what the hell should we do with miasma?

[warc]

i hate it.
it sucks ass and it is bad.
it should not be filling you to the brim all the fuckin time.

I have lots of ideas but all of them half baked.

What if rotting just made an overlay that tells you "it is stibky here" ?
what if rotting consumed a little oxygen and produced a bit of fart?
what if rotting didn't have any outward environmental signs, like the good old days where you could just stuff a body in a locker ?
what if rotting bodies produced a cleanable ichor that leaks from closets and crates *but doesnt fill you with purple sauce* ?
what if it made maggots on the tile with the body?
anything but miasma.

[ReginaldHJ]

you're right, you're absolutely right. miasma is one of those things that every time we encounter it in testing i just get so mad thinking about it.

i think the stinky bioeffect kinda thing where everyone gets messages that it smells like a skunk's leftovers took a shit in here should be applied to a dead body. start it out when it has been dead long enough to decompose to stage 1. increase the radius and intensity (including barfing) as the body rots more. until it's just bones, then reduce the radius to like 1.
replacing oxygen with fart is hilarious and i agree with it just as a tiny funny thing to do. even in death, we fart.

otherwise, make it invisible. it should be easy to hide a body for a while. a big visible sea of purple stink surrounding a locker is just a big neon sign that says BODY INSIDE. there's too much of a reliance on visual- and also less reason to look at the log on the right. make it a detect by smell and walking by thing.

as for cleanable ichor, every cycle of decomposition, just drop a very particular kind of gib decal there.
that makes for a good forensics. "oh, there was a body here. i know corpse juice when i see it."
if there's a way to have an overlay on, say, a locker or something. something you gotta hose out. maybe you also just spawn the goop all over the floor when you open it with a splash, like the locker was holding it in and you just did something fuckin' gross and the floor's a mess because of you. you weirdo.

don't think the maggots work great. just doesn't feel right (and also it'd definitely squick people, to me that's grindhouse horror on the "old strich" side of it)

for extra fun, what if gibs and organs decomposed and stank in a similar way??? more reason to keep the latter refrigerated and safe
makes a gibbed up bar a really grody place to be (without tox damage) and this encourages everyone to want the janitor to do a good job.

[eagletanker]

Miasma is annoying cause it just gives you toxin damage for no reason other than being miasma and your not wearing a gas mask with a o2 supply. I agree with bob entirely that it should be more of a smell thing that lingers in a area rather than purple goop that kills you once you smell it too much

[ReginaldHJ]

plus like, in what kind of hell does "a stinking rotting corpse" result in "oopy doopy purple goopy"

that's like low effort grossout-but-no-blood 90s saturday morning cartoon shit. that's "half-life in germany"

PURPLE, of all the colors,,,

[Camryn]

[s]Miasma should eventually turn into a big fuzzy blob made of individual smorgs.[/s]

Does the stinky bioeffect work through containers?

[warc]

• - dunno but
  - maybe
  - also if we do use the fart route that takes care of the smell factor *and* potentially does also provide a little tox damage but not in a way that lingers when you leave the space, and wont fill your bloodstream