Crate viruses are IMMENSELY overpowered compared to isolated viruses and I need YOUR ideas for how to fix this.
Created by: despotate
Skip to the bolded text at the bottom to get the rundown if you don't want to read everything.
I was planning on opening a PR to decrease the amount of virus food that the virus food dispenser contains but I realized after some speculation that it would only result in making virus crates even MORE unbalanced compared to homegrown viruses. Let me explain by first stating the facts.
- Crate viruses start with 5-50 growth (Mapping (Meta)).
- Crate viruses ALWAYS have random symptoms and antigens, so there's no point growing them past 60 (analysis + splicing) or 50 (analysis, then pop them back in for 10 more if you want to splice) growth. You never need to radiate them since they'll be just as random regardless.
- Apart from getting the crates, virus crate viruses are only time limited by how fast you can click a dish and stuff it into the incubator.
Meanwhile
- Isolated viruses start with 0 growth and need to be taken to 100 (actually 120) since you have to wait for the isolator as well as try to maximize new symptoms per unit of time by cooking them longer.
- Isolated viruses usually get 1-2 major mutations per 100 growth. Each major mutation results in a "new" symptom, however, there's is an increasing chance with each new mutation that you overwrite a previous mutation. You also have a lower chance of getting a "good symptom" because isolated viruses can mutate towards badness=2 effects while crate viruses don't. Per new symptom, crate viruses have a 5% chance of changing antigens.
- Isolated viruses are time limited by how fast it takes the isolator to spit one out (roughly 120 growth worth of time), and makes you waste your time constantly having to make the isolator keep running.
So this means that, on average
- Isolated viruses spend 5x more time being cooked, wasting 5x the virus food, to get 1/2 the new symptoms and 1/10th the chance of new antigens, while making the player have to deal with 30% more machinery, constantly click the isolate and radiate button, and leave a mess in the incubator and isolator that will JUST fuck your shit up if a virus is on the loose and you need to flush the incubator and clear the isolator and deal with the vials that are left behind.
It literally takes FIFTY FUCKING TIMES LONGER to get all the antigens with isolated viruses instead of crate viruses. This makes it ALWAYS worth it to spend up to half an hour grabbing virus crates and begging for access to unlock them instead of having to deal with isolated viruses.
We need a rebalance. Share ideas here.