As of right now, there is a strange situation where you absolutely need to randomly find (pre-fabricated) autoclave pouches to be able to sterilize a CBM. You can’t re-use the pouches, and no substitutes are allowed.
From gameplay perspective, this feels like a very bizarre bottleneck, as everything else for bionic installation (tools to dissect with, cleaning reagents, anesthesia, autodocks, autoclaves, etc) can either be crafted, or exists as a guaranteed statistic spawn in certain locations. Moreover, the fact that the bags spawn in 25-units stacks makes them essentially all-or-nothing: once you’ve found one stack, you’ve got enough for nearly all your future CBM-related needs.
From realism perspective, it also does not make much sense that you cannot use a 3L glass jar with a lid (or something similar) to sterilize the CBM in.
Suggestions:
Unless autoclave pouches are supposed to act as a hard bottleneck, allow for a reasonable substitute (aforementioned 3L glass jar to sterilize in, for example). Or just add a recipe for “makeshift pouches”.
From realism perspective, it also does not make much sense that you cannot use a 3L glass jar with a lid (or something similar) to sterilize the CBM in.
Please if you know how to implement that do so, that would be very cool. Otherwise bumping autoclave pouches spawn in labs and other appropriate locations would probably solve your problem.
Can you actually use any glass jar in an autoclave? I really doubt that would work.
There seem to be specific autoclavable jars, which makes me think you can’t.
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen what looks very much like jam glass jars used to store autoclaved eppendorf before. I’m not sure but If it can be used for canning it might be able to support the autoclave without breaking
I guess what I should have asked is if it actually allows the thing inside to be sterilized. Though that sounds like it would work to me, which is neat.
I was under the impression the pouch was made of sort of membrane that the items contained inside to be sterilized. I guess I was wrong, and good to know.
Autoclaves usually work by using high pressure overheated water vapor. Container can’t be vapor-tight during sterilization for it to work.
They are normally sealed right after the cycle ends.
Yep the game doesn’t really model the part about sealing afterward because that would be a pain. It’s part of the skill check for putting the CBM in correctly.
Well, the simplest solution I can think of that is least likely to produce any new problems or compatibility issues is to:
Add an auto-learn recipe for “makeshift autoclave container” with something like [ first aid 4 / fabrication 3 ] as requirements, and any appropriately large water-tight container as primary component.
Autoclave pouches seem like something that’d be pretty easy to craft. It’s just a paper and plastic sleeve with envelope adhesive on one end. The only reason they’re more useful than a simple envelope is that they have indicators whether the object inside is actually sterile or not or if the process didn’t work.
To make it better reflect in game you could make autoclaves not be 100% effective. (97% at most repaired, diminishing with more damage) and the reason why you would want a proper autoclave pouch would be to know if you should re-run it or not.
Honestly, a recipe of like 20 paper, 1 plastic bag, 10 medical tape per for a makeshift pouch would be welcome.
This would open up the use of more sterilized versions of more common medical equipment for higher level first aide (gauze, hemostats, etc). Though, this could probably wait for the health overhaul too, as there’s no use for things like curved hemostats, betadine, and sutures other than clutter until then.
Jars can absolutely be used, but I’ve generally ever seen them used for things that quality as clean rather than sterile (such as gauze, q-tips, tongue depressors). You would imagine it’d be less than sterile because the lid doesn’t prevent microbe from entering until after the sterilization process. For our purposes it’s probably fine to represent it as being fine.
Also, can the kitchen buddy sterilize? Because instantpots can Irl and that’d be another thing to bundle in one’s deathmobile kitchen.
There are two types of autoclave: furniture one and portable one.
Portable needs to be installed into a vehicle to be operated (otherwise energy drain is beyond what normal batteries can provide). Portable autoclaves can be found as normal lab loot. I assume a scientist Z can carry it, but I’ve never really seen one being dropped.
Furniture autoclaves need no extra power to work (internal supply or something). But, you know, all the normal restrictions of moving a piece of furniture around apply. These autoclaves can be found in abundance in the big research facility (guaranteed spawn there, essentially).
I might oversimplify things here a bit, but isn’t the autoclave and its pouches just a fancy way of “boiling an object in a large pot until sterile and sealing it in a vacuum sealer”?
We’re playing in an apocalypse where there’s no penalty to eat food off the ground, you can also drink water out of a puddle and eat rotten things if desperate enough but can’t stick a (mostly) clean piece of metal into your body?
Heck, I personally would probably rip a bionic module out of a zombie, wipe it off at my shirt and shove it right into my body (and watch myself slowly and painfully succumb to an infection, oops).
What I’m trying to say is; not only should it be possible to substitute the pouches, but there should also be more options for (more or less) sterilizing bionics (like the mentioned vacuum sealer, let it soak in ethanol/antiseptic, …).
If I remember right (although it’s a long time ago I last did that), slightly failing the installation of a CBM at an autodoc does not turn it unsterile. I assume it gets unpacked during the (failed) attempt to install it, so… how does that work?
In a technical sense, the main features of a proper autoclave is higher temperature (normally above 100 C, below 200C) with relatively high water vapor pressure.
But a huge amount of disinfectant to soak CBM in should also work.