viro is OP now

[BeeSting12]

I just watched ForcefulCJS get a virus that kills you within a minute of infection 20 minutes after roundstart and killed about 4/5s of the crew with it, maybe more. That was pretty dumb.

[Gratian]

What were the stats

[Oldman Robustin]

It was Autophagocytosis Necrosis plus all transmission/speed buffs on top of Viral Metabolism which makes the disease start at stage 5 (but it will go down over time and eventually cure itself). I EMP'd comms right before I started spreading it so nobody could tell the crew and pretty soon I had 30-40 bodies scattered around medbay and the halls.

The coughing/sneezing with high transmission and stage 5 meant it spread like wildfire after I syringe gun'd a few choice crewmembers with the virus. ~9 transmission with sneezing and coughing meant anyone without internals was probably going to get it if they went into public.

I also had a 2nd strain that used Acute respiratory distress syndrome and 11 speed (but no metabolism) to finish off anyone who survived the first strain.

It was a nice lesson that it's not about stacking negative effects, anyone can start a virus that is super lethal, but if everyone is yelling about it (and the cure) on radio then pretty soon everyone has internals on and the cure is going out before you even hit double-digit infectees. So I made a virus with ideal stats for the highest possible transmission with the fastest possible lethal effect and took out comms to prevent coordination. Keep in mind if anyone did survive the first couple minutes with brute healing they would have automatically cured.

I don't think its an issue yet, metabolism might need to be looked at since starting a lethal virus at stage 5 with fast transmission means people are dead before they can even figure out what's going on.

[Alipheese]

the sad part is that virus he does every time isn't even the best it can be by a long shot. Another case of one person knowing what they're doing and repeating it to get the job fucked over. May I refer over to botany long ago

[Oldman Robustin]

the sad part is that virus he does every time isn't even the best it can be by a long shot. Another case of one person knowing what they're doing and repeating it to get the job fucked over. May I refer over to botany long ago

This was literally the first time I've ever distributed a lethal virus in the past two years.

I just did my research on the Wiki and I think it was the best at what its designed to do. Any other bad symptoms would reduce transmission and the lethality rate of an uncaught virus is always 0%.

Seriously though I've been playing viro for less than 3 days, calm your tits.

[Dr_bee]

Yeah this isnt really overpowered, there was work put into maximizing the effectiveness of the virus by creating a situation in which the main disadvantage of viruses is countered. This isnt a problem specifically with virology, this is just a very robust player doing something very robust.

It is always frustrating when one player derails a round, murderboning, bombing, and the like. But it is part of the game.

[Incomptinence]

I always thought the start at max stage symptom made little sense anyway.

Other than that fine viruses should kill you.

[XDTM]

The disease had uranium-level stats, so it does make sense for it to be strong, and robustin made good preparations to prevent the virus being cured. That said, i'll be the first one to say that the numbers can be unbalanced; i think that more gameplay examples would help me gauge what's too strong and what's not, but barely anyone seems to play virology, and only a fraction of those actually roll antag, and of those only a fraction actually make a death virus instead of abandoning the job to do more classic traitor stuff. Which leaves me very little feedback to work with.

[CPTANT]

Viro is finally a threat to the station and is instantly labelled OP

This was just traitor viro that had a good plan and took his time to execute it.

No lets all go back to buying an esword and running through the hallway trying to murderbone people!

[Nabski]

The main issue here is that you can start at stage five so people instantly start taking damage.

And SUPPOSEDLY you can neuter that symptom so you STILL start at level five then don't auto cure. Not like you're going to survive long enough for it to self cure anyways.

Feedback from one of those other players that makes death virus's":

I think having symptoms that are pure stats is a mistake, poor choice, but I also don't think it's bad enough to remove them all.
Uranium is not actually that hard to get, it requires the miners to show up, or slight begging from R&D so it's more often a WHEN than a if. Unless you're lowpop and don't have three miners.
The neutering system continues to be painful RNG based. Maybe something like run the virus to stage 5 and cure it on a monkey to unlock neutering for it with just the machine?
Coughing seems to always have a small airborne spread to it, making it more effective for spreading than sneezing.
There's a giant pile of harmful symptoms that are bad enough to get you lynched, but not "bad" enough to really impact the crew. Choking is the one that fall into this the most since it IS deadly, but not effective, and it doesn't have the stats to boost anything.
Like robustin said, it's all about the speed and transmission.
Stealth: Since everything can be seen on the machine now, stealth isn't nearly as useful as it only stops it from showing up on medhuds. MOST things give obvious messages, but the thresholds were an excellent way to fix this. Stage Speed still trumps this.
Resistance: Basically falls into four tiers: Salt and sugar (curable by vending machines), Requires Chemistry (Ethanol, Sugar, simple quick recipes), Complicated Chemistry (Lipolicide), and Non Medbay (Orange Juice and Gold). Silver being resistance 10 is a bad joke. The threshold bonus's for these are where most of the fun without being deadly falls. Stage speed still trumps this.
Start at tier five trumps stage speed when it doesn't actually lower the stage in a timely manner.

Narcolepsy/Vomiting/DNA Sabetour and some of the other "painful but not deadly" virus's can be fun for conversion rounds where your team controls medbay and chemistry so you can cure it, but don't want to straight kill your entire team who isn't paying attention on the shared radio/gang chat/sucks to be you REVs.


Should I ramble more?

[Oldman Robustin]

I think stat symptoms are fine, this system is literally the best its ever been. You actually have to put some thought into your disease instead of just stacking negative/positive symptoms.

It just needs tweaking and fleshing out. Helpful/Harmful symptoms needs to have more nuanced stat effects, right now almost every good symptom gives a flat debuff to all stats and every harmful symptom does the same.

This means (since stats are really important now) that you just pick the most effective heal/harm symptom and nothing else. There also should be some more "hidden" effects that encourage resistance or stealth.

[Nabski]

How can you say stat symptoms are fine, then also that the best thing to do is just stack stats and a single symptom.

I don't like it because it's relatively a no brainer of "Stats are good, I want stats, I will include this on every virus I make"


At some point I started restating things so that good symptoms raised stats, bad lowered, and things in the same vein always did the same thing. (Like Brute always stealth, Burn damage always speed, Toxin always resistance, Oxygen always transmission) and trying to make more things like alopecia, it's important if you want to make that stat and it has an effect that could be considered a downside, but is not harmful helpful or invisible like eternal youth and everything that starts with "viral".

[Oldman Robustin]

How can you say stat symptoms are fine, then also that the best thing to do is just stack stats and a single symptom.

I don't like it because it's relatively a no brainer of "Stats are good, I want stats, I will include this on every virus I make"


At some point I started restating things so that good symptoms raised stats, bad lowered, and things in the same vein always did the same thing. (Like Brute always stealth, Burn damage always speed, Toxin always resistance, Oxygen always transmission) and trying to make more things like alopecia, it's important if you want to make that stat and it has an effect that could be considered a downside, but is not harmful helpful or invisible like eternal youth and everything that starts with "viral".

Because symptom slots are still a premium so you have to weigh effects v. stats.

With neutering any symptom with good stats is going to end up being a "stat" symptom anyway.

There just need to be more tweaking so that you aren't forced to stack 5 stat symptoms to make another symptom effective. For example currently the "best" healing virus can do 12 brute/12 burn right now, but there's a decent argument that 8/8 plus another good effect would be better since 12/12 is kinda overkill (either you're taking a ton of damage quickly and no virus can save you, or your taking it slowly and 8/8 is plenty - there's not a lot of in-between situations) - the problem is that every positive symptom reduces speed so you can't get a 3rd positive symptom and still get 8/8 healing.

Having something like self-respiration or sensory restoration not debuff speed would add more nuance to the construction of healing viruses. Diversifying stat buffs and giving more hidden effects to stealth and resistance would also make the decision harder - imagine if there were significant advantages to having a high stealth or high resistance healing virus (e.g. high resistance means once every X minutes you will instantly get a large heal for the damage type if you enter crit).

[Nabski]

My point on pure stat virus's being bad is more for the infected than the the person making it.

You know someone can walk in space if: They have a space suit, they have a glowing aura around them, they are a special race, you punch them and they heal the damage really quickly. One of these things is not like the other.

It's likely the virus is quickly going to take effect if: You start itching sneezing and having your blood boil.
Or you can just take accel and youth and the only warning they get are the ones built into the virus and "you feel lithe".

[Not-Dorsidarf]

honestly I think this is hilarious. I loved the part where daturix sperged at oldman 4nr.

also the problem here is viral metabolism + super deadly symptoms being a too-strong combo, not virology itself.

[ShadowDimentio]

Viral metabolism is a huge double-edged sword. If someone somehow manages to keep themselves healed for long enough (I E by hiding in medbay) the virus just heals itself, which is more than enough of a downside to its one bonus of the virus starting at max stage.

I'd remind you that most any well-engineered virus has at least a respectable stage speed, meaning that metabolism is pretty much just speeding up an already speedy process of viral evolution.

[cedarbridge]

I have a beef with viro only when and where a virus can contain deadly symptoms AND be literally invisible to all scanners. I'm generally of a mind that no virus should be completely invisible on the viro console. Hand scanners I can accept being evaded by stealth, but being invisible on a viro console just turns the virus into a guessing game where you get maybe one guess before you burst into flames and die.

[Nabski]

The pandemic machine was changed a few months back so it can always see the sample.

[cedarbridge]

The pandemic machine was changed a few months back so it can always see the sample.

Neat

[XDTM]

The pandemic machine was changed a few months back so it can always see the sample.

Neat

One step ahead of you

With the latest PR, virus severity now matters, since medHUDs display different icons based on the most severe (dangerous) symptom. A disease with just coughing will have a mild green : | face, positive-only viruses keep their icon, and the more dangerous one get from yellow to orange to red, and REALLY deadly ones get a flashing black-red. These are either stuff like GBS or transformation diseases, or stuff with uranium death symptoms.
So stealth is still very valuable, even if your virus can still be scanned, since it hides the threat level until it acts.

[ShadowDimentio]

Some stuff needs changing, like the DNA Saboteur virus requiring 5!! stealth for one of the traits to activate, which is nigh impossible even if that's the only thing you're going for, and requires dropping sneezing. Lower the stealth requirement to like 1 or 2.

[onleavedontatme]

I think we are once again back in the "half the crew is essentially immune to convential damage for no cost or drawback" part of the viro balance cycle

[Arianya]

cough cough get rid of hulk cough cough

[Oldman Robustin]

>MFW I had to nerf zombie regen because 4 brute/4 burn was crazy OP for the Github shitposters.

>Viro gets an update allowing for a 12 brute/12 burn virus.

H-h-h-honk

I like healing virii but 12 is just too much. 4/6/8 seems like a more reasonable scaling.

[DemonFiren]

>virii
it's viruses

[onleavedontatme]

Just saw a round where healing virus was done at 7 minutes. Medbay should not be obsolete 7 minutes into the round.

[ShadowDimentio]

Just saw a round where healing virus was done at 7 minutes. Medbay should not be obsolete 7 minutes into the round.

Hardly. People still die and have more egregious injuries that viruses can't fix, medbay has plenty of a job even with a uranium healing virus going around.

[Nabski]

My record for the "heals 1 damage per tick of each damage type" virus is 1:27.

The other version is "whenever the fuck miners get uranium".

[legoscape]

I watched a man get two arms and a leg cut off, He got up and healed it off like he scraped his knee on the ground. pls nerf

[kevinz000]

wait
7 minutes?
wtf ban them for being slow

[XDTM]

Losing limbs cures all the damage on said limb, it wasn`t just the virus