[Manuel] Let's define "powergaming"

[Ivuchnu]

When I hear "powergaming", I imagine average Terry player getting fireaxe, AA, shades, armor, medkit and backpack full of guns to completely ruin anyone else's chances of having good time. On "I know it when I see it" basis, you know.

Somewhat recently paramedic who asked command for hand teleporter every round to get players back sooner got jobbanned. Recently I heard adminhelp.ogg over my attempt to ensure that as many people have good healing virus as possible by dumping virus pills at arrivals. Recently security player managed to disarm antag that can gib players only for admin to give said ability back, resulting in mass death. There's idea thread suggesting that geneticists should be unable to mass-produce injectors.

Is doing your job good bad?

The must flow.

EDIT: Non-Manuel players, get out!

[Reeeee]

Is doing your job good bad?

The must flow.

Here's the two shortest takes imaginable;
Don't play on Manuel. And

Spoiler:

Powergaming. Powergaming is the the act of using an in-game mechanic, any external information, or a roleplay concept to favor their own character or story, and give them an unfair or unrealistic advantage.

It's a loveable mess of rulings and admins just dropping into give their hot takes on what's allowed and what's not and rest of the admins back seating those decisions later. So, you know, just don't spend the effort unless you love lost causes.
There's a whole subforum of discussion that needs to happen OR someone being told they are now the "boss" for you to get answers to your questions specifically about manuel in these specific instances because the current answer is; nobody knows.
They'll probs get onto making actual rules and giving it a headmin at some point. Maybe. Or the whole concept is buried for "being too much fucking effort to moderate". Who knows.

Fun to read about, I don't get why people actively subject themselves to the mess when result is like you said; and
To me it seems TG is pretty good about fucking over powergamers as is, you don't really get to powercreep to being invincible unless you are a wizard. Rest of it is kind of solvable with shoves and having help. Dunno why Manuel specifically needs rules to fight it. You can just rule 1 ghost the nerd doing it if it's breaking immershium so much.

[Ivuchnu]

Don't play on Manuel

nah. Really sick of equipment check flash bullshit, staying out of someone's robusting range 100% of time, everything going to shit in about 30 minutes (good luck doing xenobio, lul) and those powergaming types being a non-murderous dick only when they don't roll antag with admins going "IC issue, closed".

[Reeeee]

powergaming types being a non-murderous dick only when they don't roll antag

Is the entire player base of TG tho.
Antags are supposed to antagonize you so you fight them to stop that.

Rest of it is coded in so you are kind of fucked there unless you convince one of the coders that your approach is the correct one instead of what it is. Flashes are noted to be bit overpowered at the moment, so that's happening.
Dying is a very big part of this game. "Winning" isn't really something that's supposed to happen to you as crewmember unless conversion antag.
30 minutes is where shit is kinda supposed to hit the fan, 60 minute runtime per round, last 30 is kind of supposed to be a mess by that interpretation, no? Whatever xeno is *supposed* to be, is going to at some point changed to be relevant to that timeframe so that complaint is kind of empty other than to note that, yes, xenobio takes a long ass time to get to it's endgoals.

Do you really ahelp so much that "IC issue" response is an actual concern for you? That kinda smells like you need to adjust your attitude a bit. Admins aren't there to cater to YOUR enjoyment specifically. or wdym.

[Ivuchnu]

nah. Let's not discuss whenever Manuel is bad or good here. Trouble with powergaming / "stay in your lane" rules actually is rather rare, but those select situations made me make this thread. And given how vague subject is, it's not in Policy Discussion.

[RaveRadbury]

Within the workflow of most jobs, you create or acquire a thing and then you store it somewhere. Most jobs that engage this have specific places to store thing, medical has the two fridges at the pharmacy, sec has the evidence locker (xenobio has their fridge, botany has their fridge, examples are everywhere). These are meant to be known locations of departmental dumping, and when someone has need of those things they know where they are supposed to go. A really easy rule of thumb is that if you're taking the fruits of your department beyond the boundaries of the workplace or storage in order to make it more easily accessible, you're likely powergaming (an example exception to this would be the chef making use of the hotdog stand and ice cream maker outside a rage cage). This applies to genetics consoles in the main hall, pills at arrivals, sec hoarding tator toys, even nanites in the hallway really (Which makes me think that public nanites and genetics should go no further than the department lobby.) Part of why we would call these things powergaming is that it is emphasizing maximization of game play mechanics while also cutting out the middleman of any social interaction or movement between departments, or what we would call, "roleplay".

Think about our established examples of powergaming: destroying theft objectives, oversecuring the brig/armory, overzealous AI bolting. These are all things that are deemed unfair because they pre-empt antagonist actions and can be performed at the beginning of every round. Here we can address the issue of rushing the hand TP: with a method of teleport and a portable health monitor a paramedic can appear instantly without any need to run to the location. If you have an especially powergamey paramedic they might act as a harm alarm to alert sec to locations rather than just doing their job and going to find the person in medical peril. These configurations and behavioral patterns completely pre-empt antags ability to complete their kill objective within a sane amount of time.

Let's go back to your situation. You want people to go and get your pill? You have to get their attention. What methods do you have? You can spam comms, you can send out a PDA blast, you can get your boss to put out an announcement. You could even walk around offering people your pills (running around with your medHUD silently spraying people with your virus, according to the above rule of thumb, is powergaming). But let's say that you want to address new arrivals, make sure that they get your virus. The trick there is to either leave a note or some graffiti (likely to be ignored, lost, or cleaned up) or you could get a holodisk and record a message for new arrivals, explaining that your wonder pill is available at the medbay lobby fridge (while there is a chance someone will overwrite it, you could just keep a spare copy on-hand and reset it, this is the solution I would go for, personally).

[Reeeee]

Trouble with powergaming / "stay in your lane" rules actually is rather rare, but those select situations made me make this thread. And given how vague subject is, it's not in Policy Discussion.

Dunno man, the thing where you tossed pills into arrivals seems very clear cut to me personally.
You do not touch arrivals. That's the entirety of it, there's no policy discussion there or anything vague about it. Just delete the existence of arrivals from all of your interactions in-game. Trying to fight that simple fact is just you trying to virtually suicide via proxy.
You were also kind of power gaming while you did that, nobody NEEDS your super pills to play the game, you elected to break one of the most basic and simple rules we have to be better than the average at your job.
Minor crimes, since you had good intentions but still, then the matter would escalate to people doing their JOB in arrivals sooner or later and then we got people ahelping "HELP I D FNR IN ARRIVALS" after spending fifty minutes in there doing chemistry or something.

Just leave it and never look back and nobody has to argue about what's allowed there if NOTHING happens in there. Fair?
(xenos are the only one who get kind of an immunity to that specifically on box since it has abandoned room? Probably still a high risk place to do your ssss-ing tho.)

EMT job is basically being a corpse cart, having a high risk item for the sake of being super good at his job? Same difference, it's an item compared to a place that was abused there. Rave got overexcited to see now content,(heretic) forced it and decisions happened that led to people arguing about it, which discussion is still ongoing? Shit is literally being tossed at the wall and then we see what sticks. That's a valid, if a slow way, to get from a mess to a defined ruleset.
Eventually.

Even rest of the TG is still having policy discussions about what's correct and not, so trying to make some universal ruling for end of all times is an empty effort. Code changes constantly and so do people playing. Something set in stone today might change tomorrow because new content arrived. There's no universal answer for you to achieve considering all possible individual interactions in the future. Some of them are kind of really integral tho, like arrivals.
You kind of said it yourself, it's too vague to be defined into a simple sentence since there are too many scenarios for it to happen in.
And when difference of opinion on grander scale happens, we got complaints, policy discussion and appeals for it in those specific instances.

Part of why we would call these things powergaming is that it is emphasizing maximization of game play mechanics while also cutting out the middleman of any social interaction or movement between departments, or what we would call, "roleplay".

They aren't exclusive tho, you can be good at your job to the level of powergaming and still be "socially active", arpee.
One does not preclude the other.
Plus, if that was the factual truth of the matter, all xenobio dudes would be instabanned for sitting at a console all day and not talking to people.

[Ivuchnu]

beyond the boundaries ... likely powergaming

Self-spreading virus release is powergaming, ok... Also both security and engineering efforts are powergaming, as you miss opportunity to be killed by antag outside of brig and you get to enjoy blue/green APC. And new items appear in protolathe menu thanks to someone pushing buttons, ban those scientists who dare to research things without people yelling at them first.

• spam comms - I do that, it's very annoying to myself.
• PDA blast - Sometimes I do that, but prefer not to as mass broadcasts are even more annoying and require killing time at hopline asking for Value-PAK or getting lawyer's cartridge somehow.
• put out an announcement - I sometimes do that. Again, it's AI's help (AI is soul-crushing "job" regarding "AI, do X" requests, not all AIs are nice when asked to do thing and I don't feel like bugging them much) or CMO that exists and not busy getting husked miner back to game.
• offering people your pills - If I got time, I get assistant with medihud to do exactly that.
• silently spraying - I avoid this because people are chimping out too much about that plus this does not let teach people how to use damn virus. I sure do give unconscious people virus if it's viable way to get them out of crit, namely, toxins or oxyloss with no one able to CPR. Extremely handy for medbay nerf state. Very little people are pissed off by me getting them out of crit with virus assistance.
• leave a note or some graffiti or holodisk - yeeted because crashes, tried and indeed cleaned up, tried and griefed by non-antag shitters even after holopad being surrounded by r-glass.

I use all those methods in varying volume. Why pills around station are bad? Simply because would-be user of pill misses opportunity to talk with me? Oh no, they don't. I'll explain how virus works or how to do virology and will likely hear and answer your request to produce specialized virus. Why advertisement-less public chemfridge is not powergaming? It's inefficient way because no one is really checking damn thing (check this out) as those are too often empty but otherwise allows one to silently get healing pills. I personally like botanists putting stuff like wooden planks, food and cloth/leather/cardboard outside of their windoor. Pubby's biogen location is brilliant in way how to empower botanists in helping station.

the thing where you tossed pills into arrivals seems very clear cut

I don't agree and some other people don't agree either, as policy thread I made suggests.

[Reeeee]

I don't agree and some other people don't agree either, as policy thread I made suggests.

Yep, I said personally. Someone told me "don't exist in arrivals" via bwoink when i was testing something as a newbie and never have I been bothered about it since.
That's simple, effective and doesn't make admins hover the bwoink button. Don't be a dick to mins.

Also you are really REALLY REALLY focused on you being the absolute best you can as viro. That's being a powergamer about the whole experience dood. Just relax a little. Nobody dies in real life if you loosen the bio hood a little and play engineer and learn to make a TEG.

[Ivuchnu]

I think if we all focused on being best at jobs we picked, overall we would have more enjoyable station. Incompetence everywhere every round is not this fun to me anymore.

[Reeeee]

I think if we all focused on being best at jobs we picked, overall we would have more enjoyable station. Incompetence everywhere every round is not this fun to me anymore.

That's... Never going to be like that.
Next thing you are going to say is "we should ban new players from roles that require knowledge of those roles". Nobody would ever play anything else but their selected role then, that would get boring really damn fast for most people.

The *point* of this game, (if there is any) is to experience it. That includes trying out new things. I heartily recommend you do some self medication and go do mining, cargo or space exploration for a while. And die to stupid shit. Viro is like 1% of this game. But like, you do you. If that's your thing who am I to argue you changing your tune.
Just don't act surprised if you are accused of powergaming while being 100% viroman.

[Ivuchnu]

I do not suggest banning new people. Teaching inexperienced people how to do things is fun. Working together with experienced people finding obscure mechanic combinations or discussing that is also fun. Powergaming in my experience is extremely anti-fun when you are victim and thus it really feels bad when admin bwoinks you to blame you for powergaming while you definitely did not do anything anti-fun. Someone tell me what is purpose of virologist the job if not to empower station with beneficial viruses and root out bad diseases.

[saprasam]

do you need an entire fucking book to explain what powergaming is
it's literally just "ooga booga me take everything to minimize failure" at the expense of others

[Reeeee]

I do not suggest banning new people. Teaching inexperienced people how to do things is fun. Working together with experienced people finding obscure mechanic combinations or discussing that is also fun. Powergaming in my experience is extremely anti-fun when you are victim and thus it really feels bad when admin bwoinks you to blame you for powergaming while you definitely did not do anything anti-fun. Someone tell me what is purpose of virologist the job if not to empower station with beneficial viruses and root out bad diseases.

You were kind of on a path to that conclusion.
I think the definition of the role is experimentation something something? There really isn't lore to be had for you. Kinda have to asspull that for yourself. Better that way anyway imo.

You are mixing up the purpose of the role ICly and people playing that role to have fun with it cus it's a videogame OOCly to be the same thing. That's not a thing people do, I hope. They are trying to have fun. And more over, it's a roleplay setting. Optimally trying to achieve the same goal over and over again isn't roleplaying, it's systematic powergaming.
You really, really don't need to win the game every time you play it dood.

The setting you are in, it's not your personal virology test chamber for the sole purpose of giving you test subjects who don't fight back and always act optimally for purposes of spreading the contagion. That's what the monkeys are for. Proper roleplay approach to a virologist on a super secret research station spreading his virus without massive warning signs everywhere with the tag "it's really good for you" is to cremate the fuck at the spot, call security and then cremate everything that virologist touched. Probably yourself too.
Well, that's how I would probably react if some rando started giving me viral pills in middle of the street.
Roleplay muddies that water even further since a janitor is not supposed to know what any virus does. Well, "MRP", you figure what the means in this context.

It is more of an mindset people exist in rather than specific actions being taken, powergaming. I imagine you were more warned about being powergamy due to how they tend to act overall rather than you being mean about it on any level. Yeah, sucks. But you were acting like one. Powergamers, as a generalization, are anti-fun. Powergamers suck the setting around themselves to be about them, and how to make best use of it to further their goals. In this case it's you being bullheaded about your virus.
Yes, it is the optimally best virus in the game in a vacuum, no, that doesn't mean EVERYONE MUST HAVE IT CUS WE MUST WIN SPACESTATIONS.
That's the metaphorical powergame line you are tripping on.
Roleplay it more, only give it to heads, or test subjects. What if only security had your virus? That's far more optimal approach to win spacestations anyway. Change it around who get's it. If it's always the same end result, then there's no real story to be told, about you nor the people with it.

There's a golden path between being inept and being powergamer you are missing where the fun happens in a roleplay setting. You have to be good enough to be fluent in playing the game, but not good enough you always win. That does require a modicum of imposing limits to yourself to get most out of it. Winning is distasteful if it comes at the price of new things happening, imo. Well, this being SS13, you kind of never win.
You are being held back, and should be held back, so there's difference in the story of SS13, instead of it being literal groundhog day each time you log in.

You are kinda railing against the whole concept of roleplay and SS13 with the "being the best viro ever always that doesn't fail never" by copy-pasting your whole character arc over and over again. Being the best there is, is for children shows and badly written self-inserts. That's not an interesting character to interact with, that's a Mary Sue. Failures and mistakes make the story, there has to be opposing elements for it to be engaging. You always doing the same virus is anti-fun as a gameplay concept when the options are pretty darn limitless for viro. There is probs another guy wanting to be virologistmans to test his silly stuff rather than to optimize everything about the role too, so that's a thingamabob for you to ponder over as well, considering there is only ever one virologist.

Again, you do you, I don't decide what's fun for you.

do you need an entire fucking book to explain what powergaming is
it's literally just "ooga booga me take everything to minimize failure" at the expense of others

Not everyone instantly knows everything and sometimes it takes people a few minutes or tries to internalize stuff.
People are different and can be fantastically blind to specific things others internalize from a hint.
Assuming makes an ass out of you and me or watsit.

[Ivuchnu]

So much words, wow. I like saprasam's approach much more than walls and walls of text from player who does not play on Manuel. Please do not post more walls. They are hard to read.

[RaveRadbury]

I think that Libby is actually saying some pretty good stuff. Worth the read.

[Ivuchnu]

I think it treads into "how you are supposed to roleplay" too much.

[cybersaber101]

It really is an excellent take. both libby and saprasam summed it up.

[Ivuchnu]

Optimally trying to achieve the same goal over and over again isn't roleplaying, it's systematic powergaming.

I believe if we pick that as definition, you could rule-lawyer that lots of people just doing their jobs are powergaming and break "Don’t use OOC information or knowledge that your character would not reasonably be aware of just to give yourself an advantage." rule. Ban scientist rushing 50k bomb (goal - early unlock of things) or mining tech (goal - miners working faster) every round. Ban engineer replacing pressure pumps with straight pipes (goal - SM that is easier to recover from sabotage and/or more appropriate for !!FUN!! setups). Playing your job in non-optimal way is mandatory!

I play virology, I know it very well to rush virus in a way similar to 50k bomb rush and I am damn sure that virologist IC knows that miasma exists and unless everyone literally does not breathe or has high resistance virus, there will be bad virus outbreaks. Highly infective virus will easily override most of things not made in virology, however this leads to virus being less useful to person having it. I chose path of non-self-transmitting viruses with low resistance, making virus outbreak prevention important.

So, personally I'd like to see admins stopping rule-lawyering things that hurt no one as "powergaming" to ban scientist, engineer or me doing this kind of thing. If I wanted to have HRP experience where everyone has to follow specific script, I'd go to damn Baystation.

[XDTM]

Even if these cases are commonly accepted, it is true that they stifle roleplaying/creativity for a gameplay advantage by essentially using a static meta strategy. That kind of problem is more of a code issue, though, and would ideally be solved through balancing and adding alternative routes which are more or less equivalent.

That said, until the necessary balance and/or variety is achieved, the next best thing is having players that can put their desire for optimization aside in favour of creativity and roleplay interactions. On Manuel i believe the admins are trying to enforce some of this to create a better overall environment, even if it might mean stifling some player freedom.

[terranaut]

You are spending way too much time and effort to moderate and enforce the one approved way of having fun (tm) that the Manuel experience, in my impression, is much more about arguing about rules and defending your absolutely non-malicious good faith attempts to play the game (and perform well at your given role) rather than actually playing the game.

[NecromancerAnne]

Personally, think some roles, due to those code issues mentioned by XDTM, have next to nothing significantly going for them if it was not for their ability to distribute the fruits of their labour. Xenobio is already regarded as an immensely selfish powergame shitfest, but it does have tools available to it for helping the station at large. Genetics gains some benefit from distributing powers in the form of chromosomes, so part of it's gameplay loop needs you to be expending injectors. And virology literally has nothing going for it except spreading a singular virus, and by incidentally making their virus as effective as possible, the vector of transmission may be such that it will spread independently from anyones intervention.

For powers obtained within a department, I think members of that department should be able to take ready advantage of it and distribute it as they see fit. I'm not really of the mind that there is any real roleplay benefit to be had from keeping that stuff under lock and key, but I'm also not advocating that you should force yourself into a department for your gamer loot, or dumping it into a public space. Rather, I think as a departmental member you should be allowed to go offer your rewards to others, man a setup in a public area to distribute it with a face behind the loot, and incentivise some kind of exchange if possible. We have money after all, but sometimes it can be gamer gear for gamer gear too.

The only thing you shouldn't do, in my opinion, is distribute weapons and guns in non-emergency situations. We really don't need gun cargo. I think antags should be fine to do that since it causes some chaos with everyone being armed to hell and back, but not as a non-antag, as I feel it overtly encourages validhunting. And by emergency situations, I mean stuff like rallying a militia with maint muskets to fight a threat that has killed all of security as included in that.

[Reeeee]

So much words, wow. I like saprasam's approach much more than walls and walls of text from player who does not play on Manuel. Please do not post more walls. They are hard to read.

Not playing on Manuel is not a reason to stop having opinions to discuss this.
It's just a roleplay server in a pile of roleplay servers, it's not unique in any other way than it... has a different name?
Just cus i don't play on your server, doesn't mean I haven't been part of other roleplay servers in the past. It's not a unique experience to roleplay and TG is familiar to me. Everyone with any "oomph" over the rulings is adamant Manuel stays part of TG.
If manuel had consistency going for it, I would have changed long ago to there.
It's, let's be honest here, a fucking shitfest. This is relevant to my interests.

I'm an oldfag who got banned too many times for "peanut posting" when it literally meant "using fifty words or less".
Different forums doe, different approaches. My foruming was mandated to be wordy cus if you didn't have over fifty words to say, you really didn't have anything to say in the first place and you got ban'd and deleted by jannies.

TG goes the route of "scream faggot at someone and do not use OVER fifty words". \o/

/quote]
I believe if we pick that as definition.../quote]
I don't think anyone is arguing that 50k bombs are not powergaming, difference being, manuel cares about "powergaming", rest of the TG doesn't.
50k every round is pretty much the norm on bagel at least, being good isn't the problem with the powergaming, it's going past being good at your job and trying to change rules so you can powergame it to be even better at it.
As I said, you should do you, but not try to rail against rules to do that. That's just goofy, they exist to make the game enjoyable for everyone.

It's not that you do a supervirus, it's that you are arguing you should be able to break arrivals neutrality (rules) to spread it better. Now that if anything is powergaming and moving goalposts. SS13 has never been about winning anything, there's no statistics and it's all forgotten the instant round ends. (Barring OOC salt.)
Miasma viruses were coded in to be part of the game, not something you MUST delete or you get jobbanned. I'd even argue that constantly deleting one aspect of the game to not be there just makes coders do worse viruses in the long run.

[Ivuchnu]

Looking at arrivals floorpills policy discussion and this faux policy discussion threads, I decided to do following until relevant rulings come up:

• Continue to put virus pills for public and in public places only as floorpills thread shown no one knows whenever it's acceptable for murderboning antag to chuck poison pill in. And if they do, victim better flop over in place full of people as opposed to rarely visited area like arrivals or some other underused corner of station.
• Get ready to file admin complaint if case of someone deciding that I don't RP hard enough for MRP.

[NecromancerAnne]

A headmin hasn't added their input into that thread, it's just a bunch of people giving their opinions. You can only take that stuff with a grain of salt. You can't seriously expect to use that thread before a headmin ruling is made as good enough to back up your complaint, surely.

Additionally, you shouldn't scream foul every time an admin tells you to knock something off. A policy discussion thread is good and fine and helps push policy forward, but this is just being bratty.

[Reeeee]

You can't seriously expect to use that thread before a headmin ruling is made as good enough to back up your complaint, surely.

Don't we got a Triumvirate now that has got to all agree?
Well, it's gonna be one of the orange names (twaticus, coconutwarrior or cpn_monkeypaw) telling how it be, not just us randoms screaming opinions at the subject. He's also new-ish so we can't assume he knows how thing work with rule changes and policies being changed.

I don't know how it works, I just hear it in-game from people that do.
I mean MrStonedOne could just pop out of the backrow and insist Word of God, can't he? Not that he will, I imagine.

Get ready to file admin complaint if case of someone deciding that I don't RP hard enough for MRP.

Admins are *not* here to fuck your game, they are there to make sure things run more or less smoothly, don't antagonize them over you pretending to know better. They are people and you full stop declaring you'll fight them over this or that, it's not gonna end well when they just rule 0 doink you for being combative about it all FNR but to be right on the internet.
Calm and collected, learn to play with people, not against them. For all their mistakes they still want what best for all of us.
Well, mostly. Human error and stuff, mistakes happen.

Nobody is arguing your arpee is bad here. For all I know you are Shakespearian revelation in pixel form.

What I'm arguing, if I'm arguing anything, is that if you powergame, your arpee suffers, if you arpee, your powergame suffers. And that you should let your powergame suffer for the arpee on manuel just for the sake of manuel in the grand scheme of things.

[RaveRadbury]

What I'm arguing, if I'm arguing anything, is that if you powergame, your arpee suffers, if you arpee, your powergame suffers. And that you should let your powergame suffer for the arpee on manuel just for the sake of manuel in the grand scheme of things.

[Ivuchnu]

You can't seriously expect to use that thread before a headmin ruling

That's why "until relevant rulings come up", bruh.

you shouldn't scream foul every time an admin tells you to knock something off

I do get that admins normally are not player's enemy. However, someone quietly setting precedent on thing that hurt no one (stop doing X, it hurt no one but I believe it does not belong on server) without much argumentation feels antagonizing. People leave over this kind of thing or go to forums to get said precedent set properly. I've made threads relevant to things invoked in ticket and even suggested code solutions.

[Reeeee]

setting precedent

You. Broke. Rules.
There was no policy discussion in process.
Your dumb ass broke rules and got told not to do that, politely, i imagine. No actual crime was committed but that doesn't change the facts.

The discussion and the ruling needs to happen before your silly face is allowed to break rules.
Before that you are just screaming at a wall it's wrong for being a wall.

[Screemonster]

I play virology, I know it very well to rush virus in a way similar to 50k bomb rush and I am damn sure that virologist IC knows that miasma exists and unless everyone literally does not breathe or has high resistance virus, there will be bad virus outbreaks. Highly infective virus will easily override most of things not made in virology, however this leads to virus being less useful to person having it. I chose path of non-self-transmitting viruses with low resistance, making virus outbreak prevention important.

In a roleplay context, this is _definitely_ powergaming. You're taking an action that doesn't make sense in the setting because you know and intend to exploit the limitations of the game's simulation engine, namely the existence of a limit on how many viruses someone can have.
"I have to give everyone harmless viruses so there won't be room left in them for bad viruses" would be a nonsensical statement outside of the context of a game with a very short hard limit on how many viruses someone can carry at a time.

[XDTM]

I play virology, I know it very well to rush virus in a way similar to 50k bomb rush and I am damn sure that virologist IC knows that miasma exists and unless everyone literally does not breathe or has high resistance virus, there will be bad virus outbreaks. Highly infective virus will easily override most of things not made in virology, however this leads to virus being less useful to person having it. I chose path of non-self-transmitting viruses with low resistance, making virus outbreak prevention important.

In a roleplay context, this is _definitely_ powergaming. You're taking an action that doesn't make sense in the setting because you know and intend to exploit the limitations of the game's simulation engine, namely the existence of a limit on how many viruses someone can have.
"I have to give everyone harmless viruses so there won't be room left in them for bad viruses" would be a nonsensical statement outside of the context of a game with a very short hard limit on how many viruses someone can carry at a time.

I would disagree on that count. It might not be fully immersive, but that's not really what is expected in MRP. We acknowledge in game mechanics as they are in other circumstances, and it's necessary to do so to keep the game functional, especially when dealing with antags.

The potential issue in the example that does push against 'rp' is the pre-emptive nullification of threat: that kind of mentality is the source of many problematic behaviours that are regarded as powergaming.
That said, the effort to risk ratio is high enough that i don't see an issue with it. Spreading a disease to the whole crew is not trivial, and will incur pushback from the less trusting crewmembers; and as a result you avoid a low chance of a most likely harmless disease spawning from miasma.

If the effort is too low (simply unwrenching a pipe to prevent ai plasmafloods) or the risk prevented is high enough (implanting key crewmembers to prevent antag conversion) then the 'powergaming' becomes disruptive to gameplay.

[Reeeee]

beep

Code it so you can get multiple viruses at one, problem solved. :p
I dunno, since you apparently code stuff.
That's going to be it's own bag of problems tho when guy is walking around with fifteen miasma viruses. One of them is going to be a kill virus.
Maybe cap miasma viruses to never be lethal...

Where's our antibiotics and stuff to combat them before they happen? That's just not a thing that exists, either you get a virus that protects you or you get a miasma virus. Pretty binary for roleplay. More it slides around, more it conduces roleplay and gives you story hooks to latch on to.
Bagel/Terry can then test how the game balance of it is, whatever change, if any, happens.

It's honestly fine tho, manuel just kind of needs to actually make rules about it and get on with it instead of pretending everything is a-okay to prevent such nerdery in the future. Nobody was hurt over the pills in arrivals, kind of an non-issue from point of view of mechanics, guy just chose he could ignore rules to help people, which is also kind of an non-issue other than that he did break rules we have, technically.