What was the old immune system?

[Magheat2009]

I have been working on a feedback post to help Klei improve the disease system in the game. During my research I keep finding refrences to an immune system mechanic which was removed during one of the Quality of Life updates during base game early acces, around April 2019. Can any veteran player inform me what it was as I cannot find information about what exactly the mechanic was? 

[sakura_sk]

1 hour ago, Magheat2009 said:

I cannot find information about what exactly the mechanic was

Information (I wasn't playing much at the time)

Spoiler

update 229531 Introduction of "Immunity attribute"

update 282822 "Diseases that have actually been contracted cure more quickly with Strong immunity and more slowly with Compromised immunity."

Suggestion how to change that immune system

update 320058 Immunity system removed and diseases rebalanced

or "old" youtube videos explaining germs

 

[Sasza22]

Basically the old system counted the amount of germs a dupe consumed via food or oxygen. Each dupe had an immunity system stat, similar to the stress stat but starting at 100%. Germs would be removed from the dupe`s interior at the cost of the immune system losing percentage (i don`t remember the actual calculations but the more germs the dupe had inside the faster it dropped). When it reached zero the dupe became sick (if he had 2 germ types, since zombie spores didn`t exist back them, he would get slimelung).

You didn`t have any medicaments for sick dupes, only ones affecting the immunity system. After a dupe was sick he would sit on a med bed (now called the triage cot) and would need to be treated by a doctor dupe. Food poisoning would cause the dupe to periodically vomit even if sitting on the med bed (would stand up for that). Slimelung would cause death if not treated for 10 cycles. Slimelung couldn`t be ured without a doctor (it would get stuck at 7 seonds remaining). Even after treated the dupe needed about 4 cycles to fully recover.

[Sanchozz]

 

19 hours ago, Magheat2009 said:

During my research I keep finding refrences to an immune system mechanic

Do you mean it?
This is not just a references. These are real bugs.
The old effect "Dead Tired", the new effect "Too Bright" (added in July 2019), and the newer effect "Afraid of Dark" (added in "Space Out DLC" in December 2020) - all three trying to reduce the attribute "Immunity", which after the QoL3 Update in April 2019 is always equal to zero and does not affect anything.

Spoiler

 

[ZombieDupe]

Baffling that this system was nerfed to begin with, it looks fine. I guess there weren't any other asteroid starts before. May be for the first few asteroids or starting asteroids having something as challenging as the old slimelung may seem too difficult to deal with, but for harder difficulty asteroids, bring them on! I would love to tackle germs and have the necessity for a doctor in the colony early on like that. If frostbite and deadly chlorine was introduced as well, we would have some awesome challenges in the work. Any challenge that isn't just boiled down to heat problems would be awesome.

[Sasza22]

1 hour ago, ZombieDupe said:

Baffling that this system was nerfed to begin with

It was nerfed first, then after quite a while it was reworked. I didn`t experience the unnerfed version personally but after the nerf you hardly ever had a dupe get sick. Now it happens more often. Back then you could see that a dupe`s immune system is dropping but it was rare, most of the time they were all on 100% unless playing on hardest settings where they didn`t regenerate it at all except gaining ~20% back when recovering.

Now when a dupe started losing his immunity there was hardly anything you could do. Even when you locked him in the base the germs he already consumed were usually enough to drop him to 0. It felt pretty bad. I prefer the new system in terms of how dupes get infected but i liked the old way they recovered over the instant heals.

[ZombieDupe]

The old system does look a bit rigid, may be if changes are made, the immunity could go down depending on how many germs are ingested/inhaled, then below 90% the duplicant starts to get light symptoms of that disease, at 50% major symptoms (food poisoning causing vomiting have them lose some calories almost instantly while calorie amount would drop just as fast as bladder fills up so they don't just generate water) and at 0% the duplicant would die as opposed to set 10 cycles after that, so you could only estimate the time they have left to be treated.

As immunity goes down, the ingested/inhaled germs would be killed, so if all the germs are killed before hitting 0% immunity the duplicant would survive. Then depending on the type of medication you take, immunity could slow or even halt as the ingested/inhaled germs are killed for a set period of time (like a cycle), but they would all need to be killed off before a duplicant is fully cured, after which the immune system could take a while to restore, but could also be sped up with medication.

Having multiple diseases could also help the germs kill each other, which would further expand your options. Some more deadly diseases like zombie spores could be much more resistant and die off much slower, requiring more potent medication to treat.