New Virology

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spookydonut
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New Virology

Post by spookydonut » #553366

I'm collecting ideas and concepts for a new virology system.

I'm not committing personally to replacing virology at this stage.

https://hackmd.io/jAEBd2e0R-KcZBiWsaPPEw
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CDranzer
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Re: New Virology

Post by CDranzer » #553433

I think the biggest thing would be to give virology something of a monopoly on cures and treatments. As it stands, virology doesn't cure viruses. Chemistry cures viruses. On rare occasion, virology helps distribute cures or identify the cure for a stealth virus.
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Re: New Virology

Post by spookydonut » #553442

CDranzer wrote:I think the biggest thing would be to give virology something of a monopoly on cures and treatments. As it stands, virology doesn't cure viruses. Chemistry cures viruses. On rare occasion, virology helps distribute cures or identify the cure for a stealth virus.
Virology should identify the cure but medbay/chemistry should be the ones giving treatment.

The issue is of course if theres no virologist then station is fucked because no one will be able to identify what the hell is going on
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Shadowflame909
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Re: New Virology

Post by Shadowflame909 » #553447

That's what the CMO is for. No worries

Also, code red lethal safeties off holodeck medbay.
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wesoda25
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Re: New Virology

Post by wesoda25 » #553456

In the same vein as the viro curing stuff, perhaps the machines role in the cure could be re-evaluated. As is the meta for traitor viros is to mass produce the disease, cure themselves, and then destroy all pandemic machines and chem machines. I’m not suggesting anything, just saying that it might be worthwhile to consider a system of curing where this isn’t the go to.
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Tlaltecuhtli
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Re: New Virology

Post by Tlaltecuhtli » #553461

rework cure into something hinted by health scan and have viro try different chems (which can make it go worse or better) first on monkys (many false positives) and then on humans (less false positives) ? like chem x y z lower the fever on monkys while a b c increase it, then you try z x y on humans and one does nothing other slowly cures fever other faster ---> synthoms being neutered gives you a % chance on tick to cure, then you create a vaccine which is the right combo of chems to cure the specific virus
this way viro and chem have different roles ( experimenation&analysis for viro and providing the chems for chemist and making vaccine pills once its found for him)
then idk add a mutative stat that rng changes some of the virus synthom so if you dont prevent it from spreading to everyone/ cure it in time a highly mutative cough + sneeze might give you heart attacks n shit
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CDranzer
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Re: New Virology

Post by CDranzer » #553535

spookydonut wrote:
CDranzer wrote:I think the biggest thing would be to give virology something of a monopoly on cures and treatments. As it stands, virology doesn't cure viruses. Chemistry cures viruses. On rare occasion, virology helps distribute cures or identify the cure for a stealth virus.
Virology should identify the cure but medbay/chemistry should be the ones giving treatment.

The issue is of course if theres no virologist then station is fucked because no one will be able to identify what the hell is going on
The Pandemic is surprisingly trivial to build
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Cobby
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Re: New Virology

Post by Cobby » #553666

Viro needs to shift in a design, as we've seen with several attempts now, the whole viro engineering viruses really boils down to "heal/kill viruses" and then he hides or AFKs for the rest of the round. It's not fun especially when most of the gameplay is pre-round where you're building your excel, which adding things like the block cap mechanic wouldn't fix.

IMO viro would be more enjoyable if it could focus less on excel building and more on reacting to situations (or working to prevent dynamic situations) that appear on the station.
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chocolate_bickie
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Re: New Virology

Post by chocolate_bickie » #553730

Instead of permanent viruses that exist to cures what if instead viruses had lifespans dependent on their symptoms before the body automatically cured the patient and made them immune to the same virus. For example a virus with only one symptom lasts an hour (such as a brute heal or coughing) but each new symptom takes away more time before you are naturally cured.

That way super heal/death viruses only last a 10 minutes, making deploying them more strategic. It also increases the relevance of an active virologist as whilst infected patients will eventually recover as long as they are kept alive it is still preferable to cure the disease and deploy a vaccine instead of constantly healing the same people.

Ir also means that the virologist can produce a variety of different viruses for different situations. No air/all plasma? Self -resp virus (50 mins) that lasts ages or self-resp+brute heal (30 mins) if your out of space suits.
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Re: New Virology

Post by Calomel » #553731

I agree that Virology probably needs changes, it's very quick to get most of the thigns you get and the only
cork is the initial formol neutering on your base disease. I wouldn't like more unnecesary RNG, but the idea of
timed symptoms is great because it forces viro to be active.

The real big upgrade that would be great is a way
to mass produce vaccines; having to go throgh little bottles of vaccine, then pilling them i chemistry is a
bulky process that isbetter solved with actual chemicals. Viro should have a vaccine maker in his station taht can
make tons of vaccines really quickly, and maybe they can be charged into the kiosk, which would give kiosk
another use, AND allow viro to cut on travel and "CHEMISTRY OPEN UP" expenses.
"Purging chemicals at incredibly hihg speeds."
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ATHATH
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Re: New Virology

Post by ATHATH » #555668

Why bother spending half of your round making a deathvirus, then, if it's only gonna kill like 10 people before mutating and becoming useless?

Hell, what's the point of making a positive virus if it's just gonna cure itself/mutate into uselessness?
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XDTM
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Re: New Virology

Post by XDTM » #555706

I've thought about this a lot; it's very hard to make a gameplay loop that is both engaging for the virologist and fair to the victims.

Permanent viruses means that you make one virus, release it, then have nothing else to do except help spread it; temporary viruses won't last long enough to be reliably spread across many targets, even if you make multiple.
Strong symptoms/Hard to detect means that victims will catch the virus and die before being able to do anything about it; Weak symptoms/easy to detect means that it's highly likely one victim will get the cure and distribute it rapidly.

To make a proper ""realistic"" pandemic experience a dangerous virus should be dangerous (i.e. long-term crippling or death), quick to spread, and hard to cure (at least for the first patient), which would ideally drive the crew to isolate themselves, establish quarantine, use protective gear, and so on. But the success of the virus, once out there, depends entirely on the actions of the victims, and the virologist either hides or gets lynched, and on our level of roleplay standards it's very hard to coordinate any form of effective countermeasures.

On top of that, it often isn't fun for the crew to just die without being able to do anything about it. It's a thing that happens in the game, but inflicting it on most of the server every time a death virus is released means fun only for one player and maybe the observers. (we do allow murderboning, though, so this might not matter)
a.k.a. Duke Hayka

Coder of golems, virology, hallucinations, traumas, nanites, and a bunch of miscellaneous stuff.
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Nabski
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Re: New Virology

Post by Nabski » #555754

XDTM wrote:I've thought about this a lot; it's very hard to make a gameplay loop that is both engaging for the virologist and fair to the victims.

Permanent viruses means that you make one virus, release it, then have nothing else to do except help spread it; temporary viruses won't last long enough to be reliably spread across many targets, even if you make multiple.
Strong symptoms/Hard to detect means that victims will catch the virus and die before being able to do anything about it; Weak symptoms/easy to detect means that it's highly likely one victim will get the cure and distribute it rapidly.

To make a proper ""realistic"" pandemic experience a dangerous virus should be dangerous (i.e. long-term crippling or death), quick to spread, and hard to cure (at least for the first patient), which would ideally drive the crew to isolate themselves, establish quarantine, use protective gear, and so on. But the success of the virus, once out there, depends entirely on the actions of the victims, and the virologist either hides or gets lynched, and on our level of roleplay standards it's very hard to coordinate any form of effective countermeasures.

On top of that, it often isn't fun for the crew to just die without being able to do anything about it. It's a thing that happens in the game, but inflicting it on most of the server every time a death virus is released means fun only for one player and maybe the observers. (we do allow murderboning, though, so this might not matter)
Would symptoms and cures being less binary help?
A virus that doubles the amount of stamina damage you take.
A virus that damages your organs.
Have multiple cures shown. One would set it back a stage, one would do nothing, one would actually cure it. These are different from person to person so it's not just "I got the pill".

Less effective negative virus's would probably be more accepted if they weren't so piss easy to cure. If the crew is going to try to lynch you for making a virus that makes them talk in a different voice, there isn't much incentive to do that instead of just killing them. Personally I'll make "subpar" viruses sometimes because they are more fun than lethal ones, but you have just as many people who do their super deadly virus until they get sick of it.
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XDTM
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Re: New Virology

Post by XDTM » #555805

Nabski wrote:
XDTM wrote:I've thought about this a lot; it's very hard to make a gameplay loop that is both engaging for the virologist and fair to the victims.

Permanent viruses means that you make one virus, release it, then have nothing else to do except help spread it; temporary viruses won't last long enough to be reliably spread across many targets, even if you make multiple.
Strong symptoms/Hard to detect means that victims will catch the virus and die before being able to do anything about it; Weak symptoms/easy to detect means that it's highly likely one victim will get the cure and distribute it rapidly.

To make a proper ""realistic"" pandemic experience a dangerous virus should be dangerous (i.e. long-term crippling or death), quick to spread, and hard to cure (at least for the first patient), which would ideally drive the crew to isolate themselves, establish quarantine, use protective gear, and so on. But the success of the virus, once out there, depends entirely on the actions of the victims, and the virologist either hides or gets lynched, and on our level of roleplay standards it's very hard to coordinate any form of effective countermeasures.

On top of that, it often isn't fun for the crew to just die without being able to do anything about it. It's a thing that happens in the game, but inflicting it on most of the server every time a death virus is released means fun only for one player and maybe the observers. (we do allow murderboning, though, so this might not matter)
Would symptoms and cures being less binary help?
A virus that doubles the amount of stamina damage you take.
A virus that damages your organs.
Have multiple cures shown. One would set it back a stage, one would do nothing, one would actually cure it. These are different from person to person so it's not just "I got the pill".

Less effective negative virus's would probably be more accepted if they weren't so piss easy to cure. If the crew is going to try to lynch you for making a virus that makes them talk in a different voice, there isn't much incentive to do that instead of just killing them. Personally I'll make "subpar" viruses sometimes because they are more fun than lethal ones, but you have just as many people who do their super deadly virus until they get sick of it.
Yeah, another problem with the viro system, that also affects nanites, is that most players seem to go for the most effective option if given the choice, regardless of the !FUN! potential. For example, everyone seems to use the explosive nanite program when going antag, instead of using more creative setups like being able to mute people at the click of a remote.

So viro really has to be balanced on its most deadly symptom, unless symptom acquisition is gated by RNG in some way (not in the current way, since eventually you can get any symptom with minimal cost).
Some kind of semi-random tech tree would probably be the best solution to that problem, so people get a set of symptoms and have to figure out how to best use them, instead of planning the perfect one and gunning for it every round.
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Re: New Virology

Post by Tlaltecuhtli » #555813

stellaris tech tree as weighted rng you can influence?
Ivuchnu
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Please no botany-style nerfs

Post by Ivuchnu » #556075

I've been maining virology lately. I like that job because it allows me to empower lots of people quickly with healing, as compared to xenobiology, which is strong but is rather weak when it comes to mass-production. Hydroponics also been potentially good departament to mass-produce strong healing plants but recent changes have put end to that.

My usual way is speedrunning healing virus that has transmittability sacrificed for versatility and healing speed and spending rest of round distributing virus (you invest either into transmittability or speed and versatility), educating people about it (viruses now provide mostly conditional healing, so virus users should know when their virus would heal them). Speedrun part is almost always the same, I have experience to finish what I want in about 15 minutes and bad RNG has little effect on that. Then I get to interact with crew! Advertise virus pills, go to virology lab with traitor curator doing news report, get into conflict with occasional anti-vaxxer, cure random miasma virus. This is good part, not rapid clicking I do with muscle memory to get there.

So far, I don't want to see virology overhauled. It's fine where it is. I might want to see is more healing symptoms with main threshold for efficiency being resistance, most of current ones have healing speed locked behind stage speed. More symptoms to choose from when designing virus is good. Also I think way to rapidly prototype viruses inside of game as opposed to calculator and wiki would be good too. I still see too much clueless virologists failing to provide meaningful virus in meaningful time.

Now I wanna comment on suggested ideas.

Virology handling curing viruses - yes, currently chemists are ones who cure viruses, not virologists. This is kinda stupid. Good idea.
Health scans doing only hints for cures - could be part of previous idea being implemented but otherwise antag viro buff no one asked for.
Viruses actually mutating as they spread - buff to bad viruses as well, not sure what I think about it.
Viro AFKing/hiding instead of being stuck in their lab unconditionally - it's their freedom to do so, myself I do find things to do after I made my healing virus. Bad idea.
Viruses that cure themselves over time, especially when complex viruses get cured faster - yeah, I sure love having my work vanish! Viruses already are pretty weak, no fleshmend tier stuff anymore. Terrible idea.
Not having to go to chemlab to nab Chemmaster - good, I'd love personal Chemmaster and chembag, chemists almost always fail to make pills exactly like you ask them to (and that requires them to exist) and "AI open" at chemlab airlock every time is not exactly fun interaction with crew.
More exotic deathvirus symptoms - good.
Semi-random tech tree - I already hate when low resistance healing virus rolls iron, bloodloss med, as cure. Getting gated out from favorite design at random is not what I want.
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Alex Crimson
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Re: New Virology

Post by Alex Crimson » #556095

Would increasing the spawn chance of Sentient Diseases be a bad idea? From what ive experienced, they are not a serious threat to the station. The back and forth between Viro and a player-controlled disease could be a fun distraction. If the disease wins, they get greentext. If Viro wins, they could also have objectives to stop any player-controlled disease from leaving the station. You could also add rewards for beating the disease, like unique symptoms(which would give balancers access to a strong way to gate overpowered symptoms) or even just lots of money for Cargo if you send the vaccine to Centcomm.

I do like the idea of Viro being a kind of quarantine unit, but it would require a lot of additions. You would need to set up a bunch of threats to the station to make them relevant, and the lack of a Virologist would make things a pain. I hesitate to suggest adding more Viro slots, because working with a partner is horrible for that job, especially with the 1-virus limit & occasional tatoring.

Honestly, Virologist is a department that could be completely removed and not affect the station much. Its probably my favourite job, to the point i made a damn virus cheatsheet, but i wouldnt be that bothered if it were just removed, if coders felt it had no place on the station. Completely reworking the job seems much harder than just removing it.
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CPTANT
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Re: New Virology

Post by CPTANT » #556138

Virologist should be merged with doctors, it's way too much of a niche job to be interesting on its own.
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confused rock
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Re: New Virology

Post by confused rock » #556167

can curing the viruses just be moved to fucking chemistry or made a virology job? one of the two. If it's a virology thing I've had the idea of making a similar virus allowing you to make vaccines as a simple way to make virology virology.
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Calomel
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Re: New Virology

Post by Calomel » #556171

confused rock wrote:can curing the viruses just be moved to fucking chemistry or made a virology job? one of the two. If it's a virology thing I've had the idea of making a similar virus allowing you to make vaccines as a simple way to make virology virology.
I think this might be a good idea. Chemistry is a job that runs outof things to do very early, and virology is a job taht usually has nothing to do roundstart, but many things that canbe done later. It's a match made in heaven.
"Purging chemicals at incredibly hihg speeds."
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Ivuchnu
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Changes for change god! Bad PR!

Post by Ivuchnu » #571761

Current virology /small/ remaster. I don't agree that fucking over pre-made virus designs is "small". How this is good for game? I gotta say that fighting RNG in virology is not why virology is liked.
Add random stats to symptoms with a hard cap on positive gain.
Age of mediocre healviruses or viro grinding RNG to get good stat buffs (might be not happening) has come!
Make viruses evolve over time, requiring a more hands-on approach for the virologist.
Viro made healvirus, healvirus got kill symptom, lynch viro.
Wait for Cobby to request more tuning
I'd talk with person who's still around and did most of work for virology but idk lol bruh.

If you don't like pre-planning of viruses outside of game (I enjoy that!), empower people to do it ingame too.
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Not happy with game, not happy with code.
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Stickymayhem
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Re: New Virology

Post by Stickymayhem » #571817

On reading the doc just a thought

couldn't we tie some interesting transmission mechanics and sample collection to the existing fingerprint system? Fingerprints take into account whether protective clothing was being worn and objects store it as a var

i dont know big code projects though maybe this is dumb
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