medical nerd stuff, suggestions and thoughts

[Goose]

i know the line between real meds and game balancing is hard. there are just some things, e.g. the suggested rate for CPR is 100BPM (ignoring the fact that >90% of chirurgical CPR fails) , in game it is too slow. Then obviously morphine will never heal any wounds, and also saline is important to treat burns bc a lot of liquid is lost in larger burns. This game is still in alpha and idk what direction the devs wanna go, and *how* realistic they wanna be. Like, i see the generator and am amazed by the realism, then someone has internal bleedings fixed by morphine..

[Dim]

Bleeding can't be fixed by morphine in the game

[Mechanos]

Like you said, more or less, it's important to keep in mind that finding a balance between realism and ease of access can be difficult. Make it too technical or require too many steps, and most players will avoid it. Make it too simple, and you ruin the skill requirement that gamers crave. That's likely why you see differing levels of realism - some stuff would hurt gameplay if they made it too realistic. As for the morphine, I'm betting the health bar is affected by pain, so using the morphine, while not fixing the burn, would temporarily remove pain and "appear" to be healing you when your bar raises? I could be wrong though.

[Silence Suzuka]

Originally posted by Dimsim:

Bleeding can't be fixed by morphine in the game

I guess he mean internal injury

[Goose]

Originally posted by Mechanos:

Like you said, more or less, it's important to keep in mind that finding a balance between realism and ease of access can be difficult. Make it too technical or require too many steps, and most players will avoid it. Make it too simple, and you ruin the skill requirement that gamers crave. That's likely why you see differing levels of realism - some stuff would hurt gameplay if they made it too realistic. As for the morphine, I'm betting the health bar is affected by pain, so using the morphine, while not fixing the burn, would temporarily remove pain and "appear" to be healing you when your bar raises? I could be wrong though.

The Game, if i am not wrong, is supposed to be hard, right? Like SS13, whichs' medical system i actually really like (if it's not even my favourite) because not every injury could be field dressed and people need to be carried away and operated on to heal, with a medics job being only to keep them stable as it really is. now ofc this won't work as well in a quickly paced game with not that many players to just for a while just lose 2, one in OP and one operating, but this game is still early access so they might wanna try around with things like this which is why i made this in the first place, to see others opinions on this

[Dat Zorro]

Personally I'm not a fan of it. Is a rather complex medical system like this with seemingly over a dozen of different items really needed? As someone noted in a review, you die very quickly anyway and if you hire a noob-medic with less than 55 in the field, he's only useful for CPR while still sucking at doing actual healing.

Complexity for complexity's sake isn't always a good thing. Given how simple most of the other stuff is, it feels out of place for me.

[Mechanos]

Originally posted by Martin.jg:

The Game, if i am not wrong, is supposed to be hard, right?

A game can be challenging without resorting to complexity extremes. Have you actually seen a dev flat out say the goal of the game is to make it only accessible to hardcore players? I personally would like to see this game be accessible to a broader range of players.

Originally posted by UAZ-469:

Personally I'm not a fan of it. Is a rather complex medical system like this with seemingly over a dozen of different items really needed? As someone noted in a review, you die very quickly anyway and if you hire a noob-medic with less than 55 in the field, he's only useful for CPR while still sucking at doing actual healing.

Complexity for complexity's sake isn't always a good thing. Given how simple most of the other stuff is, it feels out of place for me.

I have to agree. At current time, I go out of my way to avoid playing medic and instead micro manage a medic bot as needed. I've yet to see a human player be able to treat 5 different wound types on someone that has 20 seconds to live. While I'm sure there's some player out there with good memory that tries to kit themselves to be as prepared as possible, I'm certain they are the minority. Most players just end up not keeping people alive, or spend their time griefing in secret, with their arsenal of various chemicals and drugs.

That said, I wonder if it would be possible to meet the hardcore players half way? Something like.. have a generic healing item that can treat a broad range of illnesses but requires a good amount of medical skill to properly use. This would allow noobs to heal people as long as they're playing a medic. But have a few rarer illness types that require specific treatments, possibly some of these treatments having a shelf life and must be crafted, so that noobs have something to learn and work towards, and the hardcore medic players have their "fix"?

[Goose]

Originally posted by Mechanos:

Originally posted by Martin.jg:

The Game, if i am not wrong, is supposed to be hard, right?

A game can be challenging without resorting to complexity extremes. Have you actually seen a dev flat out say the goal of the game is to make it only accessible to hardcore players? I personally would like to see this game be accessible to a broader range of players.

Originally posted by UAZ-469:

Personally I'm not a fan of it. Is a rather complex medical system like this with seemingly over a dozen of different items really needed? As someone noted in a review, you die very quickly anyway and if you hire a noob-medic with less than 55 in the field, he's only useful for CPR while still sucking at doing actual healing.

Complexity for complexity's sake isn't always a good thing. Given how simple most of the other stuff is, it feels out of place for me.

I have to agree. At current time, I go out of my way to avoid playing medic and instead micro manage a medic bot as needed. I've yet to see a human player be able to treat 5 different wound types on someone that has 20 seconds to live. While I'm sure there's some player out there with good memory that tries to kit themselves to be as prepared as possible, I'm certain they are the minority. Most players just end up not keeping people alive, or spend their time griefing in secret, with their arsenal of various chemicals and drugs.

That said, I wonder if it would be possible to meet the hardcore players half way? Something like.. have a generic healing item that can treat a broad range of illnesses but requires a good amount of medical skill to properly use. This would allow noobs to heal people as long as they're playing a medic. But have a few rarer illness types that require specific treatments, possibly some of these treatments having a shelf life and must be crafted, so that noobs have something to learn and work towards, and the hardcore medic players have their "fix"?

Im to stupid for formatting so lemme just respond to the block. As I said, SS13 is perfect in that regard, there are no guides and hints in game, you have to read up and learn your role to be good at it, knowing when and how to do what. I know those two games don't compare too well on many regards, it was just something I wanted to add. Because nothing is as satisfying in SS13 than finally to be good at a role and reliably be able to do that.

Look at a different game, like CSS or team fortress 2. Casual players can play the game, the round lasts 20 minutes and then you can play another role with not all too many players perfecting a round. But if im not wrong rounds in BT are supposed to be longer with a heavy emphasis on team roles, closer to jobs not roles. I hope I make sense i don't really know how to say that, but those roles are more than tank/damage/heal, most jobs don't overlap and by design of that game you need practice to be good at your job. At the moment the welder welds, the electrician does electric stuff and the security dude shoots, but none of those jobs but the medic, which already is pretty complicated, are really challenging.

Initially my post was about medic, but IDK if the game should lean more towards being noob-friendly with easy roles (like fixed holes and broken stuff just being fixed by welding it and medic just applying a magic heal ray to heal) and more casual, or if it should have ss13 style way more complicated and specialised jobs where you either have different roles (like skill levels, but those skill levels don't say how likely you are to fail but how long you played) where some noob can be first responder who does bandading and maybe CPR and if they played enough and get familiar with the role they can become, idk, paramedic or something

This is not me saying: game dev, do this. this is me saying 'this is an idea i had, what do you think of it'. i am not a game dev and don't know what the devs wanna do. a compromise would be that job complexity scales with crew size, like 1-5 player crews are very easy jobs while more players will have more specialized jobs/ or a realism setting that removes items.

e.g
realism low: medic has a heal ray with which he blasts injured people.
realism medium: he has gauze, painkillers and blood bags.
realism high: the way it is now or more complicated even

maybe you could combine all of this. a noob paramedic has low realism so the teammates don't suffer under his lack of skill, and if he gets better he can turn it up to become better at it

again, i'm just brain storming and dumping ideas im having and not saying this is the best way to do things

[Dat Zorro]

But why is the medic the most complex class, aside from the engineer if he's gonna rewire and install stuff (Which one probably won't do unless a player is really into it)? Why are the captain and mechanic so simple in comparison?

What I'm trying to say is that the difficulty is inconsistent, almost like the medic is a leftover from a time where BT was supposed to be hardcore, until the developers decided that a small hardcore-fanbase won't be enough to sustain the game and they needed to attract the casual-crowd as well. Imagine how the game would have ended up if, for instance, the mechanic would have to carry spare parts to repair the engine with a chance of utterly destroying it when using the wrong parts on it. The same for the mechanic with fixing electrical equipment.

[Goose]

Originally posted by UAZ-469:

But why is the medic the most complex class, aside from the engineer if he's gonna rewire and install stuff (Which one probably won't do unless a player is really into it)? Why are the captain and mechanic so simple in comparison?

What I'm trying to say is that the difficulty is inconsistent, almost like the medic is a leftover from a time where BT was supposed to be hardcore, until the developers decided that a small hardcore-fanbase won't be enough to sustain the game and they needed to attract the casual-crowd as well. Imagine how the game would have ended up if, for instance, the mechanic would have to carry spare parts to repair the engine with a chance of utterly destroying it when using the wrong parts on it. The same for the mechanic with fixing electrical equipment.

I agree, but I think i would enjoy both experiences. Having a casual mode where it is like now with medic turned down and everything simpler, and having a hard-core mode for all hard core gamers. there are few games which have simple gamplay and a sustained player base, most die after a bit and then there are games like ss13, hoi4 and starsector that mostly only have a decent or great playebases for a long time because they are games that can be perfected. hoi4 is horrible for noobs and starsector takes a lot of time to know how to play, but they both only are really fun when you're good at them.

that's actually what draws me personally to some of those games, the constant challenge. because without competitive or story elements, what the replay value isn't as high if the game has very simple mechanics.

That is at least my opinion on this and why i'd be interested in varying degrees of complexity, casual players can get to know the game without being helpless and masters have stuff to learn and pretty complex jobs

> Which one probably won't do unless a player is really into it

some people are into it and i think that is what i am talking about, let the players decide how complex they'd like the game. there will be teams where no one will bother to wire up anyting and there will be teams where there will be a huge nerd for electronics in this game same as i am a nerd for the original topic, paramedicine.

[Mechanos]

I can somewhat relate. What pulled me into the game, is I like designing submarines from scratch. Wiring, gating, and predicting failure points, is something I enjoy, as I already have years of experience with that sort of thing in other games. I sometimes play the electrician class in-game to re-wire things on the fly during a round too, for those times that a pub server is using a submarine with something glitchy, or critical failure demands rerouting power and what not. That said, unlike the medic, if a player finds the building/wiring thing to be too complex.. they have the option to use pre-built subs and never have to touch the building/wiring stuff if they don't want to. The only real equivalent side option for medics, is to have a bot do it.

Another major difference is once I've built a working sub.. it pretty much just works on it's own. Whereas the difficulty from the medic job never stops. Identify an injured person, run over, look at their injuries, hope you have the right medication on you, apply it X times, maybe prioritize CPR.. inventory management becomes huge I'm sure, carrying around a bunch of toolboxes. If that's something you enjoy.. then my hat's off to ya. For me, it's just a big PITA lol.

[Goose]

Originally posted by Mechanos:

I can somewhat relate. What pulled me into the game, is I like designing submarines from scratch. Wiring, gating, and predicting failure points, is something I enjoy, as I already have years of experience with that sort of thing in other games. I sometimes play the electrician class in-game to re-wire things on the fly during a round too, for those times that a pub server is using a submarine with something glitchy, or critical failure demands rerouting power and what not. That said, unlike the medic, if a player finds the building/wiring thing to be too complex.. they have the option to use pre-built subs and never have to touch the building/wiring stuff if they don't want to. The only real equivalent side option for medics, is to have a bot do it.

Another major difference is once I've built a working sub.. it pretty much just works on it's own. Whereas the difficulty from the medic job never stops. Identify an injured person, run over, look at their injuries, hope you have the right medication on you, apply it X times, maybe prioritize CPR.. inventory management becomes huge I'm sure, carrying around a bunch of toolboxes. If that's something you enjoy.. then my hat's off to ya. For me, it's just a big PITA lol.

I love submarines which is why i got the game. My focus usually lies on Kriegsmarine Uboote, but all are interesting

Also, what you describe in the second paragraph is exactly what paramedicine is. You go to a person, you check them up and you hope you have all you need. In-game if you don't - they die and you'll know next time that x should be in your kit. Maybe because I learned this stuff irl and i am into it is the reason i like it but that is the beauty of SS13. For every nerd there is a job they can tryhard and perfect.

I know this might not be what the devs have in mind anymore and even is possible, just my thoughts on it. i'd generally games be more complicated than washed down

[Beta-03]

The longer I read this thread, the more I think you might be right with your statement "For me it is easy, because I learned it IRL."

I also do enjoy the hidden complexity of the medical item gameplay and I want to stress the "item" in it. Because I expierience the difficulty in it not in the different afflictions etc. (like you said before, opiates heal a lot of things), but in the medical item fabrication. If the devs schould decide to increase the realism to a certain level, most afflictions would be lethal and non-reversible. We are playing on a sub after all.

Most (new/noobie) medics just run to the med bay and grab some morphine and bandages and that's it. Better medics are taking the more complex drugs which are lying around in the sub. And the best medics try to get the available stuff to the highest available level and that while avoiding bankruptcy of the sub, improving the quality of heals, involving the security guards (because they are regulary near the action) and are treating 5 different afflictions on someone with 20 seconds left while also giving remote support to first responders.

Also when I'm not totally in the wrong: The Devs want to add poisoning and radiation to the medical gameplay loop. This should increase the overall difficulty through adding afflictions.

[Mechanos]

With regard to my description being paramedicine.. in a perfect game world, sure. But what tends to happen is.. random intruder in sub, they take out a crewmate or bot with no one knowing, or worse outside of the sub in a derelict. If it's in-ship, eventually other crew realizes there's flooding and investigates, finds the intruder, kills them, by now the crewmate has only seconds or is already dead. Assuming they aren't already dead, this is where you have.. idk 10-20 seconds to know exactly what mixtures of medicines/etc to apply and/or start CPR. Which is basically saying... first you gotta get lucky, then you gotta git gud, just to give them a 2nd chance.

I imagine irl paramedicine is initialized differently.. simply because someone has to call the paramedics. That difference is pretty huge... it implies the patient will be alive for at least a little while and implies paramedics know roughly where the patient is (with-in reason of course). Otherwise the person never becomes a patient because no one calls the paramedics (probably because the victim was unable to make the call themselves). In game, crewmates die really fast, and nothing tells you when they're downed AFAIK (other than random chat hints, or maybe a player screaming lol), so finding the patient as fast as possible also figures in. The bigger the sub and the more understaffed your sub is, the worse this gets. This is where the medicine complexity becomes a problem.. you have only seconds to do the thing quite often. This is where many people, like me, just throw our hands up and write off the game mechanic, as it doesn't fit with the fast paced gameplay, like you said.

So I guess, I do see your point. But I also think a really in depth medical system is currently very difficult to pull off, due to how fast you die when knocked out mainly, on top of some people just straight up not liking the memory game. If people could get knocked out but survive long enough for learning players to experiment and hopefully figure things out, then maybe more people would warm up to it? My personal response has been to just avoid injury to begin with through sub design.

[Kastuk]

Not qualified blood transfusion must cause quite a damage to recipient.

[The Mogician]

For the morphine thing, think of it as "painkillers". If your feeling of pain is too strong, you will go into shock, by using morphine, it helps to suppress the pain and keep you in ship shape (heh) for longer.