virology

[iamgoofball]

its shit

not fun to play

literally rng the job, even moreso than genetics

anyone got any ideas on how to make it fun

[imblyings]

change nutriment cure to salt

you're done

the pr will be merged with no conflict and everyone will adore you for being a reasonable, logical, saviour of the chefs.

[DaemonBomb]

Make it infectious enough to warrant the airlock and all that shit, and maybe have it so you basically have to play tomagotchi with petri dishes, kinda like Botany.

[Saegrimr]

Genetics is RNG.
Virology is RNG.
Botany is RNG.
R&D is a fetch quest and waiting.
Toxins is smaller fetch quest and less waiting.
Security is a fetch quest with PVP.
Mining is wheres waldo with actual danger.
Chemistry is a human macro simulator.
Cargo is a lord of the flies simulator.
Engineering likes to pretend their job is hard when all they have to do is not get shot by the emitter they just turned on.
Atmospherics is pure autism incarnate, and the only downside to the job is you're not actually required for anything and the shuttle gets called by the time you finish your project.

So tell me which category you want to stick virology in?

[Deitus]

i think its fine the way it is though the tomagachi thing sounds like it would be nice. what i would like to see is the equivalent of a chem dispenser for genetics and/or viro where you can hand out helpful diseases in a more public way other than letting loose infected monkies that are most likely to get punched to death by some random greyshit before it can do anything or trying to inject people and getting beaten to death yourself.

[iamgoofball]

botany and genetics have a method

viro is pure 100% rng

[Deitus]

botany and genetics have a method

viro is pure 100% rng

i think the point they were trying to make (and that i agree with) is that most departments have rng. its just kind of a sad fact of not only tgstation but just ss13 in general.

[Reimoo]

It's cause outbreaks are an annoyance at best. Even when they are "beneficial"

You guys ever see Contagion? Imagine a round like that.

[onleavedontatme]

Disease spread is pretty much binary (do you have protection or not?)

The population is too mobile/cramped/small for things like quarantine to matter or be enforceable.

The symptoms boil down to losing health or gaining way too much health.

Not sure how you can make the job interesting.

[newfren]

botany and genetics have a method

viro is pure 100% rng

Virology also has "a method" - it's about saving your work well, good labelling and house-keeping to make sure you don't lose positive symptoms. Compare it to botany, which has plant upkeep and harvests, and it's basically the same level of involvement.

I really don't know why you're going after virology and not, say, fucking genetics - incredibly tedious RNG that takes a long time without RnD upgrades (good luck) for really no discernible reason.

Also to Kor - disease spread I believe has a chance to get through protection if you don't have complete bio protection (at least that's what the wiki claims), I've successfully seen medbay quarantines enforced by a competent AI (realistically the only person who can really enforce them anyway), and a lot of the symptoms are less binary than you're suggesting there - off the top of my head, coughing's drop chance, hyphema, stimulant, deafness, voice change - I'm sure there are more. The main problem is that most virologists are objectively bad at their job, and when you get traitor viro it's usually a better idea to just make yourself a positive disease rather than spread a negative one, given the ease of curing any sort of negative disease that doesn't have 4 buffing symptoms to 1 actually negative symptom.

[PKPenguin321]

remove the cooldown on producing virus bottles with only 1 symptom (see: sneezing/cold)
change the nutriment cure to salt
viro is now 10,000% better

[Bluespace]

As someone who's probably got close to 500 virology rounds, I absolutely adore it.
It's a laid back but still thrilling race against time to develop a helpful virus with limited resources and a fickle RNG system that may bless or curse you. I love it.
Nutriment cure does not matter when you have weight even in your virus.

[Steelpoint]

I do like current virology, I can relax and make a nice virus that acts as a minor passive benefit, unless I'm insane and make a DNA Aide thing.

[DaemonBomb]

Nutriment cure does not matter when you have weight even in your virus.

Yeah but the nutriment cure means that if Virology is done, the Chef becomes not only useless, but annoying, and we really shouldn't have jobs stepping on each other's toes like that.

[Cheimon]

Exactly, about 50% of the times I've played chef the virologist has made a "beneficial disease", and now, oh great, I'm a glorified bartender without even a bar to chat to people in. It makes the job totally useless.

Much like DNA aide treads on the toes of genetics (and is annoying for other reasons), nutriment cure and the weight even sympton treads on the toes of the service department.

Virology symptons should, ideally, produce something new, not just make other jobs less relevant. At least medical improvements are keeping it in-department.