Johnnie,
I suppose you could 'dail back' Virus if you use an Ebola model instead of the canonical Influenza model. (I've found that using broad biological analogies helps me 'grok' Virus somewhat better.)
Currently our only 'defense' against Ebola is that is requires a very specific host. It jumps between hosts rarely and then usually doesn't survive/reproduce easily enough to jump again. In the 1980s or 90s, some poor SOB died gruesomely of Ebola aboard a commuter airliner in Africa and yet none of the other passengers developed the disease.
Virus was supposed to 'infect' ships and only through their transponder systems. You could presume that the Omnicron researchers were more successful in 'geneering' Virus to maintain and hold to those two abilities. The release at Omnicron would then infect the two fleets invovled and those fleets would then go ontt infect other ships but...
... Virus would find it hard to jump to and live in other systems.
This difficulty in jumping to other hosts is what keeps Ebola under 'control'. It is also what is currently worrying the world about the avian flu, we're closely monitoring that disease to be warned when it evolves enough to make the bird-to-human and human-to-human jumps.
I've suggested that Virus and the Deyo Transponder acted like the two strains of syphilis did in 1492. Each hemisphere had its own strain of syphilis, one that had evolved to 'live' more successfully (not kill quickly) within the host populations. When the two strains 'met' and 'bred' together, syphilis became a disease that killed within days. (In the ensuing centuries it has evolved 'back' into one that lives more successfully with its hosts.)
We can presume that the fully sentient, crazy killer Viral strain was produced when the Omnicron strain met the Deyo chips. That is what the Omnicron researchers were working towards after all. From that idea it not a big step to suggest that this killer Viral strain can only exist within the environment provided by the Deyo Transponder just as Ebola can only exist within its specific host.
Limiting Virus to being hosted by the Deyo Transponder system could reduce it to an endemic problem from the canoncial pandemic level. Virus could still evolve and would need to be watched/eradicated to (hopefully) prevent that evolution from 'releasing' it from the Deyo transponder just as we are watching/eradicating avian flu to hopefully prevent it from being released, but the Virus would now be 'dialed back' from a pandemic holocaust to an endemic cybernetic 'health' problem.
The killer Viral strain embedded in the Deyo Transponder could still release 'seeds' or 'eggs' that, if they find another Deyo Transponder or (perhaps) a somewhat similar environment, could grow into a copy of the fully sentient, crazy killer strain. However, if those eggs do not find the right host they would either 1) die or 2) merely disrupt systems up to the point where they 'kill by ommission'(1)
Thus limiting the number of systems that can actually host Virus; the Deyo Transponders and a handful of similar systems, and limiting it's propagation methods; physical and comm links but not sensor data, will limit Virus' effects.
Off the top of my pointy head:
- The vast majority of shipping including the warships of all the factions involved is doomed. As in TNE, Virus will infect and destroy all but the most technologically obsolete.
- Damage and losses to infrastructure beyond shipping will be limited to those targets Virus can damage/destroy while in control of ships and those systems Virus can partially infect with its less effective 'seeds' or 'eggs'.
- We'll have space swept clean of ships while the worlds below are only partially damaged at the same time and by the same mechanism.
The immediate result of all this is that the various wars are now over and that interstellar travel is now rare to the point vanishing until new ships that do not provide a host system for Virus are built. One major consequence of this is that no multi-system polities will exist.
The result in the long run is that defenses against recurring Viral outbreaks resemble our current defenses against influenza pandemics. Infected hosts will be detected, isolated, and destroyed much the same way we now detect, isolate, and destroy domestic fowls to defend against avian flu. Systems at greater pontential risk for Viral infection will monitored and immunized in much the same way we know monitor and immunize at risk populations for influenza. Deadly outbreaks of Virus will occur in regions with weak or nonexistent "cybernetic health" defenses against Virus just as there are deadly outbreaks of measles, cholera, and flu in regions with weak or nonexistent health systems.
After this shipping 'holocaust', Chartered Space will be made up of tens of thousands of individual worlds. When enough new, Viral proof ships are built thousands of pocket empires will begin forming with all the shenanigans that involves. Think of it as "Interesting Times" on steroids.
Hope all this nonsense helps.
Have fun,
Bill
1 - I've suggested several times that, because Virus is 'situationally sentient', that it kills mainly by ommission. A Viral infection grows within a cybernetic system talking over more and more memory and more and more processing power as it attmepts to achieve sentience. Eventually, this hijacking shuts donw the other functions being handled by the infected processor. If that processor is in a toaster, you get bunrt toast. If that processor is in your air/raft, you better have a parachute. In neither case however did Virus consciously choose to burn you toast or turn off the air/raft's CG nodes.
