Virology and Murderboning

[GPeckman]

I don't think it's controversial to say that most people don't like murderboning, and that the coders have been trying to curb murderboning as much as possible. With that in mind, I believe that there is another method of murderboning that needs fixing: virology. In a recent round (205276) a virus was able to cause a considerable amount of deaths. As some preliminary evidence of the death toll, before the logs go up, I offer this screenshot of medbay near the end of the round:

► Show Spoiler

There were about as many bodies in the medbay storage room as there were shown in the screenshot. Somewhat anecdotally, another borg pegged the death total at 24, which seems plausible based on the image.

Now, I certainly think that 20 deaths is in murderbone territory. So, should something be done to change this, and if not, then why not?

[Itseasytosee2me]

I hate to say it, but it sounds like you kinda just got owned by a traitor virologist doing traitor virologist things. It was like a 65 person round. If a malevolent virus isn't allowed to threaten less than a third of the station's population what is even the point of having viruses.

I don't think it's controversial to say that most people don't like murderboning

This is actually, surprisingly controversial, at least with your definition of muderboning being "causing the indirect deaths of at least 20 people"

[blackdav123]

murderbone is allowed and the crew is allowed to be wiped if they cant handle a threat

balancing virology is a job for the coders and in this case I think everything is working fine considering the few people who did throw on hardsuits and bio suits ended up making a cure

the traitor viro ended up greentexting as a result of this so I see this as no different from a well placed bomb or plasmaflood

[GPeckman]

I hate to say it, but it sounds like you kinda just got owned by a traitor virologist doing traitor virologist things. It was like a 65 person round. If a malevolent virus isn't allowed to threaten less than a third of the station's population what is even the point of having viruses.

If you'd bothered to look at the screenshot, you'd know I was a cyborg that round. It is physically impossible for the virus to have killed me.

I don't think it's controversial to say that most people don't like murderboning

This is actually, surprisingly controversial, at least with your definition of muderboning being "causing the indirect deaths of at least 20 people"

the traitor viro ended up greentexting as a result of this so I see this as no different from a well placed bomb or plasmaflood

The indirectness is actually a very good point. Although, now I'm curious: why do the maintainers in general allow indirect mass murder but not direct mass murder? What's the reasoning behind that?

balancing virology is a job for the coders

Well, yes. This is why I made the thread in the coding feedback subforum and not the policy subforum.

[JusticeGoat]

I just was a bit surprised by how that same virus owned me in less than 3 minutes, was no chance for any counterplay when caught.

[blackdav123]

The indirectness is actually a very good point. Although, now I'm curious: why do the maintainers in general allow indirect mass murder but not direct mass murder? What's the reasoning behind that?

maintainers and administration allow both, not sure where you are getting the idea they dont from.

killing 20 people IS considerably harder when doing it directly but not disallowed

Well, yes. This is why I made the thread in the coding feedback subforum and not the policy subforum.

thought this was in policy my fault crewmate

[Itseasytosee2me]

I hate to say it, but it sounds like you kinda just got owned by a traitor virologist doing traitor virologist things. It was like a 65 person round. If a malevolent virus isn't allowed to threaten less than a third of the station's population what is even the point of having viruses.

If you'd bothered to look at the screenshot, you'd know I was a cyborg that round. It is physically impossible for the virus to have killed me.

I did know that you were a cyborg, because I checked the round ID to see how many players were in that shift. Just because you didn't die doesn't mean you didn't fail at preventing human harm.

[GPeckman]

The indirectness is actually a very good point. Although, now I'm curious: why do the maintainers in general allow indirect mass murder but not direct mass murder? What's the reasoning behind that?

maintainers and administration allow both, not sure where you are getting the idea they dont from.

killing 20 people IS considerably harder when doing it directly but not disallowed

Historically methods of direct murderbone have been nerfed in some way. Dswords and some other tot items got locked behind reputation. The sleeping carp scroll can't be bought unless there are at least 25 players, because of how easy it was to murderbone with it on lowpop. There are probably other exams that I'm not aware of. The maintainers certainly have tried to restrict direct murderbone, so I'm curious why the same hasn't been done for indirect mass murder.

I did know that you were a cyborg, because I checked the round ID to see how many players were in that shift. Just because you didn't die doesn't mean you didn't fail at preventing human harm.

Well, that isn't why I made this thread. I made this thread because I was curious about why certainly balancing decisions have been made while others haven't.

[TheRex9001]

Virology is easy as all hell to beat, compare it to stuff like kudzu which has very obscure and hard counterplay. A good virology virus takes around 25~45 minutes to produce and if you get owned by one take the L, dying is part of the game and further neutering a job/system a lot of people dislike won't make it more liked or played. I have played a lot of viro and can with confidence say that killing 1/3rd of the crew is insanely difficult with virology.

[ArcaneDefence]

Plenty of people are unhappy with virology, both in how you make the viruses and what the viruses themselves do.
No one's done anything about it, but the fish doctor pr was pretty funny.

I'm not sure trying to brainstom ideasguy about focusing on its capacity to murderbone is going to go far.
Being infected is often weird in that a delicately made kill/confusion virus can reasonably be overwritten by taking a common cold and spamming virus food on it to full symptoms.
To me, virology feels like it exists to on an ordinary round do little to nothing, on more notable rounds save/kill a person or two with coma or provide passive healing, and on sporadic traitor rounds cause station wide suffocation/immolation/suicide inducing confusion.

Iunno. I'm really not sure what to expect of virology going forward, as we don't have anyone championing what to do with it.
It's felt like predefined nanites-lite at times, and those got put aside because of how much they could do.
Maybe in making virus construction deterministic but have hurdles and gates to focus on instead of the spam RNG that challenges only your procedure we could bring virology closer to the biddle progression mentality, and that'd naturally 'discourage shiftstart murderbone' /shrug

[HeyHey]

You don't speak for me, murder boning is a great tool for shaping rounds.

[Cobby]

Viro is absolutely my least fav dept in Medical because all the fun of making a virus is lost when the least path of resistance is to "make" one in excel then recreate it every round moving forward.

That said im a bit confused, are you upset with murderboning conceptually or do you just dislike the power associated with making a strong naughty virus in viro? The post comes off as coding feedback trying to veil under policy discussion.

edit: this is coding feedback am i going crazypony or something???

edit2: viro is easily countered so i dont think while it stays in the current iteration it should be nerfed (the best method for a naughty virus is prevention vs. reacting), but i think everyone agrees the design is the snoozefest

[GPeckman]

Viro is absolutely my least fav dept in Medical because all the fun of making a virus is lost when the least path of resistance is to "make" one in excel then recreate it every round moving forward.

That said im a bit confused, are you upset with murderboning conceptually or do you just dislike the power associated with making a strong naughty virus in viro? The post comes off as coding feedback trying to veil under policy discussion.

edit: this is coding feedback am i going crazypony or something???

edit2: viro is easily countered so i dont think while it stays in the current iteration it should be nerfed (the best method for a naughty virus is prevention vs. reacting), but i think everyone agrees the design is the snoozefest

To clarify, I don't like murderboning but that isn't why I made this thread. I made this thread because, historically, things that facilitate murderboning have been nerfed to make murderboning harder, and I was wondering why virology hadn't gotten the same treatment.

[ArcaneDefence]

Because no one's settled on what virology should become well enough to convince others.

[Cobby]

Because no one's settled on what virology should become well enough to convince others.

Actually this, when I was the medical goto viro was an offset that felt like its own challenge because the actual gameplay loop is literally done offscreen via wiki/code reading and simply replicating those findings when you actually click "join round".

The power of viro for either good or evil simply hasnt been addressed because the design space for viro needs to be addressed first and then the power layout can be established following that.

Now, if I was still a maintainer I wouldnt outright remove viro (and it looks like that is still being held), but i'd say it's certainly real estate for anyone interested in either tackling viro itself or adding a new gameplay loop to replace it (although I think the act of curing diseases should stay in but just be a challenge that is part of the generic medical umbrella vs. a dedicated individual).

[Nabski]

Because no one's settled on what virology should become well enough to convince others.

Actually this, when I was the medical goto viro was an offset that felt like its own challenge because the actual gameplay loop is literally done offscreen via wiki/code reading and simply replicating those findings when you actually click "join round".

The power of viro for either good or evil simply hasnt been addressed because the design space for viro needs to be addressed first and then the power layout can be established following that.

Now, if I was still a maintainer I wouldnt outright remove viro (and it looks like that is still being held), but i'd say it's certainly real estate for anyone interested in either tackling viro itself or adding a new gameplay loop to replace it (although I think the act of curing diseases should stay in but just be a challenge that is part of the generic medical umbrella vs. a dedicated individual).

When you say generic medical umbrella v dedicated individual what do you mean.

To me individual means "Chemist who cures it then drops a bunch of vaccines on the floor in the lobby".

[Cobby]

When you say generic medical umbrella v dedicated individual what do you mean.

To me individual means "Chemist who cures it then drops a bunch of vaccines on the floor in the lobby".

First off I say youre lookin v fine today.

Second off I think thats perfectly fine. Medical (MDs+Chem+Para...) tackling the problem even with a simple cure n distribute is ok because diseases just being a slightly different loop than say surgery is fine (not to say there isnt room for improvement here either). It does not need an entire job dedicated explicitly to stopping them, at least currently. Im not sure I would want it that fleshed out either.

[factoryman942]

The indirectness is actually a very good point. Although, now I'm curious: why do the maintainers in general allow indirect mass murder but not direct mass murder? What's the reasoning behind that?

maintainers and administration allow both, not sure where you are getting the idea they dont from.

killing 20 people IS considerably harder when doing it directly but not disallowed

Historically methods of direct murderbone have been nerfed in some way. Dswords and some other tot items got locked behind reputation. The sleeping carp scroll can't be bought unless there are at least 25 players, because of how easy it was to murderbone with it on lowpop. There are probably other exams that I'm not aware of. The maintainers certainly have tried to restrict direct murderbone, so I'm curious why the same hasn't been done for indirect mass murder.

in the case of pop/rep locking, I think it's less "direct vs indirect" and more the amount of effort / game-system interaction going into it - a virus/bomb/golem spam at least requires you to fuck around with toxins/viro/xenobio for a while, and an effective plasma flood needs you to go around tampering with air alarms; whereas deswording (before reputation) is literally just "open uplink at the start of the round --> press funny 16tc button". If people are consistently able to "speedrun" supermurderviruses though, that's a sign they'd need a nerf/rework.

[MooCow12]

Virology and viruses wouldnt be that big of a deal if people would stop knowingly spreading it, I lost count of the amount of times ive observed people run into an isolated room as if they are just looking around, cough and infect everyone in there, then walk out.

[BeeSting12]

Viro is funny because the chemist can do the job of curing viruses better than the actual virologist can. The core gameplay loop discourages interaction with others until the virus is complete, at which point you just run around and cough in everyone's faces. It has the kill potential of toxins, but is isolated so no one can see what is going on until it's too late for the station. I don't have any suggestions on improving it, that's just my two cents.

Virology and viruses wouldnt be that big of a deal if people would stop knowingly spreading it, I lost count of the amount of times ive observed people run into an isolated room as if they are just looking around, cough and infect everyone in there, then walk out.

So no different from real life then

[Farquaar]

you just run around and cough in everyone's faces.

I mean yeah, if you're a square
A based virologist infects himself, cures the virus so he gets immunity and then covertly spreads it to a patient zero so he can survey the epidemiological fruits of his dastardly labour. Bonus points if he distributes a "vaccine" that actually contains a second virus.

[Cobby]

the core gameplay loop involves crafting the virus in excel then relaying it into the game, which is relatively easy to do unless lady luck is genuinely upset with you (she can be offset p easily with map-provided chems).

viro is genuinely bad lol i really want someone to suggest an epic rework or replacement