Best use of medicine

[The Man with No Name]

There's a bit on the Wiki about this, such as that dry-bandaging (using no medicine) can only heal one injury at once and that using a medicine pack is a waste on minor injuries.

Let's say a colonist has one or two gunshot injuries that needs bandaging, but is in no immediate danger or their death several hours away. Dry-bandaging, and so using up no medicine or herbal medicine, would be slower, but, if time was not crucial, would there be any other drawbacks in dry-bandaging, such as healing time?

[SpaceDorf]

Nope.

In my oppinion the best uses for the medicine pack is :

1.) to build medical Beds
2.) Surgery
3.) Treat Infections or Sickness when you have no penoxi around.

Everything else is Herbal or no Medicine at all.

The best use of dry-bandaging is putting a medical sleeping spot near the wounded and treating him right fucking now without medicine with the nearest capable pawn.
The time saved by not carrying him across half the map and then grab some medicine from somewhere can save your pawn.

You can use this to slow down bleeding and carry him to the hospital afterward.
To bridge the time until your competent Doc has hauled some medicine to a stockpile next to the sleeping spot.

Or if you are fighting a siege and a mechanoid shippart with 4 pawns at the same time on the other side of a 300x300 map to get the whiny sucker on his feet again after a scratch ..
In this case your Doc better brought food instead of meds.

[Greep]

IMO, medicine use depends on age of the fort. 

year 1: fatal disease::medicine, non-fatal::herbal, injury::none, unless pressing and medicine is close.
year 2: same, but several med beds.
year 3: medicine for everything but bruises.
year 4: medicine for everything

Year 1 there's more important things to spend money on, but once you've got fortress essentials, the increased heal time is worth it.

[cultist]

There are two main things to consider here:

First of all, you don't need medicine if the wounds are not too serious. This isn't just a matter of the "size" of the wounds (HP lost) but also the number of wounds. A large amount of superficial wounds take a long time to bandage if your doctor is unskilled and/or not using medicine. Wounds that are left open for too long lead to infections regardless of their severity, even if the hospital is clean. So if your doctor is overworked, you may want to use medicine simply to speed up the process.
Whereas a single large wound may seem very serious (shot from a charge lance for instance), your doctor can take care of it quite fast (negating the risk of infection) and move on to something else.

The second thing to consider is time. Not just the time the doctor spends healing, but also the patient's time. Poorly bandaged wounds means that pawns spend more time in bed, doing nothing. So if the wounded pawn is very important to your plans, give them medicine to get them on their feet faster.

[The Man with No Name]

Thanks for the suggestions.

That's a good idea for using sleeping spots as field-dressing places. I hadn't even thought of that, and I could definitely see it being useful in those times that the colonists have to leave the base and go on the offensive.

I've also, in times when medicine is not abundant, started on occasion to change the level of care while mid-tending. Such as using stronger medicine on those who are close to death, and then as soon as the timer shows they have a few hours to live, switching to dry-bandaging. This is particularly useful for captured prisoners, who I don't want to die in my care, since the colony gets a negative mood loss, but also don't want to use much medicine on.

[SpaceDorf]

I've also, in times when medicine is not abundant, started on occasion to change the level of care while mid-tending. Such as using stronger medicine on those who are close to death, and then as soon as the timer shows they have a few hours to live, switching to dry-bandaging. This is particularly useful for captured prisoners, who I don't want to die in my care, since the colony gets a negative mood loss, but also don't want to use much medicine on.

Hmm .. so far I only used that for organ harvesting .. but good Idea in general.