"Used" CBMs as analogy to "filthy clothes" mod

[Azrad]

Just a random question with regards to installing them. In the outpost/ranch there’s a doctor that can help assist in installing/removing bionics. In that case, perhaps that option of installing/removing bionics with the help of that doctor has the doctor automatically apply painkillers for less risk of death, or somesuch?

[tarburst98]

if you want realism then you need an easy way as well as a hard way because the pre-cataclysm world wouldn’t only have had the hard way, so like a hospital can rarely spawn with a “bionic installation system” or something, that gives you a much much higher chance on installing bionics. as a cost you can have it literally knock you out for 6 hours or so, so you need to make sure the area is secure before using it otherwise a zombie could just walk up and nom your brains out while you are strapped to an operating table. also maybe it needs a lot of power so you need a fully charged UPS to plug it into to make it work. (and it eats ALL of the charge)

also, maybe scale painkillers with difficulty? the easy ones don’t require nearly enough cutting to warrant 100 painkiller. like cranial flashlight, you make one incision on your forehead, stick an LED in there and seal it up, maybe a little painful but i doubt that is 100 painful.

[Valiant]

1. As for something like “CBM installation kits” - we already had a rather big discussion (https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/issues/20383) on this matter. In short: good idea, but only after 0.D.

2. As for local anesthetics - adding them would be great IMO, but sometimes (for a bigger and complex medical operations like eyes surgery, or thermal climate control, or replacing your stomach) local anesthetics wouldn’t be enough, you can’t inject anesthetics into your eyes or inject them into every part of your body and become fully numb.

[RedPine]

Wait a sec. Quote by Kevin on Feb 26th, in the Github linked in the above comment (https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/issues/20383)

" kevingranade commented on Feb 26
There has been discussion of requiring install kits for harvested cbms,
which is a great idea. That requires deciding where to spawn the
installation kits and perhaps making a crafting recipe for them, basically
some medical gear.

We’d probably treat dropped cbms more or less the same as harvested ones.
Only the ones in labs or vaults would cone with installation kits. "

“Meh, don’t care one way or the other, could easily be abstracted away by saying the install kit has the necessary antiseptics.”

Then, Kevin does a complete 180:

http://smf.cataclysmdda.com/index.php?topic=14746.msg302408#msg302408

What happened between February and July? We had many well thought out solutions presented by the players. They would have been tedious to implement, sure, but could be implemented within existing and well understood game mechanics. Why the jump to requiring painkillers? Painkillers aren’t even that rare by mid-late game, so it’s not like they balance anything.

[Azrad]

Regarding “new” CBMs with install kits, how about make them like MREs? Disassemble to get the bionic, and the needed amount of painkiller/anesthetic and whatever else that might be needed. Or somesuch.

[Logistic_Tangent]

While I am not an expert, here is my idea / suggestion.

As technology is always improving why not have varying degrees of cbm’s. The better the grade the less of a pain penalty You suffer after the implantation.

The lab type cbm’s might be “experimental” they could have a moderate pain penalty for the “uncommon” type And the “common” ones could have no penalty.

Normal cbm’s might have a average to low penalty these would be the ones you could buy off the rack with enough money before the cataclysm.

Low quality ones would be the ones you dig out of the zombies. High pain penalty and might require additional tools.

This is just my opinion but I think it would be a reasonable middle ground between the no painkillers group and my understanding of what Kevin Granade wants as the developer.

[kevin.granade]

[quote=“Alec White, post:11, topic:14002”]Had a character that looted a lab, got plenty of morphine and some CBMs so I decided to use it.

Took a shot, waited 5 minutes, checked it asked for more, repeat operation 3 more times, managed to install CBM, half an hour later the character was dead.[/quote]
Indeed, this will kill you, 4 doses of morphine will take you over the limit.

Follow up, did you read the messages when you were doing this, or just reflexively clear them? When I followed your directions, I did, “apply morphine, wait 5 min, check CBM install” three times, the third time I noticed the message changed to “You aren’t quite numb enough” instead of “You need to be a lot more numb”, so my inclination was to wait longer to be safe, but I was mechanically following your directions, so ignored this concern, which led to the outcome you predicted. I tried again with just one more 5 minute wait once the feedback changed to “You aren’t quite numb enough”, and survived.

I was wondering if the difference between “enough to install” and “enough to kill you” was really just one ampule of morphine, so I checked by waiting longer, it turns out two ampules is sufficient if you wait much longer for it to take effect. Perhaps we can have some better feedback about this, but frankly, it is working as intended. If you treat morphine with the respect it deserves, you’ll be fine.

[quote=“Alec White, post:11, topic:14002”]If that was the intention, adding realism. Why not add proper local anesthetic? Why not add proper surgical tools? Why not even add hospital/lab surgery robots/NPCs?
And in general why not first take a look at CBMs and think about all the possible ways of making it more realistic, and how those changes will affect the gameplay?[/quote]
You’re asking a lot of leading questions here that assume what the “correct” answer is and pretty much assert that the contributors to this issue didn’t put enough thought into it, that’s downright rude.

Also why are we now fleshing out CBMs from realism and resource consumption points of view? I thought we were in a feature freeze.

Check the status thread, if it doesn’t say we’re in feature freeze, we’re not, that’s the reason it’s there.

[Fris0uman]

What I get from this discussion so far is that the painkiller mechanic would be an ok one with more feedback to the player.

One of the problem with painkillers seems to be that it does a lot of hidden stuff that can lead you to accidentaly OD, and you don’t really learn how those hidden stuff work through a game because you never have to use painkiller with no pain. Usually you’re in pain, you take a pill and wait for the pain to go down , you have an indication of the effect via the pain meter and a rough idea of the painkiller strength from description/real life.

But with the cbm you’re not in pain so the only way to follow the effect of the pill is to blindy wait and check the cbm installation prompt from time to time, that seems to be a bit annoying and confusing because you have no idea how long to wait or how much is too much.

So the game could give you a “numbness meter” that could give you an idea of the progress of the pill effect, and/or the cbm installation prompt could be more precise about how much painkiller/numbness you need to install. Since IRL it’s not obvious either to know these things the amount of info you get could depend of your level in first aid, if you’re a surgeon you get very accurate info, if you have no skill you just know that you’re numb and how painfull the installation looks.

The fact that doing self surgery on your eyes while high on codeine is not very reallistic is probably another problem that will get solved progressively by the addition of cbm installation kit, robot surgeon, NPC surgeon etc

[Litppunk]

A section in @ for various “hidden” stats (minor stat effects tab?) where vague character feelings could be a useful tool while keeping it from being OP… might be a good solution.

Messages in the message log are often easy to miss especially for noobs who should realize that guzzling meds effects your character, but frequently assume that as a game there will be no cumulative drawbacks or penalties especially long term.

would make keeping track of your ‘vague hidden health’ level and other stats easier, without cluttering the ‘major’ stat effects section.

[kevin.granade]

if you want realism then you need an easy way as well as a hard way because the pre-cataclysm world wouldn’t only have had the hard way

That doesn’t follow, the “easy” way would be either a full surgical procedure or a clinic like setting similar to a tatoo/piercing parlor, neither of which exist any more. There is a MOD in one of the settlements that can install and remove CBMs for you, that’s the easy way.

also, maybe scale painkillers with difficulty? the easy ones don’t require nearly enough cutting to warrant 100 painkiller. like cranial flashlight, you make one incision on your forehead, stick an LED in there and seal it up, maybe a little painful but i doubt that is 100 painful.

I don’t have a problem with this concept in general, but its pretty far down the road, and i think adding it right now would make things worse and the short term.

What happened between February and July?

I took another look at the issue from the point of view of painkiller use, and realized that installation would have side effects such as leaving drugs in your system after the procedure, so requiring a batch of painkillers in each kit doesn’t make sense. There are a number of reasons why you might not need to use the painkillers bundled with the kit, which includes characters that dont need it at all.

[quote=“Fris0uman, post:19, topic:14002”]What I get from this discussion so far is that the painkiller mechanic would be an ok one with more feedback to the player.

One of the problem with painkillers seems to be that it does a lot of hidden stuff that can lead you to accidentaly OD, and you don’t really learn how those hidden stuff work through a game because you never have to use painkiller with no pain. Usually you’re in pain, you take a pill and wait for the pain to go down , you have an indication of the effect via the pain meter and a rough idea of the painkiller strength from description/real life.

But with the cbm you’re not in pain so the only way to follow the effect of the pill is to blindy wait and check the cbm installation prompt from time to time, that seems to be a bit annoying and confusing because you have no idea how long to wait or how much is too much.[/quote]
That’s a good point, I was under the impression that “pregaming” before combat was fairly common, but perhaps not.

[tarburst98]

ah, another thing i thought of is accounting for pain altering mutations like Deadened.

[NFossil]

Wow this really blew up. I didn’t mean to.

I still haven’t played the relevant change. Reading the thread gave me the impression that the following might be part of the problem:

[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:10, topic:14002”][quote=“Alec White, post:6, topic:14002”]How it is balanced right now is an issue, as there is no way to tell how much is enough painkillers without killing you and generally doing it by trial and error.
Which makes it seriously unbalance, something that already had very harsh punishment for failing.[/quote]
Can you outline the actual sequence of actions you took that led to death? You geet fedback about whether you have enough painkiller each time you attempt to install a CBM, so if you just do:
Take painkiller, wait, attempt installation
repeat.

It will just work.
If you skip the “wait” part, it’s not going to end well, which is why the CBM failure installation messages warn that painkillers might not have fully taken effect yet.[/quote]

Waiting for medicine to take effect might be common sense in real life, but is rarely a factor in video game logic. Of course it is right at home in a game as detailed as CDDA, but the problem is that the rest of the game does not “train” the player to expect this, and often even expresses the opposite impression that medicines here work just like regular video game logic.

When you take food, your fullness changes instantly after eating (I don’t know if there’s a hidden nutrient value that increases gradually). First aid kits instantly cure infections after use. Vitamin pills instantly cure scurvy after use. Maybe I haven’t been taking enough painkillers to be aware of the gradual effect, but other more commonly used consumables work instantly. I literally only knew that “waiting for effect” is a thing through this post.

I see that there’s a failure message that reminds the player of waiting. How about moving the reminder to the Y/N prompt before installation, especially when or after the CBM installation process is being fleshed out?

[Alec_White]

When I followed your directions, I did, “apply morphine, wait 5 min, check CBM install” three times, the third time I noticed the message changed to “You aren’t quite numb enough” instead of “You need to be a lot more numb”, so my inclination was to wait longer to be safe

Then that makes the mechanic a “trial and error” kind, with the fact that “error” in this case means instantaneous death.

You’re asking a lot of leading questions here that assume what the “correct” answer is and pretty much assert that the contributors to this issue didn’t put enough thought into it, that’s downright rude.

What I assume or not is irrelevant to the fact that you haven’t answered any of my totally on-topic questions.
And the fact that you opted to brush it aside, may or may make me believe, that you implied that it wasn’t the right thing to do.
Of course all this could be solved if you answered my question, but as you didn’t I can only make up my opinion based on the way you chose to not answer them.

And being this thread about the CBM topic, and the questions I made being entirely on-topic. In my opinion is even more rude to not answered them, and on top of that imply that even the mere fact of asking on-topic question in the first place is “downright rude”.

I apologize if the questions felt rude. But if the mere fact of asking question of the thread’s topic, about in-game mechanic are not going to be answered because somehow they are “rude”, how can we even have constructive discussion about it if we can’t even ask questions about it?

The questions put in doubt the rationale and reasons of the game mechanic. Is it not allowed to question the game mechanics now?

Because if now questioning the game mechanics is going to be taken as “rude”, we might as well delete the whole forum. As it will be impossible to have any discussion about the game, that isn’t to agree with the game mechanics.

I’m sorry if I’m reading too much into it. But my questions were not answered and were even called rude, which is frustrating. But that’s what I understood out of the dismissal.

[Valiant]

If anyone interested, I added info on maximum painkiller intensity on the wiki: (http://cddawiki.chezzo.com/cdda_wiki/index.php?title=Hidden_stats#Painkillers).

[Knossos]

What about a medical tool that tells you how much of a substance you have in your system? Ordinarily, this would require blood analysis which is not instant. But, being that the game also has future age CBMs, a future age medical tool would make sense.

It could also be super rare.

[dovla]

Any particular reason Sensory Dulling CBM doesn’t seem to allow for CBM installation?

Your nervous system is wired to allow you to inhibit the signals of pain, allowing you to dull your senses at will. However, the use of this system may cause delayed reaction time and drowsiness.

Sounds pretty much ideal for this purpose but I tried installing it, then flipping the thing on and even waiting a while but I wasn’t able to install new CBMs.

[Coolthulhu]

Any particular reason Sensory Dulling CBM doesn’t seem to allow for CBM installation?

No, just an omission. Will probably be allowed soon.

[Azrad]

Would self-aware provide help in letting you know with better accuracy with regards to having enough painkillers in your survivor?

[Valiant]

Would self-aware provide help in letting you know with better accuracy with regards to having enough painkillers in your survivor?

Not likely, I think higher skills in first aid, medical profession and maybe higher intelligence would fit better for this.

[kevin.granade]

A section in @ for various “hidden” stats (minor stat effects tab?) where vague character feelings could be a useful tool while keeping it from being OP… might be a good solution.

Numbness is a good candidate for this, and would give feedback about the gradual nature of painkillers.

would make keeping track of your ‘vague hidden health’ level and other stats easier, without cluttering the ‘major’ stat effects section.

The hidden health stat is hidden on purpose, not because were short of room on the menu.

Waiting for medicine to take effect might be common sense in real life, but is rarely a factor in video game logic. Of course it is right at home in a game as detailed as CDDA, but the problem is that the rest of the game does not “train” the player to expect this, and often even expresses the opposite impression that medicines here work just like regular video game logic.

We did have some concern that people wouldn’t be familiar with it, which is why installation attempts warn you about the delay when suggesting you take more painkiller. It seems that the reminder that the delay exists was insufficient for some people though.

I see that there’s a failure message that reminds the player of waiting. How about moving the reminder to the Y/N prompt before installation, especially when or after the CBM installation process is being fleshed out?

The warning is displayed when you attempt to install a CBM, it cancels the attempt, but doesn’t use any resources. In other words, it comes before the Y/N prompt.

Looking at the feedback, there’s definitely an issue with the interface for this new feature, it works as intended if you know about some key mechanics, like delay time for painkiller effect, and painkiller OF. If you aren’t aware of these it’s dangerous to use.

Some of the options for addressing this:

1. Be specific about how long painkillers can take to reach full effect, i.e. “painkillers can take up to an hour to reach full effect”. This is the most minimal fix and targets the specific misunderstanding that leads to player death, that waiting 5-10 minutes is sufficient for painkillers to kick in fully.
2. Display feedback about “numbness level” in addition to pain level somewhere. This attempts to make the delay mechanic more apparent, more directly, but seems fragile for this particular issue, because it’s one more piece of interface you need to understand in order for it to work. It’s good to have information anyway, so it might be worth doing independent of this issue.
3. Display onset times in painkiller item descriptions, and possibly in messages when taking them. This is another general solution that has some risk of not being noticed in this particular case. This one is also worthwhile independent of CBM installation.
4. Add a craftable “surgery prep kit” that has the right amount of painkiller in it to get an average person ready for surgery. This gives people a safe option for installations, but isn’t a one size fits all solution.
5. Make the “you need painkillers” prompt lead to a menu for selecting painkillers to take, the minimal version would just let you select painkillers and it would take them on a schedule to determine the necessary dosage for your character. This is the most radical change, and would more or less eliminate the risk of taking the painkillers for this purpose. It’s also a bit complicated to implement.