Station ML3M/NSFW briefcases are now itemsize_huge (cannot fit in bags)
Non-station multi-cells are itemsize_large (takes up twice the current amount of space)
- Removes the Pathfinder's Frontier Carbine
- Removes the Pathfinder's Binoculars
- Adds the Frontier Carbine to the Survery Vendor, for 750 points. It has improved stats over a normal Frontier Phaser
- Adds binoculars to the survey vendor for 40 points
- Adds a Frontier Rifle, adminbus only for now
- Renames some frontier phaser sprites for additional clarity
- Adds two frontier holdout phasers to the exploration weapons locker
- Adds a new Scatter type of gateway, abductor, which strips the person's gear and deposits them somewhere else
- Nerfs Expedition Phasers and Holdout Phasers
- Reduces the number of full size phasers in Exploration from 4 to 3
- Slightly buffs melee mobs
- Removes humanoid mobs from Virgo 3B Wilderness
- Removes ADG from one of the POIs from V2
Originally, the ML3M was intended to be a little bit stronger. The healing values for the Brute, Burn, Omni, Toxin, and Antirad cells, have been adjusted according to what was initially planned.
Base Tier's now heal 10 per shot, for a total of 40 damage healed, up from 20.
Second Tier's now heal 20, instead of 10.
Third Tier's heal 40, instead of 20.
Omni 1 heals 5's for brute, burn, and toxin, and 30 for oxy, up from half those values. Omni 2, is 10's and 60, and Omni 3 is 20's and 120.
Antirad Cell had its toxin heal bumped up from 2.5 to 5, and its radiation-heal from 150, to 350. I wasn't originally going to touch this one, but the text said "It's 150 because that's equal to five units of arithrazine", and... it wasn't. So, I bumped it up to actually be equal to 5u of Arithrazine's worth of radiation healing.
Stabilizer Cell, CorpseMend, Resistance, Haste, and the size-changing cells, were not touched.
The reasons for this are as follows:
- The healing laser was simply not strong enough to ever tend to more than one patient. Healing 20-40 damage per cell just isn't enough, even if you had several clips full of cells, it just wasn't viable.
- As a result of this, it was seldom if ever used. Field Medics rarely if ever took it with them. In nearly every round I've played, it was left exactly where it was spawned, collecting dust.
- I'd like to make it a more proper treatment option. It wouldn't be equal to reagents used in your usual Medbay setting, or surgical repair, but if it's modified to actually fulfill its niche as a rapid, contact-free treatment option, it could be relied on more by Field Medics. There is so much potential for this device as an "in the field" healing tool, and I'd like to see it done well. We have no shortage of people who would like to see non-chemical-based treatment options. We might as well make it useful enough to actually use.
Here are a few issues people brought up in Discord when I floated this idea.
"But, Tempest, you're doubling everything? That's a huge change! Won't this result in the ML3M overshadowing other treatment options?"
Certainly not. Currently, with tier-2 cells that only heal up to 40 damage, this is actually worse than basic first-aid in terms of raw healing ability, as the cutoff for first aid healing is 50 damage on a limb. First aid and reagents will still be the most convenient, most readily available, and overall most-used manner of treatment for injuries that can be treated using those methods. All this change would do is allow the ML3M to also have its uses, and stop being overshadowed by everything else.
"Okay, but what if it DOES actually become The New Meta and becomes the favored tool for healing?"
I wouldn't see it as an issue if Chemistry gets dethroned, in all honesty. They'd both take quite a bit of prep-work to use. You have to make multiples of every chem if you want a solid stock, and you'd need multiples of every cell if you want proper coverage and healing-ability, since even with these changes you're expending 1-3 cells per patient. And, unless you get multiple ML3M's made, only folks who are gonna have one are the CMO, and whoever nabs the spawned one first.
"But wouldn't this result in less departmental cooperation between Medical and Science now that Medical will require fewer cells?"
Most likely, no. If anything, I'd think there would be an increase, round-to-round, if this becomes a more viable and wanted tool, more people will ask for cells. Personally, my list of requested cells would stay the same, but I'd be sending that request in more often since I know it'll actually be useful rather than having it just to have it. Tier 2 cells are still going to be desirable, and I'm still probably not going to order Tier 3's because of the cost, but that's just me. It's still going to be incredibly weak at roundstart, and better cells will be that much nicer to obtain.
"But Tempest! If you get the highest tiers of cells, and a lot of them, you could fix anything that doesn't require surgery!"
Well, if Science had the time and mats, then sure, you could gather up a large enough collection of cells, and you probably could indeed do this for one or two badly injured patients... ... ...and I could accomplish the same goal if I'm given 20 seconds in a chem-lab. The ML3M is more costly to use, the cells cost resources, have to be recharged after 4 shots, and you only start with a base tier Burn, Brute, and Stabilizer cell. Each shot from a base level burn/brute cell is the equivalent of 1.25u of bicaridine or kelotane. This change would make it 2.5. Base level cells are still going to be next to useless for anything other than the most minor of injuries. Chemistry will still be the dominating powerhouse it always has been, but at least you can use this tool, provided the PR goes through, instead, more often.
"Tempest, this thing just wasn't intended to be used to fully heal people..."
A couple people have said this, and to be honest, it's silly. In our medical system, there's very little distinction between what can "heal a little bit" and what can "heal fully", because it all comes down to the fact that everything works off of damage values. If Option A heals 5 damage, and Option B heals 50... Both are capable of "healing fully" if you have enough Option A, it's just a question as to whether or not that's practical. Currently, the ML3M's healing values can't really even be used to even partially heal injuries, unless you have a large number of cells. You'd expend all of your charges on one patient and then you've got a paperweight taking up storage space until you can get to a recharger.
Now, as for issues that I personally see? Biggest one is probably the Toxin cell. If I remlember correctly, the base Toxin cell is the same tech requirement as the Second Tier Brute/Burn cells. This PR doesn't fix that, and I don't really see it as a huge priority since I don't think anyone uses the toxin cells as it is, but yeah. Might need to be fixed at some point if this PR goes through.
And, absolute worst case scenario, let's say that this PR screws everything up, turns the Tether upside down, and now Medbay is dominated by a bunch of blue laser beams flying everywhere like it's the new Star Wars Trilogy (but actually better because those movies kinda set a low bar)... this PR was really easy to do. The only long part about it was typing all of this up. We can just bump the numbers down if this ends up sucking really bad, ezpz.
Thank you for coming to my ted talk.
* Improve gun animations to be more modular.
- This is a port of TGCM pull/4807. Credit to SplinterGP for helping me set things up.
- It essentially allows people to not need a '-pump' for their animation, but instead to just use whatever they please. They just need to write it down at the relevant intervals.
* Improve further.
* Update shotgun.dm
