Virology Sucks & How to Fix It

[Deanthelis]

 

A more humble title would probably be more appropriate, but if you clicked on it, then HA! I got your attention. It's too late now!

 

Basically, playing Virology is shit. Your only job is to stand around and wait for viruses to show up so you can go not cure them because the Chemist and CMO did it already since you don't even have radium in your lab, and in the meantime, pray really hard for RNGsus to give you a virus with symptoms that you want.

 

I propose a means of removing that second part! Because seriously, fuck RNG-based balance. It's bad enough with Genetics - there's even a thread up wanting Hulk removed because it takes NO SKILL to acquire, just blind luck. That isn't relevant to this discussion of course, but it's a terribly similar issue - ancient Baystation code that makes jobs into painfully boring, almost unplayable crap.

 

The full page on my proposed changes is here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1i5Y ... cslist_api

It's way the hell more informative and goes into the details of how I'd see it done. It's complicated, though! Oh no! Well, it's just a series of steps to a desired goal that takes time and knowledge to perform. Just like Chemistry, or Engineering, or really almost every other fukken job.

 

This thread serves as discussion and commentary on the idea I have proposed. I do NOT want to discuss anything about the symptoms themselves or viral curing mechanics, they're outside of the scope of this thread and it's not a good idea to add in too much change all in one go.

 

[Midaychi]

 

So, reading that doc, basically a simplified version of goon pathology with a bunch of pseudoscience fluff about amino acids instead of taking binary and obscuring it by translating it to hex?

 

http://wiki.ss13.co/Pathology_Research

 

[Deanthelis]

 

Well I mean. Amino acids are real actual things. And Goon isn't open source. Like, you can... Google any of the acids I listed, all I've done is heavily simplify things. I figured having a loose basis in reality would be good, just like a lot of Chemistry recipes loosely mirror real life compounds.

 

I don't play on Goon, so I really have no idea if it's similar to Goon's. If it is, then, well okay I guess. Code this, port Goon's version with their permission, either way works I guess. I didn't really want to completely rip out our existing structure though. Either option would require considerable effort to balance.

 

Just get the RNG part of it excised like a malignant tumor, that's the important part here. I simply don’t like the practice of complaining about a problem without offering a reasonable solution.

 

[Midaychi]

 

There's going to be rng in any system like this. Otherwise, someone's just going to write down the exact steps to get super gibbintons catbeast, spawn in and have the virus released within 4 minutes of roundstart.

 

What you *actually* meant to say during all that rant was "Let's keep rng to have combinations randomized per round, but also give a non-rng way to discover the combination you're going for through empirical research and testing."

 

That way, your options are 1. push button till work through RNG, or 2. Science it till work

and the only way someone can really abuse this is if they accidentally #1.

 

 

edit: Also, you forgot to mention that a non antag virologist's job currently is *only* to generate antigen soup and be on standby.

There's no such thing as a beneficial virus in bay viro, and you shouldn't delude yourself otherwise. Anything you make can and *will* mutate at some point into a new strain over the course of a round, and cause terrible shit. There's also that not everyone wants to be infected with your super amazing microbe, and no they shouldn't just 'get fukt' and deal with it. Any symptom that seems beneficial in bay viro actually doesn't work worth shit unless you minor-mutate the strength and veroisty up to unreasonably high levels using a super undocumented and zero-feedback method, and even then it's not worth it at all.

 

[Deanthelis]

 

You have successfully proven that you neither read my document nor know how paradise Virology currently works, and here's how I know that.

 

"There's going to be rng in any system like this. Otherwise, someone's just going to write down the exact steps to get super gibbintons catbeast, spawn in and have the virus released within 4 minutes of roundstart."

 

Except, no. That's not how my proposal works. It takes a minimum of twenty minutes to produce an Injection only, Human only, Gibbingtons only virus, due to the number of acid blocks you have to change.

 

 

"There's no such thing as a beneficial virus in bay viro, and you shouldn't delude yourself otherwise. Anything you make can and *will* mutate at some point into a new strain over the course of a round, and cause terrible shit."

 

Viruses mutating in hosts was removed literally months ago. They simply don't do that here anymore.

 

"edit: Also, you forgot to mention that a non antag virologist's job currently is *only* to generate antigen soup and be on standby."

 

I did mention that, though. In a sarcastic, pessimistic manner. But you didn't read anything I wrote, so you didn't get it.

 

If you don't know what you're talking about and aren't willing to read what I've proposed, don't bother posting anything.

 

[Midaychi]

I'll admit, by "read" I actually meant "skimmed like emo poetry".

[Lars]

The one improvement I would go for is making viruses able to produce any chemical, same way strange plants from cargo can grow any chemical too. Cue lantern shadowpeople...

[davidchan]

 

Frankly Virology is more trouble than it's worth, just removing it, giving Medical a better surgery area that can print or make their own prosthetics would be nice. Virology is just one of those jobs where you won't do anything useful unless the RNJesus favors you, or the Chemist can supply you with the radium you need to do everything right.

 

A bigger genetics departments or biomechanical workshop (though this is probably too close to Robotics, but Science has their own, bigger Chemistry department so why not), or just about any other idea for study, improvment or alternative health care that would allow for a much more active role on the station than just sitting in an isolated lab by yourself for 45 minutes creating diseases only to unleash a plague on the rest of the station because you didn't take a shower. (WHY DOESN'T THAT AIRLOCK HAVE AUTOMATIC DECONTAMINATION?!?!)

 

[Deanthelis]

 

Frankly Virology is more trouble than it's worth, just removing it, giving Medical a better surgery area that can print or make their own prosthetics would be nice. Virology is just one of those jobs where you won't do anything useful unless the RNJesus favors you, or the Chemist can supply you with the radium you need to do everything right.

Yeah, that's why I wanted to fix that whole RNJesus part, so that virology would have a purpose and be fun and whatever. At least, in theory. This is a lot of work, I don't think anybody cares enough to fix it.

 

A bigger genetics departments or biomechanical workshop (though this is probably too close to Robotics, but Science has their own, bigger Chemistry department so why not), or just about any other idea for study, improvment or alternative health care that would allow for a much more active role on the station than just sitting in an isolated lab by yourself for 45 minutes creating diseases only to unleash a plague on the rest of the station because you didn't take a shower. (WHY DOESN'T THAT AIRLOCK HAVE AUTOMATIC DECONTAMINATION?!?!)

 

I'd love to see a variety of brands of prosthetic limbs, and have them actually do different things. But that's not in the scope of this thread - I might make another one later. Maybe. Probably not, the current trend of not giving a fuck is unlikely to change, it seems.

 

[davidchan]

 

The problem with virology is how exactly do you make it a more active job. Even times when there is an event plague, virology doesn't handle it or even aware people are sick until cmo/captain busts down their door and drags sick people in.

 

There is no current way to mark a disease as beneficial, so being infected with one will have anyone with a med hud freaking out when they see the green face symbol. Virology is interesting in theory, but as a dedicated job it doesn't serve a function, much like xenobiology only people who want to play with a very specific part of the field enter the lab, and everyone else ignores it, especially when crew monitor shows a dead body in there.

 

[Taaketa]

 

Here are some suggestions to remove the randomness:

 

Virus effects still happen at random but you can provoke different effects at different balances of the following:

 

[list=]Radiation Levels

Virus' food level (I forget the term)

Infection Level of the Virus

 

 

Up to you. But each stage of virus' can be provoked at a specific stage by manipulating these stats on a particular virus. To make it more challenging is that a virus cannot be left at 0% food for more than 5 minutes. If it is, the virus sample dies in the dish.

 

You can avoid this by placing the virus into the provided "Freezer" box.