Some tweaks to the Disease System

[Magheat2009]

In my opinion, these relatively simply changes can be made to improve the disease system and make it more thematic-

1. Dupes should vomit germy polluted water on being infected with food poisoning. This should also reduce their calories by 500 kcal. Number of time a dupe has a chance of vomitting during a cycle should be influenced by disease difficulty slider. 

2. Oxygen should inhibit slimelung at a rate in line with other gases that inhibit slimelung, such as Natural Gas, not faster.

3. Immuno-boosters and the vitamin chews can be merged into a single tablet, providing the same or better immunity than immuno boosters. Preferably to be called vitamin chews as that is more thematic.

4. Germ sensor should sense germs in an area (like the dupe motion sensor) rather than just monitoring the tile its sitting on.

5. Slime produced by Pufts should not be slimelung free. 

6. Number of germs produced by coughing due to slimelung should be adjusted to make it more infectious. Should be influenced by the disease difficulty slider.

7. Coughing should interrupt the sleep of other dupes sleeping in the same bedroom.

[Sasza22]

1. They used to do that. The main issue is that it`s only a problem early in the game and for beginner players making the earlygame harder and the game overall being harder to learn. But honestly i`d like a harder setting where dupes would vomit again. Maybe on regular settings the dupe would just get the regular symptoms and just vomit at the end of the disease period (giving some time to react to sickness)

2. Slimelung is notoriously hard to get rid of once you got your base infected. Now at least we got radiation to disinfect in the dlc but it`s a hard balance. Either it fully blocks it from spreading in your base or it just spreads so fast it takes 20+ cycles to clean up.

3. Agreed, nobody really spends time making those. Main issue is that you don`t see if they actually do something. I`d like to see a rework on them. They should work longer(10 cycles or something) and give dupes immunity to catching a single disease upon waking up (when they got exposed earlier). Then it would show somehow that the dupe dodged getting sick. That would make it seem more rewarding.

4. Agreed, that would be some nice QoL for them.

5. Pufts are already terrible in in converting oxygen to slime. If they got a huge buff (like 250% consumed mass produced as slime) i`d take the extra germs though.

6. Yup, the germs produced disappear instantly. But i`d go further. Anytime a dupe coughs dupes within 2 tiles from him should get exposure to slimelung.

7. They used to sneeze which worked that way. I guess it could still do it just at a lower range.

[Magheat2009]

On 12/23/2021 at 5:42 AM, Sasza22 said:

2. Slimelung is notoriously hard to get rid of once you got your base infected. Now at least we got radiation to disinfect in the dlc but it`s a hard balance. Either it fully blocks it from spreading in your base or it just spreads so fast it takes 20+ cycles to clean up.

I believe it is only the possibility of a messy outbreak that can make hospitals and medicine make sense. Hospitals are easy to construct, and can significantly reduce chances of a disease spreading to an entire base. More advanced designs are better at preventing outbreaks. Medicine will ensures that a outbreak will not happen, so it makes sense to produce them even in the late game.

Hospitals need a small change to be usable, which I have highlighted below.

 

[Sasza22]

On 3/19/2022 at 11:12 AM, Magheat2009 said:

I believe it is only the possibility of a messy outbreak that can make hospitals and medicine make sense. Hospitals are easy to construct, and can significantly reduce chances of a disease spreading to an entire base. More advanced designs are better at preventing outbreaks. Medicine will ensures that a outbreak will not happen, so it makes sense to produce them even in the late game.

Hospitals made sense with the old system that required the dupe to spend several cycles sick before recovering. The dupe would sit in there and not spread slimelung around.

But currently dupes recover instantly if there`s medicine available. If there`s none they won`t even visit the hospital which makes the room kinda pointless. Also dupe coughs hardly spread slimelung around (the amount of germs created is too small for them to grow in Poxygen) so locking them in a room wouldn`t do much either.

IMO for hospitals to make sense diseases would need time to get cured again and be more contagious when a sick dupe meets other dupes so it makes sense to quarantine them.