Goonhub
02-15-2019, 04:40 AM
I fully agree with indirectly nerfing the strength of pathology's impact on the station due to its rise in popularity. Also, the cure-alls should absolutely be very rare. However, there should also be symptom inhibiting reagents, as to buy people time to synthesize a cure or order them from the CDC (provided it's not broken, I dunno if it still is or ever was). They wouldn't cure the disease, but they'd suppress the lethal/dangerous/really annoying symptoms, while giving you some other symptoms (vomiting, coughing, sweating, etc.), so that you're obviously infected, but hey, at least you're not dying!
Immunity boosters would be interesting as well. There absolutely should be drawbacks to this as to prevent powergaming. They should throw your immune system into overdrive, causing reagents to deplete far faster inside of you, allergic reactions to be much harsher (so histamines are a lot more deadly), and even give you temporary allergies (perhaps to some medicines?). The immunity boosting reagent would probably deplete VERY slowly as well.
It's important to ensure that the hard work that pathology requires to make a successful pathogen remains worth it, as over-nerfing will lead to pathology becoming very unpopular, thus ruining an interesting mechanic. Playtesting is likely required for these fixes.
Making Pathology able to help the station should also be a part of this fix, for a big reason: It's largely a way to fuck over the station (like Toxins is), or to practice fucking over the station. As such, people expect nothing good to come from pathology, and the element of surprise may be completely gone as soon as people start coughing. If beneficial symptoms were available, then people wouldn't be as suspicious of pathology. That and another way for the station to benefit from an existing department/game mechanic is always a good thing!
Immunity boosters would be interesting as well. There absolutely should be drawbacks to this as to prevent powergaming. They should throw your immune system into overdrive, causing reagents to deplete far faster inside of you, allergic reactions to be much harsher (so histamines are a lot more deadly), and even give you temporary allergies (perhaps to some medicines?). The immunity boosting reagent would probably deplete VERY slowly as well.
It's important to ensure that the hard work that pathology requires to make a successful pathogen remains worth it, as over-nerfing will lead to pathology becoming very unpopular, thus ruining an interesting mechanic. Playtesting is likely required for these fixes.
Making Pathology able to help the station should also be a part of this fix, for a big reason: It's largely a way to fuck over the station (like Toxins is), or to practice fucking over the station. As such, people expect nothing good to come from pathology, and the element of surprise may be completely gone as soon as people start coughing. If beneficial symptoms were available, then people wouldn't be as suspicious of pathology. That and another way for the station to benefit from an existing department/game mechanic is always a good thing!