New book: Curing Diseases for Dummies

[MrMagolor]

This is an idea for a book I had. People just resort to using the CDC when they can just cure the disease themselves for less expense.

Start:
Curing Diseases for Dummies
Authored By: Harold Harold, PhD

So there's a rampant disease on your station, and you want to cure it. Well, nothing wrong with that. Sadly, there are too few people that are knowledgeable enough to know how to operate the equipment to obtain a cure. Most people just resort to using the CDC, which is, while technically effective: a waste of money! We here at NT believe in not spending money when you don't have to, so understanding how to save potentially thousands of credits is a vital employee skill!

Firstly, you need to obtain a pure sample of the virus. This will involve extracting the blood from an infected, most likely yourself. Then, drip some blood onto a blood slide, and insert it into a centrifuge. Add an empty petri dish to that same centrifuge, then begin the cycle. It will take awhile, but you'll end up with a petri dish that contains a pure sample.

Now, take that petri dish from the machine, and insert it into a microscope. Observe it while zoomed out: you'll get the type, shape, and color of the pathogen. The shape doesn't matter, but the type and color are vital.

Next, zoom in. The symptoms will be listed, but more importantly, the suppressant information. Combine this with the color of the pathogen you observed when zoomed out, and you will get 1-3 ideas for what the suppressant will be.

(Put the suppressant hint table from https://wiki.ss13.co/Pathology_Research#Suppressant here)

Now, the antiagent is guaranteed based on the type of pathogen. It goes as follows:

Virus: Antiviral agent

Bacteria: Spaceacillin

Fungus: Biocide

Parasite: Biocide

Great Mutatis: Mutation Inhibitor

Beakers of these anti-agents are available from the Path-O-Matic ™ vending machine available in the pathology lab.

This may sound counter-productive, but you'll want to keep growing the sample that's in the petri dish, so you can make multiple cures. Like with anti-agents, beakers of growth medium (except stable mutagen) are available from the Path-O-Matic ™.

Virus: Eggs

Bacteria: Bacterial Growth Medium

Fungus: Fungal Growth Medium

Parasite: Parasitic Growth Medium

Great Mutatis: Stable Mutagen

Now, once the petri dish grows beyond its initial supply, you're ready to make cures! Take a mechanical dropper and set it to 2 units. Draw and drop from the petri dish into a vial using it. Insert that vial into the Synth-O-Matic ™. Then add the beakers of antiagent and suppressant. Push the "manufacture syringe" button, wait a few seconds, then bam! If you did it right, you have a functional cure!

That wasn't so hard, was it? Now that you have such a powerful money-saving technique at your disposal, go show the world how efficient you are!

ADDENDUM: Synth-O-Matic ™ Modules

These modules will make synthesizing cures even easier! They may cost money, or some effort to find, out in space somewhere, but they're worth the effort! To install/remove a module, simply screwdriver open the machine's maintenance panel.

Fungus Module: The Synth-O-Matic actually doesn't have a module for producing cures for Fungi by default, so you should probably go find it!

Irradiation Module: Enables you to use radiation instead of a suppressant to synthesize cures. Takes longer.

Synthesizer Module: Uses matter fabricators to synthesize antiagent, ensuring that you are no longer reliant on the vending machine.

Upgrade Module: Increases the machine's efficiency fourfold at creating cure syringes!

Vaccine Module: Enables cures to prevent future infection. DISCLAIMER: Only works on viruses.

Assistant Module: Helps you analyze exactly how much antiagent/suppressant you'll need for curing a pathogen.

(End book here)

[Wraithcraft]

this probably belongs in a patch. people'll be more willing to merge it then probably.

[Studenterhue]

Aside from a few grammar mistakes, this piece's a lot better than the stuff you usually write, honest. Unlike some of the other books, (Geothermal Capture guide comes to mind) it's goes straight to the point, without any unnecessary auxiliary verbs or awkward sentence arrangements to congest things. There's just one major thing I'd like to point out:

Curing Diseases for Dummies
(Put the suppressant hint table from https://wiki.ss13.co/Pathology_Research#Suppressant here)

Don't. That suppressant table I made might look pretty, but it's pretty abysmal under the hood . It could probably be ported over to HTML, but I'd spare the coders some agony and make it into a simple dichotomous key.

1. Observations under the microscope the suggest that the pathogen might be suppressed by:

• A. Certain foodstuffs....Go to 2.
  
• B. Temperature....Go to 3.
  
• C. A reagent affecting neural activity...Go to 4.
  
• D. Certain kinds of medicine...Go to 5.
  
• E. Gamma rays or mutagenic substances...Go to 6.
  

2. Is the pathogen orange or pink?

• A. Pink....Try porktonium, space-soybean oil, or partially hydrogenated space-soybean oil
  
• B. Orange....Try chicken soup.
  

3. Is the pathogen blue or red?

• A. Blue....Try phlogiston or chloride trifluoride.
  
• B. Red....Try cryostalane or cryoxadone.
  

4. Try ketamine or morphine.
5. Is the pathogen black or cyan?

• A. Black....Try styptic powder or synthflesh.
  
• B. Cyan....Try silver sulfadiazine
  

6. Is the pathogen viridian or olive drab?

• A. Viridian....Try radium, polonium, or uranium.
  
• B. Olive drab....Try stable mutagen or unstable mutagen.
  

[MrMagolor]

Curing Diseases for Dummies
(Put the suppressant hint table from https://wiki.ss13.co/Pathology_Research#Suppressant here)

Don't. That suppressant table I made might look pretty, but it's pretty abysmal under the hood . It could probably be ported over to HTML, but I'd spare the coders some agony and make it into a simple dichotomous key.

1. Observations under the microscope the suggest that the pathogen might be suppressed by:

• A. Certain foodstuffs....Go to 2.
  
• B. Temperature....Go to 3.
  
• C. A reagent affecting neural activity...Go to 4.
  
• D. Certain kinds of medicine...Go to 5.
  
• E. Gamma rays or mutagenic substances...Go to 6.
  

2. Is the pathogen orange or pink?

• A. Pink....Try porktonium, space-soybean oil, or partially hydrogenated space-soybean oil
  
• B. Orange....Try chicken soup.
  

3. Is the pathogen blue or red?

• A. Blue....Try phlogiston or chloride trifluoride.
  
• B. Red....Try cryostalane or cryoxadone.
  

4. Try ketamine or morphine.
5. Is the pathogen black or cyan?

• A. Black....Try styptic powder or synthflesh.
  
• B. Cyan....Try silver sulfadiazine
  

6. Is the pathogen viridian or olive drab?

• A. Viridian....Try radium, polonium, or uranium.
  
• B. Olive drab....Try stable mutagen or unstable mutagen.
  

That probably makes more sense in the context of a handbook anyways.

[Erev]

If people are going to make it that easy then I'm just going to blow up the cure machine. I'd prefer to leave it available so that people can try to find a cure as that is more fun but if its just gonna be a case of a book holding the curer's hand until cure is had... boom goes the machine.

[Studenterhue]

If people are going to make it that easy then I'm just going to blow up the cure machine. I'd prefer to leave it available so that people can try to find a cure as that is more fun but if its just gonna be a case of a book holding the curer's hand until cure is had... boom goes the machine.

Go ahead. Blow the rest of the lab, plus the ones in Debris Field, and burn the book too. A few destroyed Synths is a good trade for less fear, loathing, and frustration, more agency for victims, and lower barriers to an intricate but obtuse system.

[Cirrial]

Yes, I agree with Erev, pathology should remain a black box only two people on the station understand.

By which I mean I wholeheartedly support this book idea and the dichotomous key feels very textbooky, I like.

[Gannets]

I think it's better that players have the opportunity to learn how to use a feature, as well as how to combat it. Rather than it languish in a room forever until the 5 players who know how to use it roll up and use it to kill everyone.

At least if there's a guide you can at least say "Hey, if you wanted that to not beef you so bad, you coulda learned how to avoid it."

[MrMagolor]

Yes, I agree with Erev, pathology should remain a black box only two people on the station understand.

By which I mean I wholeheartedly support this book idea and the dichotomous key feels very textbooky, I like.

I think it's better that players have the opportunity to learn how to use a feature, as well as how to combat it. Rather than it languish in a room forever until the 5 players who know how to use it roll up and use it to kill everyone.

At least if there's a guide you can at least say "Hey, if you wanted that to not beef you so bad, you coulda learned how to avoid it."

This 100%

People learning how to MAKE deadly diseases should be left up to them to figure out, but curing them? Neat thing to know.

[Superlagg]

Fun fact, that dichotomous key thing is one of the ways real microbiology dweebs figure out which microbe they're dealing with. It's all laid out in Bergey's Manual of Determinative Bacteriology, I assume, never having read the darn thing.

This dichotomous key book thing should be structured like a choose-your-own-adventure novel, where all the pages are in a very non-intuitive order, with several intentionally misleading pages mixed in there for anyone who wants to spoil the adventure. Might need an extra patch to give books pages, as opposed to now how they're just one big text window. Might even have the page order randomized on round-start to make it less hand-holdy, with the "if your patient is on fire, go to page X" always leading to the correct page.

[Newtonsolo]

Fun fact, that dichotomous key thing is one of the ways real microbiology dweebs figure out which microbe they're dealing with. It's all laid out in Bergey's Manual of Determinative Bacteriology, I assume, never having read the darn thing.

This dichotomous key book thing should be structured like a choose-your-own-adventure novel, where all the pages are in a very non-intuitive order, with several intentionally misleading pages mixed in there for anyone who wants to spoil the adventure. Might need an extra patch to give books pages, as opposed to now how they're just one big text window. Might even have the page order randomized on round-start to make it less hand-holdy, with the "if your patient is on fire, go to page X" always leading to the correct page.

we gotta have a part of the book which is just ripped from an actual choose your own adventure book

[Cirrial]

8. If ancestral voices are foretelling doom, go to 9.
9. You have been slain by the jabberwock. You should have listened to the tribe elder!

[Frank_Stein]

I just really like the way that guide is written. We could use a lot more of that for the more complicated systems, something short and sweet that barely touches on how to do things without explaining the how or why, leaving that for those that want to experiment

[Erev]

I'm all for ***A*** book, but it shouldn't be a step by step diagram complete with 'here are the suppressants and an answer key' which is what seems to be proposed.

[Lady Birb]

Anything that makes pathology nerds mad is a good idea 10/10 add immediately.