Can we stop using germy water for shower and hand washing?

[smithdl]

To be clear, I disagree with the original poster.  I do not think you should limit game play at all.  I think restricting options is not a good idea.  I do, however, think there should be a massive consequence if you wash your hands or take a shower with water that has been filtered from "pollution" but not sanitized.  I can't imagine taking a shower with water I just took a dump in simply because I ran it through sand.  That is gross and will make you very sick.  Not to mention the stench.  

So, maybe have a new strait called "stinky" where you lower morale of those around you because you smell like **** water, I dont know.

But to be clear, that is because it makes sense to do something like that.  It makes sense because of the reality of life we base "making sense" off of.  Or, to maintain the hyperbole of this conversation, it's "realism".

For me, since we are validating with subjective motives, it ruins the game to be able to take a shower with water ran through sand but not sanitized after I took a dump in it.  So, I don't.  And while I understand the argument of "play how you want then", to not have a consequence of doing something so obviously riddled with consequences and not have one is, well, unreal.  And since it is so far from reality, it seems out of place, wrong, broken.  And that isn't "lazy" or "nonintellectual", it is simple common sense.  

Regardless, even if you disagree with my subjective view, it is fair, understandable, thought out, and is PURELY based on trying to make the game realistic enough to understand and play.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, smithdl said:

But to be clear, that is because it makes sense to do something like that.  It makes sense because of the reality of life we base "making sense" off of.  Or, to maintain the hyperbole of this conversation, it's "realism".

So you are basing your argument on some premises that I do not accept. First, realism does not equal intuitiveness. If you want an example of this, just look to the standard model of physics. Many professional physicists claim to not fully understand the standard model. If reality were the standard for what "made sense", then science would be a finished enterprise. Second, that a concept being understandable or intuitive is not an objective quality. How readily any individual will understand a concept is dependent, at the very least, on their cumulative experience. A person who works as an engineer might easily understand how automation works in the game without any explanation while a musician might have to go read an electronics tutorial before it makes sense. The act of making sense of a concept requires fitting that new information into the framework of experience and all experience is subjective and individual. So I do not see how I can make a definitive statement about "what makes sense". I can only say "what makes sense to me."

Saying the mechanic is not fun for you is completely acceptable. There are many aspects of the game that I find not to be fun. But we evaluate the trade-offs of what we like and don't and have as much fun as we can.

1 hour ago, smithdl said:

Regardless, even if you disagree with my subjective view, it is fair, understandable, thought out, and is PURELY based on trying to make the game realistic enough to understand and play.

ar-ee-es-pee-ee-see-tea

[gotnoface]

@watermelen671 That was indeed poor choice of words from me. Half-delirious as I am with mild concussion after traffic accident, II should've read what I wrote first before posting it.

@Gurgel The entire physics system as you said is about willing suspension of disbelief. To me ONI is fun, because it's fantastic physics, only touvhing reality when it is convenient to the game mechanics. I! don't care things are magic as long as they are fun to use.

[Guinaro]

To me the most simple solution would be:
Yes you may use germy water in the sinks. But hey, do not be surprised that your dupes end up with more germs after than before the washed their hands. That's all that is missing.
It would be as simple as.
Values to be configured by Klei, but in essence.
Sink use takes minimum of 10 seconds.
Sink removes 10 000 germs/second.
Dupe washes hands until all germs are removed.
At the end, germs in the used piped in water are counted, and reapplied to the duplicant.
So if a dupe washes away 100 000 germs and the water contains 1000 germs. The dupe ends up with 1000 germs.
In light of the fact that 1000 germs hasn't a high chance to infect the dupe. This is a good compromise.

But since germs easily multiple in polluted water and sieving doesn't get rid of them. Your closed but sieved bathroom loop will not run for long before you are infecting your dupes instead of cleaning your dupes.

If your water contains 500 000 germs however, your dupes will end up with those 500 000 germs and an almost guaranteed case of Food poisoning.
Yeah, and in real life that's what you would expect to happen.
Using germy water for your toilets, would be no problem, but for showers, water cooler and sinks, it is as it should be, pipe in germs, get germy dupes.

Possible consequences. Having a dupe make a mess in your only source of clean water. Not a real issue. Unless it happens frequently.
Just isolate the polluted water or pump it away. The few germs spread to the clean water, would be a minor nuisance, resulting in only an occasional infection of food poisoning.

Maybe you could use the clean but very germy water, to be used to create polluted water faster, as dirty dupes will keep cleaning until germ free. So just have them wash themselves repeatedly. But there are other ways to get polluted water, so that is just one way out of many, and tweaking the number of germs removed per second would slow or accelerate this process.

Now if you want to reuse the clean germy water for your toilets, you can do so, but you will need to put in extra piping. If not go with clean non germy water.

What a much nicer concept would be is needing to limit the temperature of your water for your shower and sinks to 45°C or so. Any hotter and your dupes get scalded, hurt or worse.
The same could be if showering with below 20°C of water, resulting in chilly dupes with a nice debuff: the sniffles you get from getting soppy wet, until warmed up again. It is already in the game, just extend it to showers.
Again makes sense, as showering dupes with 80°C seems ideocy when they get scalded by geysers at temps of around 50°C.

This would make a nice progression in Duplicant care.
Step 1.
Provide sinks with non germy water, below 45°C (No burning your hands) Cold water is only for a few seconds, and won't get you undercooled.
Step 2.
Provide showers with non germy water, between 25°C and 45°C.
Step 3.
Provide showers with a nice 37° - 40°C water, and your dupes get an extra anti stress buff, on top of the regular showering that boosts morale.

You could even have a positive trait: +1 morale when taking a hot shower.

Most initial water on the map is between 0 and 40 degrees. And depending on the pipes used, you can get it to cool down a bit before it reaches your pipes.
Getting your water in an ideal range will make players tackle temperature management, which you can do in all sorts of ways.
 

[smithdl]

11 hours ago, nonoxyl said:

First, realism does not equal intuitiveness.

Your first point.

11 hours ago, nonoxyl said:

How readily any individual will understand a concept is dependent, at the very least, on their cumulative experience.

Your second point.  Your arguing against yourself.  Change cumulative experience to "their reality".  For the context of this argument, it is the same thing man.

Lets say for fun we combine the words "realism" and "cumulative experience".  The whole intent of my argument is that "realism", "common sense", "experience", "perception", is all the same point.  How we see the game, its intuitiveness, the ability to understand it, is based off of "real life", our "cumulative experience", our filter of perception.

All of that to say, taking a shower with water I pooped in, ran through sand to get rid of gross debris, or "pollution" for the game, but did not sanitize is gross and will obvious have negative consequences.  I don't care what life you come from, what your "reality" is or how well you understand something.  2 + 2 = 4.  Take any human and have them **** in a bowl, wipe their butt and put the toilet paper in the bowl.  Then, run that concoction over sand and ask them to drink what comes out.  Would you?

Now, with that being said, I backpack bow hunt into deep wilderness sections.  I live off of my back for 1-2 weeks.  We obviously cant carry that much water, so I have a filter water pump that removes any germs above .2 microns.

https://www.sportsmans.com/camping-gear-supplies/hydration/water-filters/water-filters/msr-hyperflow-microfilter-water-filter/p/1217859

The problem is that filters like this have massive restrictions on flow.  For drinking water where you can spend 20 minutes filling a camelback, they work great.  To run a colony, it is unrealistic.  Which brings us back to the original poster and Gurgel's, IMO, rude response.

While I disagree with the OP on restricting options to use germy water as an input, I think it makes perfect sense to have a negative consequence for using germy water.  I also think coming up with a way to sanitize that water without having to heat it up and then cool it back down is perfectly reasonable.  Here is my solution for showers...

Now, this works great for showers, but I don't want all that heat back into my sinks too, so I don't use germy water, that comes from a slush geyser.  If I didn't have that, I would have to heat up, then cool the water.  

Anyway, I am rabbit trailing.  I think having a way to get rid of germs from regular water, a chlorine machine or a different type of filter, makes perfect sense.  It is not..  "Lets just make all basic mechanisms more tedious and problematic!" t It makes perfect sense, and it was a rude response to negate someones opinion in negative descriptions simply because the concept didn't seem important enough to your "reality", "Realism", "Perception", 'Cumulative Experience", or whatever word you want to use to say the same damn thing.

I'm done, hope you enjoy the solution I use.

 

[Sasza22]

18 hours ago, nonoxyl said:

or you can just be lazy and dump it in your cool steam vent

I actually did it once. It works as long as it doesn`t go dormant.

17 hours ago, Gurgel said:

This becomes a problem when people confuse physical reality and what ONI simulates and then demand the second be closer to the first. That argument has no merit. ONI can never even be a reasonable approximation of a simulation of physical reality. They would have to throw out 99% of the game. Hence that argument does not work. An argument of "I find this hard to do" or "this characteristic irritates me" or "this mechanism is not fun" is entirely valid. An argument of "this is not realistic" against a specific aspect of the game is not valid. It also misses the point of ONI completely.

I agree that we shouldn`t add stuff for sake of making it complex and stack annoying mechanics for preserving reality. But one thing is what people expect to happen in each scenario. Do people expect germy water to work as good as clean when washing hands? It`s not obvious. Common sense would say no. New players will design system around common sense until they learn how the system actually works. In the end it`s not harmful for the game. If someone sees it as exploity might just choose not to use it this way, like i often do.

[mathmanican]

23 minutes ago, Sasza22 said:

New players will design system around common sense until they learn how the system actually works. In the end it`s not harmful for the game.

+1

For my first hundred hours of play or so, I avoided opening the caustic biome completely.  I was afraid of the chlorine, and the "toxic to duplicants" warning in the tooltips.  I thought I had to have suits to even enter the room.  Then one day I noticed that chlorine didn't hurt me....  Well, I clearly decided to exploit this, and now I'm running into chlorine pits by cycle 20. 

[Gurgel]

16 hours ago, gotnoface said:

@Gurgel The entire physics system as you said is about willing suspension of disbelief. To me ONI is fun, because it's fantastic physics, only touching reality when it is convenient to the game mechanics. I! don't care things are magic as long as they are fun to use.

And that is the thing. This is a game, squarely aimed at entertainment. Its primary purpose is to be fun. The only "learning" element I see in there is "don't do stupid things if you are in a closed environment or you may kill yourself". Unfortunately we cannot just plant a few pre-nerf WWs on this planet...

5 hours ago, Sasza22 said:

Do people expect germy water to work as good as clean when washing hands? It`s not obvious. Common sense would say no. New players will design system around common sense until they learn how the system actually works. In the end it`s not harmful for the game. If someone sees it as exploity might just choose not to use it this way, like i often do.

I don't think most new players will even notice. It would just be one more crisis if there are negative consequences and it is not really one that adds anything. The germ system is already pretty intransparent. I still get food poisoning on food despite none in the environment and hand-washing not being avoidable.

Also, I think you take far too much stop in "common sense". It is a quality only a minority of people actually have. The rest just follows the crowd and hopes for the best.

[Sasza22]

11 minutes ago, Gurgel said:

I don't think most new players will even notice. It would just be one more crisis if there are negative consequences and it is not really one that adds anything.

I mean most people will assume germy water spreads germs through sinks to dupes. Obviously after they undertand the basics of the germ mechanic. Then them not spreading will be a pleasant surprise that some might consider a bug or exploit. On the other hand if germs spread that way inexperienced users will get caught by it once, similar to how they get caught by the water sieve not removing germs. Either way it won`t be a big deal. Only thing it affects is closed systems (those would be still doable using the reservoirs in chlorine).

[BaloneyOs]

6 minutes ago, Sasza22 said:

I mean most people will assume germy water spreads germs through sinks to dupes.

Dupes don't seem to have porous skin. Food poisoning only transfers via consumption and they don't even need goggles to sit in chlorine gas.

[KittenIsAGeek]

22 hours ago, smithdl said:

<snip> think there should be a massive consequence if <snip> water that has been filtered from "pollution" but not sanitized. 

There is.  Food poisoning.  If you make food or fill your Water Cooler with water that hasn't been sanitized of food poisoning, then your dupes will get that malady.  Food poisoning on a dupe's body doesn't really do anything unless it becomes ingested.  When they wash their hands in a sink, one would presume they're using soap -- so the food poisoning in the water doesn't matter. 

Which is somewhat like RL anyway.  If happen upon a random lake or a stream and you use a simple filter to clean the water, it'll look and smell just like water should -- i.e. clear and odorless.  You can use it for washing your hands, or for showering (done so many times while camping).  But odds are if you drink it, you'll get sick.  If you want to INGEST the water, THEN it needs to be sanitized instead of simply purified.

[Gurgel]

3 minutes ago, KittenIsAGeek said:

Which is somewhat like RL anyway.  If happen upon a random lake or a stream and you use a simple filter to clean the water, it'll look and smell just like water should -- i.e. clear and odorless.  You can use it for washing your hands, or for showering (done so many times while camping).  But odds are if you drink it, you'll get sick.  If you want to INGEST the water, THEN it needs to be sanitized instead of simply purified.

I agree on that. The killer is drinking the stuff. If you do not, you will usually be fine. Even getting in in your eyes (a sure way to get infected for some things) will not do anything in most cases. Now, we could ask for a whole "soap" cycle to the game, but I think that is taking things too far.

[Guinaro]

12 hours ago, mathmanican said:

+1

For my first hundred hours of play or so, I avoided opening the caustic biome completely.  I was afraid of the chlorine, and the "toxic to duplicants" warning in the tooltips.  I thought I had to have suits to even enter the room.  Then one day I noticed that chlorine didn't hurt me....  Well, I clearly decided to exploit this, and now I'm running into chlorine pits by cycle 20. 

And that is why I use the mods like Chemical Burns and Self-Sealing Airlocks. The first one makes Gasses like Chlorine and Sour Gas deadly to your duplicants (as I would expect from high concentrations) and the latter makes Airlocks behave like what their name says. They prevent gasses from exiting or entering the room. The latter may seem exploity to some. But the gas mechanics in ONI combined with actual toxic gasses makes sure that you want decent working airlocks, who do what they say they do. Even a single cell of 100 gr Chlorine can wreck havoc in your base. And gaspumps aren't very good at removing that packet quickly.
The consequence with rust -> oxygen and chlorine production I haven't been able to test yet. But it will propably provide a nice challenge to make it work without hurting my dupes.

[Alexander Block]

If the use of water with germs in the shower and the sink does not infect duplicants, then why does infect using water with germs in a metallurgical machine? Why infects carrying infected objects? Game logic should be unified! Beginners use clean water in the shower, and experienced say it is too difficult!