So, as far as I am aware, carrying charcoal, calomel, or other chemical purging reagents without being medical or without having witnessed or heard of a poisoning is considered powergaming. I don’t think that this should be the case, personally, and I’ll explain why from both an OOC and IC perspective.
OOC: Most mechanics in the game have counters to them, this is good game design practice when applied correctly. I do think that most of the game applies this principle of “things have reasonably accessible counters” very well. Chemistry is the exception to this rule, in that a single AP syringe of heparin gives you essentially a 1:30 microwave timer of “you fucking pass out to blood loss.” The only counter to this is either filtration surgery, potassium/ice cheesing, or charcoal/calomel. None of these is reasonably accessible to the layperson, which means that until poisonings are reported, antagonists can essentially secure free kills by just darting people.
IC: There is, realistically speaking, a source of ionizing radiation in the workplace of SS13: the supermatter (and background cosmic radiation from space in places that are not engineering). In real life, when a person has an occupational hazard that involves radiation, they are given proper countermeasures to prevent contamination and personal harm or injury. I’d argue that realistically, given the way that radiation mechanics work, carrying charcoal/ pentetic / potassium iodide would sound much more reasonable to people living on this station than some may believe.
By no means am I trying to come across as attacking the choices of the administration as far as this is concerned, I am just trying to foster a civil, productive conversation on the implications that this decision has on the gameplay and universe of the game. I would enjoy if this ruling were to change, but it wouldn’t by any means be the end of the world if it didn’t.
So activated charcoal is used to neutralize toxic substances that were drunk (non corrosives as vomiting corrosive substances would burn your esophagus) so you wouldn’t use that for radiation poisoning anyways since activated charcoal binds to the consumed chemicals.
The game is not a perfect copy of reality, get over it.
If you want to code dive and re-write the code so that Charcoal doesn’t cure rad damage, then go ahead. Going to be hard to find one of the servers coders to take that on.
The game is not a perfect copy of reality, but it does make attempts to be realistic, and the server rules ask that people play realistic and believable characters. Charcoal doesn’t fully cure rad damage to begin with, it only buys you time to get better treatment from medical. It only deals with the toxins, not the actual radioactive contamination.
I’ve seen and heard of drama surrounding carrying medical supplies, mostly if it is a lot. Carrying one thing against one of four (technically five) damage types, isn’t that bad. Security will sometimes carry one brute and burn patches. I as a chemist usually make Oxandrocyclic (Oxandrolone and Salicyclic Acid) pills and throw it at Doctors, Heads and Security.
I made this a few times which I would hand out to Medbay and IT WAS PAAAAAAINFUL to make. The cardboard boxes themselves were hard enough to get. But it was advanced versions of everything you could really want to treat (but not oozlings and IPCs). People called this powergaming. Though I was only really able to make this after 1.5 hours of the shift of doing nothing but chemistry. Is it power gaming to hand out? I don’t know admins stance on this. I have a feeling that if you make something for someone else (such as my Oxandrocyclic mixes for Securtiy and Command), it isn’t power gaming. But I could be wrong on this.
Maybe @prickly_tomato who is writing as I am writing could answer that for us.
I feel like engineers are mostly fine with carrying a syringe with them due to occupational hazards, but otherwise there isn’t a real IC reason for everyone on the station to always have charcoal on them. If you need charcoal, head over to medbay and it’s pretty easy to get. I see the IC point of them working on a station that would expose you to background cosmic radiation, but in-universe that radiation doesn’t exist. Even then, you’d mostly be exposed to background radiation by space walking, which the average bartender/cargo tech isn’t going to have to experience.
I don’t think charcoal/toxin purging chems aren’t the best example when trying to discuss carrying medical equipment on your character. They’re so situational that the majority of the time it’s just going to take up space, and charcoal is among the most easily accessible medical chems. I don’t find it logical to carry it unless spiders are attacking people or you like to get a tan with the SM crystal.
I might sound like a broken record by now, but personally when it comes down to what med chems players can have on their person is situational. Whether it’s sec is getting beaten up and needs some meds to make encounters less dangerous, blob or nukeclear agents make themselves known so you need to pump out first aid kits, or just constant explosions causing people to get exposed to the pressure-less, cold space. Just be reasonable with what you have on your person and don’t be a walking medbay when there isn’t any reason to. Medbay is there for a reason, a good chunk of injuries can just be handled by going over to the chem counter and getting meds.
While you can debate if charcoal is powergaming or not, by technicality it could be but I’m not going to bowink someone over having a small amount of charcoal in their emergency supply box. Now if someone had a super beefed up homemade medkit and there isn’t a station ending mess or if a janitor (who will never see combat) has enough meds to start his own practice for no reason, then I’ll check it out. This is when I use Rule 0: Admin Discretion.
TLDR: Just be reasonable with meds you carrying, medbay is there for a reason. A syringe of charcoal isn’t going to get you into trouble
I don’t think the creation of them are powergaming, chemistry makes chem’s for the station to use. Someone not in chem could make their own ghetto version of this using chems found in chem fridges at the midpoint of the round anyway, I think distributing these read-made kits to the general public without the right situation or to the right job is iffy and would get in trouble.
YES!! So many doctors insist of working against Chemistry too instead of with Chemistry…
If my post from my ready made kits is to be believed, I gave it to Miners, Captain and HoS, which seems reasonable to me. But yeah, handing it out to everyone would be a bit iffy. Or perhaps just an inventory clogger too.
Follow up question. What about making Oxandrocyclic pills on the start of the shift to Security and Command? I tend to make a box of 7 bottles of Oxandrocyclic pills and throw it at Security and letting the Warden or HoS distribute them. I’d argue that the nature in their Security’s job would advice them to carry some easy to use medical supplies. Some of Command too like Captain, HoS, CE and CMO too perhaps? Did the same with Space Adapt when I first started playing this game. What would be the admin opinion on this?
I’d feel better it was a lower amount (like 1 honestly) and given to the brig physician first for them to deal out (warden if no brig physician). Now giving first aid kits to command I feel iffy about, largely due to most command not really being put into dangerous situations.
I wouldn’t consider my understanding and interputation to be THE way all of the team views it, would wait to see if other admin agree/their viewpoint
1 is… not a lot… 0.2 Metabolism Rate and 3 brute and burn per tick makes it heal 15 damage. That’s… pretty much what a VERY standard virology pill would do. However, I do think having up to 25u of Oxandrolone and Salicyclic Acid is too much as that would heal 375 damage of Brute and Burn, meaning you’ll most likely die from blood loss or taking too much damage in a short amount of time. I think this would be due for a change to be similar to Hepanephrodaxon which heals 6 toxin but at a Metabolism Rate of 3.75, making it so you can drink it.
That’s reasonable! I’ll keep that in mind.
Was referring to the Oxandrocyclic bottles, same as Security and general Medbay staff. Advanced medkits… uhh… takes too much time and no one gives a shit about them from what I noticed when I made them.
Damn mate that sucks because it’s against the rules.
Do not seek items with no relevance to your job “just in case” something goes wrong. The specific items chosen aren’t important, it’s the fact you value winning over staying in character.
This is a terrible example, heparin works very slowly. The point you’re trying to make is definitely true for numerous reagents but heparin isn’t one of them lol
At the end of the day though the point of the game isn’t winning - yes reagents can be OP and so can a good number of other things. You are not expected to survive or win against these sorts of attacks - sometimes you’re the redshirt of the round and you need to accept that.
Failure to accept that is what makes you a powergamer.
I never argued that it wasn’t against the rules, I was trying to bring up a civil discussion about the premise of how we could go about making that not the case while still remaining friendly to the lore. Lore can do a lot of things for making a system where people are on relatively equal footing a majority of the time, like how Eris allows for everyone to have weapons because it’s a dangerous place where maintenance mobs and other players can bring harm very easily. All I was trying to do is bring up a civil discussion of lore-friendly ways that we could create a framework where chemistry combat isn’t absurdly overbearing on the meta like the way it feels right now. I understand that sometimes you die, whenever I play antagonist I expect to die and try to create an interesting story for everyone before I die. The argument isn’t that people shouldn’t die, it’s that we should make the counters to chemistry as accessible as the counters to fire and other similar hazards. I would appreciate if, going forward, both sides would not resort to ad hominem.
ad hominem: “in a way that is directed against a person rather than the position they are maintaining.”
What? I… was talking to Prickly Tomato from my own experience in Chemistry. Never mentioned you at all?
I too would appreciate if, going forward, both sides would not resort to ad hominem. Especially like accusing others of ad hominem.
you don’t need medical access to acquire charcoal, there is normally a bottle of charcoal infront of medbay and the chemfridge is auto-stocked with some pills
you can also just, go to medbay and get cured there
the radiation is very much contained in engineering and rarely ever is seen outside of engineering. and engineering has multitudes of radiation treatment kits inside of it so there is no need for a normal person to carry around toxin meds
and most workplaces even where injury is common, the workers don’t just carry around medicine and instead have stationed medkits, like the entirety of the medical bay
Outside of engineers/doctors, I don’t think that everyone needs to have Charcoal on them 24/7. Let’s be honest, what are the chances someone’s gonna lace your food with cyanide, or the mother of all radiation breaches occurs?
There is the radiation flood event too, for what its worth. Not making an argument one way or the other, just pointing out it’s a factor.
On a tangential note I personally feel that there is an rp gap between how our characters are meant to be -very professional, ss13 is a state of the art research center- and the reality of fun, silly rp -the insane guy with the tin foil hat who cant go near the hos, the skater bro assistant building a skate course in the halls- are often at odds. What I mean is, what is and isnt reasonable for a character to do has never really been enforced as"would a 9-5 professional do this", for better or worse.
Sure, and so is mine! But what I’m saying is many people’s characters dont fit that stereotype. I personally enjoy the sillyness, but it does go against the rp guidelines of us all being professionals. And this sorta bleeds into what items to have: If this station has a manical cat surgeon and a botanist selling you weed for extra cash in an openly visable hydroponics bay while security is gobbled up by a clowncar, how crazy really is it for an assistant to have a full toolbelt on? Ive known guys at jobs ive worked at to carry tools they dont need around just in case irl. My best answer would be that the toolbelt gives the assistant an unfair potential advantage in a combat situation, and i think that makes the most sense.
