/tg/Station 13

This is an offshoot from Saege's trainwreck of a thread that Cimika posted in:

Cimika wrote:I think virologist as a job shouldn't exist and the virology lab should be accessible by MDs

I think this is worth discussing further. It opens up the ability to make viruses to more players and deflects some of the blame if a bad virus gets out instead of, y'know, just being a game of "lynch the Viro".

Virology is in a rough spot right now for certain, much like genetics. I've proposed a few times the merging of Viro, Genetics and Nanites into a single role based around human experimentation, though in hindsight that may be condensing too much gamer gear potential into one job.

Alternatively, viro could be given more to do. I've personally thought of ideas to integrate it with xenobiology (totally not stolen from oranges), and I'm sure there are other ways microbiology could be leveraged in medical ways that could expand the virologist role and prevent it being such a one trick pony.

I like virologist being a separate role. I also like roboticist/geneticist being separate from scientist, detective/warden being separate from security, and chemist/paramedic being separate from MD.

Heck, if it were up to me, xenobiologist and physicist (toxins) would be separate roles as well. Having a jobs that cover different niches, even if they share similar access restrictions, is a good thing. It's so much easier to learn a new mechanic if you role is cut out for you, especially if you're new to the game in general.

Virologists are just MDs with a twenty minutes boot up sequence during which they make a virus. Afterwards, they just treat patients like everyone. Any MD could just say roundstart "I'll make a virus" and there would be effectively no difference with what we have right now.

I'll make a PR, we'll see how it goes.

Farquaar wrote:I like virologist being a separate role. I also like roboticist/geneticist being separate from scientist, detective/warden being separate from security, and chemist/paramedic being separate from MD.

Heck, if it were up to me, xenobiologist and physicist (toxins) would be separate roles as well. Having a jobs that cover different niches, even if they share similar access restrictions, is a good thing. It's so much easier to learn a new mechanic if you role is cut out for you, especially if you're new to the game in general.

Fundamentally I agree, but new jobs should really be more than just a single niche that's done quickly. Some of the worst offenders for jobs that have little to no content (geneticist, virologist, atmos tech, etc.) are jobs where they've been given their basics but nothing to help pad their runtime to the length of a full round.

Virology really suffers from not being able to upgrade their work over the course of a round; once a virus is out and about it can't really be updated most of the time.
I theorized how it could be reworked to allow live-updating them via a console, and it ended up being different enough that i made that into its own feature as nanites instead.

If there was a reason to make more than one virus over the course of a round it has the potential to become a more legitimate role, but so far i haven't come up with a good method.

XDTM wrote:If there was a reason to make more than one virus over the course of a round it has the potential to become a more legitimate role.

In real life you get a cold, have it for a week, then have antibodies for that strain.

Applying this to space station virus have a length that's determined by (stagespeed+resistance)? and at the end autocures.

You'd have your disease, you'd have a reason to go back to the lab every now and then. You probably only get one shot at the perfect threshold system then you're just changing around low tier nuetered symptoms.
Something something taking a virus that has completely run it's course would allow you to get different symptoms.

IE the first virus is only able to hold 1 t1 symptom
Second will always hold that t1 symptom and a t2
repeat repeat repeat

Make a middle tier that always has some drawback, and a higher tier that always has upside. If you make it to an hour long round then you unlock some of the older OP things.
(Some of the RNG of viro would probably need to be killed for this second half of the rework to not suck to play)

Vekter wrote:

Cimika wrote:I think virologist as a job shouldn't exist and the virology lab should be accessible by MDs

I think this is worth discussing further. It opens up the ability to make viruses to more players and deflects some of the blame if a bad virus gets out instead of, y'know, just being a game of "lynch the Viro".

This.

Virologist is boring and while I object to the eradication of that job because I'm pretty sure we've had it since the beginning and anytime anything is removed it's either unnecessary or the result is worse I actually agree with the rationale here. It'd certainly make it quicker for cancerous viruses to get cured (and more likely for that cure to be distributed) if more people had access by default.

cacogen wrote:Virologist is boring and while I object to the eradication of that job because I'm pretty sure we've had it since the beginning and anytime anything is removed it's either unnecessary or the result is worse I actually agree with the rationale here. It'd certainly make it quicker for cancerous viruses to get cured (and more likely for that cure to be distributed) if more people had access by default.

Its not a job that really needs to stay. There are no Toxinologists or Slimeologists in Science (its all part of science and all scientists have access), there is no need for a Virologist in Medbay.

Okay that's dumb reasoning to assume it'd be 1:1 like that and you're forgetting geneticists and chemists too. There's also the psychologist now, which is a meme RP job the zoomers added just because they could and has even less utility than lawyer but you probably wouldn't want to join their apparent responsibilities up with medical doctor. At some point it becomes too much for doctors to handle.

cacogen wrote:There's also the psychologist now, which is a meme RP job the zoomers added just because they could and has even less utility than lawyer but you probably wouldn't want to join their apparent responsibilities up with medical doctor.

I'll have you know that there are few things more fun than pawning off some drooling meth-addled greytider onto a terrified psychologist as security.

Best part is when they inevitably escape, you can throw the book at them for their refusal to rehabilitate.

Not a fan of removing Viro. Yes, it could use some work in terms of more stuff to do, but the slight lack thereof doesn't seem to be enough to justify the entire job being binned. It isn't particularly difficult for med to get to a Pandemic machine, either.

Edit: If access to the Pandemic machine is really that big of a concern, a possible solution might be to split it's functionality. Have one machine that only functions for the duplication of viruses, and another that only creates vaccines. Virology would have both, and med would only have the vaccine machine. Ditto with holodeck.

Merging the job with doctor doesn't remove the job content, in fact it only makes it more accessible.