Virus mechanics are fully functional, it's empty all the time because the OG Riviera from 2015 didn't have Virologists so Gecko subsequently removed random illness outbreak events due to this. I'll make a PR to re-add Virologists and Virus events (and also improve a few viro sprites) in late Jan so please keep it.
I disagree that Box has a lot of such places, most of the places you describe will obviously feel empty when no one's manning the jobs that occupy them. It's not a map issue, it's a pop issue.
Ehhhhh, there is already a button to vent the chamber and local plasmafires generally don't spread very far due to firelocks. Doesn't really make sense to irreversibly space a whole CHUNK of the station over a medium-sized fire. It would make sense though if the engine failure had station-wide consequences like with SM delaminating or Singulo/Tesla escaping.
That reminds me, someone should totally port Tesla engine. Watching it zap everyone and blow up the station at random is almost as KINO as watching scrungulo devour entire departments.
Also maybe add a Turbine from old /tg/ as an alternative to TEG that doesn't have an arbitrary power cap.
Last time I tried virologist the viruses didn't do anything. And it being a pop issue is the entire point, solvable by scaling down the map until there's no longer a pop issue. Something like Packed station would be slightly too small, but not by much, especially not on nukeops.
Engine ejection made more than perfect sense back in the Finite Element Analysis atmos days before plasma got nerfed; burning plasma could easily reach
INF temperatures and there wasn't a force in the world that could extinguish it. A bomb, perhaps, or making the entire engine block fuck off somewhere else and make it someone else's problem. I'd like to re-implement infinite plasma one day, as an extension of Bay's XGM and a result of some overcomplex atmos chemistry, but that'll be a lot of work. It'll make sense once supermatter/fusion works, and perhaps even the singularity/tesla if you manage to catch it.
Which brings me onto another potential port: hot-swappable station rooms. It isn't much work to implement a cycling roster of potential engines, it doesn't even impact startup times (which are apparently
too fast right now, not that it should be an excuse) based on templates that are placed on server start. Doesn't have to be random, either; it could be another vote. Do you feel like plasma today? How about singularity? Or N/A, build your own? Or it could be a part of persistence, with good profitable crews getting better engines while retards get sticks and twine. It'd also be applicable to other parts of the station. Semi-randomized maintenance could be fun, depending on the station. The only real disadvantage is that it makes mapping slightly more painful, but grouping all map files (including area definitions) together alleviates most of that.
They are like mice but can also attack, that's what makes them so devilish. Their damage should be lowered even further down to like 0-2 points and also maybe lower their health/add a longer cooldown to their attacks.
They're fine as is. 0-2 points would mean they basically cannot kill anything but non-healing mobs, as the average human would out-regenerate them. And you can already kill them by stomping on them twice. Not being able to kill squiggers is a genuine skill issue, and it's doubly funny making the crew wreck the station trying to intercept a wild squigga.
I'd allow them to pull a limited amount of items. Like other squirrels/small critters. Someone has to bury the fallen.
