Pathology improvements & suggestions

[RichardGere]

Hello!

So recently there has been a bit of a buzz regarding pathology again. In my experience, as someone who knows pathology and who has suffered from the effects of pathology, the current situation is this:

• It is too easy to get T5s (there is currently a Pull Request on Github addressing this issue)
  
• The only way to battle pathology, is pathology (i.e. cures can only be made in pathology by someone knowledgable, and is easily prevented)
  
• There is a general disconnect between pathology and other systems of the game
  

I'd like this thread to be a place to brainstorm ideas and suggestions to make pathology fit better into the game. This does not include "improve by removing pathology", but rather genuine ideas that you think would improve the feel of pathology for both pathologists and people outside pathology.

[Rain2025]

Permability-Coefficent + Less Often Airborne Plagues seems like a probable answer (copied from discord at request). Tbf I often turn on internals any time I'm taking "mystery damage".

[zjdtmkhzt]

I've said this before in other places, but I might as well repeat it here again. This is my plan so far for how pathology can hopefully be somewhat brought in line:

• Remove mutating in the stat adjusting window to get symptoms, it is way too quick and it is a boring way to do things compared to the intended method of the dna analyzer.
  
• Potentially add other ways of curing that do not require pathology. (Curing with just suppressants or maybe something different). This will help people that do not want to learn pathology (for reasons that are completely beyond my understanding :^)) and it will also make it possible to cure pathogens if the pathologist that made them blew up the machines.
  
• Make it so you can only have a limited amount of spreading symptoms on a pathogen, so people can protect themselves more adequately (airborne transmission->get internals, etc...) rather than always needing the whole set of gear. In addition, remove white shoes as a kind of needed protection because that is hella dumb.
  
• Potentially also limit the amount of non-spreading symptoms a pathogen can have. This can also serve to rebalance the different microbodies so Virus isn't the best in pretty much any situation. (So maybe a bacterium can have loads of symptoms, but can only go to stage 3 while a virus could go to stage 5 but you could only put one tier 5 symptom on it. Something like that). For the purposes of the dna analyzer, there could be a kind of microbody that can carry an unlimited amount of symptoms but cannot advance past stage 1 or something. Maybe fungi, fuck fungi.
  
• Add more interesting beneficial symptoms, most of the current ones are just passive healing, which is really boring. Of course, this is much easier said than done.
  
• Make it so a health analyzer shows the general amount of beneficial vs harmful symptoms a pathogen has, so people can tell if a pathogen is harmful. This should reduce the amount of times that I get fucking murdered am falsely arrested.
  

[Frank_Stein]

I'd like if pathogens occured in the wild more.

Stuff like getting sick from exposure to bad food, tunnel fungus, etc, with pathogen being where you go to get treated.

And if they want to cultivate what you come in with more power to them

[zjdtmkhzt]

I'd like if pathogens occured in the wild more.

Stuff like getting sick from exposure to bad food, tunnel fungus, etc, with pathogen being where you go to get treated.

And if they want to cultivate what you come in with more power to them

Somehow I kind of doubt randomly getting sick will make people like pathology more, haha.
Didn't there used to be random pathogen events? Those were probably removed for a reason. :/

[Sov]

I'd like if pathogens occured in the wild more.

Stuff like getting sick from exposure to bad food, tunnel fungus, etc, with pathogen being where you go to get treated.

And if they want to cultivate what you come in with more power to them

I think this used to happen? I remember we could get infected with GBS or a cold and needed to eat some soup

[Rain2025]

I've said this before in other places, but I might as well repeat it here again. This is my plan so far for how pathology can hopefully be somewhat brought in line:

• Remove mutating in the stat adjusting window to get symptoms, it is way too quick and it is a boring way to do things compared to the intended method of the dna analyzer.
  
• Potentially add other ways of curing that do not require pathology. (Curing with just suppressants or maybe something different). This will help people that do not want to learn pathology (for reasons that are completely beyond my understanding :^)) and it will also make it possible to cure pathogens if the pathologist that made them blew up the machines.
  
• Make it so you can only have a limited amount of spreading symptoms on a pathogen, so people can protect themselves more adequately (airborne transmission->get internals, etc...) rather than always needing the whole set of gear. In addition, remove white shoes as a kind of needed protection because that is hella dumb.
  
• Potentially also limit the amount of non-spreading symptoms a pathogen can have. This can also serve to rebalance the different microbodies so Virus isn't the best in pretty much any situation. (So maybe a bacterium can have loads of symptoms, but can only go to stage 3 while a virus could go to stage 5 but you could only put one tier 5 symptom on it. Something like that). For the purposes of the dna analyzer, there could be a kind of microbody that can carry an unlimited amount of symptoms but cannot advance past stage 1 or something. Maybe fungi, fuck fungi.
  
• Add more interesting beneficial symptoms, most of the current ones are just passive healing, which is really boring. Of course, this is much easier said than done.
  
• Make it so a health analyzer shows the general amount of beneficial vs harmful symptoms a pathogen has, so people can tell if a pathogen is harmful. This should reduce the amount of times that I get fucking murdered am falsely arrested.
  

I agree that limiting the types of transmission is a good idea (hence my permability co-efficent comment) and definitely think the Health Analyzer could at the very least use an additional upgrade to scan for pathogens generic if not the exact symptoms. I don't know that I agree with unupgraded health analyzers should have this function though as it is kinda a specialized type of thing to look for; technically your first option with pathogen defensive measures can and should be prevention and mitigation; it's just currently we have no real options to detect pathogen activities because until someone broadcasts over radio we have no idea a pathogen is loose.

Also personally I think the whole "suppressant" thing could use a rework - something along the lines of a vaccination for unaffected crew that can take the "cure" in prevention or absence of symptoms to prevent ever developing the virus (obviously once it's properly diagnosed and treated to begin with). Not to "steal" any ideas but /tg/ has a real solid virology system that has similar traits to goons pathos so maybe people could draw comparisons between the systems and come up with a goon-unique system that works in an equally efficient capacity to /tg/'s virology. Again not to steal the system directly - but to draw inspiration for a potential set of changes.

[zjdtmkhzt]

You can already make vaccines! They are made exactly like cures, except they do not require an anti-agent. Admittedly, this is pretty much never useful, seeing as anti-agent is completely free now and takes no time to put into the machine, so you might as well make cures instead.

[Frank_Stein]

I'd like if pathogens occured in the wild more.

Stuff like getting sick from exposure to bad food, tunnel fungus, etc, with pathogen being where you go to get treated.

And if they want to cultivate what you come in with more power to them

Somehow I kind of doubt randomly getting sick will make people like pathology more, haha.
Didn't there used to be random pathogen events? Those were probably removed for a reason. :/

I think that would depend on exactly how random it is, and what the consequences for catching pathogens this way would be.

For instance, getting space rabies from  attacking a monkey, or sick from eating obviously spoiled food involves player action and the consequences can match that degree of interaction.

No one should randomly get a sickness that is going to make their game experience negative just cause

[Lady Birb]

Restating what I said in the other thread

How about we actually start treating the mutation exploit like an exploit and jobban everyone who abuses it from any jobs with pathology access until it gets fixed?

[Sov]

Restating what I said in the other thread

How about we actually start treating the mutation exploit like an exploit and jobban everyone who abuses it from any jobs with pathology access until it gets fixed?

https://github.com/goonstation/goonstation/pull/470

it should now be significantly more time consuming like it used to be

Edit: nvm I misunderstood was the 20 meant it’s not seconds

[Tarmunora]

20 deciseconds, rather

[GORE]

Is the mutation exploit you are talking about......to add the same symptom several times so that it procs more often...or what is exactly the thing ya'll are arguing?

[zjdtmkhzt]

They were talking about just raising maliciousness/mutation speed/mutativeness until you get loads of symptoms. It wasn't an exploit, just something that got overbuffed.