What are microbes in the game for?

[Guest aresd]

I just can’t understand what role microbes play in the game? Why is so much automation added to the game to detect them? What's the point?

[Falcore55]

I actually found it very useful to pump them all into liquid reservoirs build in an ice biome.  Chain them with radiant pipes then run it through your base with normal granite pipes.  Didn't have a heat problem for 500+ cycles.

[SamuraiJones]

They make your dupes sick of course!

Sickness used to have a pretty major impact on the base, with slimelung requiring 3 cycles of hosptial rest under medical care or else it was fatal. They've nerfed the crap out of it now though, and you can pretty much ignore diseases, or else instantly cure them.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Falcore55 said:

I actually found it very useful to pump them all into liquid reservoirs build in an ice biome.  Chain them with radiant pipes then run it through your base with normal granite pipes.  Didn't have a heat problem for 500+ cycles.

The same can be done with ordinary water, whether it is with germs or without germs. What is the principal role of microbes?

[Gus Smedstad]

Microbes cause illness. In days of yore, illness was a pretty serious thing. Now it's a fairly minor drawback for a Dupe to get ill, but it's still a drawback so you might want to avoid having your entire colony sick all the time.

Food Poisoning microbes come from outhouses and toilets. If a Dupe consumes enough food poisoning microbes, they'll get sick. The primary way to avoid this is to provide enough washbasins or sinks to wash the germs away.

Microbe sensors in liquid pipes are primarily there so you can set up ways of sterilizing water that has come out of a toilet or sink.

Dupes get slimelung from inhaling slimelung microbes. The automation isn't so useful for handling that, since it's airborne. Slimelung in water is not important, since it's inhaling that's a problem, not eating them.

There are ways of ensuring no slimelung gets into your air supply, mostly centering around storing slime in chlorine filled rooms.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, SamuraiJones said:

They make your dupes sick of course!

Sickness used to have a pretty major impact on the base, with slimelung requiring 3 cycles of hosptial rest under medical care or else it was fatal. They've nerfed the crap out of it now though, and you can pretty much ignore diseases, or else instantly cure them.

In this case, you can simply remove it from the game. Why load the game with unnecessary useless calculations that do not play any role?

[Falcore55]

1 minute ago, aresd said:

The same can be done with ordinary water, whether it is with germs or without germs. What is the principal role of microbes?

Sorry about that.  I was in a different thread then I jumped here for some reason when i went to reply.  Odd.  Microbes make dupes sick and a neat trick to removing food poisoning germs from water is store your slime in the pool and the slimelung will overtake the food poisoning.  Just make sure you have a sink leaving the pool to not spread it around.

[SamuraiJones]

2 minutes ago, aresd said:

In this case, you can simply remove it from the game. Why load the game with unnecessary useless calculations that do not play any role?

I agree 100%. But there are tons of posts on steam (and perhaps here too) about how "broken" and "unbeatable" slimelung is. People avoiding swamp biomes completely to avoid it.

The consumer base has said it's too hard, and the devs have to listen. Hopefully we'll get an extra nasty version of the game, either as mod or DLC, cuz some of us like higher stakes.

Still, it's a real shame. That zombie disease looked pretty amusing.

[Gus Smedstad]

He didn't say microbes play no role. Just that you can easily manage them. "You" can't remove the from the game, unless "you" means the developers. You'd have to talk to them about removing microbes if you don't like them.

[DepravityCat]

Personally, I quite like and prefer the way the chance of getting sick is handled in the new system. I just wish we still had the consequences of getting sick of the old system. 

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, Gus Smedstad said:

He didn't say microbes play no role. Just that you can easily manage them. "You" can't remove the from the game, unless "you" means the developers. You'd have to talk to them about removing microbes if you don't like them.

I just said my point. If microbes do not bring much trouble, what's the point of dealing with them. And if there is no reason to pay attention to fighting them, why are they in the game

1 minute ago, DepravityCat said:

Personally, I quite like and prefer the way the chance of getting sick is handled in the new system. I just wish we still had the consequences of getting sick of the old system. 

I also think so. Need motivation to deal with them. Now there is no such motivation.

[SamuraiJones]

1 minute ago, DepravityCat said:

Personally, I quite like and prefer the way the chance of getting sick is handled in the new system. I just wish we still had the consequences of getting sick of the old system. 

I'd agree with that. With the old system you just had to control exposure. Immune systems getting low? close off the slime biome for a couple days. This new format is more lifelike and better captures the uneasiness and randomness of germ exposure ("Will I get infected? I might not, I didn't inhale much... but it only takes 1 germ...")

[Gus Smedstad]

There is a reason to pay attention to microbes. They make your Dupes sick. Sick dupes function at a disadvantages compared to healthy Dupes.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Gus Smedstad said:

There is a reason to pay attention to microbes. They make your Dupes sick. Sick dupes function at a disadvantages compared to healthy Dupes.

Didn't quite notice the difference

[DepravityCat]

2 minutes ago, aresd said:

I just said my point. If microbes do not bring much trouble, what's the point of dealing with them. And if there is no reason to pay attention to fighting them, why are they in the game

As it stands, sickness is enough of an inconvenience that it's worth making some efforts to avoid it.

I think that Klei preferred to have it too easy than too hard on release, and the hope is that tougher options will be added later. 

[Gus Smedstad]

1 minute ago, SamuraiJones said:

but it only takes 1 germ...")

That's not quite correct. There's a minimum threshold, a minimum number of microbes to count as "exposure." I seem to recall it's 1000, but I'm having trouble finding a cite for that. So much disease information hasn't been updated for QOL III and beyond.

[SamuraiJones]

Just now, DepravityCat said:

I think that Klei preferred to have it too easy than too hard on release, and the hope is that tougher options will be added later. 

There are alot of posts out there about that. Between disease mechanics, exploding batteries, and hatches eating dupes, there are alot of ideas out there. I'm tempted to make a post talking about a more don't-starvishly difficult mode and see if it picks up any momentum, but I'm scared it won't so i don't want to do it.

[Gus Smedstad]

2 minutes ago, aresd said:

Didn't quite notice the difference

I strongly suspect you haven't gotten any actual disease outbreaks yet, or you wouldn't be asking this question in the first place. More likely is that you've had exposure but no actual infection yet.

I'd talk about disease specifics, but I'm pretty careful about avoiding exposure, so I don't know what the debuffs are currently. I was pretty familiar with them when Slimelung meant bed rest and possible death.

[SamuraiJones]

1 minute ago, Gus Smedstad said:

That's not quite correct. There's a minimum threshold, a minimum number of microbes to count as "exposure." I seem to recall it's 1000, but I'm having trouble finding a cite for that. So much disease information hasn't been updated for QOL III and beyond.

Oh yea, sorry, I was referring to meatspace on that one. Measuring diseases in terms of LD50 and ranking risk based on exposure, instead of hard numbers like "a healthy adult (or dupe) can breath x number of germs before getting sick. x-1 and you're fine."

[Guest]

My bloodthirsty soul requires mass extinctions, plague, paralysis, crazy, death from dehydration, bloody diarrhea, consumption, anthrax, alien diseases, fungi, viruses, virus mutations. In general, you need a mod "Plugue Inc" here 

[Gus Smedstad]

I've said this a few times in disease-related threads, but I rather want disease to be somewhere between where it was pre-QOL 3 and today. Send the Dupes to bed in the medbay for a couple of days, but don't kill them. No instant-cure pills, more serious consequences than slowing down and having trouble breathing.

I'm still avoiding sickness anyway. 

[SamuraiJones]

12 minutes ago, Gus Smedstad said:

I'm still avoiding sickness anyway. 

Not me! Lately, this latest map I'm doing has slime growth all over... I just have my dupes tear into them with narry a care or any kind of protective gear. I put a few deodorizers in the base, but I don't make banks of them like I used to. Let germy polluted oxygen float around until either it makes its way to the base and get deodorized, or else a uses it while he's on an errand. I've got a slime compactor underwater, and a few algae distilleries, but that's it.

None of the old complicated hazmat procures chlorine bathed atmos suit docks between dual waterlocks. It's just not necessary anymore. I've had a few infections, but not many, and I can just ignore them. I don't have a hospital either, and the doctor really just functions as a paramedic to retrieve dupes who collapse while analyzing volcanoes.

[Gus Smedstad]

I guess I'm pretending sSlimelung is a deadly disease.

So what are the precise effects of Slimelung infection these days? Assuming you're not just curing it with pills.

[avc15]

8 minutes ago, Gus Smedstad said:

I guess I'm pretending sSlimelung is a deadly disease.

So what are the precise effects of Slimelung infection these days? Assuming you're not just curing it with pills.

breath rate goes up.

there's a small attribute penalty, and they will sneeze sometimes.

Basically it just makes them complete fewer errands, pause more frequently for breath, and incapable of commuting anywhere they have to hold breath. Or you can just manufacture medkits and then all slimelung does it eat up ~~4 errands.

So it *can* make the difference between a successful base and a lost base but only if you're already doing a lot of other things wrong *and* you let your entire colony get sick.

[Daxterr]

I agree, diseases seem way too dull now. They should add more symptoms with the disease difficulty options, for those that want them. The hardest difficulty could include fatal illnesses again