What are microbes in the game for?

[SamuraiJones]

6 minutes ago, Daxterr said:

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

I disagree! The standard option should include fatal diseases! The hardest should have have infected dupes spread their germs everywhere so you have to quarentine them and send docs in with an atmos suit to prevent infection.

Even at it's worst, dupes have never infect each other, and so there was never any risk of any kind of plague.

[Gus Smedstad]

12 minutes ago, SamuraiJones said:

I disagree! The standard option should include fatal diseases!

Think of the newbs! Won't anyone think of the newbs?

In all seriousness, we're experienced players familiar with the rules. Just because it's easy after you've mastered the game, doesn't mean it's suitable for the default difficulty. Catering to a small core of hardcore players is how games go into design death spirals.

[Alexander Block]

36 minutes ago, Daxterr said:

diseases seem way too dull now.

I watched a beginner play. Complete misunderstanding and panic on how to treat this. Imagine if his favorite duplicates will die? This is too cruel.
The problem is not in the complexity of microbes, but in the incorrect scaling of difficulty. Only the likelihood of infection is growing, and not the severity of the disease.

[Guest]

16 minutes ago, Gus Smedstad said:

Think of the newbs! Won't anyone think of the newbs?

In all seriousness, we're experienced players familiar with the rules. Just because it's easy after you've mastered the game, doesn't mean it's suitable for the default difficulty. Catering to a small core of hardcore players is how games go into design death spirals.

Hey, did you see that there are options in the game? Is there an easy mode and is there a survival mode? Where do you see the problem for beginners?

[Alexander Block]

4 minutes ago, aresd said:

did you see that there are options in the game? 

Do you think hardcore players should determine the level of difficulty for other players? The current normal level is quite complicated for a normal player without 100500 hours of experience, wikis read and guides viewed. If you (like me) are not satisfied with the level of difficulty, it makes sense to talk about a balance of hard levels. Only.

[Guest]

Just now, Alexander Block said:

Do you think hardcore players should determine the level of difficulty for other players? The current normal level is quite complicated for a normal player without 100500 hours of experience, wikis read and guides viewed. If you (like me) are not satisfied with the level of difficulty, it makes sense to talk about a balance of hard levels. Only.

For this, the "no tension" mode was created. I can not see problem for beginners

 

The big problem for beginners, I see only that a billion information about the game can be found outside the game. Banal information on the transformation of substances at certain temperatures is absent in the game. The banal limit pressure on the tile is still missing in the game. One can list for a long time the scarcity of documentation. That is where the huge problem is. A billion newcomers will be struck by the lack of basic information about the mechanics and rules of the game. Do you care about the power of disease? Seriously?

[Gus Smedstad]

There have been some pretty good threads on disease and difficulty level in the game. This thread is clearly not one of them.

[Sasza22]

Microbes are clearly intended to be a part of the game. The balance is just a bit off. The effects should be more noticable, to the point that your dupes workspeed is reduced to a crawl or they keep stopping their work to catch breath or go to the toilet. Atm is a bit too weak, but it can be tuned. Germs are supposed to be an obstcle in exploration and something you design your base around.

[Guest]

8 minutes ago, Sasza22 said:

Microbes are clearly intended to be a part of the game. The balance is just a bit off. The effects should be more noticable, to the point that your dupes workspeed is reduced to a crawl or they keep stopping their work to catch breath or go to the toilet. Atm is a bit too weak, but it can be tuned. Germs are supposed to be an obstcle in exploration and something you design your base around.

I hope so that the developers will rework it a bit. Otherwise, there is no point in fighting them. Now I absolutely do not feel their influence on the gameplay

[dearmad]

So much right in this thread... LOL. Ah, the great disease nerfing/change was horrible.

[LucidFugue]

I do miss the old slimelung, but I don't think it's a good idea to revert it. The new skill based medicine system means you need to research med bays, skill up a dupe to be able to make medicine and administer it, and also build and power those facilities. That's a lot to ask for when the slime biome is right next door, and it doesn't help if players are still figuring out how to clean polluted oxygen out of their base and filling their deoxidisers with infected algae. 

I like the instant cure because it gives you a viable alternative to just using atmo suits. Having a more deadly/dangerous disease for mid-late game which would require you to get more serious would be good. I guess that's the idea for sporechilds? But I they seem way too easy to avoid.  

[QuQuasar]

Personal opinion

 

I think that each disease should have a visible symptom associated with it, to give it character and make it something that can't simply be ignored.

 

• Food poisoning should result in vomiting, identical to stress vomiting.
• Allergies should result in sneezing.
• Slimelung symptoms should gradually increase in severity to eventually require permanent bed rest, requiring tending by the doctor. If the doctor is unavailable for multiple cycles it should result in death, but can otherwise be sustained until a cure can be manufactured.
• Zombie outbreaks should result in... well, zombies. Infected dupes stop what they're doing to try and infect other duplicants, but are slow and can't open doors, making them easily contained. Also, the zombie cure should fired from a dupes multi-tool, because reasons.
• Hypothermia, Heatstroke and Sunburn are good the way they are.

[SamuraiJones]

7 hours ago, Gus Smedstad said:

Think of the newbs! Won't anyone think of the newbs?

In all seriousness, we're experienced players familiar with the rules. Just because it's easy after you've mastered the game, doesn't mean it's suitable for the default difficulty. Catering to a small core of hardcore players is how games go into design death spirals.

Oh I to be clear, I'm not saying make the game impossible by default! I don't want to make it inaccessable to anyone.

I'm all for an easy (or maybe even normal) that's the game in it's current state. I just would like some more complicated challenges -- rather than "I put it on hard mode, so I had to build twice as many farms and have twice as many cooks" or "I had to craft twice as much medicine." Stuff that makes us play in different ways, new challenges, etc, rather than just the same challenges with higher costs and narrower margins.

[lunazone]

Even when I first started the game I thought the slimelung death penalty was pretty straight forward. The clearly visible threat kept me on my toes. As long as the danger is clearly visible and portrayed to the player, I think it's fine.

[Gus Smedstad]

I agree, I prefer that a harder difficulty setting involve new challenges, rather than just higher costs. I just think that the game’s actually pretty challenging for the typical new player as is, and it’s a mistake to push too hard in making the default difficulty harder.

It’s funny, I was saying earlier that you can more-or-less avoid exposure entirely, and I just got ambushed in my current colony. I opened one of those ruins, and it was full of infected polluted oxygen, plus a morb. Everyone working in the area rapidly got some mild to medium exposure to slimelung. Normally you have perfect information and it shouldn’t happen, but of course ruin interiors are blacked out until you open the door.

Anyway, as I recall in the old days, the common wisdom was that new players would experience at least one colony collapse due to runaway slimelung. New player frustration was pretty common and high. And that was with rules that made actual infection much less likely. I didn’t have a colony collapse, but I did have a couple of deaths because I didn’t really grasp the precise mechanics.

While it’s easy to say “I coped with it and it didn’t seem so bad,” and my experience falls into that category, remember that none of us have experienced a combination of terminal slimelung and no immune system buffer yet.

[Clonefarmer]

Slimelung is kind of a joke now. Once the dupes gain enough attributes the slow down is hardly noticeable. A couple deodorizers to clean up po2 and it's not really an issue. It feels very weak compared to the threat it used to be. On the plus side there's no need to contain slime biomes so base building can continue in a uniform fashion.

Even zombie spores are weak. I thought they would do something cool like turn dupes into zombies, but it just slows them down a bit.

As much as I dislike RNG screwing the player over, I do appreciate fair outside threats that could be countered like disease.

[Ellilea]

I made a topic about the disease options a little while back that faded into obscurity

 

[badgamer123]

17 hours ago, Gus Smedstad said:

Think of the newbs! Won't anyone think of the newbs?

In all seriousness, we're experienced players familiar with the rules. Just because it's easy after you've mastered the game, doesn't mean it's suitable for the default difficulty. Catering to a small core of hardcore players is how games go into design death spirals.

i think that zombie should be fatal......

[metallichydra]

I remember some of my first bases.

(QOL 3)

I thought they where dangerous

I avoided the slime, trying to find "safe" paths to reeds.

 

when I found out that diseases didn't do anything, I just ignored them, but I was disappointed.

 

it might be hard for new players to deal with deadly diseases, but its also really annoying when you realize they don't do anything.

[Steve8]

I found the liquid germ sensor to be pretty useless. Had a chlorine room for disinfection which works very well. But water in the germ sensor doesn't get disinfected. So if you block the flow, the germs sit in the sensor tile while the water behind it is clear. It's more effective to hook up some timer so the water sits in the tank for a day

Otherwise, yeah, diseases are pretty irrelevant now. Slimelung may have been a bit too deadly, but I'd rather they tweak the map generation so on Terra you aren't surrounded by slime on all sides. That happens way too often.

[ATOM7K]

21 hours ago, aresd said:

what role microbes play in the game?

I thought the role of microbes was to be mushed,

[Guest]

5 hours ago, Gus Smedstad said:

I agree, I prefer that a harder difficulty setting involve new challenges, rather than just higher costs. I just think that the game’s actually pretty challenging for the typical new player as is, and it’s a mistake to push too hard in making the default difficulty harder.

It’s funny, I was saying earlier that you can more-or-less avoid exposure entirely, and I just got ambushed in my current colony. I opened one of those ruins, and it was full of infected polluted oxygen, plus a morb. Everyone working in the area rapidly got some mild to medium exposure to slimelung. Normally you have perfect information and it shouldn’t happen, but of course ruin interiors are blacked out until you open the door.

Anyway, as I recall in the old days, the common wisdom was that new players would experience at least one colony collapse due to runaway slimelung. New player frustration was pretty common and high. And that was with rules that made actual infection much less likely. I didn’t have a colony collapse, but I did have a couple of deaths because I didn’t really grasp the precise mechanics.

While it’s easy to say “I coped with it and it didn’t seem so bad,” and my experience falls into that category, remember that none of us have experienced a combination of terminal slimelung and no immune system buffer yet.

For new players all conditions are created. I do not understand what you want. You can even completely disable the disease while learning the basics of the game. Did you come here to protest just for protest?

[Sasza22]

14 hours ago, QuQuasar said:

Food poisoning should result in vomiting, identical to stress vomiting.

Well it can be hard on new players as they can get it as early as cycle 2. But the more i think about it the more it seems the right choice. If they get some vomit early they will know to take care of it next time. I`d say give the disease a vomit effect at the end of it (last ~20s) so the dupe gets rid of the germs from himself. Making the vomit as long as from stress would be lightly too much.

Also someone needs to check if the bladder change stats from food posioning don`t have the same problem small bladder has (it increases bladder gain by 0.2% instead of 20%).

14 hours ago, QuQuasar said:

Allergies should result in sneezing.

Basically that`s what they do. Also a small stress increase.

14 hours ago, QuQuasar said:

Slimelung symptoms should gradually increase in severity to eventually require permanent bed rest, requiring tending by the doctor. If the doctor is unavailable for multiple cycles it should result in death, but can otherwise be sustained until a cure can be manufactured.

I like the idea of sustaining a dupe until there`s a cure available. Like maybe using the basic cure and it resetting the death timer. Similar zombie spores could be handled using the second tier cure. I also think the amount of germs spawned from coughs should be increased and dupes should use more oxygen when sick.

14 hours ago, QuQuasar said:

Hypothermia, Heatstroke and Sunburn are good the way they are.

IMO those 3 are the least interesting and should get some love. The basically do nothing. I think extended exposure should cause damage and eventually incapacitate the dupe. Also the effect should reset the timer each time the dupe is exposed to heat/cold/sun for each disease respectively.

[Voigt]

I started playing Oxygen not Included after the Germs Update, and while Expression Update got released. Germs were quite a hassle back then. Using Mushbars were a sure way to get infected, but grilling them got rid of most of them.

Still some sickness occured, and my dupes barfed into my water.

Slimelung was hardish, but always treatable. So restricting the Swamp Area to only 2 dupes was enough to keep the base and my dupes save. Letting chlorine flow into the swamp biome, or even pumping it there. This got rid of chlorine and get rid of slimelung.

Now all this isn't needed, which is quite sad.

[DemainaNyx]

In my opinion, there should be an easier way to edit the game settings.  Currently, most people load up a game and click new game, click survival, click an asteroid, and click go.  I feel like if there was a better way to introduce players to the game without throwing them into "No Sweat" it would help because very few people want to play a new game on easy.

In my opinion, ONI has a drastic different penalty from Don't Starve.  Don't Starve doesn't hold your hand at all.  You get flung into a new game and die and die and die until you figure out what you need to do to not die, then you die to something new.  The only real ways people die in ONI is starving or suffocating/entombing.  I honestly can't think of any other ways to die in this game and I know I've lost plenty of dupes over my years of playing.  Maybe being incapacitated and left to suffocate, but that sorta falls under suffocation rather than injury or something else.  I get that we don't want to punish new players too harshly since they have a ton to learn anyway, but the same applies to Don't Starve and yet I don't see any hand holding in that game.

 

Personally I liked the older punishment for diseases but the newer way to get them.  Making sure no one leaves because they are under 20% immunity doesn't really make sense in my eyes because we can't really scan for that in real life.  Yeah, we know the elderly and infants are more prone to diseases, but you can look at a normal person and say, "yep, you're at 87% immunity right now".  I get game mechanics but still.  If there was a way to use a duplicant checkpoint to scan a dupe to determine their immunity and prevent passage that way, sure, that would be fine.  But the old number up in the corner felt kinda odd.

Slimelung killing makes sense to me because it kinda sound like it should.  If you picture a lung with slime in it, that's not a pleasant picture.  It's like a form of pneumonia, so the fact that it just slows them down for 4 cycles if not treated doesn't really fit the theme or the name.  Now it just makes them lose air faster and makes them cough.  I want to say they also get like a -3 to stats but I don't remember off hand.  Even when it killed before I never made a medbay, I just put down a few triage cots and that took care of my slimelung infected dupes.  Put my researcher on high priority doctoring and it was good.  So it's not like we are asking new people to grow balm lillies and ranch squeaky pufts to make a cure or they die, they just have to have someone make sure they are fine daily so I'm not sure why the penalty of death was removed.

Food poisoning used to make dupes vomit, slow down, and lose calories when they vomit which fit in my mind.  Now they just use the bathroom more, take longer to use it, and have reduced stamina.  So, even if your dupes have it, they aren't going to randomly make a mess anywhere so it won't hinder your game unless you don't have enough toilets, which would already happen if you didn't have enough toilets anyway.  Personally, merge both in my opinion.  Perhaps reduce the amount of vomiting to only X seconds after they eat, or maybe introduce a new medicine at the apothecary that is just soup broth that prevents vomiting.  It could be like coal and some water or meal lice and some water.  That way if you put your dupes in a medbay they don't vomit but if you let them run around and eat the normal food they will.

Zombie spores is one I've actually never encountered because I think I've only dug up one sporechid in all my playthroughs.  I have a living sporechid in my current playthrough but that's the only one I've ever seen actually producing spores.  It's supposed to be something like -10 to all stats for 18 cycles, which seems pretty good to me but since I've never had it I can't say for certain.  I still like the idea of my dupes being possessed or perhaps corpses coming to life, but I doubt that was the intention.  I can't say much on this but I feel like being slow is fine with the chance to be possessed for X number of seconds.  During possession, maybe the infected dupe attempts to plant sporechids kinda like a pip would.  I would love to see the infected dupe try to attack nearby dupes or critters and the only way to subdue them is to beat them down then bring them to a medbay where they are strapped down to a Triage Cot or trapped in a Disease Chamber machine (the medicine tube thing, whatever it's called).  I think the chamber thing makes the most sense since I honestly have never built it otherwise.  Maybe a zombified dupe can only infect others if they are incapacitated which is when it bites them, thus fleeing dupes/critters would have to be attacked multiple times to become infected.  

Allergies are whatever.  Very rarely do I get a dupe that has them so can't really comment on their effect.  It makes them stressed and sneezy, which works.  Don't know what I would to do change them since it seems fine.

Don't know if these really count, but we also have hypothermia, heat stroke, and sun burn that are diseases even if they don't really have microbes.

Hypothermia and Heat Stroke I feel could use something.  I like that heat strokes damages your health and lowers your stats, and that they retain the lower stats until that health is healed up, but that's about the only thing it does.  Hypothermia I think lowers stats and makes them sneezy?  I don't remember honestly since it rarely happens.  Not sure how to change them but the fact that if you type hypothermia into Google and it says, "is an insidious, frequently fatal medical condition" makes the fact my dupes just kinda slow down feel bleh.  In real life it's accidental and preventable so adding death if not treated to the game seems fair since it's one of those things that rarely happens.  Again, we could reuse the soup from above to help cure it.  Or maybe the Pharma chamber tube thing could warm up these dupes.  

Sun burn should also get something.  I honestly don't remember if it even affects stats or anything at this point.  I think it's just a sorta dizzy animation but that's about it.  Correctly me if I'm wrong though cause I honestly don't remember this one.  Would love if it slowed a dupe down since I know if I have a nasty sunburn I definitely start doing things much slower.  Maybe add a nosh bean paste or lettuce wrap to medicine to speed up how quickly they recover.  Lettuce forces them to be confined the a pharma chamber tube thing or triage cot while the nosh bean paste can be applied at a doctor station and the dupe will be able to work afterwards.  I think nosh beans are harder to produce IIRC so hopefully that balances it out.

 

Overall I wish diseases were more of a threat to put this game more inline with other Klei games.  Unlike Don't Starve, losing a dupe doesn't force you to start a new base, so I don't know why death isn't used as a punishment more.  Yeah, when I started playing I restarted whenever a duped died, but I'm just crazy like that.  I doubt everyone else is.