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Pathology Suggestions - Erev - 01-21-2015

The new pathology system is one of the more complex and interesting systems on the station and yet the pathology department is currently more known as 'the place where geneticists used to take their porta-genes'. To figure out why it was so empty I've spent the last few days almost exclusively in Pathology and even trained Lamar Rathborne up as a research assistant. This has led to the realization that pathology requires a lot of work (which is good, considering its potential power) and a lot of time and useless clicking. As such, I'd like to suggest some improvements for Pathology, especially in the quality of life area.

The biggest gate when it comes to time and tedium is that you spend roughly half your round growing new pathogen. This leads to spending a huge portion of your time examining dishes and then syringing. This is boring and might need a partial rethink. You see, everything you do in pathology can ruin a sample - the DNA tester ruins a sample (or two), the splicer ruins at least one sample, the manipulator ruins a sample if you push it too far (and unlike botany we don't get a '%damaged' warning). Removing some of those losses would be a good thing, I beleive, and help speed things up and remove some of the tedium. Especially I'm looking at the manipulator and the idea of maybe making it like a reagent heater. You choose one attribute at a time and it raises or lowers it - moving quickly when at lower numbers (say -20 to 20) and then slowing down the higher (or lower) you go so that getting from 90 to 100 takes far longer than getting from 10 to 20.

I also think that we should be able to better eyeball what the symptoms are - either under the microscope or in the DNA analyzer. The fact that symptoms are round randomized puts a ton of effort into making anything at all already so it would be nice if we got something more specific than 'this virus produces lots of fluids' as there are at least three different mutations that appear to use that same exact text. It would be nice to see 'this virus seems to be perspiring' or 'this virus seems to be producing a red liquid', ect. At the very least it'd be nice to see what you've got in the DNA tester since you just put in the footwork to find the combo and lost a sample doing it.

My final quality of life improvement suggestion might be a machine that could be bought and built as an 'upgrade' of sorts. It would let you put a sample in and have a growth medium reservoir and would essentially be a better way to grow pathogens. Something that you don't need to babysit quite as much as your petri dish.

Finally, to speed up traitor access to pathogens and to encourage the curing of diseases perhaps traitor doctors should get a new item - a high telecrystal cost vial that contains a pathogen that starts off with a moderately high advance speed and suppression resistance and one or two symptoms in the tier 3-5 range including at least one method of transmission. The traitor could then tinker with his new pathogen further or just inject the first passerby and let the chaos commence.

On the whole the pathology system is an awesome addition to the station, it just needs to be sped up and have some of the tedium removed without dumbing it down too far.


Re: Pathology Suggestions - Erev - 01-21-2015

Further suggestions from Lamar Rathborne include being able to see the stage of each disease with a medical scanner and being able to name your disease.


Re: Pathology Suggestions - cgrn10 - 01-22-2015

Incoming wall of text.
Erev Wrote:The biggest gate when it comes to time and tedium is that you spend roughly half your round growing new pathogen. This leads to spending a huge portion of your time examining dishes and then syringing. This is boring and might need a partial rethink. You see, everything you do in pathology can ruin a sample - the DNA tester ruins a sample (or two), the splicer ruins at least one sample, the manipulator ruins a sample if you push it too far (and unlike botany we don't get a '%damaged' warning). Removing some of those losses would be a good thing, I beleive, and help speed things up and remove some of the tedium. Especially I'm looking at the manipulator and the idea of maybe making it like a reagent heater. You choose one attribute at a time and it raises or lowers it - moving quickly when at lower numbers (say -20 to 20) and then slowing down the higher (or lower) you go so that getting from 90 to 100 takes far longer than getting from 10 to 20.

I have no idea why you spend so much time spent into growing and looking at the dishes, mine will grow where I can put in 4 samples into the DNA tester, ruin them all and then the dish will be at 30 again. Pizza taught me a trick and you can put the dish into the chem dispenser and make one of those groups with your ID with the nutrients and spam in 600 of them and never have to care about it again. I like the idea of a microwave to change the attributes though, that can almost be usually as long as making a tier 5 pathogen.

Erev Wrote:I also think that we should be able to better eyeball what the symptoms are - either under the microscope or in the DNA analyzer. The fact that symptoms are round randomized puts a ton of effort into making anything at all already so it would be nice if we got something more specific than 'this virus produces lots of fluids' as there are at least three different mutations that appear to use that same exact text. It would be nice to see 'this virus seems to be perspiring' or 'this virus seems to be producing a red liquid', ect. At the very least it'd be nice to see what you've got in the DNA tester since you just put in the footwork to find the combo and lost a sample doing it.


Finding out what a symptom is is easy, take a second to splice it with itself a couple of times and get several pathogens with all the symptoms and look at them in the microscope and bam, you know all the symptoms AND their tier. Plus, with the 'lots of fluid' symptom, this will tell you which it is, as they only change by tier and have the same functionality anyhow. I do not think the DNA tester should tell you about it, it, to me, just looks at the DNA and says "we've got these parts know tell us what to do and we'll do it, and if you're wrong it's going to die."

Erev Wrote:My final quality of life improvement suggestion might be a machine that could be bought and built as an 'upgrade' of sorts. It would let you put a sample in and have a growth medium reservoir and would essentially be a better way to grow pathogens. Something that you don't need to babysit quite as much as your petri dish.


Again you're just growing wrong!

Erev Wrote:Finally, to speed up traitor access to pathogens and to encourage the curing of diseases perhaps traitor doctors should get a new item - a high telecrystal cost vial that contains a pathogen that starts off with a moderately high advance speed and suppression resistance and one or two symptoms in the tier 3-5 range including at least one method of transmission. The traitor could then tinker with his new pathogen further or just inject the first passerby and let the chaos commence.

I like this idea a lot, I generally don't use pathology because it takes anywhere from 30-50 minutes to make a usable killing pathogen, depending on how lucky you are. This would allow me to indulge in random gimmicks while I watch as people turn to ash trying to create a cure.



Re: Pathology Suggestions - atomic1fire - 01-22-2015

On the other hand, naming your pathogen "The devil's glove" should tell everyone the virus was either known by pathology or man made.

That said it would be neat of pathogens could have an automatically generated name, taking a list of words and assembling them in a random order to make a virus name.

Maybe the same way the crappy alcohol names are made, or are those all static?


Re: Pathology Suggestions - Marquesas - 01-22-2015

Erev Wrote:it would be nice if we got something more specific than 'this virus produces lots of fluids' as there are at least three different mutations that appear to use that same exact text.

This is intentional. Symptoms also react to reagents, try to think specifically in terms of what the symptom is. (For example, sneezing will react to pepper, fevers might react to something cold, chills might react to something hot.)


Re: Pathology Suggestions - Erev - 01-23-2015

Marquesas Wrote:
Erev Wrote:it would be nice if we got something more specific than 'this virus produces lots of fluids' as there are at least three different mutations that appear to use that same exact text.

This is intentional. Symptoms also react to reagents, try to think specifically in terms of what the symptom is. (For example, sneezing will react to pepper, fevers might react to something cold, chills might react to something hot.)

I'd figured it was intentional but, frankly, there is enough work growing pathogen and modifying it and prodding it in the DNA tester that there really isn't much time for anything beyond blindly putting together as many symptoms as possible, cranking up the stats to a reasonable level, and trying to release it early enough to have an effect on the station. The additional layer doesn't really seem to add that much to the gameplay.


Re: Pathology Suggestions - Erev - 01-23-2015

A further suggestion - perhaps the virus breakout events on the station should be changed over to use the pathology pathogens? It'd be one more reason for people to cure things.


Re: Pathology Suggestions - Erev - 01-28-2015

More thoughts:

More beneficial/misc symptoms. Of the thirty-nine I have found so far only about three are really beneficial (maybe a couple more - I did run out of monkeys). I might suggest like three tiers of healing each for brute, burn, and toxins (for a total of nine... and one more for what I suspect is an airbubble symptom). Maybe other quote sets. Perhaps some DNA even targets certain creatures - one to target human, one to target monkeys, one to target aliens.... The more good/misc things we have to play with the more likely we'll actually be able to release a good pathogen.

A lockdown button to prevent people from running in when pathology has been compromised - only liftable by the captain and Medical Director perhaps? Located inside pathology of course and traps the pusher in there along with whoever else.


Re: Pathology Suggestions - Erev - 01-28-2015

Yes, another damn post and I do apologize but this one, I think, is important.

What if pathology was kept slightly off station - connected by catwalks and an airbridge. The airbridge would transverse belt hell which would make it being retracted more important. This would help with the accidental infection of people through solid walls/glass/ect and would allow for pathology to be locked down when something particularly nasty is made.


Re: Pathology Suggestions - DyssalC - 01-28-2015

Erev Wrote:Yes, another damn post and I do apologize but this one, I think, is important.

What if pathology was kept slightly off station - connected by catwalks and an airbridge. The airbridge would transverse belt hell which would make it being retracted more important. This would help with the accidental infection of people through solid walls/glass/ect and would allow for pathology to be locked down when something particularly nasty is made.
I like the idea of parts of the station not directly connected to the main station.

Maybe use a shuttle?


Re: Pathology Suggestions - Erev - 01-28-2015

DyssalC Wrote:
Erev Wrote:Yes, another damn post and I do apologize but this one, I think, is important.

What if pathology was kept slightly off station - connected by catwalks and an airbridge. The airbridge would transverse belt hell which would make it being retracted more important. This would help with the accidental infection of people through solid walls/glass/ect and would allow for pathology to be locked down when something particularly nasty is made.
I like the idea of parts of the station not directly connected to the main station.

Maybe use a shuttle?

It'd be nice to keep it on the same z-level. Maybe a pod though.


Re: Pathology Suggestions - Frank_Stein - 01-28-2015

Erev Wrote:
DyssalC Wrote:
Erev Wrote:Yes, another damn post and I do apologize but this one, I think, is important.

What if pathology was kept slightly off station - connected by catwalks and an airbridge. The airbridge would transverse belt hell which would make it being retracted more important. This would help with the accidental infection of people through solid walls/glass/ect and would allow for pathology to be locked down when something particularly nasty is made.
I like the idea of parts of the station not directly connected to the main station.

Maybe use a shuttle?

It'd be nice to keep it on the same z-level. Maybe a pod though.
Rail system? Just a fancy pod that can only travel on a track


Re: Pathology Suggestions - DyssalC - 01-28-2015

Erev Wrote:
DyssalC Wrote:
Erev Wrote:Yes, another damn post and I do apologize but this one, I think, is important.

What if pathology was kept slightly off station - connected by catwalks and an airbridge. The airbridge would transverse belt hell which would make it being retracted more important. This would help with the accidental infection of people through solid walls/glass/ect and would allow for pathology to be locked down when something particularly nasty is made.
I like the idea of parts of the station not directly connected to the main station.

Maybe use a shuttle?

It'd be nice to keep it on the same z-level. Maybe a pod though.
Well you can have a shuttle and keep it on the station z-level. Just a better alternative than having to catwalk to it through space.


Re: Pathology Suggestions - atomic1fire - 01-29-2015

You could have a ambulance pod to drive to pathology with and have it be stolen by the crew every round.

Or a pathology teleporter, buttons only doctors/geneticists/roboticists can use. Only downside being once medbay runs out of power pathology is trapped. Maybe attach it to the cargo belt so that you can send injectors/drugs back and forth.

The only problem with splitting pathology from the rest of the station is how do they get test monkeys, unless you connect the shuttle/teleporter/pod next to the monkey area and then have them stop back at the station to get test monkeys. Which is probably not a bad thing.


Re: Pathology Suggestions - Frank_Stein - 01-29-2015

atomic1fire Wrote:You could have a ambulance pod to drive to pathology with and have it be stolen by the crew every round.

Or a pathology teleporter, buttons only doctors/geneticists/roboticists can use. Only downside being once medbay runs out of power pathology is trapped. Maybe attach it to the cargo belt so that you can send injectors/drugs back and forth.

The only problem with splitting pathology from the rest of the station is how do they get test monkeys, unless you connect the shuttle/teleporter/pod next to the monkey area and then have them stop back at the station to get test monkeys. Which is probably not a bad thing.

I like the idea of a teleporter. We should really have more of the Mechanics style constructions pre-built around the station. The monkey problem could easily be solved by giving the pathology lab a chimp dispenser.