Germs currently do not make for interesting gameplay.

[Ablationer]

I might be wrong about this, but I believe the whole reason you should be excited to be on a brand new, uncharted world, is so you can begin to build, explore, and eventually thrive on it. So far all this update has done is make all of those things even more tedious than before. I do like the idea of finding odd ruins here and there (although why these are so pristine is beyond me) but otherwise this update has been pretty disappointing.

One of my main issues is how germs are ONLY visible once you put up the overlay. Things like gases, water, power, and even temperature generally have a way to be summarized on the main game view in some rudimentary form or another. Then, you can always pull out the specialized display if you want more detail about what is what. But germs are completely invisible unless you put up the overlay specifically for them, and that makes things even more cumbersome than any other system established so far. Worst part is: It doesn't even add anything. You can play with temperature, make ice or steam, use it to cool down or heat other components. It can hurt you but it can also benefit you when used right. Germs on the other hand do nothing but be a constant nuisance, they bring nothing to the table and I ultimately feel it hurts the game more than anything.

[Sevio]

The better gameplay stories about beginning small, exploring a new world and building up also come with adversity that needs to be overcome. Germs are definitely a part of that adversity, and being a mostly invisible threat adds to that IMO. It encourages you to design your base in a different way to limit their spread, and if you do that correctly then you rarely need to look at the overlay. An experienced player will be able to judge where the risks in germ spread are when designing a base without having to look at the germ overlay.

For me personally, in the agricultural update it did not feel like there was much of anything that stood in your way of taking over the whole asteroid. I'm happy that the game puts up a little bit more resistance now, and I think that going forward the game will move further away from that early state where it was basically creative mode as soon as you got your research done.

You can set immunity to strong for a new game if you don't want to deal with germs as much, or there's even debug mode you can use if you just want to build giant bases and systems with no resistance or adversity. We'll probably see more custom game settings added if/when new threats arise as well.

 

[Mjello]

Take a look at these videos if you think they should make disease easier. It took me an hour of dedicated trying to get sick.

I think they should make the disease harder. There is definately no reason to run around cleaning everything just because there is a little bit germs on the ladders like some do.

Link to post with video

[BlazeNightash]

I haven't had much of an issue with germs yea i had a couple of dupes die to sickness but its like i had 20+ and it was basically oh well there will be more to fill their place :3

[TerTerro]

I don't like the idea of diseases management. OK, if you need hand sanitizers or washing basins, fine. But at least make them conected with pipes. I set it up and forget about it.

Now you need to much dupe time for washing basins. Also, if you dont build them, they get sick fast.

I'm not against diseases in general to exist in this game. But right now it's too frustrating and not fun. 

[brummbar7]

I do tend to agree that the current implementation of germs is problematic.  I'm going to drop my wall-of-text suggestion here.  Read at your own risk.
 

Spoiler

 

I see the problems with the current system as follows:

1) germ interactions do not behave as logically expected - that is, they do not spread solid to air/water, or water to solid/air (except sublimation), or either to dupes, except in specific cases (using a lav, oxygen producers, microbe musher).   This leads to counter-intuitive behavior, such as dupes swimming in germ filled water without picking up any germs at all.  The overall mechanic makes it tedious and/or difficult to trace infection vectors if you're not familiar with the mechanic, I think.

2) specific germ numbers on objects encourage OCD micromanaging and disinfecting of all buildings and surfaces possible.  This is not fun.  It also seems to create balance issues where numbers can swing wildly, making balancing infection rates perhaps difficult.

3) #2 is exacerbated in that this OCD disinfecting is in fact largely pointless, due to #1.  A player must either read/watch LPs, or experiment for themselves, to find out that germs on structures are mostly a non-threat.  Until they do, they are spending a lot of time doing OCD un-fun disinfecting and freaking out.

4) Germ info is fragmented.  In the germs tab you see only the percent effect on immunity of 'hosted' germs.  Which is often a large scary number.  If you want to see the overall net effect including immunity, natural recovery, and traits, you have to go to the info tab and mouse over the immune system stat, or go to the vitals tab.  Why?  Why is all that info not in the germs tab, where one would expect it?  In the germs tab you can only see the germ life cycle and effects info for surface germs, not hosted germs.  If your dupe has no surface germs you have to go find an infected tile to get those details.   This despite the fact that surface germs are much less relevant to getting sick, and the effects.  This fragmented info is not conducive to helping the player - especially new players - figure out what's going on and how to address it.

Beyond these problems with the nature of germs themselves, we were given a system where avoidance and waiting are the only way to deal with hosted germs.   We were given a medicine attribute for dupes, and an aid job, but they both seem rather trivial - medicine only affects the time it takes to administer aid, near as I can tell, which is a task applied once a day.  So how long it takes is not really that important.  Making the stat and task of minor importance.  We were given no medicines or other active measures the player can take to fight a hosted infection.  This leads to a certain degree of helplessness on the player's part, which is not that much fun.   Furthermore we were given a new notion of a 'medical wing' with medbeds and support structures, an encouragement to keep the dupes there via them wandering around the base puking/excreting PO, but then were were not given good tools to keep them there.  It requires micro-ing door permissions.  Very not fun. 

So basically we were given a new problem, with fragmented information, and not given a complete suite of tools to address the problem.  The tepidizer was billed as the solution to food poisoning, when in fact simple wash basins are the solution.  I think this is because only two foods use water and dupes don't drink.  So you're better off eating raw meal lice, or cooked foods - food poisoning avoided.  So we got a disease system whose utility is not reinforced by the food system.   We were given ore scrubbers, which address an issue that is of dubious importance, and is mostly more easily addressed simply by storing the materials in a germ-hostile environment.

 

So, I think a lot of issues are addressed by A) giving us better info B) giving us complete tool sets, and C) integrating other systems to reinforce the disease mechanic.  The existing system may be made much better via these routes I think.  But items 1-3 above remain. 

I think the good parts of the system, are the notion of immunity decreasing over time, based on exposure, leading to infection if not addressed, and I especially like the notion of encouraging a specific clinic zone (I like things that complicate base design).

I would suggest that the absolute germ numbers be scrapped.  This should eliminate the OCD disinfecting, and the balance problems of these wild number swings.  I would replace it instead with status effects, like the other stuff that affects dupes (though perhaps summarized in the germ(now "immunity"?) tab, since there can be lots).  So for instance (don't pay too much attention to the numbers):
 

Spoiler

 

- didn't sleep: -3% immunity per cycle (duration permanent until sleep.  Can be applied once per day and stacks)

- walked in polluted water: -1% immunity per cycle (duration 1 cycle)

- swam in polluted water: -5% immunity per cycle (duration 1 cycle)

- Ate bad food: -2% per cycle per negative point value of the food, so -6% for -3 food, -2% for -1 food. (duration 1 cycle)  This penalizes meal lice.  In the very early game, before breaking out of the starting biome, it is offset in part by the dupes' natural 15% recovery.  It should be survivable, but also provide a fairly strong incentive to move on to better food types. 

- Indigestion: -1% per cycle, happens when they eat food below their expectations. (duration 4 cycles or until food *above* expectations is eaten)  This one is not entirely logical (taste vs actual quality) but it would help drive the move toward better food at later levels.  Think of it as not getting all the nutrients they should from the food.

- breathed polluted oxygen: -10% per cycle (duration 1 minute, so the dupe has to breathe PO *all day* to get the full -10%)  This duration would need a lot of testing to be balanced.

- used outhouse: -10% per cycle (duration permanent, and stacks) - this penalty is removed by washbasins and sanitizers, so with proper layout it really won't affect much.  

- used Lavatory: -5% per cycle, same conditions as above.

- body temperature below X: -10% per cycle (duration as long as body temperature is below X)

 

So that's a quick selection of penalties, and they're just ideas to paint a picture, I don't want to get hung up on the details.  The advantage here is they are all directly traceable to the issue, so the player immediately knows the penalty, and immediately knows what they can do to address it.  The disadvantage is that this does not address water, since in this system water is either pure or polluted, and you can't consume polluted water.   This could possibly be addressed via creating a third water: treated water.  In this case regular water would apply a -X% penalty to any food it is used in, and could also apply a smaller swam/walked penalty.   We would need to have tools for treating water obviously.  Treated water would be instantly turned to regular water if it is within a certain non-sterile temperature threshhold, *and* touches any regular water or polluted water tiles, any polluted oxygen tiles, or any natural tiles.  The only way to store it outside pipes would be in tiled storage basins, or in heated/chilled basins outside the germ survivable range.  So you can keep it hot/cold and store it anywhere, or store in in normal temperatures in proper structures.   This should maintain the notion of treating water, without requiring germs in the water.   In the early game, where you can't easily treat water, it's ok as the natural dupe germ resistance overcomes the penalty.  The food system would need to be updated to support the need for treating water.

Immunity bonuses would be as now, and also from medicines.   I think apothecary stations would need to store the medicine themselves, have per-dupe permissions, and have a setting that corresponds to the immunity level at which a dupe will come and take the medicine.  So the player can make a station with strong medicine and a high threshhold for their dupes that do slime biome work, and a station with a lower threshhold and weaker medicine, for the dupes that don't get exposed as much.  These would be general medicines that provide immunity recovery bonus, as a preventative.  

Once the dupe is sick there could be (more expensive) disease-specific medicines to speed recovery.     Actually catching a disease would also be trickier.  The conditions required - reaching 0 immunity - would be the same.  The actual triggers would vary, and may need to involve some randomness.   So eating low quality food at 0 immunity has a chance to cause food poisoning.   Having body temperature below X for Y duration causes a common cold (this is separate from hypothermia).  Breathing PO, or entering PW has a chance to cause a host of different diseases.  I think the randomness would be acceptable as long as the player has warning, and both preventative measures, and remedial measures. 

A further possibility would be for objects and tiles to have disease flags.  So then PO and slime and stuff could have specific disease, but without the fiddliness of germ counts.  Those flags could spread to buildings, but only to buildings which are actually important - food prep, oxygen generation, beds, etc.  None of this art and ladder stuff, that just causes people angst for no good reason.  The flags would have a duration, and then go away, unless they're on/in a medium they thrive in.

Overall, I think that getting rid of germ counts would make the system easier to understand, and easier to balance.  Players could easily tell what's impacting dupe immune systems, and you wouldn't have runaway numbers that imo cause balancing problems.  That's my take on things, and how they could possibly be improved, maybe.  Thanks for reading this far.

[Sevio]

I think your analyses and suggestions have merit, but at the same time I think it's too late to throw out the whole numbers-based germ system and replace it with a whole bunch of predefined if-this-then-that disease interactions. Yes it's simple to define individual interactions but I think it would lead to a headache balancing it when it gets expanded on and the number of possible interactions increases. And letting dupes contract diseases based on randomness is not in the spirit of ONI which has a heavy focus on gameplay systems to drive the simulation. I think that would be more of a fit for story generator colony games like Rimworld.

It also removes a lot of potential for emergent gameplay that can result from different core systems interacting with each other. Temperature and germs for instance, or the way germs can be transported not only via dupes but also via fluids and gas when it's pulled into pipes.

[brummbar7]

3 minutes ago, Sevio said:

I think it's too late to throw out the whole numbers-based germ system

That would not surprise me.  They put a ton of work into this system. And there are few things people hate more than scrapping tons of work.

[doubledgedboard]

2 hours ago, brummbar7 said:

That would not surprise me.  They put a ton of work into this system. And there are few things people hate more than scrapping tons of work.

As a counter perspective, the point of 'Early Access' games is to embrace Agile software development methodologies. This means 'fast failure', e.g. getting your work out to your use base as soon as possible so you know as soon as possible when to scrap it. The best dev teams are often removing as much or more code than they write, and are willing to completely abandon ideas that the market does not embrace.

Not saying that's how Klei operates, but considering their engagement with the community I suspect they aren't afraid to scrap the whole disease system if they know we're completely unsatisfied with it.

[CobraA1]

I'm personally undecided about the whole germ thing. On the one hand, I personally thought it was great they were paying attention to it, and now that dupes can actually die from the stuff, you can't ignore it like the diseases from the previous patch. I'm actually kinda fond of how it spreads in unexpected ways and you can't really seem to get rid of them so much as manage them (although I imagine other people have figured it out).

That said, watching some people on YouTube and some of them do get OCD about it, like brummbar7 mentioned. Also some people think it's just a piece of unnecessary complexity.

I do think my dupes are doing a lot - labor is a resource, and adding a new system adds to the labor needed. It doesn't exactly help that algae and slime are big sources of early game oxygen and now they are a source of a particularly nasty strain of disease, which is particularly difficult to deal with in the early game.

[Sevio]

15 hours ago, CobraA1 said:

It doesn't exactly help that algae and slime are big sources of early game oxygen and now they are a source of a particularly nasty strain of disease, which is particularly difficult to deal with in the early game.

I'd have to note here that if you're not expanding all gung ho, accepting lots of dupes early game and doing your planning while on game speed 3, the clean algae in the starting area can last you quite a while, easily long enough to set up electrolyzers. Your starting water, if you stick to Mealwood and avoid building a shower, should last you 100 cycles or more even without any purification.

And on the topic of scrapping features if necessary, I agree that it should always be considered an option but the emergent gameplay potential I mentioned earlier is too good to just throw away.

If the numbers in tooltips and the overlay are too much detail for most players, those numbers could be fuzzified on the presentation side. (with an option to display them for those who do want to get to the bottom of how things work) They could display things like Storage Compactor: <tiny/small/medium/large/huge/extreme> amount of Food Poisoning/Slimelung germs.

[BlueV]

Im was having good fun with diseases prior to the nerfs, now it seems pointless, thanks to everyone on the forums for ruining a fun game mechanic.

[Grimgaw]

42 minutes ago, BlueV said:

Im was having good fun with diseases prior to the nerfs, now it seems pointless, thanks to everyone on the forums for ruining a fun game mechanic.

Could you perhaps elaborate what you found fun about the update, and particulars of the hotfixes which ruined the fun for you?

Feedback like that could be useful for developers. Writing that fun was ruined without any reasons; not so much.

[brummbar7]

On 8/28/2017 at 7:37 PM, CobraA1 said:

It doesn't exactly help that algae and slime are big sources of early game oxygen and now they are a source of a particularly nasty strain of disease, which is particularly difficult to deal with in the early game.

In addition to what Sevio said, hot biomes usually have oceans of algae in them, and rarely any disease.  If they do start with disease, it's dying, and will be gone probably well before your starting biome algae runs out.  The game now incentivizes starting with hot biomes first, getting access to chlorine and bleachstone, and then tackling your slime biomes.

[Vim Razz]

On 8/29/2017 at 9:20 AM, Sevio said:

I'd have to note here that if you're not expanding all gung ho, accepting lots of dupes early game and doing your planning while on game speed 3, the clean algae in the starting area can last you quite a while, easily long enough to set up electrolyzers.

I've found it to be even more lenient than that.  Even expanding gung-ho and not declining dupes at any opportunity, clean algae from the starting biome plus immediately adjacent chlorine biomes has lasted until about cycle ~80. 

In my first game the colony suffocated around cycle 90 with 30+ dupes because I was too slow setting up electrolysis (I was preoccupied with tepedizer experiments) and was too timid to use contaminated algae at that time.

My second colony was still going strong at cycle 70 and I was starting to transition my oxygen supply, but I put it on hold because I wanted to see what it was like to push into the slime biome earlier.

My current colony began mostly as an experiment, and I've been using fully contaminated algae straight from the swamp for nearly all of my oxygen since about cycle 15 or so.  I'm now at cycle 60 with ~20 dupes, and have only had problems when deoxydizers were placed directly next to beds or workstations where dupes spend a lot of time.  Slimelung just doesn't travel far enough in clean air to be dangerous more than one or two tiles away from the unit itself, as long as you keep a tight watch on PO.

[Sevio]

@Vim Razz Yeah what saves you there is that airborne germs don't actually disperse through air tiles if they're not spreading like in polluted oxygen. They just stay in the same tile even when the gases under them are flowing or swapping places with another type of gas.

If you can drain a slime area (mostly) of polluted oxygen (process with pufts or liquefy it), you can then just fill it with any other gas and it's a matter of time before the slimelung disappears.

[Oozinator]

The best part about the germs update is the trailer.
It slows down gameplay in a bad way for me and after all the hotfixes it's to easy now(useless).
Really bad are the ruins for me. No deconstruct. Brain neural thing one action(why not recharging with energy(needs a dazillion watts constant time, 120 secs, or recharge will reset)). Food dispenser gives one nutriton bar and then it's only blocking buildspace. Not even using the ruin chairs to sit down, when idle or similar.

Cleaning ore with the ore washer/chlorine is not really needed. Handwashing with the sinks not needed. There was a handcleaner with bleachstone integrated and that was useless too (not needed). Now there are so many objects ingame, with unused potential.
Food farming was a downgrade too for me. Then limitation of geysirs 2:2:1..

This was a cute base sim. Dupes are still to easy to replace, it hurts not really when one experienced is dead.
There is so much unused potential with dupes interaction/feedback. When a dupe dies, the time for calling a fresh one(portal) should double up and dozen of small additions are possible. Making friends, marry get kids. Others don't like kids/cheat/jealous.
When i started ONI i was really fascinated about the technical/experimental setting (machines/gas/fluids/temps) and the dupes seemed to be a perfect connection between player and a "science" based game.
For me the game lost something from it's magic. So easy now, like a kids/casual game. I am not happy about the direction the game takes, but hey, who cares..
 

[Nullpersona]

The germ overlay and accompanying information could require detection, like the light overlay.

Dupes could get detection if they are wearing suits with germ detection upgrade.

Until a player has some type of detection, they just have to wash their hands, and hope for the best.