Virology changes

[JoeBiggie]

So this will be a pretty salty post but I really think there needs to be some changes to Virology in order to make it much more fun and useful. Currently you can have some fun moments with virologist but in my experience that heavily depends on how engaged the CMO is in what you do and how well everyone is roleplaying. The job itself is a bit too random and needs more spice to make it fun to learn and master.

First off... PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEEAAAAAASSSSEEEE remove the risk of your virus just being deleted when you add a solution! It's adding an RNG factor to something that is already extremely RNG based and it adds literally 0 amount of fun to it. I can't see any reason why that needs to be a thing. It actually just wastes your time to be honest.

Why do people like games with RNG? Two reasons: First one is that it's fun when you can control and/or "direct" the RNG to be more in your favour. Second reason is when the RNG is very chaotic and no matter what you roll/draw you get something fun and therefore go with whatever you get. In my opinion Virology doesn't really have any of that. Yes you can kind of direct the RNG but only if you limit yourself IMMENSLY which basically makes it pointless for the mechanic to have this amount of symptoms. There are very few symptoms that are even somewhat good whether you want to make a dangerous or helpful virus so just rolling the dice and seeing what you get is not that fun. Any dangerous virus will easily be identified and cured while any good virus will just not be very useful and no one will care that you made it except the people who'll RP with you. OR you make a cool helpful virus then everyone accidentally cures themselves with salt...

Let's talk about the stats on the symptoms. In my opinion they're just way too low, especially the positive symptoms. There's almost no way to make a propely "designed" virus spread by anything other than blood. Resistance is possible to get somewhat better than orange juice being the cure but also extremely hard to design. This is because there is just so much minuses and the calculations wreck you if you make something with more than 3 symptoms (which you try to do in order to get higher stats!). I'd say buff pretty much all symptoms Resistance and Speed factors that are in the negative by +1 and buff all the Transmitting factors by +1. Maybe some key symptoms should have their Stealth buffed too. Alternatively there could be a game mechanic other than just pushing in symptoms that have positive stats. Maybe a certain solution that is very hard to make that can give +1 to all stats when used in your virus.

Vaccines needs to be more prevalent and a thing that the station ACTUALLY cares about. Sure roleplayers will take a virologist into account and have him make a vaccine. But even when there is a vaccine the crew is so busy doing their own things that no on will actually come and take the pills. I think there should be a way to distribute the vaccine with the CMO and Captains approval through either the air system or maybe the water. That way the captain can message the crew and tell them to go to nearest sink and drink some water or just alert that there will be a vaccine circulating through the station. If diseases happen a bit more often and earlier in the round it would be something fun for the virologist to do.

Lastly, if there's an update there should be a couple of more interesting symptoms but I'd say that if you do make more symptoms you should also look into removing some of the more pointless and not super fun symptoms that are in there now as to not make the list bloated and crazy. All in all this is an interesting job but it needs more and better defined mechanics as it's not nearly as fun and creative like genetecist or robotics.

 

[Autocephalophagy]

I completely agree. The UI is terrible, there is no variety in healing viruses, and even the negative symptoms are either just annoying or kill you with no in between. Virus events also suck since they are rarely impactful and the actually interesting diseases like Kingstons and Spanish Inquisition Flu almost never show up. Compare this to Bee Station virology, where there is a whole array of unique and interesting symptoms like healing in darkness and producing alcohol in the body. Also on Bee you can nullify symptoms, keeping the changes to transmissibility and resistance while not actually having the effect, which makes symptoms like sneezing and coughing actually good instead of getting people mad at you. That there is no potency value like with botany just makes virology that less fun. I'm not suggesting that virology should get easy access to Kingstons or GBS, but it really needs a lot more to it other than make the same healing virus again and again. Let us test actually cool viruses on the monkeys goddamnit!!!

[DGamerL]

4 hours ago, JoeBiggie said:

Let's talk about the stats on the symptoms. In my opinion they're just way too low, especially the positive symptoms. There's almost no way to make a propely "designed" virus spread by anything other than blood. Resistance is possible to get somewhat better than orange juice being the cure but also extremely hard to design. This is because there is just so much minuses and the calculations wreck you if you make something with more than 3 symptoms (which you try to do in order to get higher stats!). I'd say buff pretty much all symptoms Resistance and Speed factors that are in the negative by +1 and buff all the Transmitting factors by +1. Maybe some key symptoms should have their Stealth buffed too. Alternatively there could be a game mechanic other than just pushing in symptoms that have positive stats. Maybe a certain solution that is very hard to make that can give +1 to all stats when used in your virus.

Isn't this the intention? Good/Dangerous symptoms have lower stats so you can't just fill a virus with killing symptoms, but actually have to work for it?

 

In any case, this post is a massive "WYCI" (Or pay someone else to do it)

[JoeBiggie]

38 minutes ago, DGamerL said:

Isn't this the intention? Good/Dangerous symptoms have lower stats so you can't just fill a virus with killing symptoms, but actually have to work for it?

 

In any case, this post is a massive "WYCI" (Or pay someone else to do it)

Ok well I guess I severely misunderstood the intention of this suggestion forum... Honestly. I understand there's not a bunch of coders working for the server but I thought the point of this was to have suggestions for people who would like to code it.

Either way my point was that those stats are meaningless when you pretty much can't make anything interesting (dangerous or not). There's nothing hard about it. It's either not useful and maybe have good transmitting factor and resistance or it does at least something but is instantly seen by med hud and cured with salt or orange juice.

Also my suggestions are just that, suggestions, except for that first part. The point of the post is that Virology needs to have more presence otherwise it's just a job where one person hides in his lab the whole round. Unless, as I said, someone else like the CMO engages with you and start up any kind of Roleplaying.

 

[AidanFair]

I just wanna say that I appreciate the healing viruses people make. I always jump at the chance to get em when I hear about them. Passive healing like that is amazing. And I do drop in to see if there's a vaccine if I notice I'm sick. But you're right, in that sometimes I'm focussing on something and I ignore a cold or flu.

If you felt underappreciated, don't. I really do appreciate the work viros do. A healing virus with toxic comp and a beaker full of charcoal can do wonders! And the passive healing keeps crew alive.

I don't know virology. So I can't comment on the mechanics of it. But I don't want viros to feel like their work isn't valued. I value it highly.

[JoeBiggie]

7 hours ago, AidanFair said:

I just wanna say that I appreciate the healing viruses people make. I always jump at the chance to get em when I hear about them. Passive healing like that is amazing. And I do drop in to see if there's a vaccine if I notice I'm sick. But you're right, in that sometimes I'm focussing on something and I ignore a cold or flu.

If you felt underappreciated, don't. I really do appreciate the work viros do. A healing virus with toxic comp and a beaker full of charcoal can do wonders! And the passive healing keeps crew alive.

I don't know virology. So I can't comment on the mechanics of it. But I don't want viros to feel like their work isn't valued. I value it highly.

Well that's great and you're the kind of people that are fun to roleplay with then but I think you're missing my point. That healing virus except for maybe mind restoration and eye healing is pretty much useless and even those two are way to slow to actually do something except for in rare cases where it purges alcohol and lsd for very nieche situations. The only way to make toxic filter good is by increasing the speed factor since that's what it bases its healing on. And that is just not possible if you want all positive symptoms.

I just had a round where I made what I think is the best healing serum and no one batted an eye. In fact, they complained because it had itching and headache as symptoms which I intentionally put in it so that the speed would be higher. At the end of round I got hit by an axe and nearly got to crit. I managed to crawl away and my HP was back at 50% after aprox 20 seconds. Making that virus takes a long ass time and is in my opinion the only positive virus that actually does anything good.

So my point is that the job needs better mechanics that are fun to work with but of course that needs someone to code it. I wish I had that skill but I don't. I looked at beestations virology and that looks way more fun but I do prefer paradise station as server overall.

Edited February 20 by JoeBiggie

[BAGELMENSK]

If viruses could synthesize chemicals in the body I think that opens up a lot of interesting gameplay with mechanics that are already established in the game.

Transferring virus effects into reagents would also mean the adding of interesting negative chemicals that arent jsut sarin gas or some other neurotoxin. It would also allow, similar to botany, the ability to attach unique reagents/chemicals to a department/job. Using Monkeys with specific viruses to synthesize chemicals for extraction via dialysis would add, if nothing else, more things for the virologist to do.

Edited February 21 by BAGELMENSK

[DGamerL]

3 hours ago, BAGELMENSK said:

If viruses could synthesize chemicals in the body I think that opens up a lot of interesting gameplay with mechanics that are already established in the game.

They already can, they can add oculine and salbutamol, that is how the enhanced sense and breathless symptoms work

 

3 hours ago, BAGELMENSK said:

Transferring virus effects into reagents would also mean the adding of interesting negative chemicals that arent jsut sarin gas or some other neurotoxin. It would also allow, similar to botany, the ability to attach unique reagents/chemicals to a department/job. Using Monkeys with specific viruses to synthesize chemicals for extraction via dialysis would add, if nothing else, more things for the virologist to do.

This would be kind of interesting as a secondary way to make death viruses, but it would have to be done delicately because 24/7 toxic chemical buildup in a body is just unfun to play against

[BAGELMENSK]

1 hour ago, DGamerL said:

They already can, they can add oculine and salbutamol, that is how the enhanced sense and breathless symptoms work

 

This would be kind of interesting as a secondary way to make death viruses, but it would have to be done delicately because 24/7 toxic chemical buildup in a body is just unfun to play against

True I didn't consider that, I was just thinking about makign a virus that makes people explode and I lost focus on anything else.

[JoeBiggie]

I still think there are key matters that virology needs for expedience and qol change. Again, I don't know how to code and I don't have the money to pay someone but that doesn't mean it's not worth to discuss. This would be my list of qol changes.

1: Remove the risk of the virus being deleted from the blood. Imo it adds 0 amount of fun.

2: Add a chem dispenser in viro labs. There's a bunch of solution that makes experimenting somewhat easier (still super random but at least easier). I really despise having to bother the chemist for a bunch of things like, diphenhydramine, sugar, unstable mutagen and such because if I'm unlucky then the amount you get in the virus fridge is just not enough. Worst of it all is that if you accidentally mix a solution wrong you'll have different reagants in the beaker which you can't isolate because you don't have a dispenser. It would still be against the rule for a virologist to make something toxic or explosive just like it is for the chemist so I don't really understand why they shouldnt be allowed to have it.

I got really frustrated one round because I wanted things and the chemist (who was a nice guy) said it's better to just brute force the virus to get the healing virus. Does that not just sound, like, super counter active to making the job be fun? Just spam the unstable mutagen or plasma dust you get and hope you're lucky. Don't make the solutions because that just wastes yours and the chemists time... Then what is the point of the solutions? Again, he was a nice guy so I was not angry at him.

3: Give viro a fax machine? It's really annoying having to chase the CMO (or the captain if there is no CMO) for an approval. Sure I always radio them but there's still a bunch of running around and sometimes there's just bad communication from CMOs. Make it a standard procedure for viro to fax the paper to CMO when they have a virus. CMO can then talk to the virologist and investigate whether they believe the virologist. If they approve, they fax the stamped paper back to the virologist. The virologist can then leave the virus and the paper at the counter. Less running for the virologist who may want to do other things or just stay in lab for experimenting. Maybe they can only fax CMO and Captain and will have their faxing privileges removed if they abuse it and bother the CMO and/or Captain.

4: Lastly a seperate virus fridge at medbay lobby for vaccines and viruses? This would make people think more about actually taking a helpful virus or vaccine if it was its own thing and not just shoved inside the chem fridge that already usually has a super long list of medicines in it. I think it's a huge reason for why a lot of people don't bother taking viruses or vaccines (unless they are already infected)... Also makes it easier for someone who is infected to find and also know if there even is a vaccine.

Again, there's a lot more things I would add but that would mean redesigning all of it. I personally think it should work the same as beestations or /tg/ virology.

Edited February 24 by JoeBiggie

[BAGELMENSK]

Gigabrain thought for a sick new virus symptom:

 

Amanitin. Once the virus is cured every victim becomes a ticking time bomb unless medical is properly equipped. Or maybe that's too strong and would require some more consideration.

Edited September 18 by BAGELMENSK