New virology (EdgeLordExe)

Biggest goal is that there should never be some best method or best gene combinations. Each round should be a new challenge

Viruses and bacteria

Some genetic capacity for the ‘carrier’

Bacteria

• More complex
• More capacity for genetics
• Easier to detect
• Easier to treat

Viruses

• Very simple
• Very little capacity
• Easy to spread
• Harder to detect
• Harder to treat

Can discover new/different base viruses/bacteria to work from

Viruses allow 2-4 gene sequences

Bacteria allow 4-8 gene sequences

Samples

"Samples" will be active virology samples scattered throughout the station in various place.

Examples of locations to obtain samples:

• Public tables
• Toilets
• Vents
• Machines
• those moisture trap things kryson wants to add
• Assistants

Samples could potentially infect crew as well, and can be obtained from crew who could potentially have inert microbes that could contain useful genetic info.

Capacity

The base carrier/virus/bacteria can only hold X numbers of pairs

Symptoms have varying pair lengths

example:

• virus of 20 pairs
• coughing 6 pairs
• sneezing 5 pairs
• fever 10 pairs

Can't fit all 3 symptoms

Blocks

Assembly of viruses is done by combining blocks

Blocks have combinations of symptoms, often undesirable combinations.

Symptoms

Symptoms are genes or combinations of genes

Symptoms have pseudorandomness between rounds

As per current virology symptoms should combine to determine factors such as resistance, infectability etc

Genes need to be discovered/isolated and their effects identified by the player

Access to an off-station database of commonly known genes such as coughing, sneezing etc.

For the symptom to activate it needs to reach it's target organ (e.g Sneezing needs to reach lungs before it can take effect.).

Of course there are symptoms that don't have a target organ/body part. In this situation the symptom will activate as soon as it can.

As per IRL genes can have errors but still work.

harmless symptoms have higher tolerance for errors before they ‘deactivate’

deadly symptoms should have low tolerance for errors and deactivate really easily from mutations.

Harmless symptoms should be usually just a single gene

Deadly symptoms should require a combination of 2-3 genes that may need to be discovered separately

Grief/meme symptoms are a midway between harmless and deadly, being (incredibly) annoying and having an effect other than fluff text (e.g. revitiligo darkening skin)

No direct overlap between viro symptoms and genetics mutations.

Harmless:

• Coughing
• Sneezing
• Runny nose
• Itchy eyes
• Tiredness

Deadly:

• Fever
• breathing/lung issues
• Brain swelling
• Bleeding
• Organ failure.

Grief/meme:

• Polyvitiligo
• Race mutation symptoms (like vox pox from VG)
• Hair symptoms (hair growth and balding)
• Finding genes

Living things should have some benign viruses/bacteria in them From these benign viruses/bacteria you should be able to extract gene sequences for identification

Viro has a databank of known sequences and a sequence can be compared with some likeliness factor.

I.e; sequence A1 is 90% similar to known sequence “Coughing”

The less accurate a gene is, the less powerful the symptom.

Limb/organ spread

Viruses and bacteria's should spread in a more realistic way. For example if someone injects the victim with the virus in the arm, the infection starts there.

From there it can spread to adjacent body parts (Arm->Torso), or if the body part contains organs, it has a chance to spread to the organ aswell.

Transmission stat should determine the chance to spread to other body parts and organs.

Additionally it should be possible to quickly cure someone if all infected organs/body parts are removed. (Get bit by a zombie, time to cut off your arm mate)

Start locations

• Airborne viruses start off in the lungs
• Touch viruses start off in a random body part ?
• Fluid viruses start off in tounge/eyes/ears
• Blood viruses start off in heart ?

Mutations

Whenever someone contracts a virus it mutates all gene sequences.

The idea of this is to make deadly symptoms less powerful if just released in an untargeted manner.

Traitors

Traitor virologists shouldn’t have objectives that encourage them to release deadly plagues.

But maybe a freezer full of unknown symptoms as a starter kit as an uplink purchase with some exclusive symptoms?

Monkey retrovirus

Nanites

Some interactions with nanites in the body (hostile reactions? rejection?)

Genetics

Add some interactions with genetics, such as random human mutations that increase/decrease resistance

Possibly a retrovirus to deliver a dna activator payload

Maybe a virus that copies a specific mutation along?