ARDS virus symptom is pretty strong - problem?

[NecromancerAnne]

Since the changes to Epinephrine and the swapping from salbutamol to perfluorodecalin as the standard oxyloss chem, I feel like Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome has made an immense comeback in use for viro tot and its lethality has skyrocketed. There have been some changes to viro specifically lately that might be contributing to it (namely the cure system change), but I don't believe them to actually be the problem (they were healthy changes, this is just one problem in isolation). It's more that ARDS has largely been kept in check in the past by the chems available halting its extremely powerful effect. Killing you in early crit and dealing massive oxyloss damage. Since perf does actually damage you, it doesn't do quite enough to survive ARDS for long. And since oxyloss can knock you clean out eventually you are going to die without the cure/salbutamol, which isn't very widely available and largely its role is handled by cryo right now.

Since there are only two cryopods round start and those do nothing to help you stay active to stop the virus, just halt its effects (unless you're chugging frost oil/standing under a cold shower and cyroxadone), it becomes a death spiral for the station that is unprepared for it. And you probably won't be prepared for it, since the new cure changes has made it much harder to meta all the cures (this is a positive in my book actually but it is something viros using ARDS viruses take advantage of to kill everyone in seconds flat).

I feel like ARDS was not accounted for when balance passes were made for medbay (though I'm pretty sure the epinephrine change might have been related to ARDS being directly countered by it due to capping oxyloss, but don't @ me about that), so I wouldn't mind the symptom getting a revisit.

[Taylork2]

Yes, it is very strong. But not just ARDS, anything that can cause Oxyloss is Top Tier right now in terms of lethality. I think adding in another chemical that very slowly heals oxyloss(like maybe .5/1 per tick) to medical vendors would dramatically help. Just for it to be strong enough to give you a significantly larger amount of time to combat ARDS(or whatever is giving Oxyloss) but not fully stop/counter it.

[terranaut]

>CC gives every member an "oh fuck" kit
>its useless garbage
haha
just make epinephrine not suck fucking ass big whoop, maybe have the pens only have 5u or even 3u so it flushes out of your system faster than 15u lexorin and will only buy you some time and not just heal through it passively -- while still bringing someone back from the brink of death if its just oxyloss and open them up for proper treatment

[Cobby]

the solution should be to look for the cure rather than de-facto cure it with chems that nullify the symptom.

IMO the issue right now with viro is that

1) I can reliably get certain symptoms outside of just mega godawful rng
2) I can pre-build viruses in excel and just replicate them with minimal issue ingame.

Stats for viruses should be randomized imo so that you're having to actually process everything because you don't know if you're going to find something better.

If the issue is truly with ARDS specifically, we should just nerf ARDs instead of make all forms of oxydamage easier to manage.