Give Disease(s) Some Love

[O Negative]

The health system in RimWorld has always fascinated me. I would even say it was the system in the game that got me over the "I need this game" threshold I just think the disease system could use a little love, and that love could turn into a lot of really neat stories; which is kind of what the game is all about. The main idea here is to make diseases communicable, instead of having random "BAM, YOU HAVE MALARIA" events...

I'm not the best at using rhetoric to make an argument, but I have thought this through a bit:
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Q: Okay, but even if diseases were communicable/contagious, how would your colonists get them in the first place?
A.a: Coming into contact with raiders and trade caravans isn't exactly an uncommon event. Even visitors and wanderers are great vectors! Generating/spawning pawns with diseases like the flu with varying severities would be an amazing way of creating a situation where someone might get sick. I'm sure most people would prefer the pawns spawned with the disease at a stage that was visible, yet minimally debilitating, so they could decide if they wanted to risk coming into contact with said raider/trader.

A.b: Events that introduce disease offer a more controlled way of introducing a disease to a player's colony. Not 100% abiogenesis, like we have now, of course. Sure, the flu could be a spontaneous thing. But, for the others, an event where an enemy faction intentionally sends an infected pawn to your colony. Insect hives (which are a mid-late game enemy, usually) as a way of introducing parasitic infections (malaria, etc.) These are only a few examples of possibilities and aren't necessarily must-haves.
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Q: Not all diseases are transmitted by human-to-human contact. Take malaria, for example. How would those diseases be contracted?
A: Rats, Megaspiders, Megascarabs, and Spelopedes are all great options for diseases that require an animal vector. Verbs that add Hediffs work great for those kind of diseases, and I would know because I've tested them personally. Plus, it saves the hassle of drawing a mosquito with a single pixel
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Q: How do you scale diseases from early to late game?
A: The easiest way to do that would be through events. The flu could remain a spontaneous early-game disease which is easily treated, but still deadly if neglected. Other diseases could be introduced via enemies (insects, mechanoids, etc.). New events, such as a Fungal Spore event, could be used to potentially introduce slow-progressing disease to entire colonies, also.
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Q: How do you prevent diseases from being colony killers?
A.a: Preventative care options. We have something very similar to a broad-spectrum vaccine already in the game. Having a drug that increases the immunity strength of a pawn would be a simple option to keep doctors from getting too ill. Another form of preventative care might involve apparel (ie. masks or gloves) to be worn to prevent spread/contraction of disease.

A.b: Players will have to adjust their hospital designs a bit, most likely. This doesn't mean an individual room for each sick/injured colonist. Rather, simply 2 separate rooms. One for sick colonists, and another for injured colonists.
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Q: How would this benefit the player experience?
A: Diseases having true cause is a great way to relieve player frustration with diseases, and can keep them from just modding them out, like I know a lot of people do. I've even done it in the past, because diseases just fell on my people for absolutely no reason, and there was nothing I could do but give medical treatment and wait it out. Just imagine the stories of quarantine, banishment, etc. that could come from a system like this one.
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Anyways, I understand that this may not be in the future for RimWorld, but I shall cross my fingers

I'm open to discussion by the way

Survey: Rimworld - Diseases (Pathogenic)

*Click* the monkey head to participate in the survey!

[Anomaly]

I like it.

Players would have to think before allowing every bunch of visitors though their front door. Now that A16 has hit it could be possible to check the health of surrounding settlements  "waaait.. these guys just traveled through a plague town?"

It could also provide more reason to keep yorkies (rats) and cats (mice)

[Lerin]

I like this idea.
Flu/cold - if we are in low temp shivering.
Malaria - bitten by insect
Every diseases - when corpses rotting near our pawns
Parasites - eating raw food
Depression - if we are to long in memtal break state (causing a randomly selfharm and reduce social behaviors)


No more random diseases

[deslona]

I think this is a very good idea. I would also suggest there in addition to food poisoning that a person could catch some kind of disease from and of disease from uncooked meat.

Some things may be just irritating. But a combination may cause serious pain. Maybe some kind of treatment regime. To medicate if somebody has a cold or not.

I think diseases really need to be contagious. At varying levels, of course. And also there should be ways to counter the spread. (Those equippied with power helmets would be immune to air transmitted diseases).

[Rahjital]

Contagiousness would be a great feature to have. It would need some additional elements to not be frustrating in itself, such as surgical masks to prevent doctors from getting diseases from their patients (or the other way around), and an option for preventing visitors from entering the colony, at the cost of damaging your relationship with their faction.

And while we are talking about improving diseases, they should take longer to kill but give some lasting effects when they get lethally severe. Surviving a near-lethal episode of illness with chronic pain or reduced motor skills makes for a much better story than just dying.

The game could also use some more benign illnessses. Say, a common cold that is almost never lethal whether you treat it or not, but bed-rest makes it go away quicker.

[keylocke]

+1

i also suggested something similar ages ago, about being able to prevent diseases by avoiding the causes, rather than just some random tick. to add to your post : mechanite diseases would obviously come from getting damaged by mechanoids.

i believe i also discussed in older post how diseases have a higher chance of spreading the longer other pawns would remain in the same room as the infected (including their blood and puke).

this means that disease can also infect visitors and raiders. if you leave diseased bodies along their paths.

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biological and chemical warfare could add more depth to combat (when being raided or when raiding other camps) but it's a bit off-topic.

[O Negative]

With the news that the next version is going to be 1.0, I'd like to reiterate this old idea/suggestion which I think would add a lot of depth to the game. I've done some filtering through other threads on the forum and added some of the Qs and As to this thread. I love the health system in this game, and I hate that I hate the disease system. Random diseases aren't fun. And the fact that sick colonists aren't a threat to healthy colonists is a bit silly. There are plenty of tools available for hardcore and casual players alike to have fun with a communicable disease system; allowed zones, forbidding doors, preventative care, etc. Any unfilled niches will surely be filled in by the amazing modding community we have.

I want to encourage further discussion on the topic; whether you agree or disagree with the idea.

[Scarecrow]

Yeah, I don't really like the idea of them randomly happening out of the blue. There should be reasons for them occuring, like vectors that pass them onto your colonists.

• Eating raw meat should increase the chance of parasites, not just give people food poisoning.
• Like you said, raiders and caravans should occasionally pass on diseases. I think flu could be a chance every so often.
• Certain animals should have certain diseases specific to them which can be passed onto tamed animals and even colonists. Plagues could be passed on by rats, which would encourage people to keep rats under control etc. Also, rabies anyone??
• Maybe there could be an event where animals in the map become infected and you need to cull them to stop it spreading.
• If people don't dispose of corpses correctly I think there should be a higher chance of certain diseases too.

[sick puppy]

always found it was funny how i could get the plague if i killed off all the rats all the time and kept my base almost sterile most of the time. it would add some value to janitor pawns (in my base brawlers that are capable of social and animals get knives as hands and become social animal janitors, but i guess there are less useful janitors out there aswell.)
or how the flu just struck, was always deadly if left untreated and never spread
or that the plague didnt spread either

i honestly believe this wont make it to vanilla, but still, i'd like to see rabies and the common cold introduced and maybe even cholera, but i guess that should be more part of the poor hygiene mod

[O Negative]

Alright, I'm interested in collecting more raw data on this topic. So, I've created a survey on SurveyMonkey.
*Click* here or the monkey head on the OP, if you'd like to participate.

I thought about just doing a poll on this thread, but it wouldn't be as effective at collecting relevant data as the survey I created, I don't think...