Diseases "restored"

[Henlikuoth]

Hello everyone, 

This topic has been tackled already a few times, but I felt the need to mention it again. 

As you know, the germs and diseases in the current state of the game are not really dangerous. They are mere inconveniences in the beginning of the game and are forgotten once the core base is established and secured and Atmo suits are ready.

I play each new map with the highest difficulty setting for germs and diseases (outbreak prone) and I still don't care about it because it does not have any meaningful effect. I never build any deeper medical rooms or securities simply because there is no need for it. Consequently, there is also no need to have one dupe specializing in medicine/doctoring only, which is sad.

This also means that the whole tech tree related to medicine is practically non-existent in the game. I never spend any time thinking about how to protect my base from germy water or other germs that might enter (other than safe doors and liquid locks which are also needed to handle gas).

This is, to say the least, saddening. An entire tech tree and the need to use it for an elaborate medical treatment and protection system is gone. I never think about how to use germ sensors or get plants for medicine, etc. Because of that I can carelessly (and recklessly) suck water from the outside right into my base and it does not have any disease related effect, even if many germs are in the water. I have never used the disease clinic building in any of my plays. The maximum I used were triage cots and sick bays. 

Honestly, I like the idea of very dangerous germs and diseases and being forced to be very careful while exploring the map and putting great effort in protecting my dupes and base from germs. This would be challenging and suspenseful and would increase both the motivation to do something about it and an exciting sense of possible threat.

If you ask me, the germs and diseases should be highly dangerous and partly devastating, so that people (rightfully) fear them and react to it. I am not saying that germs should kill dupes instantly, but the effects should be harsh and long-lasting if not dealt with properly, which means with medical tech. 

I also want to say that I usually don't want to play with mods. I expect the official developers to handle this situation appropriately. So, if you just tell me now that I can use mods, then that is not the answer I am looking for. Mods are, in my view, for special things that are more or less outside of the design vision of a game. 

I hereby hope that Klei will look into this with great care. The absolute minimum should be to make challenging germs/diseases optional or toggleable in the game (although I personally think it should be a fixed part of any ONI experience).

Come on, Klei, please do something about this. 

[pether]

Yeah, this is #1 feedback that reappears most often on the forums, and for good reasons...

I understand why Klei doesn't want to reintroduce lethal difficulty for the common germs as it would kill both colonies and enthusiasm of newer players. But it would be nice to have more settings for them: outbreak prone doesn't change much as you noticed, the dupes are infected more often, but the result is still not enough to be noticed by the player. There should be additional setting to select severity of the germs, with highest level being lethal.

I could see some Story Trait related to the diseases, maybe spawning brand new germ type. With such update, Klei could revisit old sickness systems and make them more challenging and engaging.

28 minutes ago, Henlikuoth said:

I also want to say that I usually don't want to play with mods. I expect the official developers to handle this situation appropriately. So, if you just tell me now that I can use mods, then that is not the answer I am looking for. Mods are, in my view, for special things that are more or less outside of the design vision of a game.

Yeah, mods should not be responsible for fixing the game. But they are great testing tool - players can play with modded changes to see if those ideas are fun, good solutions to the problem. It's more constructive if you said "Klei, please do XYZ, there is a mod that does it and it proves to work really well" rather than "IDK, just do something". There are various mods that do something with germs, feel free to check them and see how does it work for you.

Also - mods are great to enrich your game quickly and make it more fun. When half of the players like X and the other doesn't, Klei could feel cautious when considering if they want to try implementation of X. Meantime, those who like X can play with modded X, without spoiling the enjoyment for people who prefer their game without it. You can add things you like to your game and you don't need to wait for Klei to do them - I'm sure they have plenty on their plate and even if they wanted to fix germ system, it will take plenty of time, planning and queuing after other ideas.

[goboking]

I've talked on this issue at length, to the point where I feel like I'm beating a dead horse now.  But every time I see someone new to the game ask how they should approach germs, and the consensus invariably is "ignore them," I feel renewed in my crusade to push for an overhaul to this area of the game.  Germs should be a problem we solve for, medicine should be a consideration we make, and doctors should be every bit as important to colony survival as researchers and cooks and farmers, in my humble opinion.

[Henlikuoth]

10 hours ago, goboking said:

I've talked on this issue at length, to the point where I feel like I'm beating a dead horse now.  But every time I see someone new to the game ask how they should approach germs, and the consensus invariably is "ignore them," I feel renewed in my crusade to push for an overhaul to this area of the game.  Germs should be a problem we solve for, medicine should be a consideration we make, and doctors should be every bit as important to colony survival as researchers and cooks and farmers, in my humble opinion.

I absolutely agree. Well, I do hope that Klei does not ignore the community in this. And I hope we will see an update from Klei in this regard in the coming time. 

Actually, some of the remaining issues, including germs, are sometimes demotivating me to play. I don't believe that is what Klei wants, especially if they want to continue with ONI successfully into the future. 

[NewWorldDan]

The diseases restored mod is how I think the game should play on higher difficulty levels. On max difficulty, slimelung should be potentially lethal, germy water should be less effective in sinks and showers, and disease should, generally, run rampant. At standard difficulty, things are just fine. And the only complaint I have about the disease restored mod is it's got some bugs that need to be worked out. Now, I don't know that ONI should be Rimworld when it comes to disease, but that might also be kind of fun. Imagine if ranching certain creatures carried a risk of disease that required regular tending for several cycles. Imagine dupes getting permanent injuries, bionic implants, and so forth. But, I digress, disease should - at higher difficulty levels - present serious challenges. 

[Sasza22]

I also hate when parts of the game aren`t doing what they should. But imo we need more disease types.

Food poisoning works as a tutorial disease that`s easy to avoid and won`t do much harm.

Slimelung is nice as a disease easy to get infected with but not too harmful.

Zombie spores is so rare you almost never get infected with it.

We could use something in the middle. Like a germ that is easy to avoid but if you forget about it it can really harm your base. Like a germ that causes dupes to sleep excessively or one that makes them eat twice as much.

A good thing would be also a disease severity slider - different from the current disease difficulty that controls how easy it`s to get a dupe sick - this one would control how severe are the symptopms. On the hardest difficulty untreated dupes would die.

[Primalflower]

I would feel the same about wanting disease to be more prominent in the game, but, I've experienced that with disease restored as well as diseases as they were originally implemented, and I don't really think what I saw there is compelling gameplay. Disease is the sort of thing where the best course of action is always going to be never actually experiencing any sort of outbreak, entirely relying on preventative measures. Oxygen not included is not a game where remedial measures have ever felt good, especially in the case of disease where in the middle of a deadly-disease outbreak, most of your workforce is going to be on the cusp of death, meaning that work towards recovery is super slow. Maybe people would want this, but I don't think this is game design that really flows well, and i strongly prefer having the 'outbreak' state simply be something that is helpful to deal with, but not terrible if you fall into.

If disease was deadly and hampered my workforce to the point where efforts to cure it were very difficult and slow, I would just want to reload to a point where that an outbreak hadn't occurred. But then, if I do things correctly, and disease fails to propogate, then my gameplay fails to be really effected by disease, and we reach the same point we have today. I'm having a hard time getting my words right here, but hopefully you understand what I mean.

[Charletrom]

I dont know anything about how easy this would be, but it’s conceptually simple… adding a stress debuf to diseases would make them impossible to ignore on high difficulty.

[pether]

1 hour ago, Charletrom said:

I dont know anything about how easy this would be, but it’s conceptually simple… adding a stress debuf to diseases would make them impossible to ignore on high difficulty.

very easy, one line of code

it's not a bad idea, though it's a little lazy and while it's better than nothing I'm sure it's not what people have in mind when talking about disease system updates

[Knurek]

I've never played the mod, but I think food poisoning could have random puking added to it if it was not treated for half a cycle for example. Radiation sickness has it, why not food poisoning. Wet feet and soiled suit debuffs would add to negative effects of the disease especially on higher difficulty.

Slimelung can still be lethal if a sick dupe goes far out of oxygenated area without a suit or mask. It could include stamina decrease over time on higher difficulty as sick dupes would be too tired to work normally. This could result in dupes falling down exhausted in areas without oxygen or before refilling their suits/masks potentially resulting in suffocation.

Zombie spores - it's sad that they are pretty non-existent. I think limiting Sporechids to the oil biome is a mistake as most players go there in the suits already because of high temperature. Just dig them out and forget about them. Maybe instead they could be randomly spawned outside of the starting biome when map is generated increasing the likehood of infection. There could be more plants spawned on higher difficulty. Some could grow in oxygen and only become active after dupes exhaust co2 in the area. Could be fun if Sporechids could spread and grow by themselves, perhaps using critters or dupes as hosts for transport a few tiles from parent plant.

[Charletrom]

On 6/29/2023 at 10:35 PM, Primalflower said:

I would feel the same about wanting disease to be more prominent in the game, but, I've experienced that with disease restored as well as diseases as they were originally implemented, and I don't really think what I saw there is compelling gameplay. Disease is the sort of thing where the best course of action is always going to be never actually experiencing any sort of outbreak, entirely relying on preventative measures. Oxygen not included is not a game where remedial measures have ever felt good, especially in the case of disease where in the middle of a deadly-disease outbreak, most of your workforce is going to be on the cusp of death, meaning that work towards recovery is super slow. Maybe people would want this, but I don't think this is game design that really flows well, and i strongly prefer having the 'outbreak' state simply be something that is helpful to deal with, but not terrible if you fall into.

If disease was deadly and hampered my workforce to the point where efforts to cure it were very difficult and slow, I would just want to reload to a point where that an outbreak hadn't occurred. But then, if I do things correctly, and disease fails to propogate, then my gameplay fails to be really effected by disease, and we reach the same point we have today. I'm having a hard time getting my words right here, but hopefully you understand what I mean.

The trick would be making the preventative measures fun to do. For example, if zombie spores were an actual threat, then ranching shine bugs and building hospitals would be important. These things are fun, but currently there is no compelling reason to do either.

[goboking]

8 hours ago, Knurek said:

I've never played the mod, but I think food poisoning could have random puking added to it if it was not treated for half a cycle for example. Radiation sickness has it, why not food poisoning.

One of the reasons they killed the old germ system is because food poisoning caused vomiting and the vomit contained food poisoning germs.  This created situations where one sick dupe could wind up infecting the entire colony.  If I'm anything to go by, veteran players would be okay because they'd have safefails protecting their water supplies, but newer players who let a sick dupe puke into their clean water were looking at a possible death spiral if too many workers would up unable to keep the colony running.

So the developers determined that since newer players had enough on their plate already, they didn't want to add unwashed hands to the list of things that could kill a new colony.  Had they moved the more severe germs to an option we toggle into, they could have had it both ways.

 

 

On 6/27/2023 at 6:42 PM, NewWorldDan said:

The diseases restored mod is how I think the game should play on higher difficulty levels. On max difficulty, slimelung should be potentially lethal, germy water should be less effective in sinks and showers, and disease should, generally, run rampant. At standard difficulty, things are just fine. And the only complaint I have about the disease restored mod is it's got some bugs that need to be worked out.

I don't think the nature of diseases should change based on difficulty settings.  There are difficulty settings that impact morale, then there's a checkbox to turn stress reactions off.  I think that's how it should work for diseases; the setting should determine infection rate and a separate checkbox should determine the severity of infections, in my humble opinion.

[Knurek]

2 hours ago, goboking said:

One of the reasons they killed the old germ system is because food poisoning caused vomiting and the vomit contained food poisoning germs.  This created situations where one sick dupe could wind up infecting the entire colony.  If I'm anything to go by, veteran players would be okay because they'd have safefails protecting their water supplies, but newer players who let a sick dupe puke into their clean water were looking at a possible death spiral if too many workers would up unable to keep the colony running.

So the developers determined that since newer players had enough on their plate already, they didn't want to add unwashed hands to the list of things that could kill a new colony.  Had they moved the more severe germs to an option we toggle into, they could have had it both ways.

I don't get their decision. Like.. so what that it could happen? New players could learn it like all other things - just load one of the last autosave files and make sure their water supply is safe or quickly make some medicine to prevent the puking. It's an easy thing to learn and I bet it doesn't take more than 15 minutes even for the not-so-bright. It's not like they would lose all dupes forever with a big "GAME OVER" screen and have to start all over like in Don't Starve. 

Edit: If the germ system is working in a way, that lets most players totally ignore it, then what is the point on wasting calculations for this system altogether instead of removing it completely? I'd trade a few more critters and dupes for some useless germs. If food poisoning vomiting was not working the way they liked then they should try to make it interesting and engaging in another way.

Edit2: How about at least giving duplicants temporary flatulence for the duration of food poisoning?

[Primalflower]

1 hour ago, Knurek said:

I don't get their decision. Like.. so what that it could happen? New players could learn it like all other things

It caused the game to be so unwelcoming that the reviews on steam for the game tanked when disease was first happening, until they made disease less punishing. I understand the logic of saving/reloading needing to be considered, but if we're going by what has been explicitly demonstrated to us, there is only so much that a new player is willing to put up with.

[Henlikuoth]

3 minutes ago, Primalflower said:

It caused the game to be so unwelcoming that the reviews on steam for the game tanked when disease was first happening, until they made disease less punishing. I understand the logic of saving/reloading needing to be considered, but if we're going by what has been explicitly demonstrated to us, there is only so much that a new player is willing to put up with.

The problem now is that the germs/diseases have been nerfed to the ground, as I outlined in my original post. 

As mentioned already, the minimum should be to make it optional in the settings. 

The way it is right now, the germs and diseases are practically non-existent in the game. Sometimes I forget they are even there and click accidentally on the germ layer screen. The same goes for all the medical tech. There is practically no effect or challenge coming from the germs/diseases, not even on the highest difficulty setting. Honestly, this cannot be right. 

Moreover, a huge strategic potential is wasted. Imagine various types of germs and diseases that are actually harmful and dangerous and that force a player to finally use the medical tech including chlorine, etc. This is actually how it should be. 

If properly done, this would add a big element to the game that is, in the current state, almost completely forgone. 

[Knurek]

12 minutes ago, Primalflower said:

It caused the game to be so unwelcoming that the reviews on steam for the game tanked when disease was first happening, until they made disease less punishing. I understand the logic of saving/reloading needing to be considered, but if we're going by what has been explicitly demonstrated to us, there is only so much that a new player is willing to put up with.

Ok then it could just be added to higher difficulty settings or completely separately as a unchecked checkbox and maybe everybody would be happy. 

[Primalflower]

4 minutes ago, Henlikuoth said:

snip

refer to my above two posts for my reservations on the matter. I wouldn't mind if the higher difficulty settings for disease made it act similarly to how it did before, but I object to the thought of implementing anything rougher in the neutral difficulty game. To put it simply, it has gone bad before, and i have little faith in it going differently the second time around.

@Knureki agree by the way

[Ellilea]

Yeah, as others have said, just make it a toggle and give each disease a specific, high-difficulty effect.

- Food poisoning causes vomitting (loss of calories + potentially infecting water source)

- Slimelung is a phase-based disease going from athletics penalties to death + infectious coughing requiring quarantine

- Zombie spores lowers dupe's skills until it leaves the dupe in some sort of zombie-state (could be many bad effects)

- Hypothermia actually kills if the dupe doesn't get warmed up soon (think heat-stroke, but with cold, getting worse the colder it is)

- Walking around in bad gasses [like chlorine] without protection gives chemical burns (slowly damage health over time spent in the gas)

Or some such. For now I, too, just make hospitals for decoration and a doctor dupe for the red hat.

[Henlikuoth]

2 minutes ago, Primalflower said:

snip

You seem to be somewhat stuck on the idea that if ever Klei will add more germs etc. to the default game mode, then it will be "exactly" like before, which was, according to your statements here, allegedly a mess. 

I am sure Klei can find an appropriate way for the default settings games. And I do not believe it would end up in the alleged disaster that you indicate at in your posts. 

But again, the basic idea is that germs and diseases are non-existent and ineffective in the current game design, which also negates all related medical tech.

I have no problem if Klei makes this optional, as long as they do it. Then all players would be happy, also the ones who don't want to deal with more difficult germs. 

[Sasza22]

The problem with the old germ system and a bit with the new one as well but not as severe is the lack of ability to disinfect air and limited ways of disinfecting water. This leads to a scenario where you either contain germs fully and never get sick dupes or get a large outbreak and germs all over the base with no way to get rid of them. Imo it`s the lack of counterplay what was the most scary with the old system. A base filled with slimelung would just cause dupes to endlessly get sick. On the other hand proper handling of germs and (over)use of atmo suits made germs mostly a non issue even back then. It was just a mechanic that only shined when you made a mistake.

Lets ask ourselves what the disease system should be. First it should enforce higiene so that dupes wash their hands. It kinda does it`s job here. Secondly it should be a danger that needs to be handled when exploring similar to heat, toxic gasses, agressive creatures or large bodies of water that can flood our base if mishandled. Here it lacks quite a lot. If you can ignore it the it doesn`t do it`s job. If you can`t counteract it efficiently it`s not a good design either. I mean we got germs sensors to detect an infection risk but no way to react to said germs other than closing the area off and waiting for the germs to die in clean oxygen. We could maybe heat up or cool down the area outside the germ living range or pump the air through an air tank surrounded by chlorine but none of those ways are too efficient.

I think we need a mechanic change. Like chlorine disinfecting tiles around itself so you can pump some of it to get rid of germs around. Bleach stone doing the same when dropped on the ground or in a liquid. Now the same mechanic would allow germs to move between phases like dupes walking in germy water should get covered with germs. Another thing is how harsh the diseases are. Slimelung shouldn`t be ignorable. Maybe it could get different levels of severity based on how long the dupe was untreated and how long was exposed to germs during that time; similar to how radiation disease works. Being medicated would then lower the level of symptoms but not remove them entirely unless it`s the lowest level. Dupe could be medicated once per cycle so they would remain sick for a while if they weren`t treated.

This still doesn`t fix most of the stuff but might help a bit in managing it while keeping it a threat.

 

[goboking]

6 hours ago, Knurek said:

I don't get their decision. Like.. so what that it could happen? New players could learn it like all other things - just load one of the last autosave files and make sure their water supply is safe or quickly make some medicine to prevent the puking. It's an easy thing to learn and I bet it doesn't take more than 15 minutes even for the not-so-bright. It's not like they would lose all dupes forever with a big "GAME OVER" screen and have to start all over like in Don't Starve. 

 

Things worked differently back then.  Dupes had an Immunity stat that started at 100% and dropped based upon exposure.  When it hit 0%, a dupe became infected.  The immunity drop was based upon exposure, so it didn't happen immediately, but if your dupes was heavily exposed, it was often too late to do anything about it.  And with new players struggling to keep their dupes from starving or suffocating to death, a food poisoning outbreak was harsh.

But has I've said, I think the developers threw the baby out with the bathwater.  A simple opt-in option during game creation would have spared newer players the harsher diseases while allowing veterans to challenge themselves.

 

2 hours ago, Sasza22 said:

The problem with the old germ system and a bit with the new one as well but not as severe is the lack of ability to disinfect air and limited ways of disinfecting water. This leads to a scenario where you either contain germs fully and never get sick dupes or get a large outbreak and germs all over the base with no way to get rid of them. Imo it`s the lack of counterplay what was the most scary with the old system. A base filled with slimelung would just cause dupes to endlessly get sick. On the other hand proper handling of germs and (over)use of atmo suits made germs mostly a non issue even back then. It was just a mechanic that only shined when you made a mistake.

 

I found deodorizers and tepidizers good enough to disinfect air and water, respectively.  But you're right, proactive play was better than reactive; keeping dupes from getting sick was fairly trivial if you knew what to expect.  That said, playing on the highest difficulty settings meant dupes didn't naturally regenerate Immunity, meaning we had to supply them with vitamins to keep their immunity up and quarantine them if their immunity dropped too low.  This wasn't perfect, but it would have made a good foundation to iterate upon.