It’s been a while since we had a detailed update on the Medical Profession, it would be great if you could put the current updated design up for discussion before rolling out the hospitals which are currently in white-box. That would enable any identified issues which you agree ought to be updated to be done in a timely manner rather having to go back and re-work polished art. Some thoughts: Field Medic vs Med Tech & Doctor It may be useful to clearly distinguish FPS healing gameplay from Hospital gameplay when talking about this game. Dragging, healing in FPS with the new tool(s), and stabilizing a patient for transport are all “Field Medic” gameplay, which ties to the Cutlass Red and Apollo Medivac. It is not yet clear what actual gameplay there will be for players on an Endeavor Hope or Apollo Triage. Recalling the design intent is that “it’s up to the Endeavor’s crew to employ their expertise to try and save the patient” once a patient actually gets to an Endeavor Hope, there really does need to be gameplay beyond managing automated repair beds that have no actual gameplay. This is literally the parallel of Repair gameplay – there is no realistic opportunity for players to repair ships if everyone can just fly to a station and clicks “repair all”, just as no-one needs a starfarer when you can refuel with in-built fuel scoops. Clearly it really will take many players “out of their comfort zone” to have to rely on other players to try to save their character. However that reliance already exists in this game’s design, as big industrial ships are intentionally designed with weak firepower so that they require escorts to save their ship. In terms of “look and feel” The Expanse does a fantastic job of presenting plausible future-medical tech. If Star Citizen includes gameplay modelled on that (including using somewhat magical devices to “find the bleed” and using and applying gadgets in a correct order) I am sure a lot of folks would be happy. . Agent Smith rather than getting bored Instant respawning or instant “choose upgrades and click apply” will destroy any possibility of ship-based medical gameplay. This is a tension between RPG/sim gamers and FPS gamers who simply want to get back out into the fight – however the ‘Verse has been pitched and the Hope sold as having gameplay inside hospitals, and other elements such as quantum travel, flying to outposts, and refining have significant “down” times, so medical gameplay should not be effectively cancelled out of the design simply because one segment of the playerbase wish to respawn and immediately rush back into the fight. That said, there needs to be a balance – floating in space waiting for rescue could get really boring, so I would advocate that when a player is down and incapacitate (e.g. awaiting being rescued, transported to a Hope and healed) then when the player should have the option to “Agent Smith” into an NPC Med Tech (if there are any available) on the nearest Hope if the captain has chosen “Allow Smithing – On” for their ship. The “down” player could then walk into the mess room and say “Hey I just caught a signal from a pilot going down over near Yela, we should scan there and send a Red.” And then rather than being a passive spectator the player could be actively involved in try to “save” their own character, without breaking the “realistic-ish” nature of the ‘Verse, and without displacing the ship’s crew from gameplay. . Tier 4+ beds The Apollo Triage being able to have a Tier 3 bed really does beg the question why anyone would bother with the immensely more expensive to buy, crew, and run Hope. Perhaps the simplest answer is to have a Tier 4 bed that only exists in true hospitals, such as Orison General and the Hope, where things like organ transplants, gene therapies, and if you can get the alien tech parts to upgrade your bed, rejuvenation therapy (+1 life) can happen. Obviously, whether there are 3 or 4 bed types is a good thing to know before you finalize making a hospital with areas for each bed type! Building in physical space for possible future add-ons (e.g. if a Bed 5 for alien patients is added or Bed 6 for an illegal upgrade to a playable Bladerunner synthetic) in the structure is obviously important too. Speaking of which, “yes please” to illegal Bladerunner Synth upgrades! . Hospital patient/player flow Real hospitals generally have at least two designed channels for the movement of people in and out of the hospital – general such as the grand lobby in the Orison General hospital, and clinical which we have not seen yet. There must be a fast-track way to get patients into a hospital, without snarling up on all the other people going in and out. For the hospital I work at, we have the main lobby on the ground level, and a four pad helicopter bay that has doors directly into our Trauma Center – turn right and you are in ICU, go down the dedicated lift and you are in the ED Trauma area. For a gold star in realism? The lift should wait on the flight deck level :blush: Orison should have the same thing – two or more private pads for medical transports only e.g. Cutlass Red with the required standings with that hospital to have permission to use that pad. Make the lift(s) from a landing pad huge, so they can fit beds / trolleys / gurney whatever are added in the future. We have over-sized lifts in real life due to pumps at one end of the bed, monitoring, airway equipment, o2 tanks, and 3-5 staff around the casualty. If you're making a hospital lift, make it bigger than you think so all the stuff not-yet-made will fit! Everyone else? Should go through security scanners, decontamination airlocks, and yes past advertising trying to sell you stuff including coffee. Even 900 years from now hospitals will still run on coffee! And oxygen, synthetic blood, and a myriad of other supplies, so there really should be a third entrance area to stores for cargo gameplay especially once physicallyized inventory is a thing. . Naming and portrayal of modern real-world professions Over time, the names for healers have changed greatly. Currently, “Doctor” and “Nurse” have very specific meanings in the West, but those terms themselves are also falling into confusion with nurse-practitioners who do more than many doctors and “Physician’s Assistants” who exist because doctors wanted clinicians to assist them outside of the regulated nursing profession. Who does what also changes: in WW1, some nurses were anaesthetists, now that is exclusively a Doctor’s job. The reason this all came to mind is in the Carrack there is a “Doctors” station next to the scanner … which is currently where a Radiologist would be, rather than a doctor. Currently in the real world we have a chronic shortage of nurses, which was the case before last’s years unfortunate events. Some are of the view that the media portrayal of nursing is partly to blame for that, as many TV shows portray doctors as smart heros and nurses as incompetent gossips who exist solely for romantic storylines for the doctors. The profession also suffers from historical gender role pay and power disparities, and movies, films, and some games can push sterotypes that implicitly justify those disparities. M+A+S+H famously had “Hot Lips Houlihan” – but the writers of that show got it right that she was also highly capable. If CIG ship a nurses station where NPC nurses in short skirts stand around gossiping all day, and male doctor NPCs save the player’s character, then the project will quite rightly be open to ridicule. The safest option? Simplify the descriptions right down and avoid the entire issue. 900 years from now the arcane names really should have been swept away anyway: no more Resident, House Officer, MR, Assoc Prof, Matron, etc – just “Doctor”, “Medical Tech” and “[Field] Medic”. Keeping Doc is important for a game because some folks really want to play that, and gameplay wise it would be sensible to progress from the community to tech then on to Doc. After all, you don’t want just anyone sawing off your foot to put on the replacement cybernetic! . ECG Trace Art – update to realistic “normal”. Given the talent of the people working on this game, the ECG trace could vary based on the player’s actual health status, however such detail is likely not worth the effort. However in terms of making the game “look real” please for the love of Cardiac Nurses everywhere, please update the ECG trace to an actual normal ECG trace. No, 900 years from now it won’t be different assuming people are not all clones with serious heart defects. Also running a short distance should not make your heart rate leap so much, surely our characters are not so unfit! . About that ship spawning It’s probably time to address the elephant in the room. If everything is meant to be physicalized … how exactly will an Endeavor Hope be able to magically spawn endless small ships? I’d scrap that part of the Hope’s design; after all there are in-game player orgs who have already offered to establish in-game transport services, and having a Hull E parked close with packed ships to set up and sell to players who respawned really should be a thing – and gameplay. As a design, in my view it’s ok to leave it up to players to answer things such as “how do you get off the Endeavor?” rather than building a system to solve it for them. My 2c ty! Key Refs: 12879-Death-Of-A-Spaceman 14972-Research-Unbound-The-MISC-Endeavor 14994-MISC-Endeavor-Q-A-Part-3 16671-The-Shipyard-Medical-Gameplay