Blood filtration, immune system, transplants

[blinari]

Blood filtration currently is essentially the immune system, affecting disease immunity by 100%. Lose one kidney and it's like your colonist has AIDS. Better hope he doesn't get sick. Lose both, instant death. This is not at all how immunity, kidneys, and blood filtration work.

So I suggest this instead:

* Kidneys are mostly redundant. Blood filtration equals 90%*best kidney + 10%*other kidney.
* Blood filtration below 50% causes a permanent "kidney failure" disease, affecting other bodily functions. Below 15%, it progresses to death.
* A new "Immune system" function for humans. This replaces blood filtration as the primary factor in gaining immunity to infectious diseases. Some diseases and conditions can lower this.
* When organs are transplanted, the organ shows up as a "Transplanted kidney" etc. If a colonist has at least one of these it will weaken the immune system by some amount due to anti-rejection drugs. Ships could sell "universal kidney" etc which doesn't have this penalty.

[b0rsuk]

While we're at it, the game misrepresents Bad Back. People with spine problems don't really walk slowly, or are unable to carry items. They can't carry HEAVY items. They need to avoid bending the torso. They need to be straight at all times. Plant work would be a nightmare.

[Kegereneku]

Hear that Tynan ? Get on with your medical PhD already !!
We won't accept anything but perfection and omniscience here.

[Songleaves]

It's true that the kidneys don't really have anything to do with fighting off infectious diseases. The only "physical targets" of the immune system though are your bone marrow and the lymph system. Loosing things like your tonsils and spleen weaken your immune system, as would possibly loosing one leg and its associated bone marrow(I don't know if the other bone marrow in the body works harder to make up for it).

[William1047]

Good point. While we're at it, I think that the destruction of both kidneys should not cause instant death, but rather a buildup of toxins that will be deadly in two days or so, unless the person is dialysed (which should take a lot of medicine and time for balance reasons) or transplantation is performed.

Much the same for loss of the liver. I think destruction of the liver should cause incapacitation due to hypoglycaemia and be deadly in probably half a day, unless transplantation is performed or a person is put in a cryptosleep module. Otherwise, what would be the point of liver transplantation?

Further I think that damage to organs should affect specs. Heart and lung damage should affect movement and work speed (for heavy work). Liver damage should increase bleeding rate and decrease consciousness.

Also, I think it would be cool if colonists could randomly get progressive and incurable diseases that affect organ systems, like severe cardiac arrhythmias, hepatic cirrhosis or end stage kidney disease, that could be treated by transplantation.

Some of this might make the game too complicated for some players, but hey, the doctoring colonists know what to do, and when a certain condition needs player intervention, the game may give hints in bright red: "Colonist has liver cirrhosis! Will progress into terminal disease unless liver is transplanted!"

[b0rsuk]

While we're at it, does the loss of a lung do anything ? I suspect the pawn suddenly dies if he loses both, but I had Blur accidentally trigger an IED trap while filling the area around it with chunks. She lost a lung and I couldn't spot any difference in her behavior or effectiveness. I even went to Information screen and checked details of some activities at random (especially movement speed and work effectiveness) but found nothing.

[JesterBlue]

Good point. While we're at it, I think that the destruction of both kidneys should not cause instant death, but rather a buildup of toxins that will be deadly in two days or so, unless the person is dialysed (which should take a lot of medicine and time for balance reasons) or transplantation is performed.

Much the same for loss of the liver. I think destruction of the liver should cause incapacitation due to hypoglycaemia and be deadly in probably half a day, unless transplantation is performed or a person is put in a cryptosleep module. Otherwise, what would be the point of liver transplantation?

Nice! Just when we got the Toxic build up status! Modder should get to it! We need Choresterol and heart disease! And Dysentery!

[Wex]

Actualy, IRL, a kidney has about the 25% of its nephrons keept as backup, so in case something happens, you can keep filtering your blood; that's why when you see a high creatinine value in your blood analysis, you have already lost half of your kidney functionality.
So, losing a kidney in a healthy person would get a flat 25% less blood filtering.