Goonhub
01-21-2015, 10:15 AM
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.
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.