Pathology Research (old)
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Pathology Research is a branch of medical science where the study, curing, manipulation and perhaps manufacturing of pathogens happens. In this area you will find a large set of unique tools that allow you to conduct hellish experiments on small organism with questionable living status.
The base concepts of Pathology
A pathogen is a structure with multiple different types of components on one body. Unlike in the old pathology system, where a disease is well-defined and has a specific way it plays out, a pathogen is a composition of different, smaller effects, creating a possibility for infinite different diseases.
Microbody
The microscopic body is the base, bare-bones structural element of a pathogen. Each pathogen is a microbody of sorts, and this microbody determines the initial value of its attributes and the level of activity the pathogen manifests on each stage of infection. The microbody also determines the type of anti-agent that should be used for cure synthesis. Infections from all bodies can be cured, but vaccines, which prevent infections, can only be manufactured for some of them. Different microbodies can be cultivated under different circumstances. Cultivation requires a growth medium and nutrition specific to that body.
| Microbody | Vaccine | Anti-agent | Growth medium | Nutrition | Initial stages | Activity |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Virus | Yes | Antiviral Agent | Egg | Iron, Nitrogen, Sodium, Sugar, Water | 5 | Low to high |
| Bacterium | No | Spaceacillin | Bacterial Medium | Iron, Nitrogen, Sodium, Sugar, Water | 3 | Low to high |
| Fungus | No | Biocide | Fungal Medium | Iron, Nitrogen, Sodium, Sugar, Water | 4 | Near constant |
| Parasite | No | Biocide | Parasitic Medium | Iron, Nitrogen, Sodium, Sugar, Water | 5 | High to low |
| Great Mutatis cell | No | Mutation Inhibitor | Stable Mutagen | Stable Mutagen | 5 | Constant |
Suppressant
All pathogens have an inherent weakness, which needs to be discovered in order to create cures. This weakness is manifested when coming into contact with an appropriate suppression agent. A suppression agent for a pathogen is one of a group of reagents exhibiting a specific trait - such as hot reagents (ClF3 or phlogiston), cold reagents (cryostylane) or brute medicine (synthflesh, omnizine). In order to test this, a pathogen sample must be introduced to the reagent while being observed under a microscope. Simply add a few units of the pathogen reagent to a petri dish, then place the petri dish on the microscope. Then, use a dropper on the microscope to introduce a small amount of the reagent to the culture, finally, view the petri dish through the microscope in both a zoomed in and zoomed out state. A message about a reagent weakening or negatively affecting the pathogen culture is a good indication of that reagent acting as a suppressant.
The suppressant is not only a reagent that is used for cure synthesis, but also a reagent that will slow down the worsening of an infected individual's symptoms. Thus if you require time to cure everyone that's been infected, injecting them with a high amount of the appropriate suppressing agent is likely to keep them alive longer. Unless, of course, the suppressing agent is something that is inherently harmful. The amount of suppressant reagent required to keep the patient relatively stable is determined by the suppression threshold of the pathogen.
The suppressant inherently determines the color of the pathogen. Be careful, though, as multiple different suppressants might have the same color!
Each suppressant has a DNA signature consisting of three hexadecimal digits (such as F0A). The DNA signature is usually different than that of any symptom, and thus is rarely useful in symptom splicing.
Symptom
A symptom of a pathogen is a trait exerted when infecting a human. Symptoms can be something fairly innocent, such as constant moaning or reciting Shakespeare, or something deadly, such as spontaneous combustion or gibbing. A pathogen may have any number of symptoms, though initial unmutated strains usually have 1 to 5 different symptoms on them.
Symptoms may also be positive instead of negative - such as wound mending, or detoxicating. The aim for a non-traitor pathologist while not busy curing infected individuals should be to create a beneficial pathogen.
Pathogens have a varying amount of stages, the stage being a values that determines the potency of symptoms. Thus a pathogen with 3 stages and a gibbing symptom will never gib infected individuals, as a gibbing event may only occur in stage 5. Mind the amount of stages a pathogen has - it is a value that can be determined from a glance at the private DNA of the pathogen.
There are 5 tiers of symptoms present in the game. Higher tier symptoms are increasingly rare, however, they can be synthesized artificially through splicing. More on this subject below.
The secondary function of symptoms is transmission of the pathogen between individuals. A pathogen that has no symptom creating a forced ejection of bodily fluids (such as coughing, sneezing or sweating) is unlikely to be contageous. A station-wide contagion can only happen if a pathogen has one or more of these symptoms.
Mutation
Initially, each pathogen is assigned a number of properties, however, this is subject to change over time. Pathogens mutate and adapt according to their attributes. There are several things which may induce a mutation on a pathogen, such as:
- Infection. When an individual becomes infected with a pathogen, there is a probability, depending on the mutativeness of the pathogen, that the newly infected individual will be infected by a mutated version of the pathogen.
- Radiation. A pathogen irradiated in the pathogen manipulator has a chance to mutate, and pathogens residing in irradiated individuals may also mutate over time.
- Mutagenic symptoms. Certain symptoms might cause their base pathogen to mutate.
A strain of pathogen is assigned a base name with the pattern letter number (1-99) letter. This is the base name of the pathogen, which will be used to identify it. Any pathogen with the same base name can be cured with a cure created using any other pathogen with the same base name. A pathogen strain with the same base name will always share the same microbody, but may have a different suppressant due to splicing. The specific mutation of a pathogen is identified by the last number, appended after the base name. For example, A1B2 and A1B3 have the same base name (A1B) and thus are considered the same pathogen, but may have different symptoms or attributes due to the different mutation number (2 and 3 respectively).
The frequency and nature of the mutations occurring are affected by a number of pathogen attributes.
TODO: A table listing possible mutations.
Attributes
Attributes are numeric values of the pathogen. There are two groups of attributes: primary attributes, which can be affected by the pathogen manipulator via the manipulate option, and secondary attributes, which can only be modified through mutation.
The primary attributes specific to a pathogen:
- Advance speed determines how quickly a pathogen advances to its final stage. A very high advance speed is likely to cause a pathogen to hit stage 5 in a matter of minutes, while a negative advance speed might cause an infection to cure itself.
- Maliciousness determines the nature of mutations occurring on a pathogen. A high maliciousness value will enable very bad things to happen when a pathogen mutates (such as gaining multiple additional bad symptoms), while a negative maliciousness value will promote the occurrence of benevolent mutations (such as losing a bad symptom).
- Mutativeness is initially determined by the microbody of the pathogen. Virii and great mutatis cells are very mutative, while fungi are unlikely to mutate over time. Mutativeness translates to a flat chance of mutations occurring on a pathogen on infection. A negative mutativeness will also induce mutations, albeit devolutionary ones.
- Mutation speed determines how many mutations will occur if a mutation happens. Mutation speed is a logarithmic scale, thus you need increasingly higher values of mutation speed for that one extra mutation to happen. For example, at a mutation speed of 10, chances are that if the pathogen mutates, two different types of mutations will happen to the pathogen.
- Suppression threshold is a value which is primarily used in cure synthesis. The threshold determines the minimum amount of reagents required to suppress a pathogen while infecting an individual, and also determines the minimum amount of suppressant reagent and anti-agent required in the Synth-O-Matic for synthesizing a working cure or vaccine.
The secondary attributes specific to a pathogen:
- Stages is the maximum severity of this pathogen. The amount of stages on a pathogen will always be between 3 and 5. The mutation causing the stages to decrease is a devolution, and will not occur on positive value pathogens. The amount of stages is initially determined by the microbody.
- Generation determines the priority of a pathogen. An individual may only be affected by a single mutation of a pathogen strain at a time (and thus cannot be infected with both A1B2 and A1B3 simultaneously). A higher generation number pathogen will always assimilate a lower generation pathogen, thus if someone infected with A1B2 is introduced to A1B3, and A1B3 has a greater generation number, the individual will instead be infected with A1B3 from there on, continuing from the same infection stage. Mutations might cause this number to increase, but never to decrease. A gene-modified pathogen will always be generation 1 when removed from the Pathogen Manipulator.
- Symptomaticity is a flat boolean, which determines if symptoms are exerted on an individual. A mutation might cause a symptomatic pathogen to become asymptomatic and vice versa. Note that an asymptomatic pathogen is not completely inert - contageous symptoms, such as coughing, will still be active on asymptomatic infections, but purely non-contageous symptoms, such as spontaneous combustion, will not occur.
The tools at your disposal
WIP