Pods are not the kind of cloning being discussed; we're referring to the cloning machine, which was removed from the game wholesale (with the intent to make quietly re-implementing it impossible, because any semi-removal would see the playerbase and mappers try to re-integrate it, because removing cloning was wildly unpopular). I understand you're trying to analogize them, since you've never played with old med, but they really aren't that comparable. This is a good write-up on the state of cloning with pods in general, in the sense that it's summed up the main problems/differences:
- The reason you would want cloning over pods is for situations like Xenos, non-medbay Bombings (though simply putting the cloner in a room farther from the medbay floor would be a good option so you have a backup even if medbay does get bombed, it used to be in Genetics for this reason), just general disasters that level large quantities of crew, pods do little to help. While pods are very scaleable, they do not solve the SSD problem, which cloning does: if you have scanned yourself before, you are aware you have a high chance of being cloned.
- Database management and skill to use. Replica pods are a clusterfuck to manage and use. There is pretty much no reason to forcibly integrate cloning into Botany instead of Research, replica pods were supposed to be a neat niche feature to give you the unique pod people race, not the default option. Cloning keeps your database clean for you.
- Conventional surgery is not fast or efficient, as it requires two people. Cloning (and pods) are a single point solution, while surgery is a two point solution; for every second spend in surgery, you have wasted a second for two people. If the surgeon is good, the raw time spent for crew is at an absolute minimum 80 seconds due to the timers (40*2); in situations where surgery is not necessary, defibs were already the best option, obviously. If the surgeon is bad (kiwi medbay surgeons have consistently demonstrated an inability/unwillingness to learn medicine, thereby relegating to using the Tend Wounds surgery, and fumbling through that), they may spend up to or beyond 2 minutes on a single body, which is 4 minutes in crew time. It's fine to waste doctor's time if you are on a lowpop, no deaths, RP-heavy round, not when the station is in a catastrophe. The payoff for grinding for pods is minimal, grinding for a cloner would be a great reward for research in such cases.
Mannitol is one of the few traditional medications that slipped past the Cobby filter and still works on just about everything, that's solid advice, and I agree that a large part of the problem I've seen is less with the raw time to do surgery and more with the doctors fumbling surgeries, but it still doesn't address what happens when the station is truly in a state of disaster. High death rounds aren't the most common state for the station to be in (the server seems to be hardstuck on changelings or traitorlings with a low midround antag rate) but I have not seen medbay navigate them successfully a single time that I have been on.
It's easy to say "medbay is competent" in a low stress environment where 1-2 people die per ten minutes. Cloning isn't really for that, though. It's for those scary rounds, to provide the station a chance to endure instead of just shuttling up and leaving right when things are getting fun.
That might be a creeping problem with the entire codebase though, because I haven't seen the station go depressurized
once. Not one section, not a few rooms, I mean 30% of the whole station. That used to be a normal, fairly frequent occurrence. /tg/ seems to have turned up bruising beyond the point of reasonability (because they're gay) but having to patch up the station and survive is atmos and engineering's main job, not setting up (1) reactor and either afking the whole round or making haha funny slip gas. It's certainly not a reason for a shuttle call. Where are the meteors? What happened to space carp? Why the
fuck do bombs break
walls faster than
reinforced windows? Even without these previously-common problems the station was implicitly supposed to handle on its own time, things seem very tame in general.
Kiwistation is fun and I'm enjoying myself a lot, mainly on account of the the playerbase, especially the newest players feeling out what's possible and having a good time with it. I kind of worry that they're missing out on the authentic experience, though. Everywhere I turn it's like I bump into another "new thing" that has no explicit purpose other than to make the game slower, less chaotic, less kinetic, less creative. There's some cool innovations with systems, but the fact that they only exist to gate you
out of doing stuff you used to always be able to do (or within a few minutes of the round start, anyway), that stings. Because there seems to have been this vision that equipment checks and skill checks to get shit done were a feature you shouldn't be able to overcome, not simply a temporary problem to bypass, as antithetical of a paradigm shift that is to SS13 as a whole.
If this was what SS13 was like when I first started, well, I probably wouldn't love the game as much as I do.
Well, more on the topic of cloning and regardless of how calm the round is, cloning enables players to pursue much more dangerous (i.e. FUN) behaviors: groups of miners can challenge bosses without obvious perma-death from being too far to do surgery on, the station can afford to send away teams, people can get to exploring other Z-levels, these sorts of adventurous behaviors were far more common pre 2019 because you could always say bounce a signal or tell people to watch your suit and get yourself cloned.
It used to be a decent split between cloning and borging, but now simply shitting out positronic brains is faster and far more likely to return players to the game, but roboticists spend more time on unnecessary gygaxes to self-antag with, on average, even in particularly dangerous rounds.
To up my issues-per-post count so I don't get accused of wall of texting™ in a discussion of a very complicated game with well over a decade of history to brush through, I think Johan mentioned the Singularity and Teslas being gutted so that the Supermatter shard is the only real option to power the station, that's stupid and dumb and part of what I'm talking about of gutting features to do some weird streamlining of play for no good reason.
There was also an Antimatter engine for a while as the "safe" option, a gas turbine, and even a thermoelectric generator that floated into and out of /tg/ and goon canon for ages, which gave atmospheric technicians a way to power the station, too. I think
some of these may still be available through cargo, but I haven't checked to see if all of them are. I've never been a fan of the Tesla, but Singuloose was one of the more fun disaster states, with a chance of doing nothing or, if a traitor beaconed it, absolute havoc. It certainly wasn't a guaranteed shuttle call in the prior cases, unless the crew was particularly lazy, and monitoring it gave the Engineers and AI something to do when things get particularly slow.
Having a full Singularity kit just lying around in Engineering (instead of having to order one, if that's even possible) would be nice. Also, telescience being gutted is still gay and always has been.
