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Silly Builder, Surgery is for Doctors

NO LONGER NEEDED FOR A17 - THE ISSUES HAVE BEEN FIXED AS DEFAULT BEHAVIOR

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Geckulon Decktar's log, Mayor of Togetherness's Crag

Date: 14th of Summer, 5501

We've returned from our -

Now that I'm thinking about it, since when is "summer" a month? I must remember to talk to my astronomers about this.

Let me start over.

We've returned from our last trip to the charmingly named "Fartburg". As usual, the colonists offloaded a huge amount of nearly unusable clothing, several hats made from a rather suspicious form of leather, and "Pemmican, wink wink". It is unclear what makes this different from normal pemmican, aside from the addition of knowing glances and several nods at the hats.

In most ways, the Fartburgian colonists have done a marvelous job of establishing a foothold on this barren rock we call home. In the last year they've built a massive freezer as well as thick walls surrounding the entire colony. Their industriousness cannot be understated, which makes the upcoming events all the more confusing.

On our trip inwards, we met several scythers lying on the ground and slowly rocking back and forth. They were absolutely covered in moss, suggesting that they had been left in the elements for at least two months.

Which means they've been left there since Winter. Which is, as we all know, a month. Winter. A month. Yes.

Anyway. Continuing.

Upon sighting our caravan, several of the Fartburgian citizens left the base and ran to the scythers, carrying bags of medical tools, and proceeded to clumsily tear off the scythers' limbs. Several of the blades were damaged during this action. I asked if they had someone better at surgical manipulations, as perhaps more of the valuable limbs would survive intact, but their response was something along the lines of "you're crazy, surgery on mechanoids is for builders, not people who are skilled at surgery".

(I say "something along the lines of" because he was nearly drowned out by sounds of tearing metal. I may have the exact wording wrong.)

Black, my right-hand man, suggested that perhaps they had no better doctors, but I remembered a skilled doctor by the name of Emu who was tending minor injuries on our last visit, three months ago, in Autumn, which is definitely a month and not a season.

Black suggested we set up our trade post directly in the middle of all their turrets to ensure that we take as much damage as possible in the event of a raid. For reasons that I frankly can no longer comprehend, I agreed, and as we waited for their leader Chef to arrive, we saw Emu herself walking out of a building carrying a freshly-removed lung.

This was concerning until we remembered that lungs, like all body parts, don't rot or biodegrade in any way, and so naturally we offered Emu a large quantity of silver for her still-warm spare lung, which she accepted immediately.

After purchasing the scyther blades and other miscellany mentioned above, we suggested to Chef and Emu that perhaps Emu should do the scyther surgery in the future. Chef gave us a dark look, mumbled "I've tried", and retreated to his room; we did not see him for the remainder of our visit.

As we left, we passed a large fully-automated battle tank lying on the ground watching the stars, and a sarcophagus that commemorated a Fartburg colonist walking around naked while watched by oysters. The epitaph read:

HERE LIES KITTYCAT
SHE DIED THE WAY SHE LIVED
WALKING AROUND NAKED AND GETTING MAULED BY A PANTHER

We spent several minutes admiring it, and can only hope to purchase art of such beauty on our next visit.

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Addendum:

Reading over this log entry a second time, I am beginning to believe that my entire existence is a drug-induced hallucination.

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See, there's this weird subtlety in how Rimworld jobs work.

The job definition says which work type is used for the job. So, for example, the "mechanoid surgery" job thinks it uses the Repair work type.

Which seems reasonable.

But there isn't necessarily any connection between what work type it *thinks* it uses and what skill it actually *does* use.

Mechanoid surgery is the same as all other surgery. Like all surgery, it uses Medicine.

Which is weird. Because we're talking mechanoids here. But that's what it does.

And so the end result here is that your construction workers will see a Scyther in need of limb removal, run over to it, and then use their nearly-nonexistent Medicine skill to do surgery, frequently losing the Scyther's limbs. That's bad.

Changing it to *actually* use the Repair work type is quite complicated. But changing it to correctly link to the Medicine skill is simple. And, let's be honest, you probably have more skilled construction workers than you do doctors, so it's not like we're making things easier for you.

So now, your medicine-incompetent workers won't go try to remove scyther limbs. They'll fix stuff like they should, and your doctors will go take care of removing those pricey scyther bits.

Does not require a new save game - this can be transparently added and removed from any savegame you already have.

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-- Visit https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=26623.msg269333#msg269333 for more info and other mods --