Why wont my doctors use my meds?

[Your Commissar]

Throughout my time in this game so far, both playing vanilla and in modded games, there is one recurring thing(bug? feature?) that pisses me off beyond belief. No matter what I do, hospital beds, altered stockpiles, work priorities, item quality, debug option, no, nothing work. My doctors will stand on top of industrial medicine, and treat bullet and stab wounds with their bare hands. Best quality medicine? check, still not used. Caravan meds into the docs inventory? check, madlad still uses his hands. Reassign work priorities and zones? check, ♥♥♥♥♥♥ still uses his ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hands. Developer mode to kill the doctor, ressurect him, raise his medical skill to 20? my man still uses his hands and honestly i need help before i just make a mod to do it for me...

[BlackSmokeDMax]

No bug in the game, and you can have a zero medical skill and use any medicine. Either you are doing something wrong, or a mod is messing it up.

[Your Commissar]

I actually don't have any mods on right now and no, they still won't use meds.

Originally posted by BlackSmokeDMax:

No bug in the game, and you can have a zero medical skill and use any medicine. Either you are doing something wrong, or a mod is messing it up.

As a side note though, I didn't ever have this problem till 1.1, and I don't have royalty installed if it matters.

[desrtfox071]

Originally posted by BlackSmokeDMax:

No bug in the game, and you can have a zero medical skill and use any medicine. Either you are doing something wrong, or a mod is messing it up.

Or both. That's my bet.

First, you need to make sure the bed is marked as medical.
Second you need to make sure your pawns have a high "patient" priority (I think this is likely the issue)
Third, you need to make sure your Doctors have highest priority.
Designate maximum level of medicine for each colonist.

Once that's done. your doctors will provide medical assistance automatically after your pawns go to the medical beds. Which they will do once injured or sick.

That's all there is to it really. Make sure your medicines are within the allowed area for your doctors. Make sure your beds are accessible, etc.

[Razor 2.3]

Also note that both doctors and haulers reserve medicine by stack, and doctors only check for medicine at the start of the procedure. If you have one stack of 75 meds, and two doctors looking for meds, one of them will claim the entire stack of 75, and the other will look for another stack. Only when the fist doctor takes the 3 medicine he needs can anyone else do anything with the remaining 72.

[TwoTonGamer]

Vanilla tending with best available medicine allowed by pawns medical tab works.

I've been playing vanilla royalty since it was released and there has never been an issue. There must be another cause to explore.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by desrtfox071:

First, you need to make sure the bed is marked as medical.

That's not necessary at all. They'll seek out their own bed if there's no marked medical beds.

Second you need to make sure your pawns have a high "patient" priority (I think this is likely the issue)

That determines the priority to go to bed when they have untreated injuries. OP already has them in a bed.

Third, you need to make sure your Doctors have highest priority.

OP problem isn't getting them to do medical, it's getting them to use medicine when they do it.

[Hedgie]

It's probably an issue with a mod remaining or something, vanilla has almost 0 bugs

[Raymond]

in vanilla, you will have to enable medicine treatment type in the health tab.
If you are modded, check if you have pharmacist installed.

[fwoosh waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa]

Sometimes even when disabling mods they still kind of have an effect on your game, I recommend wiping your mods folder in D:\Steam\steamapps\workshop\content\294100 or C:\Steam\steamapps\workshop\content\294100

Happened to me before where I was getting conflicts for mods I had disabled & uninstalled

[Jigain]

If the pawn in need of treatment is set to get industrial quality medicine or better, and the doctor can use the medicine (it is not outside of their allowed zone, is not forbidden, is not reserved by another pawn, is reachable), then you have a mod causing issues.

Obligatory #WheresTheModList goes here.

You could try starting a new game with no mods, use dev mode to spawn in some medicine and put down a bed or two, use the "Damage until down" tool to apply damage, and see if your assigned doctor uses medicine. If they do, as they should in vanilla, you've got clear confirmation that it's because of your mods. Then add some mods a few at a time, redo the experiment, see when they stop using medicine and find your culprit. Or if you want to make it as quick as possible, use the "by halves" troubleshooting method. Enable pretty much exactly half your mods. If the problem happens, the issue is with the half you enabled. If it does not happen, the issue is with the half yet to go. Enable / disable half of those mods. Use the same logic as above. Reduces troubleshooting (as an example) 200 mods to 8 steps at most.

[Mazey]

Originally posted by Nightlight:

Best quality medicine? check,

Have you set "best quality medicine" on the doctor or on the patient?
It needs to be on the patient.

[desrtfox071]

Originally posted by gimmethegepgun:

Originally posted by desrtfox071:

First, you need to make sure the bed is marked as medical.

That's not necessary at all. They'll seek out their own bed if there's no marked medical beds.

Second you need to make sure your pawns have a high "patient" priority (I think this is likely the issue)

That determines the priority to go to bed when they have untreated injuries. OP already has them in a bed.

Third, you need to make sure your Doctors have highest priority.

OP problem isn't getting them to do medical, it's getting them to use medicine when they do it.

You can get away without the things I mentioned, but it does complicate the tending. The OP is doing something wrong, or there's a mod issue, this is why I laid it all out like this. There can be many reasons why the doctor isn't using medicine, chief among them is that the doctor is not doctoring, or there is no patient.

Now, you could be right and it's all down to the medicine, as is alluded to in the OP, but it may be something a little more fundamental too.

[Your Commissar]

Originally posted by Jigain:

If the pawn in need of treatment is set to get industrial quality medicine or better, and the doctor can use the medicine (it is not outside of their allowed zone, is not forbidden, is not reserved by another pawn, is reachable), then you have a mod causing issues.

Obligatory #WheresTheModList goes here.

You could try starting a new game with no mods, use dev mode to spawn in some medicine and put down a bed or two, use the "Damage until down" tool to apply damage, and see if your assigned doctor uses medicine. If they do, as they should in vanilla, you've got clear confirmation that it's because of your mods. Then add some mods a few at a time, redo the experiment, see when they stop using medicine and find your culprit. Or if you want to make it as quick as possible, use the "by halves" troubleshooting method. Enable pretty much exactly half your mods. If the problem happens, the issue is with the half you enabled. If it does not happen, the issue is with the half yet to go. Enable / disable half of those mods. Use the same logic as above. Reduces troubleshooting (as an example) 200 mods to 8 steps at most.

Vanilla atm. And mentioned I've tried a lot of things in the devmode regards, and after testing your specific method also proved a failure.

Originally posted by desrtfox071:

Originally posted by gimmethegepgun:

Now, you could be right and it's all down to the medicine, as is alluded to in the OP, but it may be something a little more fundamental too.

The entire issue is the lack of medicine usage, and no other problems have been noted. Everything else is attended to.

Originally posted by Mazey:

Originally posted by Nightlight:

Best quality medicine? check,

Have you set "best quality medicine" on the doctor or on the patient?
It needs to be on the patient.

Its set that way on everyone including animals and prisoners. I made this mistake when I first started playing and have always used best quality since the first time I wiped to mechs.

Originally posted by gimmethegepgun:

Originally posted by desrtfox071:

First, you need to make sure the bed is marked as medical.

That's not necessary at all. They'll seek out their own bed if there's no marked medical beds.

Second you need to make sure your pawns have a high "patient" priority (I think this is likely the issue)

That determines the priority to go to bed when they have untreated injuries. OP already has them in a bed.

Third, you need to make sure your Doctors have highest priority.

OP problem isn't getting them to do medical, it's getting them to use medicine when they do it.

Thank you for being a voice for clarity.


At this point, to me, it isn't about my pawns dying or whatnot, I simply want a fix that works. As far as mods go, I am on VANILLA atm, on Randy medium reload anytime, I have percisely 247 herbal meds in one stockpile zone, and roughly 40 industrial meds in my hospital. Doc sleeps one room down from the hospital, and patient is a colonist with three gunshot wounds and a shattered nose(i don't know where he got it from tbh). Thank you for your contributions to what I can only call science, I need answers.

Also quote is messed up, sorry

[desrtfox071]

Originally posted by Nightlight:

quote here

Post some screenshots of what you have there. Also, what is "industrial medicine"?

You probably have an area definition or pawn restriction or something like that getting in the way. Please show a screenshot of the doctor selected, the patient selected and the overall area.

Also, just because someone agrees with your initial assessment doesn't mean they're helping clarity. If your assessment was actually accurate, your game would be working.

[Your Commissar]

Originally posted by desrtfox071:

If your assessment was actually accurate, your game would be working. [/quote]

I'll acknowledge that yes, there is probably some error my part, but that's the whole point of asking for help and frankly you aren't offering much help, but I will answer your concerns. All pawns are on unrestricted, all meds are in stockpiles. There are no mods and I recently did the good ole uninstall reinstall to start the day. I firmly believe currently that as I am not yet aware of any user error on my part so far, it is likely a problem yet unmentioned on my end, or an error the devlog isn't reporting.