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Closed Hemosynth Shouldn't Be A Cure-All

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Wes

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Here's a suggestion I got from @Deleted User - He pointed out that in reality, nanomachines would probably cause a lot of problems in other species that they're not designed for. They'd likely trigger immune systems and cause clotting and other bad stuff. This would probably happen for humans too but in SARP it's long been established hemosynth plays nice with humans. IC it was probably designed that way because Nekovalkyrja were designed to work with humans. Anyway, I thought this was a great observation and it fits into the recent discussion about Yamatai/Nekovalkyrja being seen as overpowered. By adding it to the lore that standard HS only works on Nekos, Minkans, and humans, we can help clarify these limitations.
 
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Given how diverse Star Army is, having this be a cure all gives GM the means to heal any of the crew. If we start to split this out then we would have to cover many different articles in order to heal a crew. While I do not like this being a cure all, I also do not wish to have to research 15 wiki pages just to cure my crew should I decide to do so.
 
Given how diverse Star Army is, having this be a cure all gives GM the means to heal any of the crew. If we start to split this out then we would have to cover many different articles in order to heal a crew. While I do not like this being a cure all, I also do not wish to have to research 15 wiki pages just to cure my crew should I decide to do so.
Maybe not a perfect cure all then but something like Bacta in star wars that helps expedite healing but that's about it
 
Given how diverse Star Army is, having this be a cure all gives GM the means to heal any of the crew. If we start to split this out then we would have to cover many different articles in order to heal a crew. While I do not like this being a cure all, I also do not wish to have to research 15 wiki pages just to cure my crew should I decide to do so.
I also reference that you shouldn't be able to have a magical cure all. It's just generally unbalanced, and this has more narrative flair. It forces people to get creative with solutions, and overally promotes general creativity.
 
Given how diverse Star Army is, having this be a cure all gives GM the means to heal any of the crew. If we start to split this out then we would have to cover many different articles in order to heal a crew. While I do not like this being a cure all, I also do not wish to have to research 15 wiki pages just to cure my crew should I decide to do so.
That's fair, but think of it from the medic player's perspective, giving them multiple tools to use instead of using the same thing every time, helps make the RP less repetitive.
 
This was never an issue before and frankly I'm not sure why it's an issue now. If people don't want hemosynth to work on their characters, then it doesn't have to work. I suggest to leave it up to the player being healed and the character doing the healing.
I think it makes more sense to canonically state what it works on and doesn't work on, than to have people inconsistently winging it and contradicting each other because there's no information available.
 
That's why you design the machines for the species for species that weren't designed for it. I'd say the reason works on humans because they're a fully-known example with all gotchas figured out and the system is intelligent enough to design successful machines for known factors. The issue is more that you can't stick them in other kinds of folks without the control system in charge of assembling and configuring the machines sort of data already. They could also "do their thing and self destruct into benign components" more quickly than most things's systems could react is another possibility.
 
For Senti specifically, the nano-and femptomachines used by most Yamataian medical technologies. are preyed upon by the Senti immune system symbiote, causing blood infections.

The same key that makes them nearly immune to most normal viral infections and even the high viral load required for infection of most illnesses can be easily handled without downsides. More often than not, these bacteria break down the complex proteins of cell waste, prions, viral shells, nanomachines, whatever, into fructose and sucralose for the body to use. This can even be helpful in dealing with venoms, as the enzymes will be surrounded by small bacterial colonies, preventing them from acting in their designed capacity. With large doses of viral load such as a hemosynth injection will cause the symbiote to reproduce out of control and cause massive opportunistic blood infections.

The other downside is that while Senti are bioplastic and are capable of switching to an iron hemogloben in stead of their normal cyanogloben, they do have hemogloben recycling organs, which will nearly immediately break down the oxygen carrying capacity of the hemosynth and turn it into more food for the symbiote.

Combined with their oil based blood solvent and the saline used for most injectable drugs, and we have a recipe for cardiac arrhythmia as the saline breaks down the fluid continuity of the blood. Combined with the osmosis properties of water, the saline will dissolve vital components of the blood, causing clots and coagulation, even if you can solve the cardiac arrest.

TL;DR: Hemosynth is horrifyingly lethal to your senti crew.
 
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I think it makes more sense to canonically state what it works on and doesn't work on, than to have people inconsistently winging it and contradicting each other because there's no information available.
That's kind of real medicine though. Some people won't respond to certain treatments where other people will. In this case the contradiction that may or may not occur isn't really that big of a deal, because it can happen in real life too.
 
I do want to say though that I was under the impression hemosynth was only for things whose biology was based on it, i.e. PNUgen Bioroids.

If any Neps were shooting it up I would have assumed it was recreational.
 
I also reference that you shouldn't be able to have a magical cure all. It's just generally unbalanced, and this has more narrative flair. It forces people to get creative with solutions, and overally promotes general creativity.
I don’t mean to be rude, but just because you believe something’s unbalanced doesn’t mean it needs to be removed or changed, Deleted User, particularly when it’s been a part of the setting since (or, at least, extremely close to) the very beginning - as is the case with things such as the Psionic Signal Controller.
That's fair, but think of it from the medic player's perspective, giving them multiple tools to use instead of using the same thing every time, helps make the RP less repetitive.
What about bacta, then? It’s a “cure all” in Star Wars that works on just about everyone - and yet there’s been dozens upon dozens of novels filled with “narrative flair” and “general creativity” regarding its use, particularly in the (extremely awesome <3) X-Wing series.

Moving onto the topic at hand, I’m opposed to this suggestion for the following two reasons:
  • Similar to what Immortal said - welcome back, btw~ - it should be left up to the GM and the player characters of a plot whether or not they want to use hemosynth for healing. In my opinion it’s also not terribly hard to find reasons for it to not be available - off the top of my head, for instance, I can already think of a couple reasons: the hemosynth was contaminated by the plot’s Big Bad and now causes harm instead of healing, or the PCs aren’t in a position where they can readily access hemosynth (or have a limited supply for whatever reason).
  • Yamatai has had literal decades to ensure that femtomachines don’t cause adverse effects in the plethora of alien species - Abwehrans, Elysians, Phodians, Kodians, Delsaurians, Lorath, Iromakuanhe, and so on - that interact with it on a daily basis. If the femtomachines did cause issues, I feel that SARA (or whoever’s responsible for such things) would have been more then competent enough to isolate the problem and resolve it before it caused a diplomatic crisis or three - especially since that I’m sure many of the aforementioned species maintain one or more embassies on at least one Yamataian planet or station.
Edit: Apologies if I came across as too blunt, especially in the first section - had to write this in a hurry. >_<
 
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Very good points, but more than half of those species are Human-derived and all but one of the rest are carbon-iron mammals or near-mammals and close at hand since the beginning. Those decades are to develop them for species they have on hand to study.

Another thing is, something like the disinfectants and cleaners are under active control at all times by the nodal system, that can give an abort, destroy self now message faster than any organic system can react, and are only working on the surface and then done, not permeating all tissues- only a very tiny dose is going inside someone. Those kinds of machines are inherently less hazardous than an infusion.
 
To bounce off of what Frost said, Star Wars has bacta allergies for those situations where maybe an author doesn't want bacta to work quite as well for one reason or another. Could easily have a similar mechanic (written or unwritten) with hemosynth that allows players to decide whether they want the healing to work or not.
 
I just dislike the mentality that Yamatai is and continues to remain arguably the best and most perfect faction in existance on the site, with cures for everything, and counters to every counter. And I think dismissing that opinion on the ground that it's "my opinion" implies that it shouldn't matter.
 
Very good points, but more than half of those species are Human-derived and all but one of the rest are carbon-iron mammals or near-mammals and close at hand since the beginning. Those decades are to develop them for species they have on hand to study.

Another thing is, something like the disinfectants and cleaners are under active control at all times by the nodal system, that can give an abort, destroy self now message faster than any organic system can react, and are only working on the surface and then done, not permeating all tissues- only a very tiny dose is going inside someone. Those kinds of machines are inherently less hazardous than an infusion.

Even assuming all of those are, as you said, mostly human derived mammals or pseudomammals, they mostly are carbon based, saline blood solvent, ATP/PTP base energy systems, which means even if you have some magically super powerful nanomachine microsurgery device, the developmental frame of reference is for carbon based life with a saline blood and hemogloben. Three main species use anything else, and one of those don't even use blood per se. (Hedoro)

The Senti and the Rethenkans use a variation on cyanogloben, which is copper based, not iron. The rethenkans can use saline drug infusions, but there are issues of blood chemistry and PH values.
 
Would be it be alright if I just put that Hemosynth works best on Nekovalkyrja and Minkan, and works decently on "most species with iron-based blood," and should not be used on species with other blood types like copper? Because this is how I understand it to work as its creator.
 
Even assuming all of those are, as you said, mostly human derived mammals or pseudomammals, they mostly are carbon based, saline blood solvent, ATP/PTP base energy systems, which means even if you have some magically super powerful nanomachine microsurgery device, the developmental frame of reference is for carbon based life with a saline blood and hemogloben. Three main species use anything else, and one of those don't even use blood per se. (Hedoro)

The Senti and the Rethenkans use a variation on cyanogloben, which is copper based, not iron.
Given what Yuuki said here, that could certainly be used for RP purposes - i.e. it causes the nasty things Wes described in the OP - until SARA develops a "software patch" for the femtomachines without having to sacrifice hemosynth's pre-existing healing capabilities.
 
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