Duplicants are weirdly proactive about germs

[PowerPowerPower]

One thing thats always been weird to me about surface germs is that dupes just disinfect things automatically, enough so that if you don’t disable disinfection in general it can be a genuine annoyance because they disinfect too much and waste tons of time. It feels inconsistent with how dupes otherwise do essentially exactly what you tell them, and the main challenge is giving them the right instructions.

In my opinion if contact is ever gonna be a real vector for germs then disinfection should be more manual, maybe even gated behind a skill

[Charletrom]

You can change the disinfection threshold in the germ overlay 

[PowerPowerPower]

18 minutes ago, Charletrom said:

You can change the disinfection threshold in the germ overlay 

no yeah I know, its not about thresholds its that I think its weird that its automatic at all from a design perspective

[cyberwarlord]

3 hours ago, PowerPowerPower said:

no yeah I know, its not about thresholds its that I think its weird that its automatic at all from a design perspective

I could see disinfect as a tier 1 skill. Otherwise auto disinfect is a must.

Keeping things clean in the first place is the challenge. Irl or otherwise. 

[PowerPowerPower]

20 hours ago, cyberwarlord said:

I could see disinfect as a tier 1 skill. Otherwise auto disinfect is a must.

Keeping things clean in the first place is the challenge. Irl or otherwise. 

If keeping things clean were supposed to be the challenge then why would they automatically clean things up for you?

[cyberwarlord]

1 hour ago, PowerPowerPower said:

If keeping things clean were supposed to be the challenge then why would they automatically clean things up for you?

I don't see hunt and click the dirty stuff as a fun game mechanic.

Preventing the germs is the challenge,  the reward is not wasting time on cleaning once organized. 

Tell the dupes if it's dirty clean it. If your hungry eat. 

[PowerPowerPower]

On 4/17/2025 at 5:09 PM, cyberwarlord said:

I don't see hunt and click the dirty stuff as a fun game mechanic.

Preventing the germs is the challenge,  the reward is not wasting time on cleaning once organized. 

Tell the dupes if it's dirty clean it. If your hungry eat. 

You’re still missing the point, if dupes clean automatically then buildings can’t effectively spread germs at all. The game can’t punish you for having bad sanitation in your kitchen by getting your grill covered in germs because your dupe already cleaned it up before you even noticed it happened. All it would take would be turning on the germ overlay, finding the building covered in germs, and dragging the disinfect tool over it. It’s like that with mopping and sweeping and the disinfect tool literally already exists on the toolbar and never gets used.

[urvurm]

So, the next update, you would like to see dupes be turned into bad roommates that only clean the toilet when explicitly ordered to? That would really suck for colonies that are otherwise low maintenance, needing to have the player go drag a box around the toilets every cycle. I don't understand why the time spent disinfecting is a problem for you while also knowing that you can lower the threshold and disable for certain buildings? That's the tradeoff. You can either deal with germs, calibrate it and engineer germs away, or waste time disinfecting all the time. Why do you want less choice in that?

Just canonically, locking the ability to spray disinfectant behind a skill when they can build complex machines without a skill seems silly. And it would make the early game really tedious too. I think they overly nerfed diseases, but that's clearly a different problem from what you have. Not to be rude, but, is there a problem you have that can't already be fixed by changing some settings in-game? I understand you think it's balanced against germs but I am having a hard time justifying your suggestions from a quality of life perspective when you can literally just change the balance for yourself.

[PowerPowerPower]

I need you to think about this for one second before you decide it’s a bad idea.

1. we’re talking about a creature that will literally piss on the floor wherever they happen to be if you don’t give them a bathroom. Dupes are capable of a lot of complex things but they do not solve their own problems without player intervention, that’s what the game is

2. Auto disinfection comes into play in two cases, when a building is actively generating germs and would be better serviced by a washing station or chlorine atmosphere, or when a building is not actively generating germs and the germs will die off on their own over time. Auto disinfection means that the second case is solved for the player before they even realize it happened, and completely fails to solve the first case because buildings like toilets apply germs directly to dupes regardless of whether they’re disinfected, which is the primary path to infection.

I don’t care about germs in their current state. What I’m saying is this system that’s 90% built already will never have one of its key pillars function as it currently exists because it has a built in solution that’s so aggressively automatic it actually gets in the way sometimes. If they ever wanted surface germs to be a credible threat auto disinfect would have to at the very least be reconsidered.

[Charletrom]

I don’t get it. If you want the game to function that way, you can make it. The tools are already there. You can change disinfection threshold and disable auto disinfection on specific buildings.

[cyberwarlord]

1 hour ago, Charletrom said:

I don’t get it. If you want the game to function that way, you can make it. The tools are already there. You can change disinfection threshold and disable auto disinfection on specific buildings.

That sounds awful though. Right?

I get it to some extent. I even would advocate for more low tier skills.

But dupes cleaning can actually be detrimental if not managed properly. Over cleaning every surface or getting stuck in cleaning loops.

[PowerPowerPower]

18 hours ago, Charletrom said:

I don’t get it. If you want the game to function that way, you can make it. The tools are already there. You can change disinfection threshold and disable auto disinfection on specific buildings.

I don't know how I can make it any clearer that this isn't my one weird mechanical gripe with how food poisoning spreads, It's what I think is a strange design decision that limiting the ways that new germs can pose unique challenges with unique solutions, and which goes against the usual design philosophy of ONI. Many people talk about how the infection system is nonthreatening as it currently exists, but because germs are pretty bad at spreading the main solution people have is just making them really dangerous to compensate, but that doesn't actually translate to interesting gameplay.

Surface germs are really the best way of modeling person to person infections in game, dupes are too sparse and don't spend enough time close together for airborne germs to spread in any way other than how slimelung does it, which essentially means that solving airborne germ outbreaks is a matter of solving the environmental problem that's allowing the germ to sustain itself. Because usually there's some overlap in the machines that different dupes use, spreading surface germs allows an infected dupe to pass their illness to other dupes until they receive treatment if you set them up in a certain way, which would actually give a reason to use the quarantine functionality of hospitals (well, almost. that system is also somewhat hurt by the fact that all medicines are instant cures, meaning that as soon as a medicine is manufactured you're essentially done with curing it, but that can be solved where needed as well).

Surface germs do not significantly change the model of infection for food poisoning. Maybe you can get a few extra infections with it, and there are interesting ways to change it to make it perpetuate itself more readily (I know a lot of people don't like that sinks can work with germy water, and I half agree with them), but as it currently exists as soon as you have working sinks outside your bathroom food poisoning is on its way out. I think that's perfectly fine, food poisoning is an early game nuisance who's main function is just encouraging you to maintain your bathrooms properly.

There is much to be said about the limitations of germs, basically every germ has a major flaw in its setup, but this one sticks out to me because it's the only one that's actively programmed in rather than being an emergent property of how several other mechanics interact.

[mitboy]

Personally, I always disable auto disinfect and and literally never ever use it. It feels like a redundant feature and I wont complain if they remove it completely. 

Even if germs were a real threat, having disinfect be a free thing that requires nothing but dupe labour is kinda bizzare. Like imagine if every dupe had a free freeze gun that they automatically used on overheating building.