My gripes with the new medbay

frances
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My gripes with the new medbay Jun 23, 2014 1:46:57 GMT Rusty Shackleford, halorocks22, and 1 more like this

Post by frances on Jun 23, 2014 1:46:57 GMT

Since I've been playing in medical a bit recently, I honestly feel like the new medbay leaves to be desired. It's harder to navigate, has some design flaws, and doesn't really do anything better than the old medbay. Basically, to me, it feels like the design was changed "for the heck of it", while making it a lot clunkier for no good reason. Without further ado, I'll attempt to list all of the issues I have with the new design, encouraging you to submit your own opinions on whether you agree or disagree with me:

The hallway's layout is awkward. While the previous medbay had a single north-to-south hallway, with a corridor off the side, this one has a weird, tetris-shaped room which leads to everything from everywhere, followed by an (imo) equally confusing cactus-hallway. Additionally, as you can see here, i.imgur.com/bAdKGFi.png?1 , the shape of the main room gives off a very disorganized feel, with consoles, tables, sleepers and lockers organized haphazardly around a very vast, empty space that's difficult to fill.
The morgue's layout is equally awkward, with two slabs just standing in the middle of the room, and opening to the side. Considering slabs can be rotated, they should be on either side of the room, not in the middle. Additionally, while bodybags have been readded, the morgue is still missing the necessary paper bin and filing cabinet used for filing autopsies.
The CMO's office has bad furniture placement, with the CMO's desk being in the middle of the room, and a large, empty space existing behind it. Additionally, the full-room carpet doesn't fit with the regular furniture, or the rest of the medbay. Considering it also needs to overlook medbay, as well as be an easily accessible place by all station staff coming to see the CMO, I think it shouldn't be this far back into the medbay as a whole.
The recovery room is badly designed in general. The beds are placed directly against windows overlooking the main hallway (patients need privacy, and no one wants to see burn victims being treated into what essentially constitutes the medbay's "storefront". Additionally, it's a bit too big, with all of the essential furniture (beds, tables and lockers) being concentrated against one wall/little niche. Also, the beds (which can't be rotated, and thus would need to be moved) have the patients' feet be against the wall, and are lacking blankets.
Surgery is more cramped than before, as it lost a table.
Storage is more cramped, and a mess of random gear piled up on two L-shaped tables, whereas the old storage had neatly organized medkits.
The psych office has been cut down by half, losing a locker and (I'm pretty sure) a filing cabinet, and reducing it to basically nothing.
The only vendor is all the way at the back of the medbay.
Unlike many other rooms which got cut down, the break room actually doubled in size, while still remaining about the same in content, which takes up valuable space which could be used for other rooms. It also feels a bit weird that the staff's beds should be in the same open area where they go eat and take their breaks.
There's an AI holopad in every single room, which honestly feels weird. The main hallway has like, three, four if you count the one in the adjacent reception area, two of which are essentially right by each other.
There's also emergency closets everywhere, which you wouldn't expect to be a thing, seeing as the medbay is in the middle of the station, never gets any breaches, and should be equipped to deal with oxygen deprivation, because yeah, medbay. As an example, the main room + hallway alone have five emergency closets, which feels a bit excessive. No other area of the ship currently has this many emergency closets.
There's disposal units everywhere. It's okay for genetics to get one, but do they one in cloning and in the research lab? The central room has two disposal units that are five tiles away from each other, and then yeah. Just, trash cans everywhere.
Another really big problem is furniture spam. Basically, having a bunch of the same piece of furniture repeating, usually in a row, creating very bland and artificial areas. Examples here: i.imgur.com/WxennQO.jpg

As for things that are actually good:

The chemistry lab looks good, and is functional
The new waiting room is definitely better than the old one.

That's about all I can think of for now. Agree? Disagree? Any other suggestions? Post them here.

Last Edit: Jun 23, 2014 1:54:29 GMT by frances

Rusty Shackleford
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My gripes with the new medbay Jun 23, 2014 2:07:48 GMT

Post by Rusty Shackleford on Jun 23, 2014 2:07:48 GMT

THIS.

I prefer the old layout. It was simple and served its purpose with an even distribution of space for everything. If medbay had been tweaked from that design rather than completely redesigned as it is now, there wouldn't be any of these problems.

While I'm getting used to the new layout (actually, it's less like "getting used to" and more like "learning to deal with"), it's still all very haphazard and blocky. As someone who spends most of their rounds in this department, I can tell you that it's not streamlined very well, even with the fixes to the CMO's office and cryogenics/cloning/genetics.

ALSO, the fact that one of the closets in surgery storage is a chemical closet instead of a second anesthetic closet really bugs me. A lot.

Last Edit: Jun 23, 2014 2:10:21 GMT by Rusty Shackleford

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bluesp34r
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My gripes with the new medbay Jun 23, 2014 3:27:21 GMT

Post by bluesp34r on Jun 23, 2014 3:27:21 GMT

I actually like the new medbay a lot. However, there's still a few things that bug me.

1) The psych's office is really small. There's hardly enough space for ERP anymore.

2) The break room is so damn big.

3) NO FUCKING SHUTTERS IN THE PSYCH OR THE CMO'S OFFICE.

4) That damn disposal unit that's right below the exit doors. It always, ALWAYS, manage to get in my way somehow. It's just so awkwardly placed and it makes me more mad than anything in this game.

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forgottentraveller
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My gripes with the new medbay Jun 23, 2014 5:08:41 GMT

Post by forgottentraveller on Jun 23, 2014 5:08:41 GMT

I have three main issues with the layout as it stands.

1) The halls a very tight and the gaps at the sleeper scanner are tiny leaving doctors with rollers and patient coming and going even to a complete traffic jam. This also leads onto the fact that the surgery room is a fair distance with several turns away even if you cut through storage to get there which is horrific if you have someone with an internal bleed.
2)Surgery has lost a clean layout of the tools into a jumbled mess where you almost always need to use the pick up verb to get the tool you need.
3)With the halls and getting from room to room, or through a room. There are many many tight corners and thin spaces this is a place that is bustling back and forth in a crisis and has a dire need for spaces to move not only as a character but often with an unpassable roller bed with a patient who needs treatment. A mix of getting A to B, B to A, B to C and C to A all at the same time and we would quickly end up with four dead bodies for cloning and doctors with frayed nerves.

On the positive. The entrance has had the perfect overhaul it has needed for an age. Two people can now work in chem without killing each other over floorspace.

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Less
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My gripes with the new medbay Jun 23, 2014 7:50:15 GMT

Post by Less on Jun 23, 2014 7:50:15 GMT

Gonna be honest, other than the fact that it gets food/cigarettes lobbed at it when brand intelligence happens, I really love the new chemistry placement. The entrance of medbay is pretty, but the rest of it is a jumbled clusterfuck of mess.

The above gripes I agree with. The new medbay design is clunky as heck. And here's an inter-departmental gripe: the new genetics placement completely cuts off robotics from the morgue (there used to be a science maint hall connecting them), other than from the main corridor. This means the bodies from robotics -must- be brought through the hall, and on a more meta level, it means roboticists have one less escape route if shit starts hitting the fan.

nikolaithebeast Lore Developer Well then. Posts: 1,064	My gripes with the new medbay Jun 23, 2014 9:08:54 GMT Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by nikolaithebeast on Jun 23, 2014 9:08:54 GMT It's a bit too limited in the paths you can take, and it becomes a bit of a bother. Also, genetics is fucking massive.
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nikolaithebeast Lore Developer Well then. Posts: 1,064	My gripes with the new medbay Jun 23, 2014 9:09:10 GMT Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by nikolaithebeast on Jun 23, 2014 9:09:10 GMT Although, I do like it.
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deatacita
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My gripes with the new medbay Jun 27, 2014 23:02:38 GMT

Post by deatacita on Jun 27, 2014 23:02:38 GMT

Ffrances is making a new version merging new stuff and me and moch's medbay. I've seen it and it's baws.

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deatacita
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My gripes with the new medbay Jun 27, 2014 23:10:04 GMT

Post by deatacita on Jun 27, 2014 23:10:04 GMT

Jun 23, 2014 1:46:57 GMT frances said:

Unlike many other rooms which got cut down, the break room actually doubled in size, while still remaining about the same in content, which takes up valuable space which could be used for other rooms. It also feels a bit weird that the staff's beds should be in the same open area where they go eat and take their breaks.

I think the rest of your complaints are rather valid, but the "Staff beds" in the break room is a concept used in real-world hospitals, known as the "On-Call" room, where doctors who aren't currently attending a patient can rest since they typically have long-long-long shifts. It's likely a future medical facility would still have these.