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+--- Thread: Pathology Feedback (/showthread.php?tid=15693)
Pathology Feedback - zjdtmkhzt - 01-13-2021
Hi, what up, zjdtmkhzt here!
I just wanted to address the concerns that were given when Pathology was removed and how I tried to address these, and also give people a space to ask questions and stuff.
Here's the thread about the removal:
https://forum.ss13.co/showthread.php?tid=14435
New Guide to Pathology (WIP due to terrible formatting, but the info should all be there!)
https://wiki.ss13.co/Guide_to_Pathology
Lack of feedback on transmission
A pathogen roaming the station often felt pretty kafkaesque, due to the invisible nature of the spread.
It was really hard to know how to protect yourself, because most symptoms spread invisibly and the permeability system of which clothing protected you was rather complex.
In the new system, you should always be able to see a clear cause for why you got infected, for instance, most symptoms now generate a cloud or puddle of pathogen, or you are directly grabbed, disarmed, punched, hugged by an infected person.
Curing Pathogens is hard
Curing pathogens often seemed an impossible task for many people, because the CDC was often unreliable, and the pathology lab was often destroyed by the very person that released the pathogen.
The CDC was already fixed shortly before pathology got removed (in fact, due to buffs it is now so incredibly cheap that it may even need nerfs in the future).
Curing pathogens with the pathology lab is largely like before, in the state that it was at when pathology got disabled. This is much easier than how pathology was for most of its existence, due to buffs before it got removed. (Mainly the Synth-O-Matic starting out with all the modules now.)
There is now a third way to cure that relies on neither Cargo nor the Lab: curing via suppression. For this the afflicted can simply expose themselves to the suppressant, this will weaken the pathogen and eventually cure it. Suppressants are things like certain temperatures, foods, etc. You can find out which kind of suppressant is required with a health scanner.
Pathology is very RNG-based
Not getting the samples you needed used to be very frustrating, both because 8 different types of t1 symptoms were basically required, but also because virii were pretty much undisputedly the strongest microbody type.
To address this, I did a rebalance of microbody type values, where some types can have more symptoms and trigger more often, while others are able to reach higher stages.
In addition, you can now choose which microbody type your samples should have. You can also choose to manufacture several samples at once, so you have to use the horrible Synth-O-Matic UI less. ;^)
People just spammed mutations instead of doing patho the proper way
Yeah fuck that shit I got rid of pathogen mutations, they never caused any fun gameplay, ever.
Snapping symptom breaks my game
It shouldn't anymore.
Pathogens never benefit the station
There are some more beneficial symptoms now, for instance, you can spread a chosen positive mutation using a T5 symptom.
I also fixed the two T5 oxygen symptoms that did pretty much nothing, and oxygen farts and sunglass glands were modified to remove their annoying parts.
The DNA scanner now also has some features to help identify if you are chasing after beneficial or harmful symptoms, so you can find good stuff when not traitor and bad stuff when traitor more easily.
The healing symptoms were also buffed a long time ago to be pretty powerful now, give them a shot!
Oh, and I fixed up my old Revival symptom a bit, should be more reliable now, hopefully!
Hopefully more beneficial symptoms will be added in the future by both myself and others, I just need to figure out some codery stuff for that. :p
Pathology takes forever
The new features in the DNA analyzer that were mentioned earlier should hopefully help with this!
Also, there are only 6 t1 symptoms now, which makes higher tier stuff a lot easier to find.
Also, I made a new machine you can use to supply your petri dish with nutrient, so everyone can stop using the reagent dispenser exploit now to put 7000 units of nutrient into a petri dish. (:
It only holds one dish though, so if you want more than that, manually adding nutrients still works.
Oh, I also changed the Pathogen Manipulator UI a bit, so hopefully it should be less gigantic and easier to use.
Bad pathogens always escape during research
Okay, so, first of all, even in the old system there wasn't really a reason to infect a monkey if you didn't want the pathogen to spread, so if anyone says their pathogen escaped accidentally, you have my permission to smack them.
Second of all, in the new system pathogens have a Spread stat now that can easily be adjusted in the Pathology Lab, so if you want to experiment in a non-traitor-round, you can always set the Spread to 0 and ask for willing test subjects!
A pathogen with a Spread of 0 should never spread. If it does, please report it to me, because that's a bug.
If you have any more questions, please feel free to ask them in this thread.
RE: Pathology Feedback - UrsulaMejor - 01-13-2021
Important notes for fighting pathogens: the janitor (or anyone willing) can mop up pathogen puddles and clouds to help fight the spread.
To see your current disease resist, click the "stat" button at the bottom right. If that says 100% you can't be infected.
As zjd said, suppressants can cure diseases. If a virus says "suppressed by high temperatures" then you *can* cure them by lighting the victim on fire
RE: Pathology Feedback - Podrick Equus - 01-13-2021
I'm very pleased with what you've produced so far, I look forward to experimenting with it.
RE: Pathology Feedback - Daktangle - 01-13-2021
Definitely going to test this tomorrow, and try and give feedback on how it goes.
Thank you for everyone's work involved in this.
RE: Pathology Feedback - data_err0r - 01-13-2021
This is very exciting! Pathogens got removed literally the same month I started playing regularly so I only experienced them once. But that experience was a somewhat boring round where everyone just drank chicken noodle soup all round then early shuttled.
I'm looking forward to exploring this rework! Is it going live now?
RE: Pathology Feedback - zjdtmkhzt - 01-13-2021
Yup, it's live on all 4 servers for one week.
RE: Pathology Feedback - Leeanei - 01-13-2021
So, pathogens from poor hygiene on high pop RP is...well, let's just say there's lots of room for illness to spread endlessly.
RE: Pathology Feedback - zjdtmkhzt - 01-13-2021
Yup that will be addressed tomorrow. Or the day after that. Soon as I stop being lazy I'll make it so pathogens from poor hygiene do not spread.
On the bright side, those should only have tier 1 & 2 and very rarely tier 3, so hopefully things shouldn't get too bad.
Just don't forget to shower.
RE: Pathology Feedback - Leeanei - 01-13-2021
Miasma can reduce your hygiene so fast you'll get a disease well before you can get to a shower. Not sure all the details but one person managed to contract a disease that stopped them from breathing and there was no pathologist that knew what they were doing. Very messy.
RE: Pathology Feedback - Mopcat - 01-13-2021
this applies entirely to the rp servers, but hygiene negligence causing pathogens is both a bit excessive and not communicated very well, causing some Problems on rp where everyone has like 20 disease and their farts cause clouds of disease. one suggestion i saw in ooc that i liked was to refactor hygiene to affect disease spread rather than have it just create a fuck ton of diseases on the spot
RE: Pathology Feedback - Leeanei - 01-13-2021
Yeah, one person hit a heady 7 disease. The RD alone in their room spawned themselves 4
RE: Pathology Feedback - ArdentSpark - 01-13-2021
Really enjoying Pathology, seems to be working well and is satisfying, the low hygiene Pathogenic spread though is a killer so I'm glad to hear you're removing the spread from low hygiene diseases. Is there any chance you could implement a tag on the strain when you use a medical scanner, so we know it's not contagious? There is a LOT of lockdowns going on to an uncontrollable level, where people are being locked down for a significant amount of time while their pathogens are being researched, only for their low hygiene to keep spawning more
RE: Pathology Feedback - aft2001 - 01-13-2021
Honestly, having Hygiene affect your infectivity and how easily you're infected is not a bad idea at all. It should probably be a semi-hidden mechanic on non-RP as well, but modified to not be noticeable outside of you looking at the value and pathogens. The current rate of spread should be a result of very low hygiene since it's already kinda insane.
RE: Pathology Feedback - Flourish - 01-13-2021
Echoing others in how it'd be a lot better if low hygiene affected your infectivity rather than just straight up giving you pathogens.
Making it so pathogens from poor hygiene don't spread might be okay, but some of my concerns include:
- The current code which rolls every onLife(), which basically guarantees multiple pathogens if you're low on hygiene
- Miasma
- New players who aren't aware of this mechanic
- Some of the symptoms such as plasma farts
- Overloaded medical staff
RE: Pathology Feedback - Leeanei - 01-13-2021
special note: Flourish did disable hygiene pathogens after posting that.
Right now I think my good feedback is going to have to wait until things slow down and we don't see massive pathogen campaigns out of novelty. Primary concern is for RP we probably need more beneficial symptoms than not. RP pathologists also have a solid 90 minutes to do all their research so they have massive advantages over their Main counterparts in that area.