Permanent afflictions

[Nero Darkard]

I am starting to believe that Klei aims to develop Oxygen Not Included to be a game of similar difficulty as the Don't Starve series. If this is the case and a bit of realism in this space adventure would add to the challenge in a positive manner, there is something I can see would work in ONI which would be unthinkable in DS.

 

Permanent injuries and sicknesses.

 

When all you can control is your own character, adding permanent debuffs is an absolute no-go. But in an economy simulator like this, where you can command an increasingly larger number of individuals, having some be permanently debuffed by an affliction they received during their lifespan might be annoying, but might also encourage the player to stay on their toes and constantly adapt to the changing circumstances. Because I do believe some significantly more severe issues can't be undone even with futuristic technology such as a Rejuvinator.

 

Here a few examples of what might be possible:

 

Head Trauma: A dublicant receives a heavy head injury. From all the possible effect this could have, I am thinking of brain damage as a possible result. The dublicant would gain a big debuff in their ability to gain in experience, might not be able to do intelectual tasks such as research and might behave strangely, like mining randomly, walking into dead ends without being able to get out or ignoring safety measurements.

 

Spinal Damage: Should the back of a dublicant get injured permanently, they might lose significantly in strength and become unable to carry objects, rendering them useless for most tasks involving delivery.

 

Amputations: Especially one or both legs missing would severely slow down the movement speed of the dublicant and might make it impossible for them to climb ladders or obstacles higher than 1 block. Maybe they also shouldn't even be able to climb over a single block and the only ways for them to change levels in the world would be by ramps or elevators.

 

Asthma: With the new slimelung infection, maybe being cured too late would cause a permanent affliction of the dublicant's lungs, making them suffocate faster and having a much lower tolerance to low breathable athmospheres.

 

There are infinitely more ways in which dublicants could be permanently afflicted, but these are the only ones I can think of right now.

[AlexRou]

Rimworld is a similar survival game and it has a very extensive health system. So it isn't unthinkable for ONI to have a more indepth system. There's just so many ways to lose a "dupe" in rimworld and it's still fun lol.

http://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Health

http://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Body_Parts

http://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Injury

http://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Disease

http://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Ailments

[Coolthulhu]

Duplicants are annoying enough already with their random entombments, bathing in scalding water until half-dead, "suffocation dance" when nearest oxygen tile keeps moving just the wrong way, dropping themselves on the wrong side of abyssalite wall (in the CO2 pit), going the long way through slimelung-filled shaft to pick up a rock, starving themselves to death on a med-bed because the fridge was 3 tiles too far, closing off their only exit out of a CO2-filled room and so on.

Babysitting a bunch of suicidal morons is not a challenge, it's tedium. The above instances are better off just being bugs and things on the "TODO: Fix" list, no need to add yet another "oops, you didn't constantly watch dupes like a doting mother, something randomly amputated their legs and now they're completely useless".

Dupes are already competent enough at acquiring the only permanent affliction that makes sense: death.

[AlexRou]

23 minutes ago, Coolthulhu said:

Duplicants are annoying enough already with their random entombments, bathing in scalding water until half-dead, "suffocation dance" when nearest oxygen tile keeps moving just the wrong way, dropping themselves on the wrong side of abyssalite wall (in the CO2 pit), going the long way through slimelung-filled shaft to pick up a rock, starving themselves to death on a med-bed because the fridge was 3 tiles too far, closing off their only exit out of a CO2-filled room and so on.

Babysitting a bunch of suicidal morons is not a challenge, it's tedium. The above instances are better off just being bugs and things on the "TODO: Fix" list, no need to add yet another "oops, you didn't constantly watch dupes like a doting mother, something randomly amputated their legs and now they're completely useless".

Dupes are already competent enough at acquiring the only permanent affliction that makes sense: death.

In rimworld the only way for you to lose a limb is to get an infection that you didn't cure. And the only way to get an infection is to get injured. 

So if we translate that into ONI where dupes can get limb injury from falling rocks or fighting creatures and only lose a limb if you didn't bring them to the med cot in time I don't think that's much more babysitting. 

I agree tho that full on muscular dystrophy or some other limb losing disease that happens purely by chance is too much. And that now with the AI as it is it might be a little ... but with a better AI I don't see why not.

[brummbar7]

It could be interesting as a prelude to final-tier medical care that could remove the stuff (or ruins medical buildings).  Not so wild on it being absolutely permanent, and given the way things were nerfed after the OU outcry, I doubt the game would go the permanent route anyway.

[AlexRou]

5 minutes ago, brummbar7 said:

It could be interesting as a prelude to final-tier medical care that could remove the stuff (or ruins medical buildings).  Not so wild on it being absolutely permanent, and given the way things were nerfed after the OU outcry, I doubt the game would go the permanent route anyway.

Rimworld has mechanical limbs sooo thats one way of making it not so permanent.

If you have to build the limbs then that should be a enough deterrent for people who treat limbs lightly.

[Michi01]

7 hours ago, Nero Darkard said:

like mining randomly, walking into dead ends without being able to get out or ignoring safety measurements.

I'm okay with stat decreases, but a dupe like that would just get annoying and I'd probably get rid of them.

[brummbar7]

15 minutes ago, AlexRou said:

Rimworld has mechanical limbs sooo thats one way of making it not so permanent.

If you have to build the limbs then that should be a enough deterrent for people who treat limbs lightly.

Ya, like I said, final tier medical care.  If the mechanic is used as an opportunity to introduce other fun mechanics as solutions, awesome.  But if it's permanent, meaning there's no solution that the player can plan for (so not counting random ruin cures), then it's not a fun idea.

[The Plum Gate]

If they want us to care about them, and it kind of looks like they're moving in that direction with the limited number of brain machines occasionally working wonders on dupes, then they'll probably end up doing some of these types of debuffs. I'd just rather... well I'd really rather not explore permanent afflictions.

Honestly, the easy fix would be cycling back and preventing it. So it's really a waste of time trying to defeat a dupe, or increase player difficulty with a 'feature affliction' when the player can simply roll back time and handle it before the 'feature' occurs.

Now if you want to introduce a challenge - these things sound like better traits than they do debuffs. Would be a sort of opt-in rather than foisting a layer of difficulty into the fray.

Head trauma - decreased learning skill.

Spinal Damage - decreased athletics.

Amputations? seriously?... thinking the dupe would have the same navigational capacity as a hatch but without the ability to jump, talk about needing "aid" at that point. maybe he's the only dupe that can squeeze through a 1 tile slot, may be some up-sides to that somewhere, but the poor thing is always going to be on the floor with co2.

Asthma - can't hold their breath as long, possibly decreased athletics.

I'm just waiting for low quality food to start causing flatulence. No seriously, variety in the diet should be a deterrent against the flatulence affliction.

[Botaxalim]

The main problem before you all suggest advance feature as describe above

Is the dupe spawn mechanism, in rimworld we really care about single colonist because the only way acquire new colonist is recruit, buy slave, random event colonist join and that all is not in fixed rate

Meanwhile in oni dupe always coming every 3 cycles. I personally dont really care about dupe, just kill and they keep coming from printing pod, unless top dupe with highest skill or bonus perk from brain machine. From that view you can understand adding depth injury/debuff mechanism wont work well since you can kill bad dupe and gain new good dupe from printing pod.