybe be given some extra side-effects like permanent mutations irremovable with Mutadone that would require Genetics' involvement (actually giving them a reasonable excuse to be part of Medbay), or maybe an occasional missing limb that didn't properly grow in the cloning pod. One thing I'd like to see though, is for those side-effects to never be fully nullifiable as is the case with current cloning upgrades, which completely remove the chance to acquire negative mutations (which is already fairly low as-is) and even let you gain positive ones at no risk!

I'd also absolutely be on board with an official "uncloneable" disability, as it'd give people who dislike cloning or may have RP reasons to make their character unresponsive to it an easy mechanical solution (ideally with appropriate in-game feedback), with the very clear label that it's a disability they're willingly taking.

On the other hand, SR could absolutely use a bit of a buff; compared to cloning, it's currently the worse form of revival in almost every aspect, which is a bit ridiculous - without proper preparation and experience it takes a lot longer, is a lot more dangerous thanks to the possibility of gibbing someone with it, requires you to fix all original conditions like injuries and internal bleeding/broken bones that might need surgery, and also doesn't leave a body for the coroner to inspect. I feel like the side-effects should be toned down a fair bit to actually make SR a viable alternative to cloning before people even consider learning and doing SR revivals more regularly.

As for whether we even need revival to be common - I'm fairly certain the answer is 'yes'. People have raised points about some antags we have like blob, which almost requires a steady supply of crew to fight it otherwise it tends to snowball out of control, but even besides that - there are people who can't devote much time in their day to the funny spessmen game of which rounds each take 2 hours on average, and it doesn't make for a very fun playing experience to be completely removed from the round because nobody found your body in 5 or even an extended 10-15 minutes after some antag happened to shank you and hide your body early on.

Edited January 30, 2023 by CinnamonSnowball
Formatting here is funny

[Retrograde115]

My issue with cloning has never been that I don't like being cloned, and giving me the option of a disability that keeps me from being cloned is utterly redundant when the DNR button exists. My issue with cloning has always been that it makes death, the literal worst thing that can happen to someone, utterly meaningless beyond losing your cool robot arm.

Assassination objectives are made needlessly tedious, requiring you to decapitate, de-brain, or utterly destroy the body of your victim to ensure that they can't be revived. Otherwise the janitor finds a murder victim in maints and drags them to medbay. A doctor shoves the body in the scanner, wait five minutes, and Gray McTide will come out screaming "OLIVIA COLEUS IS A VAMPIRE!!1!!" This also extends to things like hostage situations, where having a gun to someone's head doesn't deter them from trying to robust you because them losing and getting shot in the head means 10-15 minutes of dchat at worst.

My personal solution would be to rework cloning and revival completely so that reviving anyone from a prolonged state of death is a difficult and involved process, and to enforce Clone Memory Disorder on top of that. We already have the "You remember nothing from the time you were dead" message, literally just amend it with "You also don't remember any details of your death." Hell, CMD alone would be a big step forward.

[CinnamonSnowball]

Clone Memory Disorder is all fine and dandy until you remember that somebody would have to actually enforce it for people to abide by it, which would be a bit of nightmare for the admin team as I've occasionally heard from admins commenting on the idea.

Also, calling an uncloneable disability option "utterly redundant when the DNR button exists" shows a bit of rude misunderstanding for the use of it.

Do agree though that cloning making revival of assassination victims very easy might be a problem, even if I don't have much experience with antagging myself. Maybe antags could be given some extra tools provided for their assasination objectives, something like a small injector-like device that can simply render a dead body unrevivable?

[Nerfection]

2 hours ago, CinnamonSnowball said:

Clone Memory Disorder is all fine and dandy until you remember that somebody would have to actually enforce it for people to abide by it, which would be a bit of nightmare for the admin team as I've occasionally heard from admins commenting on the idea.

Just to weigh in on this aspect of it, I don't really think it would be any more difficult to enforce then any of our other rules. We can see when people died, when they were cloned, and if they then say 'Sec! Jimmy Stabbings stabbed me!'  we'd see that, and could send in the bwoinks. It'd be more easily policed than - for example - rules about netspeaking, as we'd see sec's reaction over comms, changes to sec records, and people caught due to their victims post-cloned testimony would almost certainly ahelp.

On a personal level; I dislike cloning and how it can cheapen death, and be used as an alternative to surgery, but I'm aware that the community is very split on the issue.

Nerf

[Retrograde115]

20 hours ago, CinnamonSnowball said:

Clone Memory Disorder is all fine and dandy until you remember that somebody would have to actually enforce it for people to abide by it, which would be a bit of nightmare for the admin team as I've occasionally heard from admins commenting on the idea.

As Nerf said, I think the mental load on the admins for this rule is overestimated. I can see it being an issue initially as people get used to the new rule, but once it's common knowledge, it shouldn't be any harder to enforce than other forms of metagaming. I'm not an admin though, so take that opinion with a grain of salt.

20 hours ago, CinnamonSnowball said:

Also, calling an uncloneable disability option "utterly redundant when the DNR button exists" shows a bit of rude misunderstanding for the use of it.

I didn't mean to be rude, but I really do see this as a non-solution to most people's issues with cloning.

20 hours ago, CinnamonSnowball said:

Do agree though that cloning making revival of assassination victims very easy might be a problem, even if I don't have much experience with antagging myself. Maybe antags could be given some extra tools provided for their assasination objectives, something like a small injector-like device that can simply render a dead body unrevivable?

I feel like this would be an unsatisfying solution for all parties involved, as it would essentially just simplify the process of de-braining to a single click rather than addressing the underlying issue of death being inconsequential.

Funny enough, in Discord I've brought up the topic of making antag objectives that don't require the victim to stay dead, and my ideas were promptly shot down because they "reduced the drama of a permanent kill," which feels like having our cake and eating it too. Do we want death to be dramatic and impactful, or do we want to minimize round-removal by having easy revival mechanics? I lean towards the former.

[Biolock]

I really hate cloning in Space Station 13, but I don't know that this server could manage without it. Death being meaningless is such an important aspect to this server, and would require a rebalance of sooooo many things to make it viable. That said, if the staff were willing and wishing to make those steps, I think it would be an extremely positive thing. 

I do hate cloning. So much.

[Miraviel]

On 1/28/2023 at 9:54 PM, Spacemanspark said:

I've brought up the topic of removing cloning several times within the Para discord, and each time it was a clusterfuck. My (albeit now very irrelevant) opinion still stands; Paradise would do well to remove cloning and strange reagent entirely from the game. Leave defibs, FBPs and borgification as the remaining methods in which someone returns to life. 

FBPs would be a very interesting way of revival. Not IRCs - proper FBPs. I've seen it on other servers and it adds weight to late revivals. "Oh god, I am fully synthetic on the outside now?" It is so rarely done here.

On 1/28/2023 at 10:14 PM, McRamon said:

You can already choose to not get cloned

No, you can choose between life and death. Choosable cloneability decides whether you want to get cloned by a cheap, boring method, or you want the doctors to work for it. (Similar thing kinda once you pick non-cloneable species).

On 1/28/2023 at 10:44 PM, Generaldonothing said:

https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/18908

Mira tried this but couldn't get something technical related down. Was a pretty cool concept though imo

If coding was the only issue, I could get help for it - just keep in mind that it was never fully OK'd by the design team. In a hindsight, I am not sure if this was a good idea, either. It feels like a bandaid solution.

On 1/30/2023 at 4:53 PM, TheBadPerson said:

The rounds are two hours long, and medbay is totally bald about 75% of the time.

Medical is not bald because we lack good medical players - medical is bald because the good medical players are not willing to play. You can learn all the ins and outs of how bleeding works, how to effectively use lesser known drugs like atropine or salacid, and the like, it all means nothing in the end when 90% of all bodies that come in just instantly get hurled into the cloner by a random bystander.

I firmly believe the "we shouldn't remove cloning because then we will have no medbay!" argument is backwards. People stick with jobs because they present a challenge and they are exciting. A lot of people got bored of security when we had the old stuncombat because all it involved was "hit the antag with the funny yellow bolt and you won" and, similarly, get hit once by the funny stunprod and lose. Now that the handholding was removed from it, it became a way more exciting and thus way more popular job.

I sometimes play on Baystation too where medical procedures have a weight and the system itself has a lot of mechanics that actually come into play because there is no one-stop solution for most people - and I stick with it. I don't want to play other jobs. Here, on Paradise, I sometimes play Chemist to see numbers go up, but again, most drugs are never used because why would anyone fix up a body with 300 brute, two IBs, and a fracture when they can just put it into the funny tube and get it back fully healed with full blood?

Medical is fun until you figure out how to fix slightly hurt bodies and until you commit surgeries to muscle memory. Afterwards, you just realise cryotubes, two specific drugs, and the cloner fixes almost every case.

On 1/30/2023 at 8:58 PM, CinnamonSnowball said:

As for whether we even need revival to be common - I'm fairly certain the answer is 'yes'. People have raised points about some antags we have like blob, which almost requires a steady supply of crew to fight it otherwise it tends to snowball out of control, but even besides that - there are people who can't devote much time in their day to the funny spessmen game of which rounds each take 2 hours on average, and it doesn't make for a very fun playing experience to be completely removed from the round because nobody found your body in 5 or even an extended 10-15 minutes after some antag happened to shank you and hide your body early on.

I agree that permadeath should not be too encouraged on Paradise, we are not that kind of a server. To make it clear: I want cloning to go away, it is cheap, stupid, and boring. But we need a very, very good alternative for it for which I have not yet seen good ideas yet. Making the SR less dangerous is a good step but it is not enough, SR itself needs an overhaul (its recipe is dumb and currently its best use is to field execute changelings).

Unfortunately, these topics usually lead to nowhere because these alternatives are not thought through from the gameflow's point of view. If we remove cloning, what is there instead? The 5 min timer to defib, SR, brain transplant, and cyborgification. What alternatives can we offer? If we increase the defib timer to 10 minutes, that can work - or if there was a drug (space formaldehyde?) that extended the timer. If we popularise SR, we will need many more surgeries, for which we might need a third OR, especially during highpop, or a way for medical to print cheap prosthetics. If we popularise brain transplants, we'll inevitably piss off people who play non-standard races (vox and plasmamen are unlikely to revive once they are put into a human body). Cyborgification is currently bugged if you want to make a shell without laws.

 

So, TLDR: If anyone wants cloning to go away, offer alternatives by saying "x could be done which would lead to y but could be fixed by z". This is a good starting point of a discussion. Talking about why cloning should or should not stay will send us into the same loop as it has been doing so for the past 6(?) years.

Edited February 23, 2023 by Miraviel

[Accinator50]

I agree with Miraviel's opinion. 

Recently, by chance, I came up with an idea that may or may not be a good solution.

Why do we have a timer after which someone can no longer be resuscitated with the defibrillator?

If one would remove this timer completely, except perhaps for species which cannot be cloned, and also remove the cloner at the same time then you would be forced to actually treat every injury. At the same time, you could perhaps make it so that the body simply takes additional damage after a certain time, in order to maintain the time pressure a bit.

In my opinion, that would be the simplest and best solution. No one would have to give up their appearance or rely on a doctor knowing SR, but at the same time it does present some challenge.

A problem here could perhaps arise during very chaotic rounds when Medbay is completely overrun, as this type of resurrection takes more time. However, this problem always exists when you remove the one-click completely healed machine. Also, you could leave the cloner in the emergency medical ship so admins could give it to players in extreme emergencies.

[Miraviel]

Accumulating damage sounds like a really good starting point. The slower the triage provided, the more work to do once the heart is beating again. That'd reward good paras/nurses without making mass revival impossible during biohazard rounds.

[Pckables]

On 2/23/2023 at 3:46 AM, Accinator50 said:

A problem here could perhaps arise during very chaotic rounds when Medbay is completely overrun, as this type of resurrection takes more time. However, this problem always exists when you remove the one-click completely healed machine.

This is a major factor that I feel often gets overlooked:
Cloning doesn't take up a surgery room.

Surgery is a HUGE bottleneck in terms of the medical flow. You only have so many rooms, and surgery can be as short as 1 minute to as long as 10+ minutes on a particularly mangled victim.

When things get ESPECIALLY bad on the station, and medical is overrun with both corpses and injuries, what keeps things running is the fact that Cloning the dead and fixing the living occupy completely different areas.

Whether or not this is part of the plan, if reviving the dead is going to require a surgery room as well, reviving people will end up being shoved to the last priority during emergencies. Doctors are going to favor keeping the non-stop flood of IB victims alive, rather than having to work on a single corpse for 5-10 minutes.

-Not saying this is a good or bad thing, but important to keep in mind.

Edited February 24, 2023 by Pckables