Warning
This guide is incomplete, I am aware of that. HOWEVER, it has been over a year since I first began work on this guide, and though a lot of that time was spent procrastinating, my real life work has continued to pile on, and by my current projections, I’ll be done with the guide sometime in early 2025. Seeing as that is a ridiculous release date (one I may not even make good on), I’ve decided to upload my guide as is and just update it later once I have the time to finish up.
Please bear in mind that though the guide is unfinished, this guide is still VERY long (about 30 pages) and, despite being written with them in mind, is likely not a great read for new doctors, due to its extreme length. A shorter version of this guide will probably be made in due time.
If you’re a new medical player and are actually masochistic enough to read this guide, then keep in mind that, as a doctor, you only need to read the sections, “Basics of Medicine” and “Duties as Doctor”. Aspiring CMOs should definitely read the entire guide.
(Picture courtesy of Rickie Hairson)
Yup, that’s me. You’re probably wondering how I ended up in this situation.
Notes
(image will later be edited to include a chat log of Zhu saying, “The heck?”)
Yes, that is actually me.
On a more serious note, hello there! My name is Zhu Cijue. You may know me as that one no-lifer who actually enjoys playing CMO. Well, besides wasting my days fishing for superficial compliments online, I also enjoy teaching people! And with a near complete lack of dedicated guides for doctors and CMOs on this forum, I thought I’d take the time to make one.
Moreover, as someone who has a potato for a PC, I firmly believe you shouldn’t have to have 16 GBs of RAM to keep 100 tabs open just to learn to play a single role in this game. So, this guide will try to be as comprehensive as possible; we’ll be covering everything from what those funny red pills do, to how to perform three vasectomies simultaneously. That being said, though I will cover basic medicine in this guide, I would suggest you refer to Alan Bentway’s “Comprehensive Corpsman Guide” for a breakdown of basic medicine on this server anyways, as he is much more knowledgeable on the actual mechanics of medicine in this game than I am and offers much better advice than I could ever hope to give.
Don’t be intimidated by the picture above. As a doctor, or any medical role for that matter, you will likely be dealing with more human patients the vast majority of the time, so no need to worry about Xenobiology yet (in fact, unless you are a researcher, you are mechanically restricted from operating on non-humans anyways. RIP in pepperonis, Pred. You will not be missed.).
Oh God I Just Spawned During Hijack. What Do I Do?
You’re screwed. Good luck soldier; you’ll need it. 
Basics of Medicine
Types of Damage
( ) = alternate names, abbreviations, or small note
As a medical role, the most basic forms of damage you’ll deal with are:
- Brute - The most common form of damage you’ll find in the game. It’s caused by everything from getting hit in the head with a helmet to getting your inner organs slashed out by a bug.
- Burn - The second-most common form of damage you’ll find in the game. It’s caused by-you guessed it! Getting burned, either by acidic spit or from actual flames. It can also be caused by being in an incredibly cold environment or having a very cold chemical (like milkshakes) inside you.
- Toxin (Tox) - This is damage taken when there is some sort of toxin in your body. It’s caused by either having some sort of toxin in you, kidney and/or liver damage, or overdosing (OD’ing) on a chemical. At high enough levels, your character can end up vomiting, which briefly stuns them.
- Oxyloss/oxygen/suffocation (Oxy)* - This is damage you take when you cannot breathe and/or take in oxygen for whatever reason. This kind of damage has a variety of causes, which are: low blood, heart damage, lung damage, crit damage (oxyloss taken as you lay on the ground in critical condition, that is, below 0% health)
- Cloneloss - rarest form of damage in the game and is only caused by weird custom chemicals that research can make. Don’t worry too much about it, you’ll rarely deal with it.
These types of damage are all neatly represented by numbers to allow you to immediately determine the severity of the damage, but you will also have to deal with other forms of damage that don’t get neat numbers.
- Fractures (Frac)- When a bone in a part of your body breaks. If you attempt to move around while you have a broken bone, it can cause that part of your body to bleed internally or even damage organs located in there. You can put a splint on the broken bone to prevent this from happening, but splints slow you down and come off easily if a xenomorph attacks you. If you want a more permanent solution, surgery must be done.
- Pain - Does not show up on your scanner, but that’s doesn’t make it any less real. Caused by taking almost any source of damage, it can slow you down, obscure your vision, and even force you to lay down in a position called “paincrit” and slowly take oxyloss damage if it’s that bad. Simply having a strong enough painkiller in your system (tramadol or oxycodone), usually fixes the issue.
- Low Blood - When you don’t have enough blood in your body. Shocking. At <90% blood, you will take gradual oxyloss damage. At <70%, you will start to take even more oxyloss damage. And at <50-60% blood, you will be rendered unconscious, take rapid oxyloss damage, and even moderate toxin damage. All levels will cause you to go hungry soon.
- Internal Bleeding (IB) - When your blood vessels burst inside your body. This causes gradual blood loss (no kidding sherlock) as long as the IB persists.
- Organ (org, name of damaged organ)- Will not show up on a HF2 Analyzer but can nonetheless be diagnosed if you notice a patient’s toxin or oxyloss damage build up with no other obvious cause, such as low blood or if they had just ingested a toxin. If bad enough, the patient may be rendered unconscious. Can be delayed temporarily by feeding them peridaxon (peri) but this is a temporary solution and they will need to see a doctor to get cured. Can potentially be ignored by medics if it’s simply minor heart damage (oxyloss damage caps out at around 20 or less)
If the patient complains that they have headaches or blurry vision, then they likely have brain and eye damage, which can also be treated temporarily with peridaxon, but can also be treated more permanently with IA, a custom medication that will be covered in the “Custom Chemical Medicines” section. - Hunger - not an actual type of damage, but simply being hungry can slow both your speed and your passive blood regeneration down to a snail’s pace. Fixed by nutriment, which you get by eating food (no way).
- Overdose (OD) - caused by taking too much of a chemical, usually some sort of chemical medicine. Severity and symptoms vary wildly depending on the chemical the patient OD’ed on and how much of the chemical is inside the patient, but usually involves a buildup of toxin damage. You can either try to keep the patient alive and treat the symptoms as they pop up, or refer them to a doctor who will run dialysis to remove the chemical and surgery if any organs were damaged as a result of the OD.
- Facehugged/Hugged/Infected - caused by getting a little too intimate with a xenomorph facehugger. Patient will be fine in the early stages of being hugged, but as they progress, they will slowly begin to violently convulse and pass out until finally having a xenomorph larva burst out of their chest. The only cure is surgery, but placing the patient in a stasis bag can delay the burst.
*Oxy can also refer to oxycodone, a strong painkiller that will be covered in the “Basic Treatments” section. Don’t get confused between the two, read the context!
Targetting Limbs
In this game, as I am sure you can already tell, damage applies to individual limbs, and so the vast majority of treatments in this game must target the EXACT limb that has been damaged before treatment can be done. There is, unfortunately, no in-game tutorial at the moment that covers how to target limbs, so in case you didn’t know, here it is.
To target certain limbs, look for the numpad on your keyboard. It should be rightmost panel of a standard QWERTY keyboard. Once you find it, press these numbers to target these limbs:
- 7 = Next Limb
- 8 = Head
- 9 = Previous Limb
- 4 = Left arm/hand
- 5 = Chest
- 6 = Right arm/hand
- 1 = Left leg/foot
- 2 = Groin
- 3 = Right leg/foot
(It has come to my attention that since I first drafted this guide that a new tutorial system has been added to the game. This section of the guide, however, will remain, as we all know that there’s going to be that one guy who never plays it.)
How to Read Medical Scans
(Picture courtesy of Cassandra ‘Boston’ Ellis)
Medical scans, which are generated by using a health analyzer or a body scanner on a patient, are usually very straight forward in how they present information to you, but I’ve taught a few newbies who were overwhelmed by the scan nonetheless. No shame in that, that’s why I’m here!
This section here tallies up the total amount of damage of each type on the patient. A healthy patient has none. A not-so-healthy patient has something like the above.
At below 0% health, without a painkiller in their system, a patient will enter crit and lie down on the floor and slowly take oxygen damage. At -100% health, the patient dies and must be brought above -100% health to be revived.
Through the condition, this section will also tell you whether the patient is:
- Alive and well
- SSD (logged out or AFK, occasionally includes soulless)
- Soulless (the player went DNR, has not returned to their body, or is now playing someone else)
- Braindead (excessive amounts of brain damage)
- Dead, but reviveable
- Permanently Deceased (permadead, perma)
This section tells you what kind of damage is on each limb respectively. Fracture indicates that the limb has a frac and needs to be splinted, if it hasn’t already. The red and yellow numbers stand for brute and burn respectively. Moreover, if you notice that the red or yellow number is surrounded by {these brackets}, then that means that the brute or burn damage on that limb has not had a trauma or burn kit applied to it.
Moreover, though not in the picture, this section may also tell you that the limb in question has Internal Bleeding (IB).
If a limb has the missing message, it is gonezo. The original limb cannot be reattached, so don’t bother keeping it. If it’s the head that’s missing, then unless they are a synthetic, then the human in question is done for.
This is the total tally of the organs that are damaged in a patient and just how damaged they are. This will not show up on health analyzer scans, so be wary for the symptoms of organ damage on a patient as a medic.
Do note that as a doctor, you should be healing ALL forms of organ damage, irrespective of their severity, unless you are strapped for time.
This section tells you how much of a certain chemical is inside a patient. Health analyzers will only show you medicines in the patient and lists the rest as “Unknown reagents”. Body scanners, however, will tell you the full list of every chemical inside the patient. This section is useful for diagnosing ODs and informing you on whether or not you should give certain chemical medications to the patient.
This section will detect foreign objects inside the patient, such as shrapnel, larva, digested monkey cubes, and implants. In health analyzers, it does NOT detect if a larva or other implants are inside a patient; it will then only detect shrapnel inside the patient.
This section tells you how much blood the patient has. That’s it.
There are other sections of the medical scan, but they all are irrelevant for the purposes of this guide, and also for medical period. ESPECIALLY the medical advice section. It can over prescribe medications for unnecessary injuries, so ONLY use that section if you have absolutely no idea what you are doing, which shouldn’t be the case if you read this guide.
Basic Treatments
( ) = alternate names, abbreviations
Whenever I’m teaching new nurses, I always like to make this chart for them to help them understand a few of the basic ways to treat damage.
The top 2 rows represent the basic chemical medications in the game. Chemical medications all have positive
Bicardine - heals 2 brute damage per tick
Custom Chemical Medicines
If you head over to the lower MedBay, you may have noticed this room here.
This is the pharmacy, and it is here that you can ask doctors to make a variety of custom chemical medicines to help heal you and your patients. The most commonly ordered items on this menu are:
Pills
- MeraBica (MB) - usually composed of 7.5u meralyne and 7.5u bicardine per pill, this pill can heal brute damage faster than plain bicardine.
- KeloDerm (KD) - usually composed of 7.5u kelotane and 7.5u dermaline per pill, this pill can heal burn damage faster than plain kelotane.
- Dexalin Plus (D+) - usually composed of 7.5u dexalin plus per pill, this pill can heal oxyloss damage faster than plain dexalin. In fact, it heals all oxyloss damage instantly!
- ImiAlky (IA) - usually composed of 10u imidazoline and 5u alkysine per pill, this mix heals brain and eye damage. Indeed, this is the ONLY non-research chem mix that can heal a type of organ damage.
- Iron, Ferrum (Fe, FE) - usually composed of 15u iron per pill. When mixed with nutriment, it can help accelerate blood regeneration, and can even replace blood faster than IB drains it. Does make the patient hungry faster as a side effect. Patient should eat right before or after taking Fe for the best results.
Liquid Bottles (All below orders, unless otherwise stated, are served in a full liquid bottle, or 60u)
- Cryo Mix - usually composed of 30u clonexadone and 30u cryoxadone.* No marine in their right mind will order this, and no doctor in their right mind will accept a marine’s order for this, but the liquid bottles can be inserted into the cryo tubes in the ICU to make them actually useful. When put inside the tubes, the tubes will heal brute and burn damage at an incredibly fast rate.
- UNGA - has a variety of forms, but the most widely accepted one (and the one least likely to get people salty) is made of equal parts meralyne, bicardine, kelotane, dermaline, tricordazine, and oxycodone. This chemical mix is designed to keep you alive and energetic for a bit of time in an emergency situation, or during regular combat. Usually found in a large reagent tank that the pharmacy leaves either south of its doors, in the Alamo, or the FOB. You can ask that a single pill or bottle of UNGA (both of which would have 10u of each chemical) be made for you, but don’t be surprised if doctors won’t make it due to either being confused or not knowing how.
You may also choose to order some less commonly ordered items, such as:
Pills
- Ari-Tricord-Dylo (ATD, AT, AD, A+) - usually composed of 5u arithazine, 5u dylovene, and 5u of tricordazine. Heals toxin damage at a slightly faster rate than plain dylovene, but also causes a slight buildup of brute damage. Supposedly offset by the presence of tricordazine, but the brute buildup exceeds what tricord can heal. If you ask me, it is actually a downgrade from plain dylo and you should never take it, but some medics like it nonetheless and use it anyways.
- Tricord-Bica (TB) - usually composed of 7.5 tricordazine and 7.5u bicardine. Technically heals brute faster than plain bicardine, but MB far and away outperforms TB, and MB heals even faster when paired with a tricordazine injector. Usually ordered by older players, as MB apparently did not exist quite a few years ago.
- Iron-Nutriment (IN) - usually composed of 7.5u iron and 7.5u nutriment but may occasionally be composed of 15u of each. Due to the presence of nutriment, this has the boost to blood recovery that plain Fe has without also making the patient hungry, thus removing the need to eat food after ingesting.
- Iron-Sugar (IS) - usually composed of 7.5u iron and 7.5u sugar but may occasionally be composed of 15u of each. Functions similarly to Iron-Nutriment above and is easier to stock than Iron-Nutriment, but the sugar barely restores any hunger, making it near useless for most medics, especially in its 7.5u form.
- Oxycodone pills (Ox) - usually composed of 10u oxycodone. Strong painkiller but doesn’t last as long as tramadol, as discussed before. Some corpsmen like to replace either their tramadol pills or their oxycodone autoinjector with oxycodone pills.
Liquid Bottles (All below orders are served in a full liquid bottle, or 60u)
- Epinephrine - buffs the healing done by defibbing someone. Some corpsmen use these to fill up their smart refill tanks.
- Oxycodone bottles - Strong painkiller, but doesn’t last as long as tramadol, as discussed before. Some corpsmen use these to fill up their smart refill tanks, though it may also be requested by the odd marine who wants to use it for their hypospray. It is also available under the liquid bottle section in the WeyMed, so it’s usually better to simply go to the WeyMed for the bottle.
- Tricordazine - heals a small amount of a random type of damage. Some corpsmen use these to fill up their smart refill tanks, though it may also be requested by the odd marine who wants to use it for their hypospray.
*Some people will add additional healing chems to cryo mix in order to make it heal faster. This can work, but the cryo tubes inject way more chems in the patient than the tube actually has, so leaving a patient in the tube for too long can potentially OD the patient if one is not careful. Moreover, standard cryo mix also heals incredibly quickly all on its own, so further boosts to its healing ability are quite unnecessary.
Medical Etiquette
When playing any medical role, there are a few unwritten rules you should keep in mind. You don’t have to follow them word-for-word, but following them can really help to prevent accidents during treatment or just enhance gameplay for others:
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When dealing with an overwhelming amount of dead or wounded people (MASCAS) you should prioritize, in this order:
Near-permas → anyone wounded, but alive → Medics → Specs → SLs/aSLs → all other dead
Of course, circumstances may necessitate prioritizing one patient over another, and you may even need to prioritize treating a wounded PFC over a near perma Sniper spec in order to get protection while you revive, but stick to this general formula, and you can’t go wrong. -
Unlike what some other people might say, I believe that double-teaming a patient (that is, working on a patient that someone else is already working on) is okay, especially if you notice one person is taking unusually long to revive someone, but:
-
NEVER give any chemical medicine (pills, autoinjectors, etc.) to the patient without SCREAMING AT THE TOP OF YOUR LUNGS that you are about to do so, and then waiting 3 or 5 seconds for a response. After this, if you are told to go ahead or get no response, you may do so. If someone says they already gave the patient pills or other chemical medicines, then refrain from doing so yourself. (Do this even if you are the first person to work on the patient! Always assume your coworkers are idiots who don’t announce when they pill.) You can always set a macro to automatically shout that you are pilling with the press of a button.
-
Respect the original worker’s wishes to work on the patient alone if they ask for it. They may be trying to get some training in, or simply believe they’ll be fine. You can always help elsewhere. If the patient is about to perma, then of course go ahead and work on the patient irrespective of the other medic’s wishes, but otherwise it pays to leave them to their own devices.
-
Please don’t steal revives from other medics. I personally do not care, but it is quite scummy to just barge into the room, defib the patient one dude spent 3 minutes healing from -900%, refuse to elaborate further, and then leave. If you aren’t the first medic to work on a patient, then allow the first medic to get the revive seeing as they did the work first.
- Listen carefully to your patient. You should be listening to EVERYTHING they have to say, as what they have to say may impact how you treat them. Most of you should already be doing this with your patients, but many doctors and medics fail to realize that even people passed out and/or in crit can talk. Their message will not appear above their head, as they will be whispering, but you can still find what they said in the chat box in italics. Keep a close eye on the chat box for these whispers, as the patient knows better than anyone else what they’ve been through and can give you valuable insight on their current condition.
-
Shake, shake, shake. If you see someone get knocked down by an acid spit or roll to get said spit off, give them a shake to help them back up faster. If you revive some, give them a shake to help them back up faster. If you see someone get set on fire after the pyro spec “accidentally” used the flamethrower on them, give them a shake to both put out the fire (most people sleep on how fast you can extinguish flames like this) and help them back up faster. Even queen screech stuns can be shortened and almost completely negated with a few shakes to people.
To shake someone who is lying down, simply click on their sprite with an empty hand and on HELP intent. -
Try to avoid treating the wounded or dead (especially the dead) in dangerous areas, even if you’re armed with enough gun to one-shot the Queen. Get yourself and the patient to a safe spot if at all possible. Though you may have to treat someone in a dangerous spot if there’s no other option to save them, it puts the lives of you and everyone else around you in danger, as now they will have to defend you as you treat the patient, leading to more marines dying because they didn’t retreat in time. Moreover, having to stop treating someone in order to run away to safety tends to screw up the healing process, and if you stripped their armor and gun to defib before retreating, then even if you revive the patient, they likely won’t be able to contribute much anymore. Speaking of which…
-
Keep a patient’s stuff close to them. The last thing people want to see when they revive is all their armor and guns gone because someone forgot to bring it with them before moving them away. If you stripped a patient and need to move them, grab the patient with one hand, their stuff with the other, and get out. If you can’t carry all their stuff, point to what you can’t carry and ask someone to help. If you can only save one thing, I suggest saving their weapon. Fighting the hive with no armor is hard, but possible. Fighting them with your bare hands, though? Good luck.
-
Keep an open mind, and don’t be afraid to ask for and receive help. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have a stick up my rear end when I play medical at times. With so much time invested in medical roles, it’s easy for people like me to become close-minded and consider ourselves the best at our jobs and that all medical players need to do things our way or take the highway. The truth of it is is that we are all always learning, and that there is always someone better than you. Keep an open mind, listen to what others have to say about you, don’t be afraid to copy other people’s homework, and always strive to become this better medical player.
Duties as Doctor
Map of MedBay (UPPER MEDBAY IS OUTDATED)
Lower MedBay
Lower MedBay contains:
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The Lobby
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The Pharmacy
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The Prep Room
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The Reception Area
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The Intensive Care Unit/Triage Bay
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The Northern and Southern Operating Rooms
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The Deployment Prep Room
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The Hypersleep Chamber Room
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The Spare Bone Gel Storage Room
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The Wheelchair Room
Upper MedBay (OUTDATED)
Upper MedBay contains:
-
The Morgue
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The Armory
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The CMO’s Office
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The CMO’s Dorm
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The Research Office
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The Research Pharmaceuticals Room
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The Botany Room
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The Research Containment Cells
Diagnosis
Usually a diagnosis, or finding out what exactly is wrong with a patient, is as simple as chucking them into a bodyscanner and reading the report it gives. This will do you well for most of your experience as a doctor, but there will be many times in your life where a bodyscanner is not available. Perhaps you deployed to the FOB and forgot to take a bodyscanner crate. Perhaps the xenos have crashed into the ship and you can’t safely travel to the MedBay. Perhaps CLF terrorists have raided the MedBay and made sure to destroy any and all bodyscanners aboard the ship. Whatever the case may be, you must have the know-how to use your health analyzer to diagnose issues that the analyzer will not directly tell you.
Organ Damage
Is the patient constantly taking oxygen damage and they also have an adequate amount of blood? (above 90%) If so, they have either major heart or lung damage and need surgery ASAP.
- Do note that if their oxygen damage seems to stabilize at around or above 20, they either have minor heart damage or minor blood loss. The former can be ignored by doctors if they are EXTREMELY pressed for time, and the latter only needs the patient to eat to fix their issue.
Is the patient constantly taking toxin damage, and they have also not OD’ed or taken any toxins, and their blood levels are above 50-60%? If so, they likely have liver or kidney damage and need surgery ASAP.
- Do note that whilst ODs can also cause organ damage as well as causing toxin damage buildup, ODs rarely cause organ damage unless their OD well exceeds OD limits.
Is the patient complaining that they keep dropping stuff or moving randomly? If so, they have brain damage and need IA or surgery ASAP.
Is the patient complaining of being unable to see well and they do not seem to be in any obvious pain? (no unpatched wounds and/or serious damage) If so, they have eye damage and need IA or surgery ASAP
Miscellaneous
Is the patient violently shaking and there was just a huge blob of neurotoxin gas (orange boiler gas) nearby? Is so, they are likely simply overexposed to the gas and need only a single dose of dylovene and rest.
Is the paitent violently shaking and they have just consumed coffee or some recreational drug? If so, they are just jittery and should be ignored, barring extreme ODs of these substances (though at this point, the shaking is the least of your concern).
Is the patient violently shaking and the above scenarios are NOT the case? If so, they are hugged and need IMMEDIATE surgery.
Is the patient violently shaking and you aren’t certain what happened to the patient recently? Assume they are hugged and get them IMMEDIATE surgery. Again, make sure to check the chat box to see if your patient is simply whispering that they are hugged or perhaps just spent a minute too long in some neuro gas.
Surgery
As a doctor, your primary responsibility will be to perform surgery on marines with more permanent damage, like fracs and organ damage.
After diagnosing what kind of damage your patient has, your first step before surgery should be to anesthetize your patient. On Operating Room (OR) tables, this is usually done by simply dragging the patient’s sprite onto the table once they are on it, but it can also be done much more quickly by simply injecting or feeding the patient tramadol or oxycodone, if they do not already have the painkiller in their system, that is. It even keeps the patient awake so you can have some nice chitchat while they wait!
Concerning anesthesia, note that:
- Tramadol lasts longer than oxycodone and is enough for most surgeries (barring larva removal and stump sealing), whilst oxycodone lasts for a shorter amount of time but can support ALL surgeries.
- A select few players (such as A.A. “Gramps” Silverton) have the “Opiate Deficiency” trait, and as such, have the painkilling effects of ALL painkillers reduced. These patients should simply be gassed before surgery.
- Patients with severe brain damage may randomly move off of the OR table if they are simply injected with a painkiller. These patients should also be gassed before surgery, if they are not being operated on a table that automatically straps them down (the portable surgical bed and the roller bed).
Once the patient is passed out and/or has internalized the painkiller, you may begin the surgery. Below is a flowchart of the surgeries you can perform as a doctor: (Note that a procedure is defined as any series of steps in a surgery where one CANNOT clamp bleeders or mend internal bleeding in between steps)
Once you finish with the surgery, simply double-check to ensure you didn’t leave any part of the patient open or forget to fix something, and then feel free to send them on their way!
If you are having trouble remembering what step you are on, or are taking over someone else’s surgery and can’t figure what they last did, the only thing you can do is spam tools on the incision until you get a prompt, and then use that prompt to figure out where along the surgery you are.
Chemistry
Doctors also have a responsibility to create custom chemicals and chemical medications for medics, COs, XOs, SOs, OTs, and really just about anyone who asks. You may think that chem is something you’ll never need to learn as a doctor, but let me tell you, I’ve once had to wait almost an hour for a nurse to make my order because every doctor and nurse that round (of which there were FOUR) didn’t know how. As such, this section is made in the (perhaps vain) hope that this will never need to be repeated.
This is your workstation.
This is the WeyChem. It contains liquid bottles of all the basic chemical medicines and can (somewhat) infinitely refill said bottles, thus making it unnecessary and rather wasteful to make the basic medical chems from scratch. To refill a bottle with the WeyChem, simply click on the machine with a non-full liquid bottle in hand. To put a bottle back into the machine, click drag the bottle’s sprite onto the machine while the bottle and you are a tile away from the machine, or click on the machine while the bottle is full.
The WeyChem also contains 2 pill bottle boxes every round, so make sure to take these out and make use of those pill bottles.
Do note the new MedVendor rebalance update has also made it so even these vendors work on a power supply that drains as they refill bottles. This doesn’t change much in the way of chem production, but do keep this in mind, as some doctors are so quick with chem production that they regularly leave the WeyChem out of power.
This is the Chem Dispenser. This machines will dispense the vast majority of the base chemicals you’ll use to produce other chemicals and chemical mixes. Below is a picture of the UI that will pop up when you use the WeyChem.
The top bar indicates how much power the Chem Dispenser has. 1u of ANY chemical dispensed from the Chem Dispenser will consume 1u of power from the machine.
The “+5, +10, +15, etc…” buttons on the top indicate how much of a chemical you will dispense into the inserted beaker with each click.
Clicking on the “-5, -10, -15, etc…” buttons along the bottom will remove that many units of chemicals inside the inserted beaker. Note that if multiple chemicals are inside the beaker, it will remove an equal amount of each chemical inside the beaker. So if someone were to remove 40u from a beaker containing 180u bicardine and 180u kelotane, then the result would be a container of 160u bicardine and kelotane each. Likewise, if someone were to remove 40u from a beaker containing 160u imidazoline and 80u alkysine, then the result would be a container of 140u imidazoline and 60u alkysine each.
Not pictured in the UI is the eject button directly below the “-5, -10, -15, etc…” buttons. The eject button will put the inserted beaker into your active hand if it is empty,
your inactive hand if your active hand isn’t empty, and finally, on top of the dispenser if neither of your hands are free.
This is the ChemMaster. When you finish making your chem mix, you can simply put the beaker into this machine, transfer everything you need to the buffer, and then convert the mix into either pills or liquid bottles. The ChemMaster can also customize the appearance of pills and liquid bottles that the machine makes, as well as create custom labels for pill bottles inserted into the machine and will also automatically fill up said pill bottle with any pills the machine produces.
Concerning labels, using the ChemMaster to create 2 letter labels on pill bottles will allow said label to show up while the pill bottle is in one’s inventory, similarly to most of the standard pill bottles. Whilst medics are also able to right-click the pill bottles to create their own two letter label, you should still keep labelling pill bottles with only two letters for three reasons.
- One, most medics do not know you can do this.
- Two, it saves medics time, which they can be short on.
- And finally, it helps with organization in the ChemFridge. Long labels like “Kelotane 7.5u Dermaline 7.5u” are not only an eyesore, but also nonstandard, meaning that other docs labelling their own pill bottles are likely to give their pill bottles some other name, which further means that the same medication gets a variety of names and places all over the fridge, cluttering the whole thing. Keeping labels to the standard 2 letters creates uniformity and helps to maintain organization.
If you want longer labels, my recommendation is to give the pill bottle the two-letter label first using the ChemMaster, and then use a hand labeler on the pill bottle to give the longer title. This retains the two-letter tag in the inventory whilst also giving the longer label when it appears in the ChemFridge, when it is used, or when you actually hover over it to see what the real name is.
Do note that some medics may ask you to fill their custom reagent pouches with a custom chem mix. The custom chem mix should be simple enough, but because the reagent pouch canister doesn’t take in chems normally, you will have to put the custom chem mix into a separate container, put said container into the ChemMaster, transfer the custom mix into the buffer, replace the container with the reagent pouch canister, and transfer the buffer’s contents into the canister. It may sound a little convoluted on paper to some, but I promise you that it’s actually very simple in practice.
Also, new update dropped. You can now change the color of pill bottles using the ChemMaster as well. It’s purely cosmetic and doesn’t help that much with organization, but it’s also really cool and is one of the changes I’ve been dying to get since forever.
This is a reagent tank. This is where you will most likely be pouring UNGA into and distributing the goodness from. You can click on the tank with an empty hand to adjust how much the tank fills or receives from another container per click. To switch the tank between its filling and dispensing modes, simply alt-click the tank, or right click on the tank and then select “Switch Transfer Direction”.
When you’re done filling the tank, make sure to take it out of the pharmacy and either leave it in the lobby for people shipside to take, or send it to the FOB through the Alamo for groundside roles to take. Preferably, you will want to do both.
Besides the tank in the pharmacy at roundstart, more empty tanks can be found in the maintenance tunnels around the Almayer. As such, please do not empty tanks already filled with welding fuel or water that you can also find around the ship, as these serve other important functions in their own right.
As the name implies, this locker contains pill bottle boxes so that you can refill the ChemMasters with them. You really should just put all the pill bottles boxes from here onto the table they’re normally kept on (the one next to the WeyChem) for your own convenience.
Now that you know how the machines work, all you really need to do is commit a few recipes to mind, which you will do naturally as you play. Below is a list of the most commonly ordered custom medications, as well as their recipes. Note that unless they are specified to yield liquid bottles or otherwise, these recipes must be split into 16 pills.
Pills
- MeraBica (MB) - 160u bicardine, 40u carbon, 40u water
- KeloDerm (KD) - 160u kelotane, 40u oxygen, 40u phosphorous
- ImiAlky (IA) - 120u dylovene, 40u chlorine, 40 nitrogen, 80u carbon, 80u hydrogen IN THAT ORDER
- Dexalin Plus (D+) - 40u dexalin, 40u carbon, 40u iron
- Iron (Fe, FE, Ir, IR) - 240u iron
- Nitrogen-Water (NW) - 120u nitrogen, 120u water
Liquids
- UNGA (reagent tank form) - (Most commonly) 120u bica, 120u kelo, 120u dermaline, 120u meralyne, 120u tricordazine, 120u oxycodone. To make a long story short, make MB and KD, dump them into the tank, then put in one bottle of dylovene and inaprovaline each, then 2 bottles of oxycodone. Yields 720u, or a little over half a reagent tank.
- Cryo Mix (Bottle form) - 60u dexalin, 60u oxygen, 60u water, THEN 10u phoron, 80u sodium. Separate into 90u cryoxadone and 90u clonexadone. Yields 3 liquid bottles, one for each cryo tube.
You may also get a request for less-commonly ordered custom medication, such as:
Pills
- Iron-Sugar (IS) - 120u iron, 120u sugar
- Iron-Nutriment (IN) - 120u iron, 120u nutriment. Split into 16 or 8 pills.*
- Nutriment - No one will be asking for nutriment on its own, but it is nonetheless an important component in making Iron-Nutriment (obviously). Nutriment is made by grinding down most food items in the grinder, but it is much more efficiently done using prepared meals from the various meal vendors found on the Almayer.
- Tri-Bica (TB) - 60u dylovene, 60u inaprovaline, 120u bicardine.
- Ari-Tricord-Dylo (ATD, AT, AD, A+) - 160u dylovene, 60 inaprovaline, 40u phosphorous. Remove 40u tricordazine from the final result before converting to pills.
- Tricordazine pills (Tc)- 120u dylovene, 120u inaprovaline
Liquid Bottles
- Epinephrine - 30u carbon, 30u nitrogen, 30u oxygen. Yields 1 liquid bottle. Cannot be pilled
- Liquid Tricordazine - 60u dylovene, 60u inaprovaline. Yields 2 liquid bottles.
*Splitting IN into 8 pills and fitting two batches in a single pill bottle is a great way to get a very potent and relatively longer-lasting blood generator, but it is resource-intensive, costing 2x as much as the standard batch. The same can be done for IS as well, but it is much, much weaker.
Warning about Chemistry
DO NOT MAKE CHEMS FROM SCRATCH
It not only wastes your time, but it also wastes the energy from both chem dispensers. Thus, not only are you slowing yourself down, but you are also slowing down everyone and wasting time. People won’t mind it if you’re a new player, but this is something that you need to get rid of ASAP.
Explosive Chemistry
DO NOT MAKE EXPLOSIVES
This section exists solely to instruct doctors on what to do when the Ordinance Technician (OT) comes asking for refills on certain chemicals, as well as request for ones that they cannot make themselves. Seeing as all these chems to do not use medicine bottles from the WeyChem to produce, all of these may be, and indeed, MUST be made from scratch.
- Ammonia - 3u hydrogen, 1u nitrogen. Yields 3u ammonia, for a 4:3 ratio.
- Polytrinic Acid (Poly Acid) - 1u chlorine, 1u potassium, and 1u sulphuric acid. Yields 3u polytrinic acid, for a 3:3 ratio.
- Phoron - Literally just throw them the phoron stack in the pharmacy. Ensure to keep at least one bar of phoron in the pharmacy so that cryo mix can be made.
- Chlorine Trifluoride (CLF3) - 1u Chlorine, 3u Fluorine. Yields 3u CLF3, for a 4:3 ratio. CONTAINER MUST HAVE WATER EQUAL TO OVER HALF THE TOTAL AMOUNT OF RESULTING NAPALM IN THE CONTAINER. WILL SET YOU ALIGHT OTHERWISE. Water may be removed after CLF3 is made.
- Thermite - 1u Aluminium, 1u Iron, 1u Oxygen. Yields 3u thermite for a 3:3 ratio.
- Napalm - 1u Phoron, 1u Aluminium, 1u Sulphuric Acid. Yields 1u napalm, for a 3:1 ratio. CONTAINER MUST HAVE WATER EQUAL TO OVER HALF THE TOTAL AMOUNT OF RESULTING NAPALM IN THE CONTAINER. WILL SET YOU ALIGHT OTHERWISE. Water may be removed after napalm is made.
- High-Combustion Napalm - 1u CLF3, 1u Napalm. Yields 2u High-Combustion Napalm, for a 3:3 ratio.
- Sticky Napalm - 1u Welding Fuel, 1u Napalm. Yields 2u Sticky Napalm, for a 3:3 ratio.
Morning Rush and Prep
When waking up at or near roundstart, the first thing you should do is head over to the MedBay Prep Room to access your equipment lockers (the leftmost vendors on the picture below) and nab your gear for the day. Many doctors have their own loadouts for whose supremacy they’ll die on a hill to defend, but the truth of the matter is that no one really cares. Doctors, by virtue of usually staying shipside and thus having all they ever need in arm’s reach, never need to worry about having too little inventory space, so go nuts with your loadout!
Once you’re done with grabbing all your gear, make sure to head on over to the Pharmacy to begin working on making chems for the coming onslaught of medics. There should ideally be two doctors working on the chemline before and during this so-called “medic rush”, but a chemline doctor may choose to leave their post early if energy is low (so as not to split limited energy between two doctors simultaneously), or if the other chemline doctor is producing chems at lightning speed, thus making the second doctor’s presence unnecessary.
If for whatever reason you aren’t manning the pharmacy, the next thing that must be done is to set up the ORs and the IVs. The ideal OR setup is pictured below, for both southern and northern ORs.
This exact setup doesn’t need to be followed word-for-word. Indeed, at least a few parts of this setup are only there because I’m a neat freak. Even so, note the general philosophy behind the setup. See how the surgical tray is placed in an easily accessible spot, with the portable surgical bed also being away from the tray, yet in a noticeable, easily accessible spot that also does not cover-up anything important. Note also the fact that the shutters (controlled by the orange button near the IV, which has been filled with O- blood) have also been lifted to let the sunlight in and allow nearby personnel to easily check on the situation inside the OR.
Not pictured in the above photos is the fact that the limb printers to the east of the IVs are already printing their first limbs and have been subsequently filled to capacity with metal. This is because putting in the metal AFTER printing the first batch of limbs eliminates metal overflow (which isn’t refunded) and thus maximizes the number of limbs you can get out of a metal resupply. Metal for the printers can usually be found by using a crowbar on metal barrels found in the various maintenance tunnels in the Almayer as well as in the Hangar. If this cannot be done, you can always ask the engineering and/or requisitions department for some. 20 sheets of metal (5 for each printer) is enough to fill all printers to their maximum capacity from being completely empty, and indeed, 20 sheets of metal should be all that’s needed for most operations, as limb loss isn’t a very common ailment for most patients. It happens frequently enough, however, to necessitate early preparation for it.
The various IVs not located inside ORs must also be filled with O- blood bags, as they are essential for doctors with extremely low blood patients, as well as other medical personnel stabilizing low blood patients. However, their actual placement doesn’t matter. As long as they remain inside the ICU, they don’t even need to be moved.
Once everything else is complete, the last thing that must be done is to stock the three cryo cells with a single bottle of cryo mix each, or at the very least cryoxadone beakers found in the pharmacy, north of the grinder. This is low priority, as the cryo cells rarely see use, but seeing as the chambers are nonetheless useful, this should still be done.
Morgue
It’s morg’ing time.
Unfortunately, not everyone can be saved. Sometimes a marine gets left behind in a retreat and their dead body isn’t sent to a medic before it’s too late. Sometimes, the medic accidentally gives someone 100u tram and fails to get them to a doctor before they perma. Sometimes the CMP falls asleep on the computer before they can get off the Alamo landing pad, crushing and gibbing their corpse. Even in death, though, a marine can continue to serve the UA.
If a permadead human corpse is stored in the Morgue, which is on the leftmost portion of the second level of the MedBay, then their body will generate 0.5 tech points for the Command staff’s techweb. This generation applies to ALL permadead human corpses, irrespective of their faction or other affiliations. This techweb can buy all sorts of goodies, not the least of which is the ability to call an additional squad of marines from cryosleep. This tech point generation also applies to xenomorph corpses, although their corpses must be put in the research containment cells, meaning that as a doctor, you only need to drag the corpse to the research entrance door. The CMO and/or researchers can handle the rest.
Before you put a body into the morgue, you should remove all items on their person so that the items can be sent back to requisitions or laid out on the shipside Alamo LZ for other marines to take. To do so, click-drag the corpse onto your character using an empty hand. Then, on the UI that pops up (pictured below), click on the item you wish to remove. After a few seconds, the item will drop to the ground. Simple, right?
Make sure to loot the uniform off of the body first, as that will drop most other items on the patient as well.
Also, please note that though most doctors (me) will advise you to put bodies into the morgue trays, it is not strictly necessary to get the tech points, it just makes the morgue not look like a mess. Bodies can be stacked in trays or even left lying outside of a tray and they will still generate points as long as they remain in the morgue.
On that same note, it is unknown what happens to tech point generation when a body is cremated, so I would advise against cremating bodies for fear of not having the cremated body count to tech points.
For reference, here is a map of the Morgue (slightly outdated):
MedBay Etiquette
This is not a necessary part of the guide per se, but it really helps to know some of the things that you should or should not do in the MedBay in order to be a more thoughtful and kinder teammate.
- If you don’t get to deploy, be mature about it.
Sometimes, you do everything right; you man the chemline, set up every OR and IV, and even help the GP and DP with outfitting their dropships with all the medical equipment they’ll ever need. Yet, even so, the CMO or aCO looks over you for the role of deploying doctor. It happens.
Whatever you do, however, don’t be a jerk about it. That means, among other things, don’t insult the CMO or XO for overlooking you, don’t call the deploying doctor an incompetent idiot, and don’t take out your anger on innocent passersbys who didn’t even have anything to do with the whole fiasco. This kind of behavior is extremely unprofessional and just makes you come off as, you guessed it, a jerk.
- Announce when you are ready to receive incoming wounded.
Just like how Dropship Pilots will (hopefully) announce that they’re bringing wounded shipside, you should then reply that are ready to take the wounded to the MedBay and stand near the DS the wounded are on. This allows DPs to acknowledge that help is coming and lets them know to clear the way for you to smoothly transport the wounded without getting shuffled by a dozen marines. However, if you cannot retrieve the wounded from the dropships for whatever reason:
- Say when you are unable to deal with incoming wounded.
Sometimes, you’re not able to pickup incoming wounded. Maybe you’re already doing a surgery. Maybe you have severe brainlag and can’t move far (but if this is happening you should avoid treating people altogether). Whatever the case, it is perfectly okay. But you MUST also alert people to your inability to do so at the moment so that they can take the wounded to you. If you don’t, it can lead to the wounded getting to the MedBay later than they should be, or maybe even not at all. Sometimes DPs forget to unload wounded before taking off, resulting in them sometimes going perma or even bursting before they can get treatment. With a reminder that you aren’t able to take the wounded yourself, however, the DPs are less likely to forget to unload wounded for you.
- Keep an eye on medical and general comms.
As a doctor, you aren’t always needed, but when you are, you need to be ready to respond in less than a minute’s notice. Keep an eye on your chat and be on the lookout for any requests for you. Keep in mind that not all marines have medical comms, and as such, they may call for your assistance on shipside general comms. General comms may usually be filled with people trying to be funny, but you must keep an eye on it nonetheless.
FAQ about Rowdiness
MedBay can be a wild place. Shipside medical can get boring, and as such, we often come up with creative ways to pass the time. Moreover, sometimes the marines can get rowdy and create issues in the MedBay. As such, I get quite a few questions from newbies who don’t know how to deal with certain situations that arise in MedBay. Below are the most commonly asked questions about this, as well as my recommended response to them.
Q: A medic is verbally harassing me because I’m taking too long to make their order! How can I get them to stop?
A: First, assure them that you are working as fast as you can and ask them to please wait just a little while longer. If they continue to be a nuisance, you have every right to deny them service and tell them to leave the MedBay. If they do not do so and become violent, inform the Military Police (MPs) on the general or medical comms.
Q: A marine broke a window/light/door/wall! How can I get it fixed?
A: First, if you wish to see the perpetrator be punished, inform the MPs on the general or medical comms that someone vandalized the MedBay. This should only be reserved for cases of extreme acts of vandalism though, as most people won’t really care for a broken window or two. If you do not care to see anyone punished, then simply ask for a Maintenance Technician (MT) or other engineer on the general comms (use :g before your message ) to come to the MedBay and repair the damage.
Q: Someone is building a campsite/bedroom/maze/other in the MedBay without authorization! How do I stop them?
A: First, is their structure obstructing any path to or inside the MedBay? If not, you may choose to ignore it.
If it does, or you simply do not like the structure, then call MPs to the MedBay to arrest the builder. Once that is done, you can call MTs to the MedBay to help with deconstruction. You may also choose to remove it yourself if you have the know-how, but be careful not to cause more damage than you fix.
Q: A patient is being rowdy and will not allow me to perform surgery on them? How do I calm them down?
A: Are they simply moving off the surgery table every now and then? If so, then they are not being rowdy, they just have severe brain damage. You should either buckle them to a surgical bed or connect them to the table’s anesthetic system if one exists.
If this is not the case, then simply try to talk them into getting the surgery. If they continue to refuse, you may choose to simply let them walk away.
If they are hugged, then do NOT let them walk away. They are a threat to the entirety of the USS Almayer staff, both groundside and shipside. Call MPs to come to MedBay and detain the patient IMMEDIATELY unless they want a shipside xenomorph. Once detained, you may freely operate on the patient.
Q: Someone is starting a Satanic cult inside the MedBay! What should I do?
A: This happens more often than you’d think. Being in the US (well technically UA), the doctors enjoy freedom of religion, so you technically cannot really do much to stop them. You can ask the CMO to get them to move the blood rituals somewhere else if it disrupts your work, but if the CMO refuses to, or perhaps is part of the cult, then you’re out of luck. If you can’t beat 'em, though, may as well join 'em.
Deploying
Deployment isn’t actually all too different from shipside MedBay. Once you have all the items you need and have a place to actually work in, groundside can be quite calm and relaxing, almost like you’re back at the ship.
And then this happens:
Unless the marines just never get hit by a xenomorph even once, then as the groundside doctor, you WILL have a lot of patients come to you and you will be stressed out by the sheer number of people screaming at you to heal them and heal them fast.
Surgery Tips
- Speed is the name of the game when it comes to medical. The faster you work, the faster the marines can get back to the frontlines to kick xenomorph rears. That being said, don’t worry too much about being fast if you’re a beginner; it’s better to be a slow but accurate, than fast but fumbling over every little step, which you WILL do if you try to be fast when just getting used to doing surgery. However, if you got the steps to surgery committed to memory, then it doesn’t hurt to try to speed it up.
- To this end, start multiple surgeries at once. I’m not talking about fixing a chest frac as you repair a damaged heart. I mean start multiple incisions at once, and not switching tools until you can’t use that tool anymore for any current step in any of your incisions. Keep in mind this will drain blood from the patient faster, but this shouldn’t be an issue unless you’re opening more than 4 incisions, or the patient is going to be open for a while.
- Set an “Interact with other hand” hotkey and keep the surgical tray in one hand while you perform surgery. This allows you to devote said hotkey to putting your surgical tools away and frees your mouse to prepare to nab the next tool you need once you finish using it.
Chemistry Tips
- Like with surgery, speed is the name of game when it comes to manning the chem line too, but prioritize precision over raw speed. Medics would prefer to wait 5 minutes for a single chem than wait 10 minutes watching you constantly fumble over a single chem.
- Use the janitor buckets you can find in maintenance tunnels and in the janitor storage room. The 500u capacity means you can usually make 2 chems at a time, really buffing your speed in chem production. However, you should keep in mind that with IA, you can usually only make that simultaneously with D+, Fe, and NW. Due to the variety of ingredients used to make IA, it can react to make other mixes and ruin the entire batch. Even trying to make two IA batches at once will simply have the chemicals react with the IA in the bucket and ruin the entire thing.
The closest 2 janitor buckets can be found in the janitor storage room southwest of the MedBay, directly south of the Alamo landing pad.
Note that doctors, researchers, and nurses do not have engineering access, and so need to take a more roundabout route in order to access the storage room.
- That being said, you can still cut down on time making two IA pill bottles by pouring 240u dylovene into the bucket and only making a single bottle’s worth of IA at a time.
Duties as CMO
Most people claim the CMO is just a Doctor+ and doesn’t wield any authority, and to an extent, I agree. Even I sometimes find my job as a CMO is really no different than from normal doctoring. That being said, CMO’s have the potential to do way more than simply performing surgeries, and a good CMO can ensure that all medical roles, both shipside and groundside, are coordinating with each other and have everything they could possibly need to do their jobs.
The Rules
CMOs, being a higher authority than doctors, are also bound to a few OOC (Out-Of-Character) restrictions that your average doctor is not usually bound to.
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LISTEN TO COMMAND. If they tell you to do something, do it. You should only refuse a command from a higher command role if you have a legitimate RP reason not to do so, or you cannot do it for whatever reason (I.E. their orders are against server rules or military law, or you are about to leave due to a real-life emergency and command asks you to perform a mental evaluation). Simply not wanting to listen to command is very childish behavior, and as the Chief Medical Officer, you’re expected to do better.
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Do NOT deploy to the groundside operations, unless given permission to do so as a result of nuclear protocol (when the nuke is purchased and being activated), or if your life is in danger shipside for whatever reason and you CANNOT use any other means of escape. As CMO, your presence shipside is how you consistently keep the ability to communicate with command, as well as ensure you are able to supervise both the MedBay and Research departments. If you deploy on accident, you’re unlikely to face even minor punishment for deploying, but only if you make a concerted effort to return shipside as soon as possible.
Do note that, with the exception of nuclear protocol, XOs are not allowed to authorize the CMO to deploy. If an XO, even one with aCO (acting Commanding Officer) powers orders you to deploy, inform them that you are not allowed to do so and they, the XO, have no authority to permit you, the CMO, to deploy.*
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Do NOT be LRP (Low Roleplay). This means that you need to play a believable character. Your character doesn’t need to be fully fleshed out, with their own novella series and theme song to boot, but you need to keep your actions reasonable considering the circumstances your character is in, or at least be prepared to explain why your character would think it’s okay to drive a stake through the Combat Correspondent’s heart.
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This isn’t a rule, and you won’t be punished if you “break” this, but CMOs must have at least BASIC knowledge of surgery, chemistry, and how to treat wounded. I’ve heard (and lived through) one too many horror stories where CMOs somehow didn’t even know how to perform IB surgery, or even operate a chem dispenser. As the Chief Medical Officer*, you should at least have a basic grasp on the basics of the MedBay’s operations so you can accurately assess your department’s performance. You don’t need to be a medical master, but just know how to operate the chemline, treat wounded, and perform the big 5 surgeries (frac, organ, hugged, limb replacement, and IB).
*They really shouldn’t be ordering you to deploy anyways. The only scenario I can think of where someone would want the CMO to deploy outside of nuclear protocol is when there are no doctors who can competently perform FOB duty. But if that’s the case, then you HAVE to stay shipside to ensure a competent doctor, you, is available shipside.
Logistics
Medics are constantly burning through their supply of defib charges, pills, and more. Moreover, groundside doctors are likewise going to be constantly burning through their supply of bone gel and robotic limbs (if they even took it down with them, of course). As the head of the medical department, you need to be prepared to take into stock what groundside has and send much-needed supplies and vendors down by means of the transport dropship, usually the Alamo.
Make sure that before first drop, the Alamo is loaded with a WeyMed, blood vendor, and a defib recharger. All three are necessary for medics and other roles to stay topped off on the medical supplies they need. And in the case of the defib charger, it also allows SGs to recharge their batteries, and other roles to recharge their night vision optics, if they have any.
Also make sure to ask on the radio every now and then to see if any medics are short on anything and keep an eye on your comms channels in case a medic or doctor groundside has a request for you.
Because of the new MedVendor rebalance, the WeyMed groundside is prone to regularly going out of stock (10 burn and trauma kit stacks and 10 splints is NOT enough for possibly over 100 marines). Always keep in touch with your groundside doc, or some other person with medical comms, to ensure the groundside WeyMed is still stocked, and when it is low, send a spare WeyMed groundside and ask for the older WeyMed to be sent back shipside to be restocked.
It is not recommended to send both of the 2 moveable shipside WeyMeds down. What usually happens is that BOTH WeyMeds will end up running out of supplies near simultaneously and end up leaving the FOB completely devoid of WeyMeds while BOTH of them refill. It’s a better idea to send only one down at a time, sending the spare to replace the original when the original begins to run below a quarter or so of its maximum capacity, and then sending the original up for refill. Repeat when the spare runs out of supplies after a while.
If for whatever reason both of the moveable WeyMeds are out of supplies, then the only choice left is to either fill a backpack full of Medkits containing the needed supplies from the shipside WeyMeds and send THAT down (preferred), or to steal supplies from the shipside vendors and use those to fill up the moveable WeyMeds. If the former method is used, try to use a medical backpack whenever possible to send the supplies down, as those will more clearly convey the contents inside them to nearby medics.
Maintaining Cleanliness
You don’t have to do it. MedBay can be a literal pig sty and your doctors should still be able to get their work done. Even so, the Provost Investigator may raise an eyebrow upon eyeing the local rat king scurry across the floor with a human ear in tow.
If you insist upon cleaning up the MedBay, then simply grab a spray cleaner from the tables in the ICU and get to spraying blood, oil, and all other liquids that manage to sneak their way into the facility. Also make sure to check under the OR tables for blood. Many doctors simply forget that blood and go under objects.
Research
Pictured: Executive Officer Cassandra ‘Boston’ Ellis witnessing the horrific after-effects of Taco-Bell on the Greeno Hive
(Picture courtesy of Cassandra ‘Boston’ Ellis herself)
As CMO, you are not only the head of the medical department, but the research department as well. Don’t forget this, because research can get boring, and though some evil men are motivated by greed, others lust, and others wrath, the man you should fear the most is the man motivated by boredom. Make sure to occasionally check up on your research staff to ensure that they know what they are doing and aren’t secretly trying to overthrow Command with a greeno army.
You don’t need to have 100+ hours in research to play as CMO. In fact, the vast majority of CMOs don’t even know how research works, and even I only have 5 hours in research and can’t use the Turing machine to save my life. But you should still try to grab a basic concept of how research works and then you can usually just leave them to their devices. You don’t need to know the specifics, but understand how research points get used and are generated, as well as the basic process to create greenos.
Also, make sure to publish the papers of stimulants or healing chems (collectively nicknamed “stims”) to the Research Database, and then announce on medical comms that the stim has been created and will be sent groundside. You can do so from the computer circled out below in your office, which is in the hallway in Upper MedBay. Doing so both allows for your doctors to help mass produce the stim for distribution groundside, as well as let medics read up on what the chemical does and how much they can give someone before they OD.
Remember that you start the round with a recipe for a chem that research can make in your left pocket. Make sure to hand that paper over to the researchers so they can take out the good properties from that chem, if any, to use for a stim. It’s also a chance for you to simply meet and greet your research team for the day and see if they have any concerns for you at the moment.
I know I said earlier that I would try to include as much as I could in this guide alone, but as I said earlier, my knowledge on research is rather poor. And seeing as knowing research isn’t necessarily essential to playing CMO, well… let’s just say that this is the one time I’m okay with breaking my own rules.
Newer Players
Fun fact: Dante’s Second Circle of Hell is commonly translated as “Lust”. This is a mistranslation, as the Italian word “Lussuria” actually translates to “CM Medical Mains”
Every now and then some poor soul gets the horrid idea to try out being a nurse and try to learn the game’s medical system, only to find themselves facing a pit of gatekeeping, narcissism, toxicity, and more. Your job as CMO is to drag these poor souls further into the pit and watch as any sense of decency they once had slowly melts away: to mold these players like clay into the same toxic sludge that defines the medical player base.
More seriously, as CMO, it is your (albeit unofficial) duty to be that warm smile that greets newer medical players and guides them through the basics of medical on CM and perhaps even a few more advanced techniques.
Don’t worry too much about not being skilled in tutoring. As a certified tutor in real life, I can confidently say that the fact of the matter is that tutoring is mostly figuring out where your student is at with their understanding and simply guiding them to use their own knowledge to find the solution. Heck, tutoring for CM’s medical system is even easier, as most of the basics to medical need only be verbally spat out to new players for them to understand. Be sure to keep your students’ attention and to constantly allow them to “interact” with their learning to avoid having them get bored, though.
Remember that you will need to use LOOC often to discuss game mechanics that cannot be explained ICly (i.e. recent medical pull requests (PRs), what buttons and hotkeys to use, etc.). Be sure to check that your student has LOOC chat turned on by asking them to do so if they do not already have it on and then tell them how to turn it on (in the OOC tab on the upper-right hand menu) if they do not know how.
During morning rush, unless all aspects of morning prep are being handled by other doctors, you should simply tell newer players to wait for training. If you are STILL unavailable to tutor after morning rush, then feel free to ask the Senior Enlisted Advisor (SEA) or another doctor to come to the MedBay to train the newbie for you. In the SEA’s case, it’s their job to do so anyhow.
Brig Duty
(Picture courtesy of Janice ‘Foxy’ Lean)
CMOs have ID access to the shortest path to the Brig’s MedBay. Therefore, when a prisoner has severely injured themselves, you are usually the one in the best position to go to the Brig’s medical center and treat them. It’s not too different from the main MedBay at all, though you may need to ask MPs to send the prisoner over to you if they haven’t already. Be sure to announce that you are headed over to the Brig to ensure no more doctors are sent there than absolutely necessary.
You may also be called to the Brig to perform a psychological evaluation on a prisoner. In case you don’t know what this is, it’s basically just talking to the prisoner for a bit to determine if they are insane or not. This is entirely roleplay-based, so do what you want! Within reason, of course. If you want to be quick, you can just call them insane after they say, “Yes. I do love pineapple on pizza.” But if you want to take a break from MedBay and have some fun, try having a conversation with them about what they did and how they saw it. You can even try to bring in some real-life psychology knowledge into this if you have it! Be creative!
In the event you cannot do this for whatever reason, you may ask a synthetic to do so in your stead. If even they are not available, you may be able to appoint a doctor with sufficient training (just ask them if they know psychology) to take over instead.
Morale and Entertainment
Medical can often get either incredibly boring when no patients come in or incredibly stressful when 100 late stage hugged patients come in all at once. After doing the same routine for possibly hours on end, medical players can often get burnt out. This burnout stretches across rounds, so try to counter it. You’ve got huge text on comms, so you better than anyone else can take the initiative to try and insert some fun into the role. Ask people how their day has been, talk to people about their past, even make a joke or two from time to time on comms. Even just the little bits can go a long way to keeping people’s spirits up and making them want to continue to have fun with you in MedBay.
Filling in as aCO
CMOs as aCOs are rare, but they do happen, usually during lowpop hours where no one wants to play a command role.
If you don’t think you’re fit to take command, you can always step down and ask the next person in the chain of command to take over.
If you REALLY want to take command, though, here’s the basics of what you need to know:
This is the CIC:
This is The Bubble. It has a variety of machines and functions in it, but as CMO, all you have to concern yourself with are these computers and buttons.
](https://cdn-forum.cm-ss13.com/original/2X/9/9d0dde73b3bfa803a7068f708e6b65a914b50796.png)
As a closing note, expect to be blamed for anything that goes wrong in the operation, regardless of whether you could actually do anything about it.
Creed of the CMO
No CMO is an island,
Entire of themselves;
Every CMO is a piece of the MedBay,
A part of the whole.
If a nurse be washed away by toxicity,
We, the MedBay, are the less,
As well as if a doctor were:
As well as if a friend were
Or if thine self were.
Any doctor’s suffering diminishes me,
Because I am involved in the MedBay.
And therefore never ask to know for whom the death bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
Why am I parodying centuries-old (but still very good) poetry? Because just as even the smallest bit of dirt is essential part of the entirety of a continent, so too are you an integral part of the MedBay; just as much as the newbie nurse who just started playing CM, just as much as the corpsman treating dying patients in an overcrowded ICU, and just as much as the expert doctor performing 4 hugged surgeries simultaneously and in record time. You and everyone else in the MedBay have an essential role to play in ensuring the department is doing everything they can to keep the war effort alive, and as such, you cannot afford to think only about yourself and your own duties (separating yourself from the whole) or overlook the needs and struggles of your subordinates, (separating them from the whole). You are part of a team and need to act as such. And don’t try to handle everything in the MedBay by yourself because you’re afraid to come off as a jerk. Feel free to delegate tasks you cannot do immediately to capable personnel. You won’t be seen as a jerk for it, trust me.
In short: Be civic-minded. Be involved. Be a leader.
At the end of the day, please remember that this is all a game. Nothing you do here will matter much in the long-run, and that OR that was trashed by a M40 incendiary grenade will soon be fixed, that prison sentence you’re serving will expire one way or another, and people who die will respawn next round. Your actions not having any long-term impact shouldn’t be seen as a curse, but a liberating force. Try not to cause short-term suffering, of course, but if you or someone else does it, don’t get too upset. Realize nothing here truly matters and make your goal on this server be to simply live out the best time you possibly can within the short confines of a CM round.
. I’ll be sure to add it once I get the time for some serious revisions.
