# Abstract Stasis is a necessary crutch for medical, as medical is both too fast paced and lethal, while lacking stabilization measures. However, this crutch trivializes 99% of treatment, and the game now revolves around rushing people to medical, putting them in stasis, and treating/preparing them with absolutely zero risk. This can be fixed by limiting or forbidding healing of the patient in stasis, which is where stasis pods come into play. Stasis pods forbid all contact with the patient, forcing medical to treat and prepare the individual off stasis. This will reintroduce the urgency of medical while maintaining the crutch of stasis. # Goals 1. Force treatment to occur off stasis 2. Encourage planning-based treatment 3. Encourage teamwork among medical staff 4. Re-introduce tension and urgency into medical treatment * Also known as, make medical fun 5. Encourage medical staff to take more creative solutions * By making treatment happen off stasis, we necessitate more complex solutions and chem mixes 6. Draw a parallel between real life medical care and game care * Exceedingly minor, but worth mentioning, the preparation and teamwork aspects closely resemble medical dramas * Not as much a goal as a funny thing I noticed # Non-Goals This does not... 1. Force players to think on their feet about medical care * Once they're in the stasis pod, doctors should (in most cases) feel secure that they wont die in the next 10 minutes 2. Expect new players to work optimally * See Non-Goal one, new players may still competently treat, even if they need some more guidance # Stasis Beds and their consequences *Stasis* is a necessary crutch for medical. It slows medical to a halt, giving the doctors time to catch their breath and think about how to treat, and also makes sure patients arent killed over and over by newer doctors who are slower to treat. However, stasis *beds* have completely nullified any sort of tension or risk in medical gameplay by allowing people to actively heal people who are on stasis, therby dodging the crit degradation, any toxins, and organ damage, any bleeding, etc. With stasis, all the complexities of medical become less than complications. They become **busywork**. Its not fun to suture up an unbleeding arm, its not fun to sit and wait as you watch cyanide be filtered out of a still patient's bloodstream. What *is* fun, however, is ripping a patient out of a pod with a group of doctors surrounding them, rushing them to surgery, and executing a well-thought out plan with your colleagues, fighting death away with your syringes and scalpels. ## Stasis Pods/Sleepers The basis of this feature is simple: Remove the ability for patients to be treated while in stasis. This is executed through **stasis pods**, or alternatively, stasis **sleepers** (See Alternatives 1), which completely prevent interaction with the patient prior to release. This means... * No surgery * No injections * No mediguns * No rod of ascelpius This maintains stasis' status as a *stabilization* measure (and by extension, as a crutch for new players) while removing its treatment capabilities. Stasis pods replace all roundstart stasis tables. This includes station, interdyne, DS2, and tarkon. Stasis pod boards also replace stasis table boards. Stasis pods allow use of health analyzers to scan the patient. ### What this means for doctors * Doctors are now expected to **plan** their treatment and use **teamwork** to outpace whatever it is killing their patients * **Planning**: How can we get this guy to surgery ASAP/Outpace the cyanide/Outpace the bleeding * **Teamwork**: Do CPR on this guy when I take them out/Shoot the medigun while I inject multiver # Alternatives 1. Stasis **sleepers** instead of stasis pods * The key difference here is the ability to inject a limited selection of chemicals prior to release * Prepare the patient prior to release * Chem selection is limited to basic stabilization chems such as epinepherine, fabricated coagulant, morphine, leporazine * Not libital/aiuri/any major healing chem - Sleepers were removed upstream for a reason * Allows doctors to perform faster treatment without needing to inject necessary stabilization chems themselves, shaving off a few important seconds 2. A stasis field that prevents surgery instead of all interaction * Violates Goal 1 - By allowing non-surgical treatment on stasised patients, we make it very easy to prepare a patient via chems, or to just bypass it entirely with a medigun/medibeam * Prepping chems on the bed is a concern, since while youre applying the chems, youre not fighting against whatever it is thats killing them * While we get rid of organ repairs and tend wounds and organ replacements we leave 90% of medical work to be trivialized * Violates Goal 5 - Teamwork is not needed if there is no risk involved # Potential changes ### Context-Specific changes 1. Treatment of plasmamen becomes difficult due to their tendency to burn apon exiting the stasis pod (**An issue with previous attempts at the stasis pod**) * See Alternative 1. Add a reagent that suppresses flammability for x amount of time to the sleeper * May not be sufficient for long-term treatment, however, hercuri and fire extinguisher exists, as do showers * Temporarily suppress **plasmaman atmospheric combusatbility** exclusively apon exit * Can be made as a reagent in case we want to use Alternative 1 * Surgery tables may suppress flammability 2. Treatment of chemical poisoning becomes difficult due to lacking purging methods * Unlikely, due to the fact Multiver, Pentetic acid, and Waterpotass purging exists, alongside blood filtering (as well as blood filter whitelist coupled with healing chems to outpace the damage) * Scenarios where it does become an issue are likely to be highly lethal regardless (Cyanide, Fentanyl, Bath salts, etc.) and should not be easily trivialized via stasis * Use 1000K 100% seiver + multiver + blood filtering to easily outpace most sources of toxin damage * If it becomes an issue, we may add a dialysis mode to the pods ala bay with a downside * Drain blood? * Do toxin damage? * Be limited? * See Alternative 1. Add multiver/any purging chem to the list of chemicals 3. Treatment of organ death (specifically, liver death) becomes difficult due to the lack of stasis preventing tick damage * Liver death is a specific concern as it prevents metabolization of healing medicine * Add limited organ repair functionality to the pod, using same rules as the organ repair surgeries * Likely a "skill issue", as most sources of organ tick damage can be overcome by generous application of antitoxin or antioxyloss (convermol and seiver is effective on heart failure) * If it becomes an endemic issue, see the organ repair option * If the liver dies, a medigun can be used * See Alternative 1. Add a reagent that briefly prevents downsides from organ death at a heavy cost * Alternatively, a machine like a heart bypass/dialysis machine/iron lung 4. Patients are left in the stasis bed without doctors knowing, leading to soft RR (**An issue with previous attempts at the stasis pod**) * Disallow the north dir * Often hides the machine's glass * Lock the machine to one dir * Far easier to notice * Make the glass transparent * Have the machine occasionally remind medical it has a patient * Play some sound to remind doctors of the patient * Add some blinking light/glow to the machine ### Misc changes 1. Do not replace the stasis beds for ghost roles * Maybe a good idea for interdyne/DS2, not so much for tarkon * DS2/Interdynes gameplay loops revolve around vibing, Tarkon has a good portion of content revolve around survival and fighting 2. Add some way for the station to access stasis tables * Not advised - Even one stasis table is enough to trivialize all patients, since you can just store injured patients in the stasis pods til the table is available * Ways to find it * Space * Illegal technology(?)