Make it harder to accidentally release pathogens

[Mouse]

I honestly have no idea how but I feel like pathology might be hated a bit less if it was harder to some moron to accidentally or "accidentally" infect the entire station by opening a door or two.

[Frank_Stein]

Some door shutters would be nice, for locking people in or out

Some kind of sterilization sequence as well, that sprays things down with disinfectant before they can come in or out

[saccharineChampion]

Cogmap 2 has lockdown shutters for pathology. Seeing similar for other maps would be good... and would even work on Destiny, where pathology and genetics are the same room.

[breach]

Although it'd require slight map changes, a decontamination chamber like what is already rendered on Cog1 but actually functional would solve this problem pretty well. Automatic door lock/cycling chamber that requires decontamination before going in and out, with an emergency lockdown mode. All powered by the local APC and fully capable of being fucked with for traitor shenanigans.

[zjdtmkhzt]

As one of the people that actually do pathology, it is extremely easy to not release a pathogen. Under normal circumstances you never need to infect a monkey or anything to actually do research, and even when you do want to test a symptom for the wiki or something, you can easily just make the pathogen non-contagious.
Honestly, I assume at least 80% of people that *accidentally* release a pathogen weren't really trying to keep it contained.
If you don't infect a monkey or something, the only way you can accidentally infect someone is if they run in and slurp all of your petri dishes.

That said, I *would* welcome the addition of shutters to maps that do not already have them, they are great for working undisturbed or if people want to murder you. Especially seeing as when a pathogen is going around, lots of people take that as a reason to head to pathology and kill the first person there that looks like they know what they are doing (even if they are trying to make a cure).

[Sundance]

Under normal circumstances you never need to infect a monkey or anything to actually do research, and even when you do want to test a symptom for the wiki or something, you can easily just make the pathogen non-contagious.

Preface: I don't play pathology, but therein lies the problem, and a possible solution.

Yes, under normal circumstances you wouldn't need to infect the monkey.

But most pathologists do because they want to see the effects of their pathogen visually. It's all well and good when you have a T4 in the petri, but to demonstrate it (and for morbid entertainment) you'd want a monkey. That's literally what they're there for. Poor bastards.

But in terms of making the pathogen contagious, yes it's extremely irresponsible for the pathologist to do so, BUT they still do it. Sometimes out of "heh, eat shakespeare crew" attitude, or other times, I would imagine, they'd want to test it's actual contagiousness.

SO

What if there was a change to make the pathogen contagious - but only to specific things?

How? A few changes to code:

1. Blood type is now randomized at round start and removed from the start up screen. It has minor interaction with MSG - let's just change that to something else, as blood type has absolutely no use otherwise. You could even weight it if the coder is bothered, i.e: 40% of the crew have AB, etc.

2. Monkeys all have a unique blood type, separate from humans. For simplicity sake, it's best for the blood type to come up as "Monkey" rather than O or AB, etc.

3. Pathogens can now be tweaked to target specific blood types, with a pathogen that's highly contagious (affecting +1 or 2 blood types) being more difficult to make.

This changes pathology in three big ways.

1. Pathologists can now test the contagiousness of a pathogen with ease.

2. Pathogens are less lethal overall. If a T5 breaks out, it'll obliterate some players, while some are immune.

3. Nefariousness is now smarter. You check your blood type on the medical records. You check the shithead captain, your target. You concoct a virus that YOU are a immune to but the captain is not. Watch him suffer while twirling mustache. Watch as your virus then jumps to the poor chef who also dies in agony.

[Trustworthy]

Pathology as of now is in a very weird place. Its extremely easy to cure, for the most part, due to all the upgrades starting in the synthomatic.  Curing is literally zero effort, the only difficulty is in getting everyone to come over to get a vaccine/cure. Recently it's only been an issue because a lot of new people have been trying pathology. It's very easy to prevent an outbreak if you're trying. Its in a good place currently, is my opinion.

[zjdtmkhzt]

While having Blood Type affect pathogen spread is a very interesting concept, I feel like the vast majority of people just have the default Blood Type for their characters and did not bother changing it.

Also, I feel like testing on monkeys just to see the effects of your pathogen (if you really want to do that) can be easily handled by having the pathologist wear safety gear and having shutters to lock down pathology. I've done that on occasion, and it worked pretty well. If you're really concerned about a random person running in and getting infected, you can always just use the time that it takes for the pathogen to advance in the monkey to make some cures just in case.

[vampirate]

Zeta, if I remember correctly, was separate from the station because of old pathogens. Might not be a bad idea to take the pathology department and separate it from the station with a decontamination that you can turn off on the ship