Stress drains Immunity

[ImpalerWrG]

This suggestion is just what the title says, when Dups are stressed that should drain immunity, exactly how much it a matter of balancing but the general principle is obvious.  First off we all know that stress dose in reality reduce a persons health and immunity, but their are game play reasons to make this link as well.

Currently immunity is extremely robust and outside of a few abnormal individuals it dose not VARY enough across the Dup population, this makes it hard to balance the disease system as stronger germs that could overcome the base immunity regen would sicken your entire population too easily, it would be an all or nothing situation.

But by using Stress to weaken immunity, for example reduce immune regen by the stress percentage, would make your most stressed Dups the ones vulnerable to diseases.  The job system give the highest ranked Dups the highest decor and food expectations which can easily lead them to suffer the most stress so these elites can also be the most vulnerable. 

It also makes a widespread stressful event more dangerous as it can have long term knock on effects for the whole population, potentially triggering a disease outbreak.  This is a good thing as currently disease is too passive now, if you don't clumsily expose yourself too it then your fine.  With stress in the equation it gives disease a chance to strike when your guard is down on both an individual and population wide level.

P.S.  I see this change as part of a wider reworking of disease/health/doctors etc as has been speculated about a great deal on this forum.

[BlueLance]

I totally second this, in real life stress plays a huge factor in many peoples immune systems.

[Zarquan]

The idea makes sense, but what would happen on miserable immune systems and fatalistic?  The dupes don't regain immunity on their own unless they have the germ resistance trait.  That mode would be essentially impossible if it were some kind of linear effect.

I suggest the toll to immunity should only start at 50% stress if implemented.  They already start displaying signs of stress at that time.

[BlueLance]

It only means doom if they get sick? If they have 0% immunity as long as they dont ingest any germs they should be ok?

[ImpalerWrG]

Well currently having some internal germs is the only way to actually get to zero, at which point they are officially ill.  Under my proposal your dups lose REGEN of immunity, but stress would never make actually directly drop your immunity number, just stop it from rising again.  To actually have your immunity reach zero you have to have internal germs.  So it should be impossible to actually reach zero without the internal germs that are ready to make one ill.

And sickness isn't doom, we should have a robust medical system that handles sickness almost all the time without death, so long as the player is prepared as they should be.  I think we should have dupes getting sicker more often actually.