Produced on request, this is a small guide on producing the vast quantities of staple chems needed to sate the voracious appetites of all those medics who'll be clambering at your doorstep a few minutes after the round begins. My doctor character is Solomon Ginsberg, if you'd like some ethos to help you decide whether or not I'm worth listening to.
First, a small overview on what we're making:
The staple chems
These are the chems that every medic will benefit significantly from having on hand compared to their base loadout. These are the mixes that you should be preemptively stocking the dispenser with before anyone has a chance to ask. I'll explain why I choose the quantities I do later, in demonstrating why batches are important.
20u Bicaridine
40u IronSugar (20u Iron, 20u Sugar)
10u PeriDex+ (5u Dexalin Plus, 5u Peridaxon)
20u KeloDerm (10u Kelotane + 10u Dermaline)
These are not
ideal mixes. They do not end up .0133 repeating units under the OD limit, and they do not provide the maximal healing possible at every moment. You can make those mixes!
Here's why you shouldn't:
Volume
You are not making drugs for one medic. You are not carefully measuring out decimals to have three shining pill bottles ready to head planetside for the drop. You are making sure that the
eight medics can all walk up, grab a full load of your staple chems, and merrily skip planetside without grumbling under their breath about medstaff being awful yet again. Realistically, all eight medics probably won't come to pilfer your fridge, but you should hope that they do, exhort them to, and make sure that you're prepared for each and every one of them. But how can you possibly produce this vast number of pills in the mere 20-25 minutes you have before the first drop, and maybe your last time seeing any of those medics alive?
Batches
The name of the game, then, is speed, and to get production rolling fast enough, you need to have pre-measured volumes of chemicals that you can turn into pills in seconds flat, ideally only needing one beaker's worth of reagents. Take bicaridine, for instance:
To produce 12 pills of 20u bicaridine, set to 40u dispensing, and just pop in carbon, sugar, oxygen, carbon, carbon, carbon. Notch it into the chem master, make 120 units into 6 pills with default name, make the other 120 into 6 pills, and you're done- ready to bottle from nothing in seconds flat. You need to have a plan like this for all of your staple chems; your time needs to be spent clicking buttons, not thinking about which buttons to click, or there's no way you'll be able to meet demand.
Before we get into the meat and potatoes of recipes, there's one more thing that needs addressing:
Energy
Energy is your biggest limiter. Once you get the hang of producing your batches quickly, you'll find that time is quickly outpaced by energy as the obstacle between you and having your job done in 20 minutes. The key is to alternate between mixes that take a high amount of energy per pill produced and ones that take low amounts; you want to have enough energy to produce the demanding pills while never letting your energy rest at 100, as that means any additional regenerated power is just being wasted. 12 pills of 40u IronSugar will cost you 48 entire energy, but 12 pills of 20u KeloDerm will only cost you 8 if you use kelotane from the Weyland-Med. If you're running low on energy, make cheap mixes until your energy is high enough to make the more expensive ones.
And now, the important part.
Recipes
One time-consuming thing that I should probably also address is naming. You can use whatever convention you want, but as for me, I go for a simple route: when I make a pill, I type in any changes I want to make to the label- for example, changing the default label of Sugar (40 units) to IronSugar (40 units)- and then ctrl+c that string. Then I can paste that in for both the rest of the pills of that batch
and the hand labeler that I use to label the pill bottles for them. That way, the pill bottles are all labeled accurately with what's inside with almost zero effort or time spent on it. Whatever you do, just make it
fast.
20u Bicaridine
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Recommended method: inaprov from vendor, 12 pills, 20u
Energy used: low per pill, 12 total
Vend two inaprov bottles from the vendor, set them to transfer 60u at a time, and pour them in the bluespace beaker. Then, 40u dispensing: carbon, carbon, carbon
Turn 120u into 6 pills, repeat
12 pills, 20u
Energy used: medium per pill, 24 total
40u dispensing: carbon, oxygen, sugar, carbon, carbon, carbon
Turn 120u into 6 pills, repeat
Alternate method: produces 14 pills in each bottle
Bicaridine is the only chem I bother to do this with, because it's used in such high quantities and is so important.
Energy used: medium per pill, 42 total (don't be alarmed by the number, quite a bit will have regenerated by the time you're finished)
Use the same process as above to create 12 pills of 20u, but now, go back and do it twice more, leaving the pills sitting on top of the chemmaster. Then, make a half run by vending one inaprov bottle and then 30u of carbon, carbon. Turning that into 6 pills will leave exactly 42 pills of 20u bicard- exactly enough to fill up 3 pill bottles completely.
This is absolutely not required, but from my experiences as both medic and doctor, the extra two pills actually does make a difference, and it's also a good way to drain energy at the start of the shift so you can prepare yourself and your workspace without wasting energy.
40u IronSugar
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12 pills, 40u
Energy used: high per pill, 48 total
40u dispensing: iron, iron, iron, sugar, sugar, sugar
Add 60u of each to the buffer (you can transfer a custom amount of 60 of one substance and then just click all on the second, and it'll give you 60 of each in the buffer), and make three pills, labelling them IronSugar. Do the same for the rest in the chemmaster, then repeat.
How much you actually need to stuff into an IronSugar pill is up for debate; personally, I've never had the opportunity to stick around a patient long enough to see how much blood various amounts will give them, so I just stick with 20u of each because I can make them in tandem with my other drugs without too much trouble and I've never had a complaint.
10u PeriDex+
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Recommended method: Peri from dispenser
Energy used: low per pill, 16 total
Dispense the two peridaxon bottles from the Weyland-Med next to the chem dispenser and pour them into your bluespace beaker. Restock them (you can bring extra peri bottles from downstairs to save some tedium here, but it's not necessary) and repeat this twice, to have 120u of peridaxon in the beaker. Add 10u of phoron, then 40u dispense oxygen, oxygen, carbon, iron. In the chemmaster, transfer 60u each of peri and dex+ to the buffer and make 12 pills out of it, bottle them, then repeat with the rest. Dump the leftover phoron back in its own beaker.
Alternate method: from scratch
Energy used: high per pill, 42 total
Best used if you're scrambling in later in the shift to restock only a few things and energy is not a concern
20u dispensing: carbon, sugar, oxygen, carbon, carbon, carbon. Add 20u phoron. 40u dispensing: oxygen, oxygen, oxygen. 20u dispensing: water, oxygen, sodium, sodium, sodium. 40u dispensing: carbon, iron.
Now you have the same mix as above to distribute. With practice, this is faster than the above, but it uses vastly more energy, so I don't recommend using it during the pre-drop crunch.
20u KeloDerm
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Recommended method: Kelotane from dispenser
Energy used: low per pill, 8 total
Dispense three kelotane bottles from the Weyland-Med. Grab one, set it to 60u transfer per click with a right click on the bottle, and dump it in your beaker. Repeat with the other two. In the dispenser, 40u dispense phosphorous and oxygen. Make 6 pills from 60u Kelotane and 60u Dermaline in the buffer, repeat, and then get rid of the excess Kelotane (you can just move it into the buffer and eject the beaker when you're finished, saves you having to dump it on the floor)
Alternate method: from scratch
Energy used: medium per pill, 24 total
40u dispense: carbon, carbon, silicon, silicon, phosphorous, oxygen. Same outcome as above, but with no excess. Again, this method is faster, but requires three times the energy. In the beginning of the round, just save that energy for Bicaridine or IronSugar.
Bonus: 15u Oxycodone
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12 pills, 15u
Energy used: Zero!
This is boring and tedious and time consuming, but also absolutely free! If you have zero energy and nothing to do, well, it won't impact the rest of your work at all, so you might as well do this, if only to have your personal stock of painkillers a step above what medics get.
Vend the 4 Oxycodone bottles from the Weyland-Med and pour them into your beaker while restocking them, then repeat four times. Pour two bottles more in, and you have 180u, which will get you 12 pills of 15u each.
Thanks for reading; I hope that this guide can help some aspiring doctors get their medics (and themselves) what they need to make everyone's rounds as fun as possible. If you have any suggestions, criticism, or vitriol, please leave a comment.
Edited to add using inaprov bottles for bicaridine manufacture instead of doing it yourself.
