Howdy gents, a few of you might know me as Alex Crossman, the medic who generally orders an exorbitant amount of chemicals in the Chemistry line at the beginning of the game (I usually order half my stuff and then come back later for the rest because I feel bad). I was considering making a suggestion revolving around medics getting their chems in a way that at least alleviated some of the pain doctors have to go through at round start, however it occurred to me I should at least get an idea of how doctor/surgeon/nurse mains feel about the situation.
So medical mains, how do you feel about the chem line at the beginning of the game? Is it a painful process, something you enjoy doing, or something in-between?
The wait justifies a lot of shipside roles - whether it’s req or med requests. It gives them all something to do. If meds could just summon chems from a vendor it would severely reduce the “med class” understanding of chem creation which would lead to more bald researchers, etc. Granted with Gramps doing round start chem mixing he’d say “go feck yeself, it’ll be on first FOB crate” if he couldn’t give you 3 of your choice before yelling “NEXT!”. If you’re asking for 4+ items, its disrespecting everyone else in the line IMO at round start. If you’re holding up the line for any amount of custom chem mixes with 2+ medics in line behind you it’s outright disrespectful - particularly if the delay keeps others from deploying with fewer needs. It’s better to have more “underequipped” medics hit dirt early than have no medics early.
Medline for Corpsman is the same as Req for Marines. Only difference is it takes the CT/RO 5 seconds to vent an attachment whereas it can take a Doctor 30 seconds to several minutes to process a single order.
I feel that ImiAlky is an almost mandatory chem to get but otherwise all chems are pretty much luxuries or optional.
Agreed, if only because Gramps starts going blind 9/10 rounds from head trauma. Meryl/Derm, etc., exotic combos are out the window. The more simple and more pragmatic the better. I’ll even settle for Imi or Alk not combined.
When I do chemline, I usually enjoy it, not the type of enjoy where I’d willingly go do chemline, rather the type of enjoy where it’s acceptable to do my job and I won’t be grumpy about it. In your words - somewhere inbetween, the only time I’d not enjoy chemline is when someone goes “IA KD MB D+ ATD 2 Bottles of Epi, please” “oh and also an oxy pill bottle”. That’s when shit gets real and I start expressing my anger ICly, even more when someone orders 2 sets of the same medicine instead of coming later for more, I’m talking about the guy who goes “2 KD 2 MB IA D+” Every. Single. Round.
As someone that does chems frequently, it just depends on how experienced someone is. Nurses are typically lost, doctors are hit or miss, and researchers can be a wild card.
The number one thing I would recommend is giving medbay chems a similar automatic mixer or two like research has. That would greatly assist in the long chem lines. Otherwise? It’s just chems. Yeah it takes a moment but people just really need to be patient until the person can nearly automate the mixes in their sleep.
to elaborate on the autochem machine thing, maybe make it so they have to first make the chem in pill bottle/bottle form as a template, and then force themachine to only do that type with a cooldown between chaning chem types
the cooldown is there so that ir lets you mass produce the same chem 20 times because doing that step by step is a massive headache, but still makes doctors/nurses do their job with the more wildcard chems (coming from a nurse main that exists to main roundstart chems and then cryo)
What I do is just open the crew manifest (IC tab) count the number of medics, then make that number of IA and MB/KD pill bottles +2. Making big batches is a lot faster, and not loading pill bottles into the chemmaster to label them saves you clicks too (make the pills with no bottle and they just appear a sa big stack on the machine, then click with a pill bottle to load them all). Just chuck the medics the hand labeller if they want labels then they can do it.
idk why more doctors don’t loot the hangar for janitor buckets, they’re just bigger bluespace beakers.
I ALWAYS ask for like 5 items, and I don’t find it disrespectful. It’s disrespectul when you have three doctors and none of them want to work the chem line so they can prep their meta loadout and then beg to get deployed. A good doctor should be able to whip up the main custom mixes so fast it doesn’t matter how much you order. One quality of life change I would like to see is the chemistry machines not having linked energy though.
From my point of view, nothing you can get from chemistry should be mandatory for treating marines. It should only be more efficient chems.
Now, obviously, my only problem in that respect with chemistry at the moment is that IA only comes from chemistry and isn’t available in the average medic vendor like it should be, when it’s a vital and necessary treatment that every medic basically needs on hand.
At the moment it’s the only thing I bother with chemistry for. I don’t like to wait in lines and everything I NEED for being a medic is otherwise available right from my vendor. Thankfully, doctor players who work in chemistry typically make a dozen bottles of IA without being asked and I can just grab it on my way to the dropship. So with that in mind, if IA was simply included in my lifebag or w/e its called with all the other pills I wouldn’t even bother getting in line and I’d be one less medic holding up every other medic who wants specialized drugs.