QOL3 - New desease system

[Lilalaunekuh]

3 hours ago, goboking said:

Major Gripes

• I hate the binary nature of the new system.  With the old system our dupes were either healthy, sick, or getting sick.  When a dupe was exposed we had a choice between mitigating further exposure until their immune system overcame the germs they were carrying or allowing them to continue knowing that further exposure meant they'd eventually spend time on a med-cot.  This new system is all or nothing; there are fewer choices to make when dupes are either sick or they're not.

...

Minor Gripes

• I find instant-cures less immersive.  Under the old system a sick dupe was going to be bedridden for a few cycles.  In the new system they see a doctor or pop a pill and they're instantly cured.  Granted, with how frequently sicknesses occur in the new system, sick dupes spending days in quarantine would be too severe a penalty, and would probably prove catastrophic to many a colony.
• I feel that the potency of diseases have been too greatly diminished.  I'm continuing a new colony and thus haven't experienced the two new diseases, but food poisoning and slime lung - two things I used to take great measures to prevent - are no longer the debilitating.  I feel like ignoring their symptoms and letting the disease run its course is now a viable, possibly even optimal strategy.

Just want to add my 2 cent here, but @gobokingalready mentioned most of my points:

• The new system feels more "alive" but it give the players less interesting decisions to make.
• Instant cures make the med bay feel a bit useless. (Whats the point of a mess table and toilet when there are instant cures ?)
• If waitng out a disease seems better than curing it (or like a good trade-off) there is something wrong with the system.
• That stockpiling (instant) cures is "superior" to handing out daily boosters feels wrong. (Just considering the time needed to get and eat the daily booster added over all duplicants in comparison to the time the sick duplicant and doctor "waste" makes them feel out of place. Not even talking about manufacturing time and power consumption...)

 

=> Was posted many times, but considering the importance:  Please add some information for opaqueness to the ingame wiki

 

[camelot]

I found the "Dupes went to bed, and when they woke up, they might got sick" mechanics very uninteresting. Without direct mention in tutorial, how on earth could I found out the disease would working this way? After one hundred observation cases about infection, maybe. But it's also uninteresting to read it clearly in tutorial message

Please find another way to decide when dupes got sick.

[Giltirn]

7 hours ago, camelot said:

Please find another way to decide when dupes got sick.

IMO they should just tweak the old system. Make the immune system fall more quickly on repeated exposure perhaps. Something that allows for people to control exposure like before if they want to go through the hassle, but at the same time make it more worthwhile to manufacture cures and boosters, which would free you from the micromanagement. In that sense it would be the same as morale/stress - we can assign a dupe to a job above the morale provided by your base facilities at the cost of having to manage their stress with decor and massage tables. In the same way we  should be able to allow dupes to get exposed to germs without boosters or cures at the cost of having to manage their immune system.

[KieraGreywolf]

3 hours ago, Giltirn said:

IMO they should just tweak the old system. Make the immune system fall more quickly on repeated exposure perhaps. Something that allows for people to control exposure like before if they want to go through the hassle, but at the same time make it more worthwhile to manufacture cures and boosters, which would free you from the micromanagement. In that sense it would be the same as morale/stress - we can assign a dupe to a job above the morale provided by your base facilities at the cost of having to manage their stress with decor and massage tables. In the same way we  should be able to allow dupes to get exposed to germs without boosters or cures at the cost of having to manage their immune system.

Agreed. Now that I have what I need to make medicines and figured out the new quarantine mechanic, the new system feels less interactive to me. Before with the immune system I had to keep an eye on who I was sending out and make adjustments to their tasks or block off their access to doors and find them something else to do in the meanwhile. Doing so would in turn effect how I handled whatever required me to send folks through the slime biome. The choice of whether or not to quarantine them immediately or risk working them closer to their death timer felt like a more impactful choice. With the new system all I do is just mass make medicine and then ignore illness all together. I no longer care if they get ill because besides resources I can easily create en masse and reproduce, there's no punishment.

Before with slimelung it would completely knock my dupes out of commission for several cycles, giving me a reason to try to keep them from getting sick, or risk my colony grinding to a halt (or even dying off) if too many dupes got ill. Currently, there's no incentive to prevent them from getting ill. They get the disease, run to the medbay, and are immediately cured and back to what they're doing. And because it's all items you can get with ease and create yourself, there's no cost. Zero punishment or incentive to be careful. Even if you don't bother to cure them, the impact is minimal. There's no risk of death. So, as some have said above, why even bother with the cure if it's faster or less resource intensive to simply ignore it in some cases?

And how they get sick is fairly up in the air. They just tweaked it, so perhaps it'll run differently now, I haven't tried it yet. As many have said, there's very little feedback. Sure, you get a 'exposed to slimelung' note on their details, but it's fairly up in the air as to whether or not they're going to get ill until the morning and SURPRISE! here's who got sick in a dice roll. Add the fact that even the slightest encounter can get someone sick? Sometimes it's an extreme struggle to figure out where the heck they're even being exposed. Because the concentration of the germ can be so tiny, sometimes even looking at the germ overlay screen, a tile with a minute amount of slimelung is nearly invisible due to it's opacity being based on concentration.

Feels a touch counter intuitive. In reality, we actually expose ourselves to minute concentrations of illnesses (aka vaccinations) and these minute amounts give our bodies the info they need to form antibodies to fight a greater exposure. In ONI that same tiny amount is an immediate full blown illness. Really feels like there should be a minimum concentration requirement to be 'exposed' unless they have the bio-hazardous trait. Otherwise they feel as though they all have zero immune system at all. Their bodies should naturally be able to handle such teeny tiny concentrations.

[Malsqueek]

I also don't like many aspects of the new disease system. There's some gold in here, but they way that dupes actually become sick is terrible in my opinion. Despite being fairly careful with exposure, creative with application of chlorine, and liberal with creation of medicine, I've been running around 6 of 14 dupes sick with slimelung constantly for about 80 cycles. 

I like that there are more medicines, as that makes building the apothecary more than a "nice to have". I like that there is a medical specialist now, again as it adds another "job" to have in the base. I like that slimelung and food poisoning actually give a suite of performance-reducing modifiers.

That said, I would rather see what happens when dupes get sick handled far more like the "old way":

• Low-grade illness should be a choice between working full time at a reduced rate or spending downtime/resources to dramatically reduce impacted time (examples below)
  • Medicine cures should reduce time spent sick by X amount (60% of remaining time, for example), rather than being an instant cure
  • Convalescing in a bed should expedite time remaining on illness by X amount (120% rate of recovery, for example), with periodic assistance from a medical dupe
  • Convalescing in a pod should expedite time remaining on an illness by X+some amount(130% rate of recovery) , with no assistance from a medical dupe
• High grade illness should be a choice between expending resources and 
• My preference would be to replace the sick bay with a pharmacy building where you could manage preventative medicines similar to how other automation is handled
  • Healthy dupes could interact with the immuno boosters directly when they carry an exposure
  • Triage beds could have medicines deployed to them adhoc, once a pharmacy is built
• I'd rather see a system that tracks individually again rather than the current "in or out" group system, as that encourages us to pay better individual attention to what we are exposing our dupes to

 

[Doddler]

One of the things I don't think are balanced at all at the moment with the recent changes are the mitigation stuff. Vitamin chews, Immuno Booster, and Allergy Medication are expensive and not very useful. Well Allergy Medication is in it's own category because you can't just cure allergies, but a bristle blossom seed per cycle per dupe is telling me I just don't want any allergic dupes in my base.

For Slimelung, vitamin chews will cut slimelung chance from 12% to 8%, and immuno boosters will drop it to 5%, which is an ok decrease... but not compared to just using a cure. It will take on average around 8 cycles for a standard dupe (with no booster) to catch slimelung if they're exposed every cycle. A medicine pack is 1 balm lily + 1kg phosphorite, relatively cheap. Using Immuno Boosters for that entire time is 4kg pincha peppernut (1kg per 2 cycles)... and you also can't easily target boosters like you can just use a medpack on only duplicants that get sick, you'd have to give them to every duplicant that could get exposed to really be effective. For Zombie Spores, which is actually a scary disease you'd actually want to mitigate, full immuno boosters will decrease your chance from 75% to 50%, at which point I wonder if it's worth the effort. Zombie Spore cures are expensive, but the boosters are almost pointless at that rate.

Honestly the boosters cost isn't that bad, but they are too expensive to aim to give them to everyone, and they aren't good enough to bother micromanaging their usage. At very least, they don't last long enough. Allergy Medication is the worst, 1 cycle of relief for a blossom berry seed, I dunno how you can reliably keep even one dupe on them for very long.

[dearmad]

19 minutes ago, Doddler said:

One of the things I don't think are balanced at all at the moment with the recent changes are the mitigation stuff. Vitamin chews, Immuno Booster, and Allergy Medication are expensive and not very useful. Well Allergy Medication is in it's own category because you can't just cure allergies, but a bristle blossom seed per cycle per dupe is telling me I just don't want any allergic dupes in my base.

<snip>

Honestly the boosters cost isn't that bad, but they are too expensive to aim to give them to everyone, and they aren't good enough to bother micromanaging their usage. At very least, they don't last long enough. Allergy Medication is the worst, 1 cycle of relief for a blossom berry seed, I dunno how you can reliably keep even one dupe on them for very long.

Plus the labor involved to make the boosts... it's a lot of time...

[Lilalaunekuh]

The biggest problem is the current ranking of the 3 ways of dealing with diseases: (Best to worst)

 

Current:

1. Waiting out a disease without any interaction.

2. Using an (instant) cure.

3. Using a way to boost the immune system / prevent an infection.

 

Optimal (hopefully not just in my opinion^^):

1. Using a way to boost the immune system / prevent an infection.

2. Using an (instant) cure.

3. Waiting out a disease without any interaction.

 

=> The current system makes ignoring diseases to the optimal strategy ...

 

[KittenIsAGeek]

I like the current changes to the disease system. I don't think they're perfect yet, but they're on the right track.

Here's the current flow of illnesses:

1. exposure
2. incubation 
3. infection
4. plague or cure 

OK, so, lets start with exposure.  Whether its eating contaminated food, venturing into slimelung contaminated air, or smelling a zombie plant, the dupe first has to be exposed to the contagion.  How your develop your base will substantially impact this particular step of the process.  Some bases will almost never have any illnesses.  Some will always be getting sick.  It will be a learning process for everyone that plays.

The next step is incubation.  Just because a dupe is exposed doesn't mean they'll get sick.  A dupe's immune system (biohazzard, etc) has a direct effect on this.  As does repeated exposure, or the use of boosters and vitamins.  This stage still needs a little work, IMHO, but I think they've got the right idea.  Currently you've got 3 options: Let your dupes take boosters any time theirs wear off, micro-manage boosters based on exposure, or forget the whole deal and leave the dupes to take their chances without help.  I would like to see a method of automatically administering boosters only if a dupe has been exposed.  With the previous method, a single exposure could get a dupe sick 10 cycles later.  The current method simplifies the process and makes it more immediate.  

Infection.  This is the point where the dupe becomes sick. Currently, in ONI, this is "the morning after."  As slimelung and food poisoning are encountered relatively early in your base, they're fortunately not completely debilitating.  Dupes can survive these without intervention.  Slimelung is also transmittable from one dupe to the next, which leads into the last step:

Plague, or cure?  This stage is going to change dramatically due to various base designs.  Some (like me) will find it nearly impossible to get slimelung (or other diseases) to spread among the dupe population, even without treating.  Others will end up quickly having a base full of sick dupes.  The key factor for any disease to spread is cleanliness.  If you have a clean base, disease is less likely to spread.  Limiting exposure will also reduce the odds, so having a med bay is useful since it will quarantine sick dupes (if you've got the right beds for the right illnesses). 

This all feels reasonable to me.   I think there's still some tweaking to do, but the framework is there to handle a variety of different illnesses.  

 

[f4rtux]

6 hours ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

I would like to see a method of automatically administering boosters only if a dupe has been exposed.

This would be great in order to try a prophylaxis and avoid the sickness in an automate way.

[bmilohill]

1 hour ago, f4rtux said:

I would like to see a method of automatically administering boosters only if a dupe has been exposed.

Or perhaps a booster administration checkpoint?

A building with medicine storage that you can place at the exit/entrance of the base that only allows boosted dupes to pass. Basically an early game option to disease mitigation. Contaminated water used in your meallice? Booster before you eat. Want to dig out the slime biome without a atmo suits? Booster up. 

The current in game version of this is through selecting which dupes get boosters on the consumable menu to match up with the priority menu, but I guess I've always felt this game is about building the perfect base - for everything that *can* be done by perfectly micromanaging your dupes in the menus, there *should* be an elaborate, more costly, but ultimately automated way of doing it through buildings. 

[SamLogan]

Since the release version, I feel the diseases are really too common in the early game, it's just insane and I'm a confirmed player.

During the beta, it was less crazy even with the last version.

I really think the system need to be rebalance.

[goboking]

On 4/21/2019 at 11:54 PM, KittenIsAGeek said:

With the previous method, a single exposure could get a dupe sick 10 cycles later.  The current method simplifies the process and makes it more immediate.  

If they wanted dupes to actually get sick more often they could have kept the immunity system and just doubled/tripled the rate at which germs depleted immunity.  The best aspect of immunity was a quick and easy way to identify which dupes were exposed without any additional clicks.

[UberFubarius]

I agree that there current disease is too binary and just a very annoying stumbling block for early game.
Once you get to mid game it's essentially a trivial annoyance. 
What I wish is to have disease that's as interesting as rest of the game, where you have multiple mitigation or prevention strategies.

I propose that disease, once contracted, have two attributes: Severity and Immunity.

Severity is how bad the symptom of a disease is. It increases overtime and max out at 100%. Max severity disease should be a lot more debilitating than current disease. This may not be linear (for example, severity of 0 to 30 may have no debug and only starts to ramp after 30, this models an incubation rate).

Immunity is how far along a duplicant is at fighting off the disease. It starts at 0% and increases overtime until it reaches 100%. Once at 100%, it will stay there and Severity will start to decrease. Immunity will decrease over time once Severity reach 0.

With that, you get a more interesting dynamics where disease mimic real life disease as having 3 phases. 
1. Incubation - duplicant got sick, the symptoms of their disease gets worse over time.
2. Fully ill -Severity is at maximum, Immunity is still catching up. This stage may be skipped if immunity rises fast enough. 
3. Recovery - Immunity max out, Severity starts to decrease. 
4. Cured - Severity reaches 0. Immunity for said disease start to decrease. 

With this,  you get several way to "modify" disease progression. 

1. Suppress severity growth - this would be the primary mechanism for early game through something like placebo pills. In short, make the disease less severe until dupe's natural immunity develops. 
2. Boost immunity growth - this would be for later game med pack or just bed rest in early game. This shortens disease duration. 

3. Prevention - have various medicine that provide an initial boost to immunity. In short,  kick immunity up such that it reaches 100% before high severity symptom shows up. 
4. Continuous exposure to same germ could accelerate severity growth and/or suppress immunity growth. 

This system would accomplish several things. 
1. Make disease significant - Max severity disease could be made debilitating, forcing player to do something about it unless they don't mind a dupe being out of commission. 
2. More options/clear progression - you'll always have options and flexibility in how to handle disease. You can manage severity (placebo pill, better medicine) to let dupe keep working or to reduce disease duration (bed rest, med bay to boost immunity).
3. Not trivial in late game - you no longer instant cure disease late game.  You just have better management system (pill to keep severity low, better facilty to boost immunity faster).
4. More varied disease - you can have different disease with different severity / immunity profile. For example, food poisoning could have acute (fast severity and immunity growth), more chronic (slime germ, moderate severity and slow immunity growth), or even allergy (low severity growth, no immunity stat, with pills that can actually reduce severity instead of just making it grow slower). 

[Joky]

On 4/14/2019 at 10:28 PM, chemie said:

worst part is their infection does not matter if exposed to 1 or 1 million germs so you in fact ignore the infection mechanic completely.  Seems stupid.

I would disagree , if u are thinking about after they get sick then yes , but otherwise there must be an x amount of germs in the air to get them sick (slimelung) , for food poisoning i am not so sure , my dupes are breathing in oxygen with 600 germs for 10 cycles now and none of em got food poisoning.

[chemie]

5 hours ago, Joky said:

I would disagree , if u are thinking about after they get sick then yes , but otherwise there must be an x amount of germs in the air to get them sick (slimelung) , for food poisoning i am not so sure , my dupes are breathing in oxygen with 600 germs for 10 cycles now and none of em got food poisoning.

Yes, I should have said 100 or 1 million as subsequent testing confirmed there is a very low threshold above 1.  But 100 is effectively the same thing and the comment still applies so....let not nit pick

[miauly]

Got a slimelung outbreak when playing a new base yesterday, so will describe it here as a picture how it unfolds from a perspective of a sloppy player.

I had a small base with exosuits+waterlock exit, and no dupes were allowed to get anywhere near slimelung without suits. No shrooms, no anything. However, I did dig a bit of slime under some of initial water packages. It was lying there under water without offgasing, so all was fine. Then at some point I noticed that dupes are sneezing - by that time, it was 5 of them infected. After the initial surprise, I discovered that nearly half of my base is now covered with slimelung. Turned out I moved water elsewhere and forgot about that slime, so it offgased, and then spores spead to oxygen as well.

Removed slime, added some deodorizers, no medicine at all. In about 10 or so cycles base was clean of the spores, and in some 20-30 cycles all dupes were back to full health.

[badgamer123]

i take my time on my old base that nothing to do,open some slime area that I lock up for 2000 cycle...dig out everything....13 dupe got 3 sicked in the end of a week of digging with nothing protecting them(no suit etc,breathing pure PO2 with XXX amount of slime...
I got bored to wait out the slimelung and slowly build a doctor place and make pills to heal them.
doing the same in another large pocket of slime block.....nothing need to look at until it finish.

well the base is old and running fine even in old setting there maybe 1 guy get sick in slimelung and take that dupe off me a few day.the new one.....my dupe just move a bit slower for some time....very uninteresting