Please consider removing Weight Even from the virus symptoms.

[Miraviel]

(I have read a lot of suggestion topics here and I was kind of discouraged by their received feedback to make this one, so please go easy on me.)

Suggestion:

• Remove Weight Even from the available virus symptoms

Reasons:

• I believe it renders the chef mostly (not entirely!) useless after the virus release
• As a consequence, it makes botany less enjoyable

I played virologist quite a few times and I often had Weight Even among my symptoms. As the general "healing virus" is rather strong, there is no reason to not to take the pill - half, if not the majority of the crew (save for the IPCs) has the virus by 13:00 (depending on when the virus was completed).

If all goes well, kitchen and botany gets upgraded by, let's say, 12:45 to 13:00. They can start growing bigger and more yielding plants, they (preferably) have self-sustaining trays by then, and these factors let them branch out and grow a wider variety of plants. It enables the chef, too, to make a more colorful menu, making their game more enjoyable.

However, should Weight Even be among the symptoms of the "healing virus", the crew will have little to no reason to visit the kitchen anymore. Botany, sure, can work on weaponized plants or other projects like glowshrooms, bluespace plants, drugs, batteries, and whatnot, but the chef is inevitably rendered unnecessary, and new botanists might not be into DNA manipulating during their first shifts.

Also, even the nutriment PLUS implant doesn't fill you to 100%, which requires the cooperation of Mining and Science (and Robotics/Medbay for implanting); even with this implant, if you want the speed buff, you have to visit the kitchen or use a vending machine from time to time. Weight Even simply keeps you full by one lucky RNG moment of a single person, and then taking a pill from Medbay.

A type of speed buff is already available through the symptom Stimulant, too, though I am not sure if they are equal in numbers.

It is currently up to the virologist if they decide to keep the symptom or not, and I decided to never keep it, because it saddens me to see chefs going SSD after a virus having Weight Even is released. I was on the receiving end as well, and it is truly pointless to come up with any kind of menu if everyone is running around with a full belly all the time.

...

It is probably a way too small and not enough of a game-changing suggestion, but I would love to see the Service department stay more involved in the second half of the shift as well, not just until someone in Medbay gets lucky with their dropper.

What are your thoughts on it?

Thank you for reading it!

Edited November 2, 2017 by Zuki
TYPOS!!

[Landerlow]

I approve of removing the weight even virus trait. I would also like to see less nutriment in foods so that more food needs to be eaten over the course of a shift, making the chef's job more important.

[SkeletalElite]

Chef is basically useless flavor already so it doesn't really matter

Just drink some hot chocolate from the vending machines 1 hot chocolate takes you from empty to full anyways

[Streaky Haddock]

Not entirely useless, the chef can heal, buff with his foods.

[Bigtimetripod]

Virology in general is really OP in healing department, but when it come to the "bad stuff", virology really lacks anything... killing wise. I have played virologist quite a bit lately and there are only two real killers. Its either Spontaneous Combustion or Necrotizing Fasciitis.

Necrotizing Fasciitis, while effective with very low stealth, its usually easy to cure. I have tested multiple variants and its either 40 brute every 3 minutes, very easy to detect and cure or easy to detect, a bit harder to cure and only deals 20 brute every 3 minutes.

Spontaneous Combustion can be made very stealthy and really hard to cure, BUT the trigger for someone to light in flames also triggers only every 1-5 minutes. This can be countered really easy by anyone with just a simple resist that puts the flames out in a second. Its impossible to make viruses trigger every 10-15 seconds, but only 1-5 minutes as its random. Making virology for antags a really useless place unless ye want some cheap heals.

[Miraviel]

It is indeed, very strong if used for healing, that's why I think it should be toned down a bit - especially if it makes another job impossible to play. With the usual symptoms, you can go down to 35% blood and only die then, and even then only because of organ failure. I think you should try suggesting some more lethal symptoms used for antag purposes in a new topic! (I would also love to see some level 7 biohazards that really  have an impact on people and force them to come to Medbay. Nothing lethal, just... more impressive than coughing.)

I'll wait for a few replies should come any until friday, then if there are no real objections, I'll try to open a PR on Github concerning this symptom. Thank you for the feedback!

Edited November 5, 2017 by Zuki

[Rurik]

Id love this, since I play chef commonly and nothing is more disappointing than nobody having need of your food. Of course my opinion is a bit one sided, since I was never a fan of viro in the first place nor do I play it.

[Harrivchaw]

Sure, why not. I used to add it to one of my trio of pathogens, but I can see why chefs would want it removed.

By the way, that one symptom that causes hallucination on the later stage (sense break?) combined with sneezing and other stealthy symptoms makes for an undetectable, yet debilitating disease, had a shift where an unknown disease rampaged throughout the station causing people to puke and collapse everywhere, the server had to be restarted, good times.

[EvadableMoxie]

If the problem is rendering Chefs meaningless then I'm sorry to say they already are.  2 cups of chicken soup provide enough nutrition to make it through a shift.  Just 1 if the shuttle comes a bit early and you drink it at the right time.  

Chef is basically a roleplay role, much like Bartender. 

Edited November 25, 2017 by EvadableMoxie

[TrainTN]

On 11/24/2017 at 11:52 PM, EvadableMoxie said:

If the problem is rendering Chefs meaningless then I'm sorry to say they already are.  2 cups of chicken soup provide enough nutrition to make it through a shift.  Just 1 if the shuttle comes a bit early and you drink it at the right time.  

Chef is basically a roleplay role, much like Bartender. 

I like to play chef, and I agree it's essentially a roleplay role, but it's not pleasant to be invalidated by the virologist's efforts. Especially when RnD does upgrade the kitchen equipment so the chef can triple their output, but no one cares about eating it. Just because it's a roleplay role doesn't mean it's okay to discard it.

I know that recently tgstation revamped virology's healing viruses to be more nuanced (injecting water heals burn damage, being hot heals brute damage, etc.) and it did remove both Weight Even and Weight Gain in doing so, so that food couldn't be rendered a 100% non-issue. I agreed with it there, and I'd agree with removing the weight symptoms here as well. After all, when you can just scrounge junk from the vending machines and Mr. Chang's if you're so averse to dealing with the chef, it would hardly make a difference in the end. Chef doesn't need to be a station VIP but it doesn't need to be a useless fluff job either.

[Darth_Dangermouse]

I agree with this, the weight even trait just makes the chef useless and he may as well become another grey suit wondering the station when everyone has the Weight Even virus.

[Jountax]

I find it odd that so many people forget that weight even allows you to pig out as much as you want and never get fat from it. Tons of people take advantage of sensory restoration to binge on booze with 0 downsides, but hardly any ever take advantage of weight even the same way.

Edited December 5, 2017 by Jountax

[TrainTN]

18 minutes ago, Jountax said:

I find it odd that so many people forget that weight even allows you to pig out as much as you want and never get fat from it. Tons of people take advantage of sensory restoration to binge on booze with 0 downsides, but hardly any ever take advantage of weight even the same way.

You're not wrong, but the game still colors it as overeating, and the nutrition meter still goes up to the "Fat" gray. So it doesn't feel like "I can eat everything I want!" The real important thing is that if people don't need to eat, they won't; and if people won't eat, whoever is playing the chef will have nothing to do because no one likes to RP with them like they do the bartender. Possibly because the chef always has limited ingredients unlike the bartender, so you can't always go up and ask for specific foods.

Thinking about this has given me an idea for another suggestion: a new disability called "Fast Metabolism" that makes the nutrition meter drain at an increased rate. I know it's not what you normally think of when you hear "disability" but it mechanically would be: more likely to be impeded by hunger and thus necesitating more trips to the kitchen/snack machines, and the duration of food buffs would be decreased also because the consumed food would be burned off faster. I considered making a thread for it but it seemed small enough, and relevant, to put here.

[imsxz]

On 11/04/2017 at 8:40 AM, Bigtimetripod said:

Virology in general is really OP in healing department, but when it come to the "bad stuff", virology really lacks anything... killing wise. I have played virologist quite a bit lately and there are only two real killers. Its either Spontaneous Combustion or Necrotizing Fasciitis.

Necrotizing Fasciitis, while effective with very low stealth, its usually easy to cure. I have tested multiple variants and its either 40 brute every 3 minutes, very easy to detect and cure or easy to detect, a bit harder to cure and only deals 20 brute every 3 minutes.

Spontaneous Combustion can be made very stealthy and really hard to cure, BUT the trigger for someone to light in flames also triggers only every 1-5 minutes. This can be countered really easy by anyone with just a simple resist that puts the flames out in a second. Its impossible to make viruses trigger every 10-15 seconds, but only 1-5 minutes as its random. Making virology for antags a really useless place unless ye want some cheap heals.

Necrotizing fascitis scales with having lower stealth, with a super low stealth you can make it do around 120+ brute every few minutes alongside super high resistance such as a gold cure.

[EvadableMoxie]

On 11/4/2017 at 8:40 AM, Bigtimetripod said:

Virology in general is really OP in healing department, but when it come to the "bad stuff", virology really lacks anything... killing wise. I have played virologist quite a bit lately and there are only two real killers. Its either Spontaneous Combustion or Necrotizing Fasciitis.

Necrotizing Fasciitis, while effective with very low stealth, its usually easy to cure. I have tested multiple variants and its either 40 brute every 3 minutes, very easy to detect and cure or easy to detect, a bit harder to cure and only deals 20 brute every 3 minutes.

Spontaneous Combustion can be made very stealthy and really hard to cure, BUT the trigger for someone to light in flames also triggers only every 1-5 minutes. This can be countered really easy by anyone with just a simple resist that puts the flames out in a second. Its impossible to make viruses trigger every 10-15 seconds, but only 1-5 minutes as its random. Making virology for antags a really useless place unless ye want some cheap heals.

Two words: Sensory Destruction.

It's a bit of a misnomer, because it actually doesn't just ruin your eyesight and hearing, it actually make you constantly produce ethanol which can even kill you eventually. You can make a virus with it that in invisible to everything, even the pandemic.  I've seen that one entirely wipe out Medbay.  Even if anyone in Medbay is competent enough to figure out what's going on, since it's invisible you have to guess at the cure, or work virology yourself to make an anti-bodies virus to counter it.  And good luck doing that when you're passing out constantly.

(The counter to this, by the way, is Charcoal.  It'll mix with the Ethanol to create Antihol and keep you functional.  But you need a constantly supply or you'll be knocked out quickly).

Edited December 5, 2017 by EvadableMoxie

[Jountax]

On 12/5/2017 at 7:18 AM, TrainTN said:

You're not wrong, but the game still colors it as overeating, and the nutrition meter still goes up to the "Fat" gray. So it doesn't feel like "I can eat everything I want!" The real important thing is that if people don't need to eat, they won't; and if people won't eat, whoever is playing the chef will have nothing to do because no one likes to RP with them like they do the bartender. Possibly because the chef always has limited ingredients unlike the bartender, so you can't always go up and ask for specific foods

It colors it as overeating because it is overeating, but if how I udnerstand the symptom is correct, it will swiftly counteract said overeating just like it counteracts undereating.

[TrainTN]

1 minute ago, Jountax said:

It colors it as overeating because it is overeating, but if how I udnerstand the symptom is correct, it will swiftly counteract said overeating just like it counteracts undereating.

I'm pretty sure you're right. I'm just saying that when everyone always has that hunger bar at a nice full blue, the chef may as well throw himself into his own gibber, because no one is going to pay him any mind anymore. At least the botanists get to play around with drugs and mushrooms when they don't have to grow food.