These viruses should conflict with most other healing methods because it’s just ridiculous. Virologist was tanking a blob and blobernaut like it was a fistfight, had only his virus and chems.
It’s the same problem xenobiology has, it throws combat balance out the window.
viro is made to work with standard combat balance, not the balance blob works around. Virology has the upper hand when it comes to battles of attrition and continuous damage, which the blob has. When it comes to standard stationside battles with crew or mobs, virology becomes a lot more balanced. It’s similar to the way a blob has no way of winning against even a single changeling or nightmare
blobs just hate health regen and damage resistance
having a trifecta ready in a half an hour is difficult to impossible in most rounds, except under ideal conditions where every level 9 symptom you want spawns, and science works fast. The RNG is in what symptoms you find, not in what they do. I’m not going to add random symptom stats or anything of that nature.
I added a large amount of symptoms just to fill out the pool and make disease creation more difficult- each symptom is less likely to be picked now, given that the pool has been increased by a good 20%
because you cannot gain said buffs by sitting alone in the dark for half an hour, and must engage with the station to get your equipment
The trifecta endgame for virology also has enough downsides and issues to be unnattractive to most powergamers, and doesnt often end up with the people who stack nanites, genetics, xenobio, etc, due to the difficulty and investment required
I wasn’t aware of that, how does a virologist engage with the crew? I only see them holed up at their console, then emerging with a supervirus that has worms.
So you can sit in your chair and powergame for half an hour, you just wont get the absolute highest tier powergame. What a job. Result? You’ll get % stat bonuses like in some MMORPG.
I love the new update. But I do have some notes.
Hysteria is wack. I wanted to try and have fun with monkeys and hysteria the other day, by making a visually transmitted heart attck but decided against it for one big reason. Virology departments aren’t ready for it. It has separate atmos, sturdy builds with reinforced walls and 2 airlock systems, but most of them have windows. Pubby has a window that points right at a maints tunnel that some assistant can just waltz by and accidentally catch my heart attack maker.
In terms of the balance of beneficial viruses, your post on how you get level 9 symptoms gave me an idea. Make symptoms even better (or worse, depending on context) but harder to get. Maybe a certain tier can only be found dormant in other crewmembers, another tier only by mutations in living beings, another tier you have to get from cargo and the worst tier where you can only find on exploration missions. Hopefully this would make virologists interact more with other people (while being extremely ominous about putting funny worms in them).