Pokerus by another name?

[ProjectXa3]

So I've got a researcher and a prisoner laid low with a case of Fibrous Mechanites. It seems to be causing pain but boosting dexterity and bloodflow in both of them, and according to the wiki it's very easy to get rid of. I kinda feel like under other circumstances, I might want to keep this around. Has anyone else here kept a colonist purposely infected for the stat boost? And if so, was it worth it?

[ProjectXa3]

So, current results are that I converted the prisoner to my base's new chef, and he took a four hour break from cooking meals to conk out on the floor of my meat locker-- my active, fully functional, and very busy meat locker. Which ended up with a 4x "disturbed sleep" mood debuff (-6 total), a "slept in the cold" mood debuff (-4), and a "slept on ground" debuff (-4), all in addition to the "sick" (-5) and "in a moderate amount of pain" (-10) debuffs that come with the territory. I'm starting to think this isn't worth it.

[DaviBones]

Mechanite infections incur a penalty to tiredness, meaning they need to sleep 50% sooner or something like that. In general, Fibrous mechanites are good on characters that only need to work rarely, but the work they do is very important -- shooters and doctors come to mind. However, I've done a lot of searching before, and never really figured out how mechanites get cured. My naive assumption is that they take some set number of treatments, then are cured. So you might be able to set them to "no treatment" and they would keep it forever. I have never tried it; I always set them to either "herbal medicine" or "treatment but no medicine" depending on what I can afford and eventually they are cured (seriously it's like 2 seasons or something).

As far as your guy who passed out in the freezer, it was probably cause you hadn't built him a bed yet

[ProjectXa3]

No, actually I... holy ass you're right. He had no bed. What the hell. I meant to switch the prison room over to his control after he joined, but I just realized I never got around to it. I guess that's what happens when you play at 2 in the morning, eh? Anyway, these are two guys who I need active more or less constantly, being cook and (in addition to head nurse/medic) my much-needed researcher, so I'll set them for good care and hope for the best. Thanks for giving me a light at the end of the tunnel to look for with all this, too-- being mechanite-based, for all I knew it was some endless sickness like Luciferium addiction!

[Toast]

A couple times I've had a pawn with Fibrous Mechanites who missed a treatment for a day or so. If you skip a treatment, the pain you get from the ailment increases substantially. So it doesn't seem very sustainable to try to keep a pawn infected with it indefinitely. The pain penalty was something ridiculous like 60% IIRC. Maybe with a Painstopper? Otherwise definitely a problem.

[ProjectXa3]

Hadn't thought of a painstopper, good idea. I haven't really come across any of those so far in this playthrough. But yeah, it's my cook and doctor/researcher/negotiator, so I'm just gonna let it get treated like normal.

[Nainara]

A couple times I've had a pawn with Fibrous Mechanites who missed a treatment for a day or so. If you skip a treatment, the pain you get from the ailment increases substantially. So it doesn't seem very sustainable to try to keep a pawn infected with it indefinitely. The pain penalty was something ridiculous like 60% IIRC. Maybe with a Painstopper? Otherwise definitely a problem.

It's rather nice to have on a pawn with the rare masochistic trait.

[Snafu_RW]

Hadn't thought of a painstopper, good idea. I haven't really come across any of those so far in this playthrough.

Not sure this would work effectively: while fine for pain mood debuffs, IIRC Painstopper /also/ increases drowsiness, so the relevant infected pawn is likely to spend most of their time in bed

I don't think it can be surgically removed either, unless modded

[Toast]

Not sure this would work effectively: while fine for pain mood debuffs, IIRC Painstopper /also/ increases drowsiness, so the relevant infected pawn is likely to spend most of their time in bed

Hmm, I don't think so? I never use the things because I consider them dangerous--it will often save a pawn's life for them to go incapacitated instead of keep fighting until they lose every limb--but the wiki says they don't work like that. http://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Painstopper

I still think it's not a great idea though, since there's still the problem that, even if you were to install a Painstopper on a Fibrous Mechanites-infected pawn, eventually that pawn would be bound to come down with the flu or get a scratch that you would have to treat, and AFAIK there is no way to only treat ONE infection/injury selectively... so you'd be left with a pawn you could never attempt to treat for any other illness or injury, lest you heal the mechanites, and that doesn't seem sustainable at all.

[GreatDookuTree]

Hadn't thought of a painstopper, good idea. I haven't really come across any of those so far in this playthrough.

Not sure this would work effectively: while fine for pain mood debuffs, IIRC Painstopper /also/ increases drowsiness, so the relevant infected pawn is likely to spend most of their time in bed

I don't think it can be surgically removed either, unless modded

You're thinking of the other brain implant, joywire. That gives a +30 mood boost (or such) and reduces consciousness which has a massive penalty to everything due to the way it works now. Painstopper on the other hand makes them only surrender in combat if their movement is reduced to 0%, usually this means they'll never be downed and will fight until they die. Especially scary now that they can still move with 1 leg, so they'd have to lose both to be downed.

[Wheatley]

I didn't know about the last part. I usually ignore the painstopper unless someone has the wimp trait. Now I'm thinking that all of my soldiers need them so they can carry on fighting after an arm and a leg have been blown off. And then walk themselves to the hospital too.