Plague unbeatable early game?

[PiggyBacon]

I started a new settlement and plague hit 4/6 people 20 days in. Highest doctor is 7 and theres no glitter medicine or Penoxycyline yet. Being that it starts at 40% and colonists are always behind it unless you get those pills or a high doctor is it basicly instant death? First time dealing with it on 16 so I have no idea how lethal it is now.

[LordMunchkin]

Stick in bed permanently. That will at least give them a decent chance of survival given your circumstances. Be warned, without a good doctor (10+ skill) or good medicine (glitterworld medicine or Penoxycyline) or good equipment (hospital bed + vitals monitor), their chances of survival are pretty low. That's why it's vital you start out with at least one good doctor and research medical tech ASAP!

[DeathWeasel]

It's pretty much fatal 100% of the time now. Diseases need a serious rework, they are totally broken in A16. To survive you need hospital beds, vital monitors, and medicine. Or you can just use penoxycyline. If you're hit by plague before you get either of these you're dead.

I've taken to just editing my saved games when they contract plague or malaria early game - restarting just because of a broken mechanic is no fun at all.

[milon]

I haven't played an A16 tribal game yet, but I assume this breaks tribals then?

[O Negative]

*Continues to advocate for communicable disease in place of disease events*

Yeah, diseases like Plague in the base game aren't a fair challenge most of the time. For a lot of reasons...

[PiggyBacon]

Pretty much you get any of the 3 Penoxycyline diseases without having Penoxycyline or Glitterworld medicine your screwed. Malaria was the same way killed everyone who got it. Never had sleeping sickness but its probley the same.

[Zhentar]

I got distracted by Sea Ice before I could put diseases to the test, but by my math <40y.o. pawns should be able to beat the plague with averages tends of 41%, assuming more or less full bedrest after it's exposed. You need a (healthy) skill 9 doctor to average that with herbal medicine, at which point you'd still be looking at roughly 50/50 chance of survival. With regular medicine, you would only need skill 4 to tend that well.

So I don't think it breaks tribals, but it does add a significant challenge, particularly in jungle biomes.

edit: Malaria and Sleeping Sickness should only need tends of about 20%, so significantly more survivable, although you'll lose a ton of pawn time to bed rest.

[Stormfox]

I just now experienced that, too.

I bet it has to do with the recent massive nerfing of medicine effectiveness. Tynan forgot to take a look at diseases when he did that and the result is that the harsher diseases are almost impossible to survive before you have medical beds, good doctors and at least a huge amount of normal meds.

I just tried for a while with a few reloads and even with solid doctors for a 1-year-old colony, normal meds and superior (but non-medical yet) beds in a sterile room, the immunity gain is just about as fast as the plague percentage ticks up, making it almost impossible to survive for the victims.


The real bummer is that diseases were one of the medium bad events I really liked a few months before, because they introduced some kind of mid-term drawback, needed a bit of attention, but where not fiddly nightmares of micromanegement or impossibly harsh.

[LordMunchkin]

Tribal plague is a nightmare. You have to base your whole strategy around surviving the plague (start with 2+ healers, buy all the medicine you can from everyone as quickly as possible, research hospital beds and vitals monitors as quickly as possible). It took me several tries to get past the first two years exactly because of plague (2/3 colonists would die of it leaving me defenseless). When I did make it was mostly due to luck (right combo of caravan traders gave me the money and means to buy good medicine). Seriously, fighting mechanoids with bows and arrows was less stressful than dealing with the plague! 

[dogthinker]

(As tribals) can't you just prioritise trading for a small stockpile of Penoxycyline and some glitter meds? If you've got a high risk of disease, that tells me the colony is probably somewhere nice and warm, which means easy farming and lots of wood, both of which mean easy money.

[b0rsuk]

Getting the right trader is the hard part.

[LordMunchkin]

(As tribals) can't you just prioritise trading for a small stockpile of Penoxycyline and some glitter meds? If you've got a high risk of disease, that tells me the colony is probably somewhere nice and warm, which means easy farming and lots of wood, both of which mean easy money.

Yeah, but if you get too wealthy too quickly as tribal you're going to get screwed by the RNG. You may be the richest colony on the planet but you're still playing with sticks and stones. 

[Wanderer_joins]

I got distracted by Sea Ice before I could put diseases to the test, but by my math <40y.o. pawns should be able to beat the plague with averages tends of 41%, assuming more or less full bedrest after it's exposed. You need a (healthy) skill 9 doctor to average that with herbal medicine, at which point you'd still be looking at roughly 50/50 chance of survival. With regular medicine, you would only need skill 4 to tend that well.

So I don't think it breaks tribals, but it does add a significant challenge, particularly in jungle biomes.

edit: Malaria and Sleeping Sickness should only need tends of about 20%, so significantly more survivable, although you'll lose a ton of pawn time to bed rest.

Yes, i don't play tribals start, but i've treated prisoners in wooden beds with herbal, if they're young and healthy they'll make it.

[XeoNovaDan]

I've honestly fought off plague in my Main A16 colony before I even got hospital beds, even though my colony's best doctor was afflicted (I had him do some tending before he was due for his treatment). Everybody still made it through though (it was cut close for one person though as they were aged 52, but they still barely scraped through - something like 95% disease and 100% immunity), even with a half-decent doctor (8 medicine skill IIRC), ordinary medicine, and pretty much constant bed rest.

Just use a doctor with at least 6 or 7 skill (preferably higher, but they will just about do), ordinary medicine, and stick them in bed, and most should get through. It's really not as bad as people think.

Edit: But yeah, Herbal Medicine simply won't cut it unless one's immunity is 'sufficiently' ahead of the disease progress, or if you've got a very skilled and/or bionic doctor, and possibly hospital beds on top of that. Other than that, you need normal medicine at the very least - or Glitterworld if you've got poor doctors.

Edit 2: On the other hand, this case was later mid-game as opposed to early, but this should mostly still apply to early game.

[Ghasty]

Yeah, I got the plague a couple times on my latest save. Used full glitter world medicine treatments. No survivors. Such BS, Tyrone really has got to fix this.