Hazards

[hostility]

Issue:

I believe the game does not posses enough hazards. The game has certain mechanics that would make you intuitively believe it creates for an experience where you would need to overcome certain obstacles that could have devastating consequences. However, the reality is that those mechanics are just a minor inconvenience, and do not require any more of the player's attention than having to worry about where they will find basic building materials. 

 

Some of these things are:

 

• Illness and Doctoring - Where a Doctor is never required in the game. Illnesses do not cause any noticeable negative consequences outside of a minor periodic inconvenient pause in the Dupe's work
• Food Shortage - The ability to turn an abundant resource, Dirt, into food, with no noticeable consequence, completely negates the idea of starvation being an issue at all within the game.
• Land Slides - Sand falling is something that could have really added a challenge to the game, especially if the Dupe could have become buried in Sand. However, this is just another example of something that is just a time sink, in that it just a minor inconvenience as the Dupe digs through a wall of Sand.

     

Solution:

With the game launched, a simple solution would be best to remedy these problems using existing mechanics. With that said, I would suggest the following:

 

• Remove illnesses going away on their own, and give an exponential level of Stress to be added to the Dupe the longer an illness goes ignored.
• Make Food Shortages give a global level of Stress, and make Mush Bars give -3 morale.
• Give Sand the same properties as liquids when not mined, but keep them as a solid.

 

 

 

[Derringer]

All of these things used to be much bigger hazards in early access.

• Mush bars, in addition to -1 morale, would apply a Diarrhea debuff to any dupe without the Iron Gut perk, sending them running for the loo three times a cycle. Long distance errands would be a complete bust without conveniently placed outhouses, and you might need more of them.
• Disease cures didn't exist, only immunity boosters and treatment to reduce the duration and severity of a disease.
• Food Poisoning afflicted dupes would randomly vomit, losing some of the food value they've eaten and spewing polluted water with even more Food Poisoning germs wherever they happen to be. The Iron Gut perk did not give immunity to Food Poisoning.
• Slimelung would outright kill an untreated dupe in 8 cycles. Treatment would downgrade it to non-fatal.
• Dropping sand more than one tile deep on a dupe was a pretty reliable way to accidentally entomb them, requiring them to be dug out by their peers before suffocating to death. (For that matter, building tiles at head height tended to result in head-stuck-in-tile syndrome, also requiring rescue.)

Food shortage being a global stressor would be an interesting way to turn up the heat. I imagine it would be even worse on Bottomless Stomach types, and if it triggers the Binge Eaters...