Infections
There are many diseases that can affect you in space! The following will come in handy for virologists, traitors, or any unfortunate soul who's come down with a case of brain rot.
Virology 101
The first, and most important way to prevent 99% of infections, is proper hazard wear, and knowing how to keep the infection from spreading.
The Clothes
The following will protect you, from the dangerous infections of space, each giving more and more (till total) protection against infection:
- Level-3 Bio Hood
- Level-3 Bio Suit
- Jumpsuit (virologist, CMO, geneticist, chemist, doctor, nurse suit, scrubs, Research Director)
- Latex Gloves
- Sterile mask
- Shoes (White shoes and Galoshes are the best)
- Private (clean) Internals
Isolation
If you or another crew member is infected, do not spread the infection further. Seek the isolation bay of the medical wing, or head to a room no one will enter but yourself and other infected.
Sterilization
Cleaning blood spills from the ground will prevent contact contamination, make sure blood is cleaned from the floor at all time. Any blood splatter out there could hold a dreaded space infection. Contact a janitor if you see blood on the floor, do not interact with the blood if you suspect possible infection chance. Any object or floor that has infected blood on it can infect anyone who handles or touches it.
Methods of Infection
The following are the various ways a disease can spread, keep this in mind at all times:
- Airborne - The most dangerous and quick spreading, if you are anywhere within the breathing area of the infected crew member, you have a chance to be infected.
- Direct Contact - Requires you to touch, been touched, or be extremely close to the source of the infection. The infection will be spread by the skin and bodily fluids of an infected person, but will not survive long in the air.
- Blood - The infection will be spread by the bodily fluids of the infected person.
- Special - The disease is not normally contagious and the affected crewman has been infected by a non-human vector source. You can work with the infected without risk yourself unless they expose you to the same vector source that infected them.
Curing an infection
Every infection is vulnerable to one substance (or combination of two). To find it, you can put an infected blood sample in the PanD.E.M.I.C 2200 machine or use a health analyzer on an infected patient. Administering the substance to the patient (may require multiple injections) should cure him. Alternatively, if you have produced a vaccine, a simple injection should cure the patient.
PanD.E.M.I.C 2200
This machine creates vaccines from the blood of people who have been cured.
Use:
- Take a blood sample with a syringe.
- Place sample into a beaker or bottle.
- Load beaker into machine.
- Select vaccine you wish to have.
- Take vaccine bottle it produces.
Additional uses:
- Reveals the cure to any infected blood sample without needing to inject a living creature.
Infection Listings
Thankfully, humanity has managed to cure and eliminate almost all of the diseases that plagued its infancy. However, the vast reaches of space have been found to harbor new illnesses that can affect the unprepared staff on Nanotrasen research stations.
| Disease Name | Vector Name | Description | Spread | Cure |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alien Parasite | Xenomorph | An uncommon infection, caused by alien rape. A facehugger has implanted an embryo inside of the body of the victim, which will grow until it kills and destroys the body while spawning a larva. | Special | Surgery |
| Zombie Infection | Romerol | A rare infection, which lies dormant in the victim. If the victim dies before it is cured, it will rise as an aggressive zombie, who will then transfer the infection to anyone it manages to scratch. The infection consists in a tumor located inside the head. | Special | Surgery |
| Brain Rot | Cryptococcus Cosmosis | An infection that causes mental degradation. | Contact | Mannitol |
| Cold | XY-Rhinovirus | Still around since the dawn of man, this disease is relatively harmless, causing fatigue and a runny nose. Will progress to the Flu when untreated. | Airborne | Rest and Spaceacillin |
| Cold 9 | ICE9-Rhinovirus | A rare disease that will progressively lower the victim's body temperature in addition to respiratory symptoms. | Contact | Spaceacillin |
| Flu | H13N1 Flu Viron | A common illness, causes fatigue, high fever, and muscle toxicity. Rarely fatal, quickly spread. | Airborne | Spaceacillin |
| Anxiety | Excess Lepidopticides | Will cause feelings of anxiety and cause the victim to cough butterflies. | Contact | Ethanol |
| GBS | Gravitokinetic Bipotential SADS+ | An extremely dangerous illness caused by contagious micro-singularities that will cause the human body to be torn apart from the inside. The initial phase begins in the lungs and mimics flu symptoms. | Contact | Sulfur and Synaptizine |
| Jungle Fever | Kongey Vibrion M-909 | One of the most feared diseases in the galaxy, this is a disease carried by primates. A single bite or scratch is enough to fully infect a human. The result is spontaneous genetic reversion, and the affected individual will also become a monkey. | Special | Death squad |
| Magnitis | Fukkos Miracos | An infection of magnetic bacteria that build up in the body. As the disease progresses any metallic items not bolted down near the infected person will be pulled toward them, even objects as large as canisters. Ingested iron will draw the bacteria to it and allow them to be excreted normally. | Contact | Iron |
| Pierrot's Throat | H0NI<42 Virus | A brain disease that was brought back with the original explorers of Clown Planet that damages the basal ganglia, victims will have an uncontrollable urge to HONK. | Airborne | Bananas |
| Retrovirus | \ | A DNA-altering retrovirus that will constantly mutate the genetic code of the host. Symptoms vary wildly from blindness to incredible fits of strength and green skin. | Contact | Rest or Mutadone |
| Space Retrovirus | S4E1 Retrovirus | A DNA-altering retrovirus that will copy the DNA of the first infected and apply it to every other infected. | Contact | Mutadone |
| Robotic Transformation | R2D2 Nanomachines | A rare infection caused by nanomachines arriving from a xenobiology-made roburger, slowly transforms the infected into a cyborg. | Special | Copper |
| Spanish Flu | 1nqu1s1t10n Flu Viron | A rare and deadly form of flu that causes an incredibly high fever. Those infected will die of internal burns without treatment or religious conversion. | Airborne | Spaceacillin |
| Wizarditus | Rincewindus Vulgaris | A rare illness, causes spontaneous robe growth, randomly speaking incantations, and finally random teleportation. | Airborne | Manly Dorf |
| Xenomorphic Transformation | Rip-LEY Alien Microbes | A rare infection caused by xeno-microbes, changing the infected's DNA to that of a xenomorph. Symptoms include severe pain and progressive insanity. | Special | Glycerol and Spaceacillin |
| Fungal Tuberculosis | Fungal Tubercle bacillus Cosmosis | A rare highly transmittable virulent virus. Few samples exist, rumoured to be carefully grown and cultured by clandestine bio-weapon specialists. Causes fever, vomiting, lung damage, weight loss, and fatigue. | Airborne | Salbutamol and Spaceacillin |
Advanced Diseases
You are able to create your own advance disease with different symptoms, which will have buffs, debuffs and bonuses!
You will start out with two advance diseases, the cold and the flu. The cold will have the sneeze symptom and the flu will have the cough symptom. They have almost no effect if they infect people, but you need them to acquire more symptoms.
The Pandemic can create culture bottles (basically copies) of existing viruses, so you won't run out while experimenting.
Modifying Symptoms
To obtain a new symptom you need to mutate an existing virus. This involves adding a chemical to the virus, which will generate a new symptom. Rarer and harder to acquire chemicals will yield more potent symptoms. You will start with enough chemicals to create a powerful disease, as long as you use them carefully.
Basic chemicals
These are the basic chemicals for virus mutation. You can either add them directly to a virus to obtain a random level symptom, or mix them with other ingredients to get advanced chemicals, that will give you a specific level symptom.
- Virus Food: You can make virus food with Water and Milk. Virology lab has its own Virus Food Dispenser. Mixing this with a disease will give that disease a symptom up to level 2.
- Unstable Mutagen: You can use mutagen to mutate your disease and give it a symptom up to level 4. Virology starts with a 30u bottle of mutagen.
- Liquid Plasma: Plasma can be used to mutate your disease to give it a symptom up to level 6. Plasma in liquid form is generally in very limited supply, unless mining and chemistry cooperates with you. Virology starts with a 30u bottle of liquid plasma, and in some station layouts with extra plasma bars.
Advanced Chemicals
Using these will allow you to both save time and resources when trying to acquire the symptoms you want.
- Virus rations: Virus rations can be used to mutate your disease and give it a level 1 symptom. It is made by depleting Virus food with Synaptizine.
- Mutagenic Agar: Mutagenic agar can be used to mutate your disease to give it a level 3 symptom. It is made by mixing Unstable mutagen and virus food together.
- Sucrose Agar: Sucrose agar can be used to mutate your disease to give it a level 4 symptom. It is made by mixing Sugar or Saline Glucose Solution and Mutagenic agar together.
- Virus Plasma: Virus plasma can be used to mutate your disease and give it a level 6 symptom. It is made by mixing liquid plasma with virus food.
- Weakened Virus Plasma: Weakened virus plasma can be used to mutate your disease and give it a level 5 symptom. It is made by weakening virus plasma using Synaptizine.
Uranium Gels
These chemicals require large quantities of liquid uranium (obtained by grinding uranium bars). You'll require the help of mining to make these. Unlike the other chemicals, they require 5 units to evolve a virus instead of 1.
- Decaying Uranium Gel: Decaying Uranium Gel can be used to mutate your disease and give it a level 6 or 7 symptom. It is made by combining 1 virus food with 1 liquid Uranium.
- Unstable Uranium Gel: Unstable Uranium Gel can be used to mutate your disease and give it a level 7 symptom. It is made by combining 1 virus plasma with 5 liquid Uranium.
- Stable Uranium Gel: Stable Uranium Gel can be used to mutate your disease and give it a level 8 symptom. It is made by combining 1 plasma with 10 parts liquid Uranium and 10 parts liquid silver or gold.
Synaptizine
Synaptizine, aside from being a base chemical, will remove one random symptom to any virus it comes in contact with. It's important if you intend to isolate a specific symptom. For example, if you mutate your Cold virus and it acquires the Toxic Filter symptom, you can try and add synaptizine to it to create a virus which only has the Toxic Filter symptom.
Tips and Techniques
Dropper
When you're adding a chemical to a virus, you only need to add a single unit of it. This means you can use a dropper to add a single unit at a time, instead of using a syringe and wasting 5 units at a time. Since Liquid Plasma and Mutagen are in limited supply, it is a smart move to conserve your chemicals. Remember, you have to use the dropper in your hand once to set its transfer value to 1 unit.
Mixing in Beakers
While your first instict may be to create a new culture bottle, adding a chemical to it and scrapping the whole bottle if it's not the symptom you want, it is a slow process due to the Pandemic's cooldown. A better way is to instead keep a culture bottle, an empty beaker, and a bottle of your desired chemical; add one unit of culture to the beaker and then mutate it with the chemical, and check the result. Then repeat until you have to replicate the culture bottle: this allows for 20 uninterrupted tries before having to make a copy.
Isolating Symptoms
When you get the symptom you want, you should isolate it, by making a new culture bottle with the symptom's name on and storing it in your fridge. Doing this will make it much easier to build different viruses with the symptoms you have, instead of being locked in a single combination. Even better is if you use synaptizine to remove the base symptom, so you have the pure symptom ready to use. A few symptoms are however too stealthy to be detectable by themselves.
Multiple symptoms
A virus can have up to eight symptoms. There's a downside to having too many symptoms: they are less resistant and less likely to spread. Not only that, but if you add a symptom when you already have six, there's a chance it will overwrite a symptom (33% for a seventh, 66% for an eighth). This is why it's important to organize your symptoms so that you can try and try again until you get the disease you want.
Understanding stats
After you're done mixing your disease, stats from the symptoms are added together to make disease stats. Viruses have a default of 0 in every stat.
- Stealth: If stealth is 2 or higher your disease will be hidden from medHUD and scanners. Stealth of 4 or higher makes it invisible to the P.A.N.D.E.M.I.C. machine. If a virus only contains positive symptoms, it will show up as a blue icon on medHUDs.
- Transmission: Improves the chance each tick to spread the virus, increases the amount of protection you need to prevent infection, determines the infection vector, and is needed to override other viruses.
- The infection vector is calculated with (disease's transmission - amount of symptoms). 1 or less is blood, 2-4 is contact, 5 is airbone. The Sneezing symptom forces sporadic airborne spreads, but does not otherwise affect this.
- When infecting someone who already has a virus, if the infecting virus' Transmission is higher than the other virus' Resistance, the latter will be overridden by the former.
- Stage speed: Increases the chance of advancing a stage each tick. It will be 2% or stage speed, whichever is higher.
- Resistance: Makes the virus harder to cure; determines the required chemical to cure, decreases the chance of it being cured each tick when in contact with the cure, and defines how resistant the virus is to being overridden by other viruses.
- The chance of it being cured every tick is 15 - resistance, but always between 10 and 20.
- The cure is determined by [resistance - (amount of symptoms / 2)].
| 1 or less | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 or more |
| Table Salt | Sugar | Orange juice | Spaceacilin | Saline-Glucose Solution | Ethanol | Leporazine | Synaptizine | Lipolicide | Silver | Gold |
Symptoms Table
| Symptom | Stealth | Resistance | Stage speed | Transmission | Level | Required Chemical | Effect |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome | -2 | 0 | -1 | -2 | 7 | Unstable Uranium Gel | Causes heavy suffocation damage, while giving a small chance of heart attacks. Becomes even more lethal if the mob has more than 120 suffocation damage. |
| Alopecia | -1 | -1 | -1 | 2 | 4 | Unstable Mutagen/Sucrose Agar | Causes rapid hair loss. |
| Alkali perspiration | 2 | -2 | -2 | -2 | 7 | Unstable Uranium Gel | Causes the affected mob to burst into flames periodically, while also giving them small doses of Napalm and Chlorine Trifluoride. |
| Apoptoxin filter | 0 | -2 | -2 | -2 | 8 | Stable Uranium Gel | Heals Toxin damage very quickly. |
| Autophagocytosis Necrosis | -2 | -2 | 1 | -2 | 7 | Unstable Uranium Gel | Causes the mob's cells to decay rapidly, causing brute damage, constant bleeding and elevated hunger. |
| Choking | -3 | -2 | -2 | -4 | 3 | Unstable Mutagen/Mutagenic Agar | Causes spikes of oxygen deprivation. Deals damage based on stage speed and stealth. |
| Coughing | -1 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 1 | Virus Food/Virus Rations | Causes coughing. Will force the affected mob to drop items. |
| Confusion | 1 | -1 | -3 | 0 | 4 | Unstable Mutagen/Sucrose Agar | Makes the affected mob be confused for short periods of time, making them walk in random directions. |
| Deafness | -1 | -2 | -1 | -3 | 4 | Unstable Mutagen/Sucrose Agar | Causes intermittent loss of hearing. |
| Deoxyribonucleic Acid Restoration | -1 | -1 | 0 | -3 | 5 | Plasma/Weakened Virus Plasma | Heals brain damage based on stage speed minus stealth, treats radiation, cleans SE of non-power mutations. |
| Deoxyribonucleic Acid Saboteur | -2 | -3 | 0 | -3 | 6 | Plasma/Virus Plasma | Gives a random disability. The disabilities are cured when the disease is cured. |
| Dizziness | 2 | -2 | -3 | -1 | 4 | Unstable Mutagen/Sucrose Agar | Shakes the affected mob's screen for short periods. (Bugged: Currently only displays an annoying message) |
| Eternal Youth | 3 | 4 | 4 | -4 | 5 | Plasma/Weakened Virus Plasma | Makes you never physically older than young adulthood and prevents death by old age. Should be used for buffing your disease. |
| Facial Hypertrichosis | -3 | -1 | -3 | -1 | 4 | Unstable Mutagen/Sucrose Agar | Makes you grow a massive beard, regardless of gender. |
| Fever | 0 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 2 | Virus Food | Heats up your body, based on transmittability and stealth. Will never reach damaging levels of heat, however. |
| Flesh Mending | 0 | -2 | -2 | -2 | 8 | Stable Uranium Gel | Heals brute damage very quickly, and converts cellular damage into burn damage. |
| Hallucinogen | -2 | -3 | -3 | -1 | 5 | Plasma/Weakened Virus Plasma | Makes the affected mob have hallucinations for short periods of time. Available in Virus Crates. |
| Headache | -1 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 1 | Virus Food/Virus Rations | Displays an annoying message! Should be used for buffing your disease. |
| Heat Resistance | 0 | -2 | -2 | -2 | 8 | Stable Uranium Gel | Heals burn damage very quickly, and helps stabilize body temperature. |
| Hyphema | -1 | -4 | -4 | -3 | 5 | Plasma/Weakened Virus Plasma | Inflicts eye damage over time. Causes blindness if left unchecked. |
| Itching | 0 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Virus Food/Virus Rations | Displays an annoying message! Should be used for buffing your disease. |
| Necrotizing Fasciitis | -3 | -4 | 0 | -4 | 6 | Plasma/Virus Plasma | Causes brute damage over time, with more brute damage the less the virus' stealth is. Fatal if left untreated. |
| Ocular Restoration | -1 | -3 | -2 | -4 | 4 | Unstable Mutagen/Sucrose Agar | Body heals eye damage on its own, preventing non-genetic blindness and nearsightedness. |
| Regeneration | 1 | -4 | -4 | -2 | 6 | Plasma/Virus Plasma | Heals brute damage over time, at a rate of 1 per tick. |
| Revitiligo | -3 | -1 | -1 | -2 | 5 | Plasma/Weakened Virus Plasma | Makes the mob gain skin pigmentation. |
| Self-Respiration | 1 | -3 | -3 | -4 | 6 | Plasma/Virus Plasma | Quickly heals oxygen damage, negating the need for air. |
| Sensory destruction | -1 | -2 | -3 | -4 | 6 | Plasma/Virus Plasma | Destroys mob's senses by shutting down motor skills, creating hallucinations, damaging brain functionality, and rarely causing sleep. |
| Sensory restoration | -1 | -4 | -4 | -3 | 5 | Plasma/Weakened Virus Plasma | Restores mob's senses by fixing ear damage, purging alcohol from the body, blocking hallucinations, and fixing brain damage. |
| Shivering | 0 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | Virus Food | Cools down your body based on stealth and resistance. Won't reach damaging levels. |
| Sneezing | -2 | 3 | 0 | 4 | 1 | Virus Food/Virus Rations | Causes the mob to occasionally sneeze, spreading the virus to nearby mobs if they aren't protected. |
| Spontaneous Combustion | 1 | -4 | -4 | -4 | 6 | Plasma/Virus Plasma | Sets your body on fire periodically, with amount of stacks based on stage speed, minus stealth. |
| Tissue Regrowth | 1 | -4 | -4 | -2 | 6 | Plasma/Virus Plasma | Heals burn damage over time, at a rate of 1 per tick. |
| Toxic Filter | 1 | -4 | -4 | -2 | 6 | Plasma/Virus Plasma | Heals toxins in the affected mob's blood stream, at the rate of 1 per tick. Available in Virus Crates. |
| Viral Aggressive Metabolism | 0 | 1 | -2 | 3 | 3 | Unstable Mutagen/Mutagenic Agar | The disease will start at stage 5, but it will gradually decay in stages until cured. |
| Viral Evolutionary Acceleration | -2 | -3 | 5 | 3 | 3 | Unstable Mutagen/Mutagenic Agar | Massively buffs the evolutionary cycle of viruses, causing it to be faster acting, better at infecting, but more easily detected and cured. |
| Viral Self-Adaptation | 3 | 5 | -3 | 0 | 3 | Unstable Mutagen/Mutagenic Agar | Massively buffs the adaptation of viruses, causing it to be stealthier, harder to cure but slower acting. |
| Vitiligo | -3 | -1 | -1 | -2 | 5 | Plasma/Weakened Virus Plasma | Makes the mob lose skin pigmentation. |
| Voice Change | -2 | -3 | -3 | -1 | 6 | Plasma/Virus Plasma | Changes the voice of the affected mob. Causing confusion in communication. Available in Virus Crates. |
| Vomiting | -2 | -1 | 0 | 1 | 3 | Unstable Mutagen/Mutagenic Agar | Forces the affected mob to vomit! Makes the affected mob lose nutrition and heal toxin damage. |
| Projectile Vomiting | -2 | -1 | 0 | 1 | 4 | Unstable Mutagen/Sucrose Agar | Like normal vomiting, except it will spread further, likely causing more to walk across the vomit. |
| Vomiting Blood | -2 | -1 | -1 | 1 | 4 | Unstable Mutagen/Sucrose Agar | Forces the affected mob to vomit blood! Makes the affected mob lose health. |
| Weakness | -1 | -1 | -2 | -2 | 3 | Unstable Mutagen/Mutagenic Agar | Deals stamina damage to the host. May knock out if left untreated. |
| Weight Gain | -3 | -3 | -2 | -2 | 4 | Unstable Mutagen/Sucrose Agar | Increases the weight gain of the mob, forcing it to eventually turn fat. |
| Weight Loss | -3 | -2 | -2 | -2 | 3 | Unstable Mutagen/Mutagenic Agar | Decreases the weight of the mob, forcing it to be skinny. |
| Weight Even | -3 | -2 | -2 | -2 | 4 | Unstable Mutagen/Sucrose Agar | Causes the weight of the mob to be even, meaning eating isn't required anymore. |
General Tips
- If you happen to run out of plasma, chemistry usually has a few extra bars you can ask for.
- Sugar can be hard to find, but you can use Saline-Glucose from any NanoVend Plus for Sucrine Agar.
- Wearing protective clothing is not necessary during virology research, but you should wear it in event of an outbreak or while experimenting on monkeys.
- If you're dealing with a virus too stealthy to analyze, you can try making a very infective virus to override it.
- Have in mind the disease you want to make before you start searching for symptoms: knowing the level of the symptom you're looking for may save you time and materials.
- While it's possible, you should refrain from using only plasma to get the symptoms you need, as it can run out very quickly, and without it you can only beg mining for more plasma bars.
- The only statistic you want when making a buffing virus is Stage Speed, as it improves a few symptoms. Resistance is useless as nobody'd want to cure it, transmittability is either undesired or taken care of by Sneezing, and Stealth is annoying, as it can make your virus hard to replicate through the Pandemic and to spot with MedHUDs.
The Black Death
Being a traitor virologist opens you up to a whole variety of cruel and interesting ways to create chaos on the station. Here's some tips to allow you to spread your worst creations.
- Here is where statistics become important: you need Resistance to avoid the cure being salt, you want Transmittability so your virus can spread, Stage Speed so it acts before the victim is cured, and Stealth to avoid it being noticed too quickly. You won't have them all on a single virus, so choose the direction you want to go with.
- A high stealth will deny any chance of discovering the cure as long as the resistance is above 0.
- A high resistance will make the cure so rare that it won't realistically be available to everyone. Beware of vaccines, though.
- A high stage speed will cause your virus to progress at extreme speed, giving targets less warning before acting.
- A high transmittability will allow you disease to spread itself without your help; it will also make it so you need more clothing to protect from infection.
- While it might seem a good idea to put many harmful symptoms on a virus, its stats will be lowered to the point it won't act before it is cured. Stick to one or two harmful symptoms, and add neutral ones to buff its statistics.
- All symptoms give out messages to the infected before they reach the stage where they activate. People will be aware of what is hindering/killing them.
- Going around outside of virology with a biosuit will alert people that you don't trust your own virus: you might want to infect yourself with a harmless resistant virus, so people can see that you're infected as well, while you'll be immune.
- Remember that live and walking infected spread more than corpses. Consider making a disease that hinders many instead of one that kills a few. Although dead people can't work on a cure.
- A syringe gun filled with infected blood is a good way to spread viruses if you can't trick the crew.
- Sabotaging the Pandemic is usually a good idea, as it can create a vaccine for a cured virus which is cheap and easy to distribute, even if the virus is so resistant that gold is the cure.
- Sabotaging chemistry can stop them from making most of the chems that can cure viruses.