ZombieDupe

Is the germ system not obvious as to how to handle it? What is the real issue in tweaking it further exactly? Telling what happened while it was being patched makes no difference here, just some methods that didn't work for one reason or another. Maybe the system was too simple? Here's how I would suggest it be done: 1) Rebalance the biomes generated, do not make Marsh biome be the one to be generated on Terra. It is the very first starting planetoid, the second or third planetoid you get to in SO could have that, as well as some mid-tier or hard difficulty starting ones. What Terra could have instead could be Swampy biome for example, and if it's reed fiber or gold amalgam you're worried about not getting, there are ways to balance that as well, like having thimble reeds available in sandstone biome for example. That balance for the easiest start actually makes sense. Here you go, opt-in difficulty done pretty well! 2) Include aforementioned buildings to deal with germs (UV cleaner, Liquid Germ Scrubber, or something of the like). Decontamination showers could remove germs from both duplicants and whatever they're carrying, makes cleaning up Marsh biomes a bit easier. Some other buildings that clean germs, like the Ore Scrubber could be changed to be a conveyor rail type building for cleaning germs automatically, or even still manually except they require rails, so instead of working like wash stations with direction, they would work a bit more like the cooling fan does, for example. 3) Make germs both more abundant and less so. There can be variation in the slime biome, how much germs could stay could depend on the mass of the tile for example. So no 1 million germs on every slime tile unless the mass allows it, and also no stacking of germs in the millions instantly when 2 pieces of debri combine while having a million germs on each. Marsh biome could have PO2 pockets all full of slimelung. The Swampy biome could also have some food poisoning germs, less so than the Marsh biome's slimelung amount, but still quite a few. Would be the better biome to present the player with. 5) Make more instances of "physical" contact between duplicants apply germs to them and buildings they interact with if they do have germs on them, maybe even make digging up germified tiles apply germs on them. 5) Make immunity go down over time if a duplicant has more than a certain number of germs on them. I'm not 100% on how the system works right now, but it's pretty close to this already from what I can recall. Just make the symptoms something that become worse if your duplicants get more and more germs. They could stay at the first level of symptoms forever in that case if they get a steady supply of 20,000 germs to linger in their bodies for a long period of time. It could scale as 10,00 least symptoms, 100,000 mid-level symptoms and 1,000,000+ germs worst. Duplicant's immune system could handle first 10,000 germs or so without it going down, by default. The speed at which the immune system would then fall depend on how many germs have been ingested and when the immune system has been completely defeated, the duplicant will die. Having some notifications for when duplicants have gotten ill or not far from death should help players pay attention to it when it's applicable. Sure, it doesn't make sense for a duplicant to die in 2, or even 10 cycles if they have germs, but you can balance it so that the fall is gradual and have notifications when that happens. It doesn't seem to me that it has ever worked like this for one reason or another though, am I clueless on something or I somehow found THE solution that for some reason everyone, including the devs, it has not occurred to? Is this exact train of thought not obvious enough when I say "buff germs"? Does this not make more sense than what we have now? It kind of makes the whole system pointless if it's not made powerful. Remember that radiation works pretty well, except maybe your duplicants can't die from it. We already have duplicants dying from suffocation THE MOMENT their oxygen bar gets to 0%, same for hunger and calories and scalding or taking damage can very quickly turn to your duplicant dying, even if they get incapacitated first for a few minutes. This can be done right, there are other mechanics that work well, and there is no way germ system can't work as a danger. Duplicants should be able to die from slimelung in my opinion, while food poisoning could make them completely useless and basically bed-ridden, but that's the worst case scenario, something that even new players would rarely ever be able to come to if they pay just a little bit attention, if you do the system right.

The Diseases Restored mod shows it can be done. Few reasons I can think of it having seemed too harsh are: 1) There were no multiple planetoid starts and Marsh biome was too close to the starting biome and was integral for reed fibre. Now that we have multiple planetoid starts to help with difficulty and challenges, Terra can be made the most bare bones and simple to deal with. Currently, it is not, you would have an easier time dealing with the Swampy asteroid start than this if you put aside the early game mud issues that could cause more floods and lots of polluted oxygen being everywhere causing a minor inconvenience. 2) There were no proper buildings to help with killing off germs from water. Using reservoirs for decontamination makes no sense and is much more finnicky than potentially alternative solutions, if implemented. Now we also have sanishells. Since they are a morph, they should not be expected for new players to be relied upon, but mid to hard difficulty planetoid start types would be perfectly fine as having them the lifeline for cleaning germy liquids. I even mentioned the implementation of a building like this (Liquid Germ Scrubber) in the same post you quoted! The aforementioned Diseases Restored mod also includes a UV cleaner, so having both of these in some form should be more than enough. If they clean only a portion of germs in one cycle-through of the building, having the germ sensor would still be necessary, or putting multiple of the buildings in place, requiring more power at a given time, which is exactly how the UV cleaner works in the mod. Or just simply requiring plastic/glass for either of these building types. EDIT: on an unrelated note to this post, but related to the previous one I made, high pressure pipes and pumps would also be a great game changer, I'm surprised that's still not been looked into at all.

No mention of looking over the germ system again (diseases are way too weak right now), proper airlock door, maybe pass-through visco gel tiles, liquid germ cleaning building of any kind, no scafolding either? You could squeeze those in, but I guess that just seals the deal on the idea you are not interested in covering any of that in the near future at all. Mentioned this a while ago and someone on the team may have liked this idea of having material colored buildings, and while it would take a lot of time, would still be a game-changer. Rooms are cool however, I would also recommend a Workshop room and an improved version, Factory for maybe some extra interior decor or morale bonus working there as such industrial areas are frequently visited by duplicants but because of heavy machinery and automation requirements, end up leaving no space for decor. Also, a Corridor room just for ladders and firepoles or even suit/mask docks as requirement to give duplicants a bit more speed as they walk through them? That... explains some things, and I'm a little worried. DST has, even if some-what hidden, loot-box system for skins available and it's very much terrible.

It's an overlooked action combination it seems. Maybe an earthquake in its place would make more sense?

Does it not show you the placement thing so you can decide where to build it like most other structures? Steps to reproduce and maybe some screenshots/video footage would help.

It's still annoying. There are actions the player can do with him still giving you stuff, so it has to be some sort of overlook, otherwise he is ultimately useless during turf digging and while picking up items yourself as well.

No refuelling the Lazy Forager with nightmare fuel? I am disappointed. Being able to do so wouldn't make the Polly Roger's hat useless btw, it would just make the hat an addition to collecting items off the ground faster. That and for a longer reach of items unreachable to you or the forager.

These are excellent changes. Not only do you get more opportunity to swamp modules around without the whole system busting on you when you do, but when the downside of wetness damage does kick in, it doesn't leave your buff of charge non-existent. Taking wetness damage while still having some modules in works well in tandem. I still think the module system sucks overall, and I would love to see some more of the old charge system brought back. I would like to point out points I made in this post for it.

All this and no respawn mechanics for the dens themselves? The entire list of this content is permanently deleted from a world if (or rather when) something destroys the stumps (a clever griefer/agitated newbie with a hammer or a nearby bearger/deerclops usually the case when this happens). Or just make the dens themselves indestructible like the walrus camps for example. It's not that hard to do. EDIT: Forgot to mention the more obvious way these get destroyed, which is Klaus as you can't entirely control its sack spawn location the very first few times. And if you DO decide to implement some way to maybe even just rebuild the dens ourselves please do not make it require some extremely difficult resource or cat tails themselves. No dens means no cat tails. I would just have them respawn/be indestructible and leave it at that, no hassle for anyone.

I would have to agree with the speed modifier removal. There are already items that will increase your character's speed boost and if coffee were to be introduced into DST version (it should, but maybe not increase speed boost that dramatically, instead we could do with part of its effect also help work animations and actions become quicker) or features of the sort we would have those as options and WX-78 who is a character much more made to be oriented around direct movement speed. Was going to comment how the extra mighty stat is a saturation of character instead of keeping it as simple as possible, but then the workout mechanics don't make sense. One way you could have done it is to have workout take hunger but then for a short period of time slow or simply halt hunger drain, giving you reason to take use of the workout mechanic to keep mighty form and still keeping the forms tied to hunger. Achieving desired results with simplicity always beats layers upon layers of useless mechanics, and they become useless from the very fact of having a simpler way to do things that would have little to no impact either way. What I'm surprised was not changed (butyou still can) is Wolfgang's maximum sanity. It should be capped to 100 or so and many would agree likely regardless of any sanity drain modifiers. Strange change for health, I don't know why you wouldn't simply cap the health the same way you have supposedly done with damage modifiers. Just do wimpy x1 damage and 100 health, normal x2 damage and 200 health, and mighty x3 damage and 300 health. Simple, effective, easy to recognize and makes Wolfgang all the more distinct for his powerful traits, if he had a good drawback... I don't know how impactful the sanity drain changes are but I don't think that's going to be much of a downside for many players who pick wolfgang for combat generally speaking. It's just easier way to farm nightmare fuel as him. You want the player to take something that will stick as a decent cost for the perks they are provided with. Maybe when low on sanity/insane Wolfgang would get stunned when something declares an attack close to him even if he won't take damage as a result? Even proximity of half a tile from the attack range would make for something interesting as low sanity/insanity would become deadly for players who know what they are doing for once and would leave the magic tackling part of the game to be handled by characters like Wanda or Maxwell. Wolfgang then becomes a character with powerful might, but if you really want to benefit from his perks at their peak with minimal risk, you will need help from players using other characters to do it. Or always keep as sane as possible, make players who know what they're doing still dread insanity for once like shadow splumonkey hordes with bad timing.

Why would you have bone shards in the deconstruction loot table for bone helmet and armor and not fossils? That just doesn't make sense. If you have planned some other way to making them renewable (might be wrong, but I really doubt that), why couldn't this just be another simple and fair avenue to get it? What could have happened is in the case of accidentally having a bone armor or helmet deconstructed, you would think "oh that was a mistake, but at least I got more fossil fragments", but right now the materials you get from these very rare and really powerful items on deconstruction so worthless, if you do happen to deconstruct them by accident or someone else does it for you, now you'll feel like an idiot or be furious at the person who did it with no compromise. How could you possibly think that was a good idea? Did the person who add the loot table put in the wrong item or just doesn't understand the game well enough themselves to make an informed decision?

Some better change suggestions for Pick/Axe in my opinion * increase durability to a solid 1000 * make efficiency same as Glass Axe (x2.5 times) * add same high durability for Thulecite Club as well, otherwise Dark Sword > Thulecite Club unless you don't have a cane Some additions relating to the bee queen crown deconstruction * make Bee Queen Crown repairable with bees wax or honey comb (+50% durability per for example) * make it possible to deconstruct the Bone Helmet for fossil fragments and repair Bone helmet with fossil fragments too (an alternative renewable way to get more fossils would be good as well, even just them having a small chance to fall from earthquakes in ruins) * hammer hound's teeth for bone shards

Evacuate from base. Engage all combat gear. And get Wolfgang some meatballs.

For now I suggest you keep the worlds you started on if you want to continue. The new geyser changes this time around aren't significant enough to warrant a fresh start. I checked what's new and it was difficult to see the difference that was there.