Shattered Femur: Treatment possible?

[Hans Lemurson]

A lucky Pila tore into my doctors leg.  His injuries were fairly mild bleeding-wise, except that the femur was shattered and showed 0/25 HP.

Is the bone gone?  Fractured beyond repair?  Is it possible to fix or replace the femur without having to amputate the entire leg (which is fine otherwise)?

If the femur had been at 1/25 HP, would it have been a simple broken bone that would get patched up and make him walk with a limp until it healed?

[b0rsuk]

In unmodded Rimworld, prosthetics (simple or bionic) is your only way forward. Just be glad it wasn't pelvis. You would be stuck with a bedridden colonist forever.

It's too bad he's your doctor. If you don't have a good backup doctor, I would try a peg leg or a simple artificial leg until you get a skilled replacement. It's not worth entrusting a quack with a bionic part. He will be able to walk and do his most important jobs, and later you will find someone who can perform a proper operation.

[mrm]

Just do not send your doctor to battle. Keep him inside, set to flee in case of danger, schedule penoxycyline every 5 days (so he wont catch malaria etc). He is the most important person in the colony. Who will fix your doctor in case like this? A gardener? He can just kill him while installing this prosthetic leg.

[TheMeInTeam]

Penoxy every 5 days is excessive.  It decays over time, so if you take it 1 per 9 days you're nigh guaranteed to never need bedrest due to a life threatening disease.  Even taking it once per 12 is pretty darned safe.

Alternatively, the doc is a pretty solid choice for luci, since that also obliterates any disease threat and it makes doctoring + whatever else that person does on top of doctoring better.

In unmodded Rimworld, prosthetics (simple or bionic) is your only way forward. Just be glad it wasn't pelvis. You would be stuck with a bedridden colonist forever.

It's too bad he's your doctor. If you don't have a good backup doctor, I would try a peg leg or a simple artificial leg until you get a skilled replacement. It's not worth entrusting a quack with a bionic part. He will be able to walk and do his most important jobs, and later you will find someone who can perform a proper operation.

Glitterworld medicine + medical skill 5 or so will trivially hit 100% odds on installing a bionic.  If you can afford a bionic just put it on.

[jpinard]

schedule penoxycyline every 5 days (so he wont catch malaria etc).

How do you "schedule" this?

[b0rsuk]

You don't have to keep doctors out of combat. Just give them survival rifles or sniper rifles. Very low chance of getting hurt.

[CrazyEyes]

The game really should have something like plasteel bone replacements.  Colonists are capable of performing much more complicated surgeries (heart transplants and brain surgery) and crafting way more complex things than a hunk of molded plasteel (power armor, computers for research, etc).  The fact that there's no reasonable replacement for a shattered bone in the vanilla game is a bit silly.  The fact that the best solution for a broken radius is to saw the whole arm off at the shoulder and install a super-expensive bionic replacement just feels wrong.

[Hans Lemurson]

Just do not send your doctor to battle. Keep him inside, set to flee in case of danger, schedule penoxycyline every 5 days (so he wont catch malaria etc). He is the most important person in the colony. Who will fix your doctor in case like this? A gardener? He can just kill him while installing this prosthetic leg.

I sent my doctor into combat because he had a really high shooting stat and I only had 5 guys.  I gave him a Sniper Rifle so he'd stay out of the front lines.  If I'd designed my bunker properly, he might have been able to kill his assailant before taking a Pila to the Thigh.  (Trading firing arc size for extra cover sounded like a great idea until the tribesmen came at me from the side.)  Fortunately I have a backup-doctor.  She only has a single flame of interest in medicine (unlike his burning passion) but she's not that much further behind than him.  They both started out at low medical skill and have been training up.

You don't have to keep doctors out of combat. Just give them survival rifles or sniper rifles. Very low chance of getting hurt.

Exactly!  Oh, wait...
Right.

The game really should have something like plasteel bone replacements.  Colonists are capable of performing much more complicated surgeries (heart transplants and brain surgery) and crafting way more complex things than a hunk of molded plasteel (power armor, computers for research, etc).  The fact that there's no reasonable replacement for a shattered bone in the vanilla game is a bit silly.  The fact that the best solution for a broken radius is to saw the whole arm off at the shoulder and install a super-expensive bionic replacement just feels wrong.

Yeah, I'd like to think it could be surgically corrected.  A "Bone Transplant" sounds funny, but I think your suggestion of a Plasteel replacement-bone sounds pretty good.

My doctor is at 50% mobility which although not ideal, doesn't impair him from anything vital except for hauling.  Would a peg-leg put him back to 60% movement speed or 80%?  I don't like the idea of cutting off his entire leg just to deal with one broken bone if I'm only going to get a little bit of speed back from it.

[CrazyEyes]

I don't know the math off the top of my head but I think a peg leg is marginally better than a leg with a shattered bone.  Feels weird to make the switch though.

[hwfanatic]

schedule penoxycyline every 5 days (so he wont catch malaria etc).

How do you "schedule" this?

Example:

[Limdood]

plasteel bone replacements...

yeah, i could replace all of the bones in my colonist with plasteel....then implant 2 scyther blades as hands....and give him luciferium so he heals fast....it'll be a totally original concept! :p

As for the OP, just give him a peg leg.  As a sniper, arriving to the fight late isn't that terrible.  When you get better parts, put those on.  As far as the leg healing?  nope.  basically the bone is effectively "gone" - reduced to fragments or otherwise broken beyond any ability to repair.  Even luciferium won't heal completely gone body parts (great for scars though, even eye scars)