What Is Coroner?
Coroner is a role that is as equally important as it is pointless. It’s a role who’s mechanical responsibility is minimal and can be completed within the first 15mins of starting a shift. However the coroners role enhances all the other roles it interacts with and sparks roleplay and gameplay beyond badguy does obvious bad thing and blood goes everywhere.
Can you go a entire shift without a coroner? Yes. Does a shift get Better with a coroner? I would say yes.
Quick note
Recent Changes have made it that you don’t spawn with tools any more, Your special set of Coroner Specific black surgery tools that make all the surgeries and autopsies quicker for you on corpses are now on a tray in the morgue. You should secure these ASAP as they are way more useful to you than anyone else.
And for the players who break in to the coroners office for an autopsy scanner when there isn’t a coroner PLEASE leave the tools on the tray for if there is a late spawn coroner.
Mechanical Responsibilities
Unlike roles such as Roboticist, Cook, Shaft Miner etc. where your job is never really done for a coroner your only required to do 1 thing in order not to be a roadblock to other players: Autopsy Experiments.
There are 2 Primary Autopsy experiments, Human Autopsy and Non-Human Autopsy.
On most if not all stations 2 no soul bodies will pre-spawn in the trays; a human one and then a random non-human e.g. Lizard Person, Moth person etc.
The human autopsy can be done immediately by taking the body to the operating table connected to the operating computer in the morgue and performing an autopsy on the chest using your surgery kit in your bag:
- Drapes and select dissection
- Scalpel
- Forceps
- Autopsy Scanner
Make sure you do this with the computer powered and only on a surgery table connected/next to a surgery computer as each body can only be autopsied once.
After this you wait patiently or pester science to unlock the techs that lead up to the non human autopsy experiment. Make sure it shows in the experiments list on the surgery computer or you will waste your free non-human body and have to obtain a monkey corpse from genetics or xenobiology.
After both autopsies are done you’re ‘done’. No other task on the station you are responsible for will have a direct impact on the flow of the round and vice versa NOT doing these things hurts the medical staff as they cannot access any advanced medical techniques or equipment and science will be smashing down your door to get a autopsy scanner as it’s the only thing stopping them from doing the autopsies themselves.
Well what next?
On paper your only other job after this is put bodies away in the morgue, update medical records to set people to dead and occasionally autopsy a revivable corpse for a surgery speed bonus towards healing and reviving them and to have something to make a detective happy. This is still fun but is generally minimally impactful and is easily thrown off by antagonists either NOT creating corpses for medbay to find and work on or by antagonists making too many bodies, usually including yours.
However there are several other things you can do to contribute that still fall in your wheel house and don’t step on others toes.
Body Processing
For soulless bodies you have guilt free reign to do whatever you want. I recommend the following steps:
- Put them in a bodybag if not already in one to stop blood trails throughout your morgue
- Inject them with Formaldehyde to prevent/reduce Organ decay while your working on them
- Perform an Autopsy and copy the autopsy report in to the notes of that persons medical record and set them to deceased via the Laptop built in to your coroner desk.
- Using that autopsy identify any undamaged organs in the body, if there are then you can use organ manipulation surgery to harvest them in to the smart fridge.
- Harvest any intact Limbs in to the smart fridge as well using amputation surgery(don’t just hack it off as it may make the limb unusable and makes a bloody mess)
- If they are not harbouring a harmful virus Grab a bloodbag, set the IV stand to extract, attach the blood bag and drag it to the body. Each body as long as it had near full blood will generally produce one blood bag of their blood type. This should be quickly stored in the blood freezer box located elsewhere in medbay.
- Throw the Autopsy Report on top of the Body Bag and then stuff them inside, then labelling the bodybag with their name using a pen.
- Put the bodybag in a tray and if you grab a Labeller from Dorms also label the closed morgue tray. Doing so will add a visible label to the tray which will be readable on mouse over.
These Label’s break if the tray’s are opened which is a blessing and a curse. It’s a curse because if a random Doctor or security officer barges in and starts rifling through trays before you can get a word in you will have to go back and re-label everything. However if your not there and come back to missing labels you know that someone has been messing with the Bodies and can tell which bodies are missing if so.
This will create a job for the detective and can help track down Cultists, Blood Suckers and Heretics who all may need bodies for parts or sacrifice.
This isn’t just Body Processing, this is ADVANCED Body Processing
So,Chopping up corpses by hand is tedious and time consuming.
Well once you have Advanced Biotech unlocked you can build a Organ Harvester:
This baby will use lasers to slice up naked dead bodies automatically, You should also buy the Organ Transport Box from the Premium section of the NanoMed Plus machine to move the parts quickly with less chance to decay.
With this you will quickly hit the 20cap in your smart organ fridges, but by upgrading them with better matter bins they will not only store more but also start to auto heal any organs inside of them.
Chaplain we’re best friends now
Whether your character is religious or not the Chaplain is going to be your best friend outside of medical.
They will want bodies for religious ceremonies and having a spray bottle of holywater to shoo away any intruders to the Morgue is a real blessing.
If you have followed the steps above a body in the morgue at that point is just taking up space so having the Chaplain perform Funerals for the deceased helps clear up space, gives them something fun and roleplay heavy to do and removes the corpses from the reaches of ne’er-do-wells.
Who is John Doe?
So, your doing your thing in the Morgue and a helpful borg or miner drags in a body from lavaland of a NPC or a off station Traitor. This stiff has no medical record so do you just carve out the useful bits and shove them in a drawer?
You can, but if you want by grabbing a Camera (or by having the photographer trait) you can take a snap of the body, Name the Photo John Doe or some variation or if they have a name their actual name and insert it into the medical laptop.
You will need to Alt click the camera and set it to 1 by 1 mode to get it the right size but this will add them to the medical records. You can then add their autopsy report and set their species and blood type from the report.
Gratz you have added somebody to the crew and now their death will have more meaning.
Back Room Surgery
So Nobodies dying or they are but medical is on point with revival what use are you now you ask?
Well in early shift you can grab food for the med team and bring it to medbay so they don’t need to leave their post to stave off hunger pangs.
You also commonly spawn with some cleaning materials in the morgue so you can do a bit of light cleaning to reduce the chances of diseases starting, mainly leaving the floors to cleanbot’s and janitors but using space cleaner spray to remove bloodstains from the busy doctors.
Later in the round however providing you have done your job in regards to dissections you should start seeing advanced cybernetic organs and implants be available in the medical techfab. If things are calm enough you can start advertising cybernetic upgrades to the crew and Perform them in the morgue.
All of the upgrades you can do via the techfab require the Organ Manipulation surgery which, even the implants, which don’t use the annoyingly named implant surgery.
The only notes being if your replacing the heart or lungs have some clovermol on hand from the Oxygen medkit as while you will try to be quick there will be a moment where they have no lungs or heart which will quickly kill them due to oxygen damage.
Questionable Ethics
So your some kind of antagonist, what fun things can you do as a Coroner?
First of all your likely the only person outside of the detective looking at medical records, so if you want to throw them off copy your DNA code and overwrite it on some patsy’s medical record with the same blood type and then modify your DNA code in the records to be 1 letter different. Now if you don’t get immediately spotted and clocked in the act the detective will be thrown off your trail and potentially set your patsy/target in the sights of the trigger happy security.
Also generally the Morgue is a quiet place so you won’t generally be observed, your office will have 2 “secure” Morgue trays that if you have a body in won’t show if you have any other items stashed in there too making them a great contraband hiding spot.
Also if your playing a Antag that has a green light for round removal and you feel like being the biggest asshole, Organ storages can hold brain’s and nobody checks them. However if you ARE a victim of brain in organ storage it may be to take advantage of upgraded organ storage Healing organs while your body is being fixed.
