New Lower Medical Layout

[Tidomann]

Summary (a quick, 2-3 sentence summary): A new layout to lower medical- making the triage lines actually important. Creates more space between advanced scanners and surgery rooms to facilitate surgery lines. Adds an extra surgery room. Remove ID lock from west doors.

Benefits (How this will benefit the server and game as a whole): I think a small revamp of lower medical could drastically improve Marine and Doctor QOL. Currently it feels as though the bottom advanced scanner is WAY too crowded in the rounds. The top scanner hardly ever sees traffic unless marines are dragged up. I blame this because leaving the dropship and going down from Landing Pad 1 is the normal behavior. Once my suggestion to swap the landing pads is implemented, then I'm hoping the west Emergency medical entrance doors will become the preferred route, reinforcing this design layout. I tried to keep the amount of items/vendors the same, keeping IMPORTANT roleplay items like the prescription glasses in medical storage, and the medical locker room. Note: There is a HUGEslight marine buff (besides the extra surgery room) with the additional extra box of sterile masks and latex gloves by the surgery rooms. Huge Sterile Mask RP BUFF.

I also kept the ladders in the same area, however tempting it was to move it to make things fit better. However, we lose symmetry. I know this might be a deal breaker with some of you, but please, be more enraged by my terrible copy pasting skills, and then forget and +1 it anyway.

Details (Description of how you think this would work, the benefits, etc): After trying to recreate this in theme hospital, my best alternative was to copy paste the sprites. If this gets traction I would be happy to learn to recreate this in bay code.

Version 2


Version 1

► Show Spoiler

If I am missing any important items, like the fact the pipes aren't connecting to the O2 canister, or the lack of vents for alien invasion, please feel free to point it out.

Implementation (Optional, if you have an idea how to implement it): Mapping changes.

I will expand my thoughts if more detail is required. I will also answer any questions.

Notes:
Surgery rooms will not start with IV's, just a byproduct of lazy copy pasting.
Buff Marines and give them a sixth IV bag so we can have symmetry.

[Jalleo]

Isnt this adding a fourth surgery room there?

[Tidomann]

Isnt this adding a fourth surgery room there?

Summary (a quick, 2-3 sentence summary): Adds an extra surgery room.

There is currently a good discussion happening in Medbay specialization & specialists. A lot of talk about having to order an extra set of tools, and the current staffing requirements of the medical bay already being high. As it stands, there is already little room for roleplay as a doctor when things start to ramp up. I'm hoping with this change we can facilitate a smoother experience from diagnosis to surgery, and allow for some more specialized roles to form, like the nurse.

It's extremely rare to see a fully staffed medbay where everyone knows what they're doing. Even one bald doctor is enough to cause a major backlog.

Beyond that, the primary issue is that surgeries take too long and there's too many of them to perform, and that Medbay often lacks the supplies needed to deal with large amounts of incoming wounded requiring surgery.

Surrealistik raises a point that you need about 6 competant doctors in the old system to keep up with the surgeries (as you can't perform double surgeries anymore). Luckily the time for each surgery step has been reduced since then. So I would easily say 4 or 5 staff is sufficient now.

So 4 competent doctors and a bonus 1 to manage cryo/organize triage would basically be able to MAYBE keep up with the heavy flow of marines at some points in the game. It's really easy to get backlogged, and when marines are waiting they shuffle, and clog the lower scanner in the old layout- making it really hard to keep track of who was waiting. At least with nice, coloured waiting lines we can more easily track who has been waiting and who is critical- and marines will actually get a visual sense of progress in their wait. If this is seen as too much of a buff I wouldn't mind cutting it down to three surgery rooms again- although I'd advocate for 3 sets of rooms prepped for surgery, and a general office instead- something for one on one doctor counsel (for rp) that can be converted into surgery once you order tools from RO.

[alekfenrir]

I like the layout, and as a set of lines in the middle it'd be nice to see people, even other medics, laying people out on the Triage lines based on how fucked up they are. That might be expecting a lot as most of the time its not a medic bringing them into Medical, and if it is a doctor they tend to go right to the scanner to figure out where to put people. Still; Layout looks nice and functional!

[misto]

while youre proposing medbay changes, heres a sweet tip - back on goonstation we had trouble with doctors always needing to let patients out the door rather than moving on to the next patient. we got around this by putting a button just inside the inner medbay doors that would open the doors momentarily to let them back out into the lobby, shutting the doors behind them. now, i realize that there is a risk of miscreants using this to sneek in or let their buddies in, but there is always a risk of people charging in whenever the doctor lets people out anyways, so it about equalizes in my mind. now healed patients can just excuse themselves. really, you should consider a "please let me out" button in many other departments too

now, on to your image here. right now i think your medbay has some ok flow concepts, you let people in the lower doors and can shove them out the upper doors. in your image youre clumping all the action into that central lobby, people who pass out by the doors or only get dragged just inside the doors and left may be neglected in favor of the crowded central lobby. risky!

youre right in that using the south hallways is the natural choice when offloading from a ds. south+west entrances are the natural intake lobbies, and north the natural output lobby.

here is some ideas

medbaycritique.jpg

so, to describe, compress the surgery rooms into a central block. south entrance serves as main intake as it does currently with west as secondary intake. then it proceeds much like current layout in that people are taken in from south and let out from north, but around an axis of the ORs. also take note that i recommend having windows in the sides and rears of the ORs that the docs inside can "pull the curtains" on if they wish to have privacy or wish to take a look around. awareness is important, it helps keep hurt patients from slipping thru the fingers.

i also made minor suggestions of doors between main lobby and big tall healing tubes room and door separating intake and output lobby(second one may be bad idea... yeah, forget about that)

also, consider making the ORs a stack of 4 going up and down, not a block of 4, so that each ORs privacy shutters may be pulled back so the doctor can have a peek at the lobby.]

ehhh how can i better explain, here look this

medbaymyplanz.png

[Bronimin]

Please have to leave via the same doors that they enter by

Okay, what if the top level is also redesigned a bit, and those ladders used as the exit point after surgery? Put the buttons to open the doors from the inside up there. The flow would become much better.

Onto the map, I'm not sure if we have vertically-oriented body scanners and while I like the idea of keeping the sleepers with the cryo pods, I don't like that they are near the red triage line and would prefer them near to the green. I'd ask that the sleeper and pods be flipped with the CMO office since more people will be coming in through the south entrance anyway.

I would also like the cyro room to be one tile wider and take that space out of the marine medical vendor room.

I don't like the vendors being outside the CMOs office, either. The entire space feels wasted, between those and the oxygen tanks. What if, instead, they were removed, the CMO's office pushed inwards and the vendors plonked down behind it, exposed to the hallways? Combined with the flip, this would leave them in the north corridor. It'd save me having to loot the pilots office for coffee, anyway.

Speaking of the tanks, I don't like them in the middle there but I'm not sure where else you'd put them. Maybe in that maintenance room, accessed through the rec room? There is nothing else in there, all it has are two empty water tanks if I recall. You could put the freezers in there as well.

[misto]

all the marine's supply rooms are on the lower deck, having people need to leave by going to the upper deck is no good, because 99% of the time they just want to go rearm

[Tidomann]

The same flow issues exist in the current design. The buttons there are still Id locked to normal marines so they can't let themselves out. We could easily squish the surgery rooms, but that might too much powergame vs aesthetics.

I'm at work so I will work on a mock I'm about 6 hours.

If vertical scanners don't exist I'll move them in between the surgery rooms. I'll remove the space between the triage lines and move the surgery rooms each one tile inward. This leave a single tile hallway that can act as an exit hallway with an I'd locked door and a button that anyone can use and open on the exit side. I'll snap a rough picture of what i am describing and edit this post.



Mirror exit on top side obviously

Downside, middle double door by symmetrical, scanners not symmetrical

[misto]

if youre hurting for space i dont think you should be shy about removing the metal foam bits

[Bronimin]

all the marine's supply rooms are on the lower deck, having people need to leave by going to the upper deck is no good, because 99% of the time they just want to go rearm

It would only be a bit longer, there are ladders directly north and south of the lvl 2 medbay doors, and ladders east right next to their prep rooms anyway.

[Fritigern]

I'm for a new medbay layout, I just don't know if any of the suggestions here are the ones I want to put my full support behind. I would rather just have whoever does the mapping for the ship to do a second pass based on suggestions.

As far as suggestions go, as others have said, we NEED a return of the open/close button for the medbay door so patients (and whoever else) can LET THEMSELVES OUT! We USED to have this and it was very helpful, this is just a pain.

As for the overall layout it needs to be massively streamlined. The South doors, as said, are the natural entrance to the medbay. It is the fastest ingress for both shuttles and the design must therefore use that to its advantage.

Also our medbay currently suffers from a huge amount of open space that really does nothing at all, especially around the cryo tanks. Cut that space out and re-purpose it for another operating theater as suggested. Also the upper medbay area is just all around useless at the moment. It could use some love as well.

[Tidomann]

Posted version two, here is the example of the flow of treatment in medical. Green door are all access (including the buttons to get out). Red doors require Medic/Doctor Access.




Edit:

Snip

I think your idea is great. It's basically conceding that south side should be a dedicated entrance. The issue is most marines want to leave that way post surgery to get back to the dropships asap. It also make charlie/delta members leaving to resupply have to fight the wave.

In the current live layout, most doctors step out to see who the next patient in the OR, and can see the waiting room from there. I need to go through and properly sprite this but it could be as simple as putting windows in between the scanner rooms and the lobby.

The idea is to only have patients requiring surgery to go past the middle barrier, and anyone else currently being treated for non-surgical injuries to remain outside.

As far as suggestions go, as others have said, we NEED a return of the open/close button for the medbay door so patients (and whoever else) can LET THEMSELVES OUT! We USED to have this and it was very helpful, this is just a pain.

Can't agree with you more.

Also the upper medbay area is just all around useless at the moment. It could use some love as well.

The only issue is until research is finally redesigned I'm hesitant to touch that area- as it's hard to gauge what is even required until the change occurs.

if youre hurting for space i dont think you should be shy about removing the metal foam bits

Foam bits are great for "RP"- but if I really need to take them out- (for example if sinks can't exist on one side of a wall) then I'll go ahead and do it.

[Tidomann]

I don't like the vendors being outside the CMOs office, either. The entire space feels wasted, between those and the oxygen tanks. What if, instead, they were removed, the CMO's office pushed inwards and the vendors plonked down behind it, exposed to the hallways? Combined with the flip, this would leave them in the north corridor. It'd save me having to loot the pilots office for coffee, anyway.

What if I did something like this? The anti symmetry is now triggering me but I think it's a better use of the space

► Show Spoiler

[Bronimin]

I'd tuck the western disposals bin into the corner and the southern one next to the cigarette machine but other than that it looks good. I'd still want more space around the cryo pods since right now you'd only be able to get one patient in and out at a time.

The bank of vendors would be the perfect place for chairs (there is a chronic lack of them for patients with minor injuries to wait around on, out of the way) but if you are so attached to them, they're not doing any harm. Personally, I'd move them into the rec room.

I can see that table with the cybernetics repair stuff getting in the way.