Lets fix pathology

[Azungar]

Simply put, pathology is in a pretty bad shape right now. It is probably one of the more difficult things to get into and even if you decide to spend a whole round doing it, you might not gain anything out of it. I will now proceed to go into detail as to what is wrong from perspective of a traitor and a non-traitor.

Traitor

First of all, pathology/virology becomes an option to traitor medical doctors/medical director/captain/HoP as they have the easiest access to it and cause the least amount of suspicion actually being there. In matter of fact, if you are doing something in that room, you will most likely be questioned (mainly because it is so rare to see someone do ANYTHING there.) I think this is because pathology has exactly seven "good" uses, which most of us probably have never even seen. 

A good comparison point for pathology is the toxic lab. In pathology, it takes a decent player anywhere from 8 to 15 minutes to produce a "good" sample which can be used to crack those tier 3-5 symptoms. A good bomb maker can get his preparations done in less then five, after which its just a waiting game for the optimal mix. Here is the first issue with pathology in general, you might get fucked over by the symptom generation code and you will be missing a single tier 1 symptom which you need to form a tier 3, 4 or 5. For example: Deadly tier 4 disease is AAA BBB CCC DDD but sadly, out of all the 10 samples that you get on round start, you never acquired DDD. The only way for you to even have a chance to get DDD is by infecting the whole station with a disease that spreads quickly and has very high mutativeness, hoping that it will generate something which uses the symptom DDD. Not to mention that you then actually have to extract samples of blood from people to acquire the new strand... This would be really tedious and generally just about anyone would just go get some genetic powers instead. Anyway, back to the comparison point. 40 minutes into the round, a half decent chemist has produced bombs and more then likely already blown half of the station to hell and back. A VERY lucky virologist could have a tier 5 by this point, if he was lucky enough to get every symptom on the round start. Now he only needs to grow it, mutate it so it actually is able to progress, then grow it again and then spread it.. Except that if he does spread it this way, he runs the risk of getting the same disease on himself and thus killing himself. So it will take a traitor 10 more minutes to go to a non-specified trader in space to acquire the vaccine module, so he can safeguard himself. By this point, it would really be much easier to get telekinesis, five other genetic powers and a c-saber. Or a bunch of bombs. Or hellfoam. 

If you decide to continue, you actually need to figure out  how to create the randomly generated suppressant. (These range from radiactive substances to chicken soup and medical chems.) Currently, they seem to be bugged (?) because if you use a petri dish on microscope and then using a dropper, drip some of the suppressant on the dish and view it, it usually doesn't show you anything, which seems to be the same thing when you are trying to investigate what does the symptom actually do. 

Lets take a small sidetrack here, especially now that some of us have had the advantage of taking a look at the code. There are THREE heat based symptoms which all share the text of "The pathogen appears to be creating a constant field of radiating heat. The relevant membranes look like they might be affected by painkillers." The difference between these is that one raises your body temperature slightly, one sets you on fire and one literally firegibs you. Due to the bugged (?) dripping mechanic on the petri dishes, it is impossible to tell these apart and yet again takes time. (You actually need to go find the chemical, take the vial, pour it into petri, put petri into microscope and then drip the solution on it.) Why can't we have three distinctive messages for each of the different, similar diseases?  For example: The pathogen appears to be creating a constant field of radiating heat. The relevant membranes look like they might be affected by painkillers. / The pathogen appears to be creating a LARGE amount of constant radiating heat. The relevant membranes look like they might be affected by painkillers. / The pathogen appears to be creating a EXTREME amounts of radiating heat. The relevant membranes look like they might be affected by painkillers. This theme of same identification text on symptoms is a reoccuring theme and while immersive, it does waste a large amount of already limited "traitoring" time. 

In the end, if you managed to vaccine yourself, reach a high tier of symptoms and if you managed to spread it around the station, the station is literally fucked. The worst of the worst diseases are very deadly, some of them gibbing you in just a few minutes after some scary messages. It's possible but requires A) you to be lucky and have all of the tier 1 symptoms B) the round to be a very long one, we're talking 85mins here. And I can tell you that its not exactly enjoyable to sit pressing buttons at the computer for 85 minutes. Atleast the geneticists click buttons for 20-40 minutes and then get to assault people. Another issue is also that as soon as people start noticing that a disease is loose, someone will scan the pathology lab for fingerprints. It's pretty much guaranteed that you are the only person to ever visit that place.

So in short, traitor pathology is too risky, takes way too long and is simply unfun. What can be done to change this?

- Give us a traitor virologist item. Hell, let us pay 12 telecrystals for a single pathogen vial which contains a random tier 3-5 malificent symptom. I'm tempted to ask that the vaccine module would be introduced as a baseline to the synth-o-matic, but that might be pushing it. 

- We need more uncommon/common/rare symptoms that are annoying but by no means deadly. This would allow pathology to be a great assisting tool for a traitor, a disease that gives you an edge against the crew. Make them easier to acquire, allow people to choose if they want to spend 10-20 minutes making a disease which gives you an edge in combat (granted that you make yourself immune to this disease) or if you wish to spend 40-60 minutes in creating a disease that will kill the whole crew if not cured/put an end to. 

- Put one of those pathology vending machines to the "secret" space pathology lab. That place is a great for any traitor virologist who wishes to take the risk, but a lack of vending machine makes it unusable. If synth-o-matic is blown up by a traitor, this also renders this "backup" lab unusable.

- Diverse the "symptom" messages. Like I pointed out, its not fun to have two different farting diseases with the same text, its not fun to have two coldness based diseases with same text. The whole process has to be sped up due to how short the usual shifts are.

- The chemists don't start off with 1/4 of their chemicals being unavailable for the whole round, why should the virologist have a chance for this to happen? Make sure that every tier 1 symptom is contained in those starting vials. You spawn as traitor medical doctor, you work towards a tier 4/5, only to find out that you are missing one symptom. This is very stupid and should not be like this. In my own very BIAsed opinion, the tier 1 "common" symptoms should always be prefixed to a certain number of hex. AAA could be always cough, BBB could always be farting, CCC could always be Shakesperian etc. Make tier 2,3,4, and 5 completely random. 

- The rarity of symptoms has to be adjusted. One "very rare" per round is fine, but after that it becomes slightly mundane due to how little of actually useful symptoms we have. This is exactly why we need more symptoms that are annoying but not deadly. I will give out examples of new diseases later on. 

Non-traitor

What does the pathology lab offer to a person who is not a traitor? Well first of all it may be used in very rare case of "random event" disease, but that rarely if ever even happens. It can also be used to spread a helpful disease, but the biggest issue here is that there is only SEVEN helpful symptoms, which honestly all suck. One that heals each damage type VERY SLOWLY, as in.. If you are dying from a fire, this said disease will do absolutely nothing to help you. It is quite literally one damage away per three minutes. I simply cannot see this ever helping anyone, it is too slow. One that reduces how drunk you are, one that destroys harmful poisons in your body and thats about it. Not to mention that nearly all of them are very rare and very, very hard to acquire. It literally takes you the same amount of time to spread a good, O2 healing disease as it takes you to release a gibbing disease on the station. This is absurd and makes no sense, no-one in their right mind would want to bother with something like that. Thankfully the solution is much easier then to the traitor one.


- Add tons of new beneficial symptoms and make the current ones all common or uncommon, there is no reason for them to be rare or very rare. Make beneficial symptoms easier to acquire, move most of the deadlier and more harmfull stuff to tier 3/4/5. Make a couple new beneficial symptoms that can be tier 3/4/5, for example one that activates helpful superpowers on people from their DNA pool. A disease that completely prevents corpse necrosis. There is so much more that can be done with pathology if only the beneficial diseases would be easier to acquire and would be slightly more powerful. The interesting concept here is that by spreading a helpful, healing disease on the station, you also help the antagonists, accidentally.

- Same as before, there is no good reason for us to have a missing tier 1 symptom which later ruins a higher tier symptom.

- Balance the rarity of all the symptoms. Make deadlier stuff automatically higher tier, while the "basic" healing symptoms baseline common.

- Duplicate symptoms have to go. It's not fun first figuring out that AAA BBB CCC is a symptom that heals brute damage, only to figure out ten minutes later that BBB CCC AAA is exactly the same, the RNG has to go. I would rather have the round start with every possible disease ever, rather then having five of the same. This is the issue why there is a chance for the 10 pathogen samples you start with, only to contain 10x of tier 1 cough. 


Pathology UI

As far as I know, the "new" pathology computer is still work in progress, but I might aswell give some criticism on it. First of all, the new "sequence" list is handy, you used to have to do that on paper/docs, so thats good. The sequence checker which verifies if the symptom will collapse or not is utter garbage and does not work even half of the time. It predicts wrong and that big red "FAIL" encourages me to check the whole code again, only to verify that it is correct and when I save it, it actually is correct, even if the computer was telling me that it was not. Add a function to check what each seperate symptom does, the microscope can still be used to check suppressant is used. For example, you have symptom AAA BBB, you click on it and it opens you a new window which tells you that its cough. For example if you have a very long pathogen with tens of symptoms, the microscope is very hard to use as it lists them in a big wall of text and isolating a single symptom takes long time. 

Honestly other then that, I have no issues with the current UI. 

Microbodies

Next I want to focus on the pathology microbodies and how they can be improved on. Currently there is little to no difference between them except for activity and the fact that some of them have auto-immunization and some of them can be vaccined against. Oh and some of them have less stages then the others. I think the introduction of microbody specific symptoms would be a good addition. For example parasite could have a bee parasite which when fully developed plants small bee eggs inside you, which later turns into a swarm of bees that assaults you or anyone who is in one tile radius of you, doing some very minor brute and toxic damage. Shameful self-advertisement. Fungal microbodies could form a symbiosis connection with its host, for example turning harmful chemicals into sugar or something else. 

All in all, pathology is currently too complicated for what you manage to achieve with it. I guess people are still scarred by the old pathology, but hopefully with the bigger focus on beneficial symptoms it could be wastly superior to the old one. I would also wish to discuss the current rarity of all the diseases and how those should be changed, but I'm not sure if we are yet allowed to discuss such things due to the code still not being public (?). I'm personally big fan of pathology and stuff that is related to it (Plague Inc, cough cough.) and am actually willing to re-write the symptom examination texts if the coders would be willing to actually change those. Hopefully this will cause some attention towards pathology and some changes would be done. The code is all there and it works quite well, it just needs to get the same treatment as genetics, more symptoms and it will be a very good, useful addition to the station. 

[medsal15]

You forgot the most important not working part of pathology: You cannot prevent anyone from being infected.

[Azungar]

You forgot the most important not working part of pathology: You cannot prevent anyone from being infected.

Well, technically you can if you possess the strain of the virus. Thats why the vaccine module is in the first place.

[Gannets]

I had a traitor pray to trade their PDA for a fancy Great Mutatis Cell sample with some tier 5 symptoms in it. It was a neat round, I'd personally be down for a MD traitor item with one of those it in.

[robertGN]

I agree in every way with everything said.

Please listen to this guy.

[Azungar]

I had a traitor pray to trade their PDA for a fancy Great Mutatis Cell sample with some tier 5 symptoms in it. It was a neat round, I'd personally be down for a MD traitor item with one of those it in.

Just a slight shame that the item would have to be either a virus, great mutatis cell or a parasite, as those are the only ones which can have tier 5's in them. And in defense of these "big bad" diseases, they have a lot of stages and so you have a lot of time to synthesize a cure, I only wish there was a faster way to produce cures. (Yes, I know there is a module which produces 5 cures instead of 1, but yet again.. The effort is quite big for something that could be there from the start.) 

Also, seems like there is one helpful symptom which is considered tier 5, would have to exclude that one from the list. The traitor item would also be good, because it is not an instant win by any means, you still need to apply some lower tier symptoms for it to spread. You still need to vaccine yourself to be safe. You still need to mutate its attributes to be appropriate and you still need to spread it.

[Vitatroll]

Pathology needs to be fixed before it gets "fixed". I once got infected through a window, in space.

There should be countermeasures for pathology that a single person can do. Active internals, especially with a gas mask, should largely prevent diseases that spread through coughing and sneezing unless there's an open wound. At current, as I've been told, a full bio suit with active internals, gasmask, gloves and all -- does pretty much jack shit at a certain point, even through glass! That's a bit ridiculous if true.

[Mageziya]

I once got infected, through space, in a pod. The disease also caused all my limbs to fall off and me to set on fire. Yeah, infection really, desperately, needs reworking.

Also, in terms of actually making cures, pathology has the weird problem where if it's a player made disease running about, to make a cure you sorta need to rummage through an already used lab. Don't think it would actually hinder anything, but it is rather odd. Cures probably also need a faster way to be made overall, because whenever there's the rare random event disease, no one ever seems to try and make a cure because its generally late in the round that infection occurs. With the effort and time required to make said cure means it won't be made before the shuttle arrives or at which point the station's been ravaged and there aren't people to save, and even then the shuttle will probably be called in only a few minutes.

[Frank_Stein]

Pathology should take a note from genetics and seriously slim down it's complexity in favor of something speedier.

[Erev]

As a fellow pathologist I do agree with almost all of this (especially the addition of more/better beneficial and flavor symptoms) and also wanted to make some notes:

If you are missing one of the base symptoms (ex DDD) you have options already. The first is to buy samples for Doc who will engage in only modest extortion. The other is an abandoned patbology lab. With 7 samples on Destiny and 10 on Cog2 missing a base symptom is quite rare now.

The 'Disease Outbreak' event uses the old disease system which currently makes a pathllogist useless. Pathology curing is only useful vs another Pathologist right now or an admin created version. I posted a thread with ideas to move to the new system not long ago. I'd link but I'm currently on my phone looking for my drinking buddy.

Pathology isn't all that complex - it just has a certain amount of required tedium and focus required. It has gotten much better now that much of the notetaking is automated now.

I agree that microbodies need more to differentiate themselves from one another.

I also think that we need a better way to culture additional pathogen. Perhaps an incubator that can only grow one strain at a time so that you need to grow others the old fashioned way if you want to run more at once.

The 'infected through glass' issue has been fixed. Also an airtight suit can and will save you from infection. The trouble is that people forget that this includes gloves. Pathogens can and will infect you through exposed hands - despite the fact that spacewalking without gloves is no big deal.

May be more to come later. Drinking buddy approaches. ((I now desire a drunked guard buddy named drinking buddy....))

Edit: Also regarding the big red 'fail' thing on the right? That's the splicing predictor. As I understand it from Marq it is made such that it is connected to the 'Prediction Effectiveness' stat which is upped by running stuff through the analyzer. The more you analyse, the more accurate it gets. That said I don't really ever consult it. Instead I consult the built in - and accurate - notes.

Edit Edit: Also you can tell apart which symptoms are which almost always - even the ones with duplicate descriptions. Keep in mind not only the description for that symptom but also remember which levels have symptoms that exist but are not listed with text (things like brain damage IIRC). You should almost always be able to puzzle it out.

[Azungar]

Pathology needs to be fixed before it gets "fixed". I once got infected through a window, in space.

There should be countermeasures for pathology that a single person can do. Active internals, especially with a gas mask, should largely prevent diseases that spread through coughing and sneezing unless there's an open wound. At current, as I've been told, a full bio suit with active internals, gasmask, gloves and all -- does pretty much jack shit at a certain point, even through glass! That's a bit ridiculous if true.

Aye, this was the case with the older version of pathology. I can confirm that this used to be the case but nowdays gasmask, gloves, biosuit and boots and you are 100 % protected against diseases, only exception being that if you get injected directly. For example coughing and sneezing is completely nullified by any "mask", even the clown wig. The window thing is still a bit funky at times, but thats how it is.

As a fellow pathologist I do agree with almost all of this (especially the addition of more/better beneficial and flavor symptoms) and also wanted to make some notes:

If you are missing one of the base symptoms (ex DDD) you have options already. The first is to buy samples for Doc who will engage in only modest extortion. The other is an abandoned patbology lab. With 7 samples on Destiny and 10 on Cog2 missing a base symptom is quite rare now.

The 'Disease Outbreak' event uses the old disease system which currently makes a pathllogist useless. Pathology curing is only useful vs another Pathologist right now or an admin created version. I posted a thread with ideas to move to the new system not long ago. I'd link but I'm currently on my phone looking for my drinking buddy.

Pathology isn't all that complex - it just has a certain amount of required tedium and focus required. It has gotten much better now that much of the notetaking is automated now.

I agree that microbodies need more to differentiate themselves from one another.

I also think that we need a better way to culture additional pathogen. Perhaps an incubator that can only grow one strain at a time so that you need to grow others the old fashioned way if you want to run more at once.

The 'infected through glass' issue has been fixed. Also an airtight suit can and will save you from infection. The trouble is that people forget that this includes gloves. Pathogens can and will infect you through exposed hands - despite the fact that spacewalking without gloves is no big deal.

May be more to come later. Drinking buddy approaches. ((I now desire a drunked guard buddy named drinking buddy....))

Edit: Also regarding the big red 'fail' thing on the right? That's the splicing predictor. As I understand it from Marq it is made such that it is connected to the 'Prediction Effectiveness' stat which is upped by running stuff through the analyzer. The more you analyse, the more accurate it gets. That said I don't really ever consult it. Instead I consult the built in - and accurate - notes.

Edit Edit: Also you can tell apart which symptoms are which almost always - even the ones with duplicate descriptions. Keep in mind not only the description for that symptom but also remember which levels have symptoms that exist but are not listed with text (things like brain damage IIRC). You should almost always be able to puzzle it out.

The thing in question here is more like.. Should we be forced to actually fly to space and spend (usually really small wage which MDs get on space samples which you have no way to analyze on the spot. Heck, you can buy 20 of those and still not get DDD. The abandoned pathology lab is awesome and as I previously stated, it will become worth actually going to if they add a pathology vendomat to it. 

Sad to hear that the breakout event is still using the old code, pretty much makes it useless for pathologists then. And I agree, pathology is really not that complex after you get into it, honestly its the exactly right amount of "hard" for it to be interesting and not too "mainstream", like genetics where someone can run in and just snatch whatever superpowers he has on himself. And as such I don't think the pathology process should be simplified, just fix the annoying "dropper" examination, remove duplicate symptoms completely and make sure the pathology lab always starts off with all tier one symptoms and I should be pretty satisfied for the time being. When and if a coder has more time, they should definetely add more symptoms as the list is quite lacking, especially on the beneficial part.

And yes, thats exactly what I am talking about the "Prediction Effectivenes" is usually lying to me and that would certainly explain it. Its not really helpful if you have to FIRST splice it and then it actually is able to tell you if it will fail or not. Yes, I don't trust it either. 

Let's stop poking around the ice and I'll just reveal a couple symptoms for example. The fire based one which raises your bodyheat is a tier 1 symptom. The next one which gives EXACTLY the same message is a tier 3 one, except that it randomly sets you on fire. And the final one which yet again gives the same symptom message, is  tier 5 and can firegib you outright. Yes, you are able to see which is which if you have only a couple symptons in your pathogen, but if you have spliced three of them in a row, you'll have to fumble around it. I would much rather just have the pathogen machine tell me what it does, or heck give those pathogens a slightly different examination text from each other. The fact that you "properly" test them out by dropping salisylic acid into the petri dish and then looking into microscope. (Which FYI, does not work. Only if you are trying to figure out what "cures" the said pathogen.

And finally, yes. Curing is quite bad. I mean if you are a smart virologist, you just remove the modules from the synth-o-matic and the crew is completely screwed. Not too many know that you can order replacement parts from QM. The thing is that when you get infected, you are on a timer. You'll probably end up getting gibbed faster then you are able to synthesize a proper cure and even then, you will only save a handful of lives at best. I really wish there was a proper way to make ton of cures without the need to go into space and buy that module.

EDIT: Also apparently the starting pathogen samples cant have higher then tier 3 at round start in them. Or atleast thats what I got from a sample of 100 vials which I bought.

[Marquesas]

There's a million things here I should be responding to but I don't have time for all of them yet. So please don't be offended if I'm responding to snippets of things I saw in a quick look-through.

- Fair point about the modules. They will no longer be removable.
- The starting pathogen samples have a very, VERY good reason to be limited to T3.
- The dropping of reagents does work, and does give different messages for each of the same message symptom if you are using the right reagent. Honestly, since there are so many ways to correlate stuff, I don't think examination should be a free pass.
- Locking these together: You are not supposed to be 'pretty satisfied all the time'. We're talking about stealthy shit that can singlehandedly take out the entire station while you sit in your chair sipping martinis. I'm not about to go and make it more comfortable to make. What do you want me to do, introduce a time-locked research system that automatically provides you with airborne GBS after 30 minutes? Because we all know how that turned out.
- PE formula: Not *quite* sure at the moment, however, I do know that the system has at least PE chance to be right. So effectively, it is a wise choice to agree when PE is above 50%.

Honestly, reading back what I had to reply to basically says you don't want to exert any effort here. That's not good.

[Azungar]

There's a million things here I should be responding to but I don't have time for all of them yet. So please don't be offended if I'm responding to snippets of things I saw in a quick look-through.

- Fair point about the modules. They will no longer be removable.
- The starting pathogen samples have a very, VERY good reason to be limited to T3.
- The dropping of reagents does work, and does give different messages for each of the same message symptom if you are using the right reagent. Honestly, since there are so many ways to correlate stuff, I don't think examination should be a free pass.
- Locking these together: You are not supposed to be 'pretty satisfied all the time'. We're talking about stealthy shit that can singlehandedly take out the entire station while you sit in your chair sipping martinis. I'm not about to go and make it more comfortable to make. What do you want me to do, introduce a time-locked research system that automatically provides you with airborne GBS after 30 minutes? Because we all know how that turned out.
- PE formula: Not *quite* sure at the moment, however, I do know that the system has at least PE chance to be right. So effectively, it is a wise choice to agree when PE is above 50%.

Honestly, reading back what I had to reply to basically says you don't want to exert any effort here. That's not good.

No, that's completely fine and I won't be offended as you did seemingly miss the more important points. 

- The module change is good, no-one will be forced to venture out into deep space for cures anymore. Can we have the vaccine and improved cure making module as baseline as well?  I think the irridiation one is too strong to be baseline.
- Yes, I never claimed that starting samples should be anything more then T3, they indeed have a good reason for to be limited to that. You don't want to have GBS, Dragon fever or teleportitis running rampart across the station five minutes in.
- I'm fairly certain that dropping of reagents does not work, I mean I am literally looking at the gooncode to see the current reagent and what the result it gives, the it simply gives me the "You can observe the following in the dish:" and then its blank, even according to the code, I am using the right reagent. I'm willing to take a beating if I am wrong and it really does work.
- No, pathology doesn't need to become old pathology, old robotics or new genetics research. The current way you do pathology research is fine except for the fact that there is a chance that you don't have all of the required tier 1 symptoms. Why does pathology have a chance to be punished heavily and be forced to go to space to buy more samples? I mean heck, those samples are 700 a piece. Medical doctor can afford six of them by 45 minutes if the HoP hasn't stolen all of the money.  I'm 100 % fine with sitting for 45 minutes tied to the computer, if I have everything I need to actually reach the highest tier of symptoms. I don't see a reason to make pathology something like artifact lab, where you pray to gods of RNG that you'll have every symptom. Let's not forget that pathology spawns you only certain amount of rare and very rare symptoms, worst case scenario is that as traitor, your only "very rare" is a helpful symptom.
- I'm quite careless for the PE analyzer, it's not helpful enough for me to use it but if someone else gains from it, so be it.


We know that the coders are busy and that pathology is not quite "polished" yet, but it would honestly be tons better with more helpful symptoms and with more stunning/annoying symptoms then those that outright fuck you over. I think pathology can be compared currently to genetics, before it received that huge increase of new genetic powers.

EDIT: Heck, can't we just start off pathology with just ONE vial which has all of the tier 1's in it? You would literally then have to work your way from the ground up, but would not have to rely on RNG at all. Also I'm available on IRC most of the time, if you wish to discuss this there. I'm a big fan of pathology and I just wish it would be more fair towards the player.

[Marquesas]

My baseline point is that having all of the T1s is a waterfall right now. Splicing the pathogen itself allows you to cultivate the holy grail very, very fast. My problem with the entire availability is that coupled with the pathogen stability analyzer and predictive subsystem, I could create at least one T5 within 10 minutes. While I understand that it is disappointing that you find out that none of the T5s are possible in your round, there has to be a better way to remedy this than providing a holy grail.

If you're suggesting that the reagent dropping system broke somewhere along the way, I can get behind that and check it out. Would fixing it alleviate these issues though or would it surface again in the manner of "it's unfair to expect people to drop reagents in there"? In the end, I don't believe that the microscopic examination of symptoms is critical to the pathologist's job. It is a really helpful thing for a traitor but once it's fixed I expect you to go the extra mile to find out which bit of the flavour text is OK.

As for flavour symptoms, I literally ran out of ideas halfway through. Ideas are welcome, patches containing reasonable symptoms are even more welcome.

[Azungar]

Yes, I'm fairly certain there has to be another way and I guess I'm forced to agree that having every tier one at the round start would make things slightly too easy. From what you are writing, I am getting that you wish the pathologist to make a full time commitment to pathology if they wish to traitor through it (or atleast if they wish to release some of the bigger killers) so how about doubling the amount of starting pathology samples? This would increase the chance that you start off with every T1 but it would also mean that you'd have to spend more time going through all the samples to make sure you have everything you need. 

Alternative option would be to drop the pathogen sample price from the abandoned satellite from 700 space credits to 100 or so. That way even medical doctors can afford more then three samples and time would be spend actually getting a pod and then flying there. (Myself being a mainly Destiny player, the doubling of samples sounds far better as Destiny already starts off with just 6 samples.) OR give us a somekind of substance/machine which turns into a new pathogen sample completely randomly, basically allow us to create more pathogen samples.

And regarding the reagent dropping system, I am personally more for the "just let us see straight away what the symptom does" but I don't think its too unreasonable to make the players to go the extra mile to actually figure out the reagent. Just don't be too cryptic about it and do your best that the reagents can be gained very easily.  So I guess I'm a bit torn here. And microscopic examinations would be handy for a non-traitor too if there was actually a decent amount of helpful symptoms.

I'll try asking around if someone who actually knows how to code would be willing to actually make some of my ideas functional but for now, they're just ideas due to me not having any coding capabilities.

Then for the symptoms themselfs, first of all I guess I would like to see a increase of healing done by Wound Mending, Burn Healing and Cleansing. Currently it feels like the same if you have them in you or not, even with very high advance speed.  Drop Detoxication from COMMON to UNCOMMON, its too bad to be a common one. Drop Oxygen Production from VERY RARE to RARE. 

Add a new VERY RARE symptom which applies the same effect as genetics "Regeneration" superpower. Meaning that it can heal limbs back and heal anykind of damage.  
desc = "The pathogen slowly regenerates damage and missing limbs."
"The pathogens cells are moving and sliding oddly in the petri dish."
Has no fitting chemical that would allow you to "test it" but the unique message should be a good giveaway.

I'm not sure if my next idea is actually a benevolent or maleficent one, I guess it depends on the application and person. The symtom would be RARE and the general idea is that the symptom generates small amounts of mutadone in the victims body from time to time. In theory, this can cure nasty mutations  but more then likely this will just ruin any geneticists day completely. Extra irony being involved that on Cogmap2, the geneticist are next door.
desc = "The pathogen generates mutadone in the victims body from time to time."
if (R == "unstable_mutagen")
return "The pathogen quickly reverts any changes done by the mutagen."
"The pathogen seems to produce foul astringent liquid in the petri dish."