Thoughts on new disease system.

[fredhp]

19 minutes ago, Ipsquiggle said:

Thanks for the feedback here. We're improving the tooltips for germ exposure some more to make it more clear what the factors are, but in a nutshell, after a duplicant is exposed to germs, they have a chance of waking up sick the next morning. That chance is modified by game settings, booster pills, traits, etc.

Broadly speaking, the new system is working as intended, though there's still some balance and tweaking to be done. Please continue posting frustrations or anything that's confusing you as it will help us refine the system and the UI! (Save files are helpful too. )

@lpsquiggle:  The number of germs a duplicant is exposed affect the sickness chances?

[FiannaTiger]

I'm not sure if this is the case but I made like 20 boosters and it seems that they were used really fast.  Do only duplicates that were exposed to something go and take the boosters or do all dups go hey look a booster! gulp!

[M.C.]

12 hours ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

I don't know what to say.  I'm not having any of the problems that many of you are reporting.  My dupes rarely get sick, and when they do, they quarantine themselves and don't infect others.  Its an occasional nuisance -- though I haven't encountered zombie spores yet.  Is everyone playing on Germ Resistance: Miserable?  Because unless I have a biohazzard dupe, it takes multiple exposures to slimelung to get sick.

I've cleaned up my sanitation setup and built an industrial strength decontamination facility. Water in my shower stalls and lavatories, as well as sinks guarding the entrance to the cafeteria, remains germ free... and I am still getting food poisoning cases left and right from eating germ-free food stored in a chlorine-filled room.

Yeah. This new disease system is broken as f*ck.

[Ipsquiggle]

4 minutes ago, M.C. said:

I've cleaned up my sanitation setup and built an industrial strength decontamination facility. Water in my shower stalls and lavatories, as well as sinks guarding the entrance to the cafeteria, remains germ free... and I am still getting food poisoning cases left and right from eating germ-free food stored in a chlorine-filled room.

Would you mind uploading your save file so I can see what's happening?

[KittenIsAGeek]

2 minutes ago, M.C. said:

I've cleaned up my sanitation setup and built an industrial strength decontamination facility. Water in my shower stalls and lavatories, as well as sinks guarding the entrance to the cafeteria, remains germ free... and I am still getting food poisoning cases left and right from eating germ-free food stored in a chlorine-filled room.

Yeah. This new disease system is broken as f*ck.

Wait.. is this "The Darkest Citadel?"  Because in that save that you shared, you had ZERO sinks or washbasins.  None.  Zilch.  You'll get food poisoning all the time because dupes eat with their hands.  

 

I'm only asking because I've only ever gotten food poisoning ONCE since QoL3 went into pre-release -- and that was because I didn't build any wash basins until cycle 15 or so.

[M.C.]

Just now, KittenIsAGeek said:

Wait.. is this "The Darkest Citadel?"  Because in that save that you shared, you had ZERO sinks or washbasins.  None.  Zilch.  You'll get food poisoning all the time because dupes eat with their hands. 

Um. Please read my post again. Specifically the part where I mention a decontamination facility.

6 minutes ago, Ipsquiggle said:

Would you mind uploading your save file so I can see what's happening?

Ask and you shall receive!

Some highlights that make me scratch my head:

• The chlorine room doesn't decontaminate liquids sitting in pipes, which means I have a few packets of germy water there that I can't do anything about. Hence the germ sensors.
• Germ sensors seem to be unreliable. A loop of germy water with a sensor and a shutoff valve right after it would still allow occasional packets of germy water to pass through. I had an early version of this build fail because of that.
• I've added a second sensor-valve pair. To make sure nothing gets past it, I've added fourteen sensors on the pipe that feeds my base, all wired to a memory gate. It hasn't triggered yet, so I am about as sure as I can be that no germs get through.
• All shower stalls have germy water (not polluted water!) despite the fact that the input is 100% germ-free. Do we have a cross-contamination problem here?
• The sink hasn't seen any germs in its water supply yet.

Please let me know if/when you figure out how my dupes ended up in the middle of a food poisoning epidemic.

 

The Darkest Citatel - space.sav

[Dyrewulfe]

@M.C. Well, that wasn't hard.

It's just as KittenIsAGeek called it. You lack proper sinks. They go to bathroom after work, don't wash their hands, grab their food with their filthy hands, and then go eat.

(Edit: Sinks don't remove germs from what they're carrying.)

[Gus Smedstad]

From the way he's talking, I don't think he realizes that using the bathroom covers the Dupe in food poisoning germs. His last post emphasizes germy water, and I suspect he thinks that's the only source of food poisoning.

For example, his Dupes are washing off germs in the shower, and he thinks that's a bug.

[KittenIsAGeek]

2 hours ago, Gus Smedstad said:

From the way he's talking, I don't think he realizes that using the bathroom covers the Dupe in food poisoning germs. His last post emphasizes germy water, and I suspect he thinks that's the only source of food poisoning.

For example, his Dupes are washing off germs in the shower, and he thinks that's a bug.

Yeah.  While showers DO wash the germs off the dupes, they don't shower every time they use the toilet.  Sometimes they shower THEN use the toilet. Sometimes they use the toilet, then leave, and half a cycle later come back to shower.  During that time between toilet and shower, the dupe has dirty hands that will contaminate any food the dupe touches.  The food may have been stored in a pristine environment, but that doesn't apply to the dupe's hands.

Recommendation: Like real life,  you should wash your hands after pooping.

[estrogenesys]

12 hours ago, Ipsquiggle said:

Thanks for the feedback here. We're improving the tooltips for germ exposure some more to make it more clear what the factors are, but in a nutshell, after a duplicant is exposed to germs, they have a chance of waking up sick the next morning. That chance is modified by game settings, booster pills, traits, etc.

Broadly speaking, the new system is working as intended, though there's still some balance and tweaking to be done. Please continue posting frustrations or anything that's confusing you as it will help us refine the system and the UI! (Save files are helpful too. )

Please let me quarantine dupes with Food Poisoning and Slime Lung on Triage Cots.

9 hours ago, FiannaTiger said:

I'm not sure if this is the case but I made like 20 boosters and it seems that they were used really fast.  Do only duplicates that were exposed to something go and take the boosters or do all dups go hey look a booster! gulp!

They get taken daily, and by default all dupes will take them. You can open the "Consumables" menu ("F" on the keyboard) to change permissions for who can and cannot take vitamins/boosters. I make sure at the very least my doctor has some.

[KittenIsAGeek]

I haven't really needed boosters, but it would be nice to have a little more control.  For example, having them only take them when exposed.

[M.C.]

3 hours ago, Gus Smedstad said:

For example, his Dupes are washing off germs in the shower, and he thinks that's a bug.

No, he thinks it's stupid when clean water in shower is somehow contaminated by dupes' germs. I don't know how showers work where you are, but in my area they are designed in a way that makes this flat out impossible.

[minespatch]

My biggest problem is that I can't put my dupes on the Triage anymore and the bed requires a syringe. I really prefer just letting my dupe have a break and rest while the others work so they can work again.

[estrogenesys]

7 hours ago, M.C. said:

Um. Please read my post again. Specifically the part where I mention a decontamination facility.

Um, it doesn't matter that the food is decontaminated if your Dupes aren't washing their hands. They get 105,000 FP germs per use of a Lavatory, and 200,000 FP germs from using an Outhouse. That infects their food. I make sure to have one Sink per Lavatory, since Dupes do not queue up and wait to use Sinks and will run right past a sink in use. I also put sinks going into my kitchen.

7 hours ago, M.C. said:

• The chlorine room doesn't decontaminate liquids sitting in pipes, which means I have a few packets of germy water there that I can't do anything about. Hence the germ sensors.

From what I understand, decontaminating in chlorine works by putting the liquid into the Liquid Reservoir building that is surrounded by chlorine gas, and it takes a full cycle to kill all of the germs. I have not tried this in QoL Mk3, so I don't know if that behavior has changed.

Quote

• All shower stalls have germy water (not polluted water!) despite the fact that the input is 100% germ-free. Do we have a cross-contamination problem here?

If your dupes have germs on them (which they probably do if they're not washing their hands), they will end up in the shower output.

[M.C.]

1 minute ago, estrogenesys said:

Um, it doesn't matter that the food is decontaminated if your Dupes aren't washing their hands.

You've missed the context of the conversation. The dude looks at my post, recognizes the save game name and tells me I don't have a sink in the first place. Well, duh, no sh*t Sherlock. He was looking at my old save. The new one had a sink and everything else... except it wasn't where it was supposed to be, which indeed turned out to be my problem. Heh.

5 minutes ago, estrogenesys said:

From what I understand, decontaminating in chlorine works by putting the liquid into a liquid reservoir that is surrounded by chlorine gas, and it takes a full cycle to kill all of the germs. I have not tried this in QoL Mk3, so I don't know if that behavior has changed.

Right, right, but consider the following:

So you send your germy water to a liquid tank in a chlorine room. You want it to sit in there for some time, so you have to prevent it from flowing right out, typically via a shutoff valve. The problem is, you have at least two pipe segments connecting the output of the tank to the input of the valve. The moment germy water gets into the tank, it will fill those two pipe segments, and it will remain germy because chlorine won't reach it while it's in the pipes. As soon as the valve opens, you'll get two packets (20kg) of contaminated water followed by however much decontaminated water you had in the tank. You'll have to filter make sure those two packets are routed back to the contaminated water pipe.

I am not sure it works that way 100% of the time, but it sure annoyed the hell out of me when it did.

15 minutes ago, estrogenesys said:

If your dupes have germs on them (which they probably do if they're not washing their hands), they will end up in the shower output.

The germs were in the shower input. Did I really write that so poorly that everybody keeps getting tripped up by that remark?

[estrogenesys]

6 hours ago, M.C. said:

You've missed the context of the conversation. The dude looks at my post, recognizes the save game name and tells me I don't have a sink in the first place. Well, duh, no sh*t Sherlock. He was looking at my old save. The new one had a sink and everything else... except it wasn't where it was supposed to be, which indeed turned out to be my problem. Heh.

I downloaded your most recent save, and you still only have one sink going into your great hall. I was able to observe FP germs jumping from Dupe to Food before they made it to the sink, and exposing them. They need to be washing their hands on their way out of the bathroom. They won't always shower after a poop. There is still room for 3 showers in the room above the skimmer and sieve, but you only really need showers if you are low on Morale.

 

6 hours ago, M.C. said:

Right, right, but consider the following:

So you send your germy water to a liquid tank in a chlorine room. You want it to sit in there for some time, so you have to prevent it from flowing right out, typically via a shutoff valve. The problem is, you have at least two pipe segments connecting the output of the tank to the input of the valve. The moment germy water gets into the tank, it will fill those two pipe segments, and it will remain germy because chlorine won't reach it while it's in the pipes. As soon as the valve opens, you'll get two packets (20kg) of contaminated water followed by however much decontaminated water you had in the tank. You'll have to filter make sure those two packets are routed back to the contaminated water pipe.

I am not sure it works that way 100% of the time, but it sure annoyed the hell out of me when it did.

I've never tried such a system, but yeah that is a problem. If it's a few germs, they would naturally die in the clean water over time. But now since it only takes 100 germs to cause a dupe to be "exposed to food poisoning", that's not as safe a gamble. 

EDIT: see my post below

6 hours ago, M.C. said:

The germs were in the shower input. Did I really write that so poorly that everybody keeps getting tripped up by that remark?

Yes, it was not very clear, especially in the context of your issue.

I don't know how germs are getting into your water sieve (EDIT: see my post below). Strangely enough, dupes can wash their hands and shower in germy water and not contract germs, so they're not getting the FP from there. They are most likely getting it by contaminating their own food when they fetch it for dinner (I watched Smarty and Dig Dug do just that. Smarty was "exposed" to FP, but did not contract it, Dig Dug got FP from his fried mushroom dinner).

 

TL;DR, put sinks by the exit of your bathrooms (1 per toilet), and for added measure I have sinks at the entrance of my kitchen and food storage. I have not had a single FP incident since doing this.

 

[KittenIsAGeek]

45 minutes ago, M.C. said:

Right, right, but consider the following:

So you send your germy water to a liquid tank in a chlorine room. You want it to sit in there for some time, so you have to prevent it from flowing right out, typically via a shutoff valve. The problem is, you have at least two pipe segments connecting the output of the tank to the input of the valve. The moment germy water gets into the tank, it will fill those two pipe segments, and it will remain germy because chlorine won't reach it while it's in the pipes. As soon as the valve opens, you'll get two packets (20kg) of contaminated water followed by however much decontaminated water you had in the tank. You'll have to filter make sure those two packets are routed back to the contaminated water pipe.

You can build it in such a way that when the valve is closed, water flows back into the reservoir.  Or you can use the horizontal doors method to disable the reservoir (preventing liquid from flowing out) without using a valve.  Or you can be creative and design something else.  My system uses a door under the reservoir and a sieve.  A clock turns the sieve on for half the day, during which the reservoir is disabled.  When the clock ticks past the half-way point, the sieve gets disabled. 50 seconds later, the door closes and the reservoir lets the clean water out.  I was just mocking something up quickly as a temporary thing, but its working just fine.

Spoiler

 

The mess with the pipes is because I later decided to cool the water with an aquatuner after it was clean.  Clearly I need to redesign the whole system. But, whatever. It works. No valves.

[estrogenesys]

4 hours ago, M.C. said:

Right, right, but consider the following:

So you send your germy water to a liquid tank in a chlorine room. You want it to sit in there for some time, so you have to prevent it from flowing right out, typically via a shutoff valve. The problem is, you have at least two pipe segments connecting the output of the tank to the input of the valve. The moment germy water gets into the tank, it will fill those two pipe segments, and it will remain germy because chlorine won't reach it while it's in the pipes. As soon as the valve opens, you'll get two packets (20kg) of contaminated water followed by however much decontaminated water you had in the tank. You'll have to filter make sure those two packets are routed back to the contaminated water pipe.

I am not sure it works that way 100% of the time, but it sure annoyed the hell out of me when it did.

So I originally built this, but the water circulated so much, it wasn't in the reservoirs long enough to kill many germs

So I simplified the design

Pipe View:

The water packets bounce back and forth a bit when the shutoff is disabled, but that was preferable to the first design because they will actually spend time in the reservoirs and get disinfected.

Automation View:

The germ sensors are set to Active if germs>0, then put through a 3 second BUFFER, then through a NOT gate, to make sure the shutoff remains closed long enough to send any germs back into the reservoir.

The clock sensor is set so that half the day, every other shutoff is active.

 

Gas View:

Seems to be working. When the shutoffs are disabled, the pwater is routed back through into the reservoir it just came from. No germs have made it through to the sensors. In this setup, they are routed back into the last reservoir, but could just as easily be put back into the main input line and put back through all 3 reservoirs. I let it run for about 20 cycles, and no germs made it into the reservoir on top. Save file attached.

Kitten's setup seems simpler, and honestly I feel like the reservoirs should have automation already, so we don't have to use the horizontal doors.

I also looked closer at your sieve setup. I deconstructed it and rebuilt it a couple of times to trouble shoot it. It looks like FP was getting into the system from both germs in the CO2 the skimmer was picking up, and methinks germs in the sand the dupes were loading into the sieve (a dupe with FP germs on them could pass them onto the sand they were carrying). But that water was all going to the skimmer and your toilets and showers, so even though that water had FP germs, it was not infecting the dupes.

 

 

 

TDC water treatment.sav

[Daxterr]

Holy cow, I wasn't expecting all these comments. Thanks for sharing your thoughts everyone. 

 

One thing I notice is that I'm storing my food in a refrigerator that's cooled by wheezeworts, and a few germs refuse to die on my food. The temperature is usually around -30 degrees celcius, but there is very often a few food poisoning germs left on the food. Since I play with miserable immunity, it causes my dupes to get sick over and over again lol. 

[Gus Smedstad]

7 hours ago, M.C. said:

No, he thinks it's stupid when clean water in shower is somehow contaminated by dupes' germs. I don't know how showers work where you are, but in my area they are designed in a way that makes this flat out impossible.

Um, what? You actually believe that whatever washes off your body in the shower is instantly sterilized? That water going down the drain is still clean?

[goboking]

Here are my thoughts on the new disease system.

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.
• I hate the rng nature of the new system.  With immunity we had all the information we needed to determine whether or not a dupe would get sick, and we could act accordingly.  In this new system sickness is a daily roll of the dice, and the difference between inhaling or ingesting a few germs and hundreds of thousands of them isn't intuitive.  Randomly determining which dupes, if any, will get sick on a given day strips us of a measure of control.
• I hate the opaqueness of the new system.  In this game we're given all the information we need to determine if a circuit will overload, if our power generation is sufficient to meet our needs, if we're producing enough food or oxygen, etc.  But when it comes to sicknesses we're left in the dark.  We, as veterans of the game, have to rely on forum-goers to analyze the game's code to determine how this new system works.  That's information that should be readily available in game.

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.

As someone who has been pining for a doctor and new diseases for a long time now, it pains me to say that I dislike this new system.  For the reasons outlined above, this new system feels like a step in the wrong direction.  The old system wasn't perfect; diseases hit new, unsuspecting players too hard while veterans found them trivial.  Changes were needed, but I think Klei threw the baby out with the bathwater.  We've gone from proactive, preventative measures being too effective to reactive treatments being too commonplace.  Hopefully we're not too close to release for another pass on diseases.

[Oozinator]

With that new germy / sickness system in place, i started 5 times a new base, to test first 50 cycles.
Most important part early game now, is a CO² airlock, to crack slime biomes open (if you ask me).

For me, it feels like something, new players "must" know about (tutorial / germs / extended), because it's easy to build and + good job at "zoning" areas off.
It's also a perfect example, of the "one element per tile" rule.

Game takes an interesting turn someway, because to get precious early game gold ore, you have to crack slime biome.
That's the point, where players extend the base / add more dupes / mine abbyssalite.
When stuff is not someway well planned, it could get messy/ugly quick.
Not bad, not bad..

[Soulwind]

Is it just me or are the immunity boosters more or less worthless?

 

They take time, power, and resources to create; and the dupes keep popping them

the moment they are created.  There's simply no way to ever accumulate any stockpile.

 

Mind you, this is in a base with no food poisoning, and I haven't even breached the starter biome yet.

There is zero exposure to germs for any of my dupes and yet they are eating me out of every booster I ever get made.

 

We really need a way to specify when the boosters get eaten.  Door permissions aren't a solution to this one really as

even the dupe who is making the booster stops and eats it as soon as it's made.

[estrogenesys]

17 minutes ago, Soulwind said:

Is it just me or are the immunity boosters more or less worthless?

 

They take time, power, and resources to create; and the dupes keep popping them

the moment they are created.  There's simply no way to ever accumulate any stockpile.

 

Mind you, this is in a base with no food poisoning, and I haven't even breached the starter biome yet.

There is zero exposure to germs for any of my dupes and yet they are eating me out of every booster I ever get made.

 

We really need a way to specify when the boosters get eaten.  Door permissions aren't a solution to this one really as

even the dupe who is making the booster stops and eats it as soon as it's made.

Press "F" to open the consumables menu. You can assign and restrict vita chews and immuno boosters in that menu.

The supplements work for 1 cycle, so dupes will eat them daily if you let them.

[Sasza22]

5 hours ago, Oozinator said:

Most important part early game now, is a CO² airlock, to crack slime biomes open (if you ask me).

What about using the buddy bud and it`s "one germ type per tile" rule. It blocks slimelung just fine without the need for fancy airlocks.

 

4 hours ago, Soulwind said:

Is it just me or are the immunity boosters more or less worthless?

I think there`s a balance issue with boosters vs medicine. Both take similar time to craft but boosters need to be used constantly and only reduce the chance of a disease while medicine completely removes it for the dupe affected in no time. Prevention should be better than treatment but currently in terms of time usage it`s not. Either the disease should effect the dupe for some time after treated (like 10% remaining duration + no coughing for slimelung) or treatment should take longer.