Plague unbeatable early game?

[TheMeInTeam]

Plague is broken for tribal.  You settle near an outlander colony to trade for penoxycillin, or you die at random.

When you have 4 people get plague and 1 is your doctor, herbal medicine offers no consistent means of rescuing people, even if you sac your doctor you're likely to lose almost everyone who gets it.

If you do immediately take penoxycillin, you can basically ignore the plague.  No need for hospital beds or further micromanagement, as long as you take it as soon as plague appears and don't force your pawns into exhaustion they only get to "major" without further effort before becoming immune.

This wouldn't be too unreasonable if there were a minimum time requirement before the game can go "here, you lose" in the first 2-3 seasons. 

[GarettZriwin]

Is it broken indeed?

It is plague - very deadly disease.
Tribals are primitive folk on rimwolds, it is basically expected that diseases may be harmful, especially the most deadly one.

[TheMeInTeam]

Is it broken indeed?

It is plague - very deadly disease.
Tribals are primitive folk on rimwolds, it is basically expected that diseases may be harmful, especially the most deadly one.

Yes.  From a design perspective "sorry you lose" without counterplay is poor design, especially in a game that is usually very, very good about punishing you for mistakes and allowing you to survive if you adequately prepare.  Its tuning being off is not unreasonable given this game isn't even beta yet, but in its current form it's detrimental to the "prepare or die" setup the game uses in most cases.

Plague right now is similar to heat waves before the passive cooler existed.

Or put another way: are you making a case that it should be impossible for tribes to defend from enemy raids since they have guns, or that enemy tribal raids should be easily trounced as long as you have an automatic or two?  No?  Then don't try to make a case that plague is ok "because tribe".  Argue it from a gameplay perspective, and you'll see it's broken.

[Limdood]

just recently got malaria in a tribe game.  The event came on day 10.  That means malaria actually hit on day 7 or 8 most likely, and the % just hit 60 on day 10.

This was cassandra easy (not peaceful or basebuilder), as i wanted a laid back animal centric game for fun.

I had 2 doctors, all others incapable of care.  my good doctor had around 12 skill, but was 68.  The plague hit as I had a caravan a full day out away from home...both doctors and one of the caravaners got malaria. 

I quickly floored and cleaned the rooms with med beds and made stockpiles for pemmican and meds in the rooms.  Put the two doctors together, and immediately treated and sent them to bed with herbal meds.  When Pete got back the next day (luckily with 8 modern meds i bought at the outlander town i visited), he got sent to bed there too.  My other colonists could do NOTHING but keep the room clean...its a pain that incapable of medical means they can't even bring food to downed colonists.  I kept just BARELY up with everything.  I was OK with the possibility of losing Pete (he was a wanderer, though a fairly good one) since he was untreated for a whole day on the world map, but it looked like all 3 were going to pull through.

Then extreme malaria set in, incapacitating my 2 doctors...my only 2 pawns CAPABLE of medical care, out of 6....oops.  Just ONE MORE TREATMENT was all I'd need to live, but missing it would mean all 3 would die.

My tribe will forever tell stories about the specter that appeared in their midst, treated them, and then left the colony without a trace. (unwilling to die to such ridiculousness after putting up such a fight, i turned on dev mode, spawned in a colonist, had the colonist treat them all, then wander away...dev mode 5000 damage on the pawn until he died and the body was gone).

As far as this topic goes, yes, obviously the disease mechanic needs an overhaul, and i'd love to see epidemics stay in the game in ROUGHLY their current form, but they should be much more rare, and hit later in the game, and notified earlier.  Conversely, i think disease from bad cleanliness, cooking, contaminants, or environmental factors should be MORE prevalent, but only affect pawns one at a time (though a chance to contract disease through contaminated surfaces and items and pawns would probably mean eventually the diseases would spread).

For people looking for a chance, or MORE of a chance to beat diseases with suboptimal starts (such as tribal) - keeping doctors near patients, keeping food near patients (when doctors are sick, to minimize time out of bed), and keeping the floor of any makeshift hospital covered and clean (wood or concrete floor is fine...dirt is not).  Also, send a caravan ASAP to an outlander town to trade for modern medicine or penoxycyline.  This last game I described above i was not adjacent to an outlander...I travelled 15 hexes to one on day 7 though, because i wanted some modern guns and medicine - which, historically, is how technologically stunted societies maintained, survived, or advanced their culture among more advanced societies.

[Jimyoda]

i turned on dev mode, spawned in a colonist, had the colonist treat them all, then wander away...dev mode 5000 damage on the pawn until he died and the body was gone).

Just a side note, you can use the dev tool 'destroy' (you have to scroll down to see it) to disappear something with one click.

[cultist]

Conversely, i think disease from bad cleanliness, cooking, contaminants, or environmental factors should be MORE prevalent

It would be nice if such things existed at all... disease in Rimworld is a 100% randomly generated event. Nothing you do or don't do will prevent or result in disease (unless you count food poisoning, but that's essentially harmless).

That's one of the reasons people are so unsatisfied with how deadly diseases are right now. Your game is shut down by a random dice roll and nothing else.

[Limdood]

That's one of the reasons people are so unsatisfied with how deadly diseases are right now. Your game is shut down by a random dice roll and nothing else.

I play D&D with friends, I'm used to it, and accustomed to planning ahead to avoid 1 bad roll = death (it CAN be done in this game too).

BUT, your point is well taken.  The "event based" disease certainly SHOULD be a thing...outbreaks and epidemics happen, but they need to be the exception...a rare thing, while other risk of disease is lower level and constant.

I WANT disease to be deadly.  I do NOT think that herbal medicine and doctor care should be enough in every case.  There is almost no case where you will not have herbal+ and doctor care.  That means if tribals are built to be able to survive disease most of the time, then disease isn't a threat, and it SHOULD be.  Even regular medicine is easy to get, stockpile and use on diseases.  There is a fundamental disconnect in people saying that using any medicine should survive diseases and saying that they want diseases to be a threat.  BECAUSE medicine is easily obtainable, medicine-treatable disease fundamentally can't really be deadly, OR is impossible to deal with (tribal or custom "nothing" starts).

Following through this thread, I haven't seen anyone suggest a "solution" that fixes the issue, that when:
disease is treatable by medicine, and medicine is obtainable easily, quickly, and in quantity, that disease is no longer a threat. 

Conversely:
Disease is deadly without medicine, and some scenarios start without medicine, so disease is almost a sure death sentence without immediately taking steps to prepare.

In my opinion...my second assertation above is fine.  You can't balance the game around tribals AND survivors.  If something is a challenge for tribals, it is a non-issue for colonists.  If something is a challenge for colonists, it is deadly for tribals.  The game NEEDS to be this way.  Otherwise tribal really becomes no different than survivors. 

Further, Tynan already TRIED to address this.  He TRIED to make diseases a real threat.  He lowered the effectiveness of that easy-to-obtain medicine, while keeping the hard to get stuff really strong.  He then added a PREVENTATIVE measure that also represents a significant cost (penoxycyline).  Suddenly the game had a real, tangible tradeoff: 1) ignore penoxycyline and work to try to fight diseases off with only meds - and hope. 2) use penoxycyline on your doctor...ALL the time.  remember, disease really hits before the event, so you need to have had penoxycyline active for a few days before the event hits.  This means your doctor is likely to always be available to care for (the 3) diseases (that penoxycyline affects).  and 3) make the insane investment to keep all your worthwhile colonists taking penoxycyline all the time....crazy expensive, but eliminates a threat.  All 3 of these seem like worthwhile, well thought out tradeoffs, and the only visible flaws are that penoxycyline is dependent on trade (you can minimize by buying penox and neutro, but you still rely on a trader AT LEAST once, and then periodically in the future) and that its hard to define the worth of preventative measures - human psychology means if you take penox all the time, and never get disease, you're left wondering if maybe disease just didn't really hit...

Oh, luciferium also addressed disease issues....makes it really hard to die from disease with crazy high blood filtration.

The only thing i can think of that would help improve the "tradeoff" situation that Tynan set up is to possibly make some other drugs that the player COULD produce themselves affect blood filtration...but make it yayo or flake or go juice or something else that can cause addiction and permanent damage/ODs.  A new, low cost, high risk answer to disease.

BTW, i'm going to make a thread in the suggestions forum about this, feel free to weigh in in agreement, disagreement, argument, or refinement.

[TheMeInTeam]

The other bad aspect is that you get hit with extended downtime, which interferes with the gameplay in general.  Sleeping sickness is particularly vexing, because unless you're running proxy trades for penoxy cycling (until you make enough your own), it's guaranteed long stretches of downtime.  Player interaction and monitoring of pawns is a core experience in the game, so more than halving it while introducing time-precision micromanagement is probably why people don't consider it fun.

I dislike toxic fallout for similar reasons.  It's less colony threatening than many events, but requires roofing + zone micromanagement + constant swapping in and out of zones unless you're getting it so late that you have a 100% sufficient indoor colony.

In my opinion...my second assertation above is fine.  You can't balance the game around tribals AND survivors.  If something is a challenge for tribals, it is a non-issue for colonists.  If something is a challenge for colonists, it is deadly for tribals.  The game NEEDS to be this way.  Otherwise tribal really becomes no different than survivors. 

Further, Tynan already TRIED to address this.  He TRIED to make diseases a real threat.  He lowered the effectiveness of that easy-to-obtain medicine, while keeping the hard to get stuff really strong.  He then added a PREVENTATIVE measure that also represents a significant cost (penoxycyline).  Suddenly the game had a real, tangible tradeoff: 1) ignore penoxycyline and work to try to fight diseases off with only meds - and hope. 2) use penoxycyline on your doctor...ALL the time.

No.  You do not need tribals and survivors to be the same.  What you do need is something, anything at all, a tribe can *consistently* do to hedge against disease, just like there are ways to *consistently* hedge against cold, heat, and raids.  All of those are more challenging for tribes by a margin.  All of them are doable if you take the correct action.

Season 1 tribe disease has absolutely no counter-play unless you game it by plopping down near an outlander settlement guaranteed to have it.

"Don't pick this option unless you settle near another colony or it's expected that you die at random with nothing you can do about it.  It's totally fine to just insta-lose on RNG because reasons that don't apply in every other aspect of the game system" is not a rational, self-consistent position.

So what is the solution?  The short term solution is to put disease on a timer, so you can't get it within 1-2 seasons.  Tribes that invest straight for electricity/other avenues and fail to trade for penoxy within a year or so then risk death, but have a CHANCE to avoid 2/3 of the colony dying by RNG with no counter option, just like they have a chance to defend guns or heat waves.

You can totally get penoxy by 2nd season on any biome except sea ice and maybe ice sheet as a tribe.  But there's nothing you can do if it's not cargo dropped/tradeable and you get disease earlier than that.

[Limdood]

I put up my suggestion thread on the suggestion board.

https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=29945.0

Feel free to weigh in (but please read the whole thread and stay on the rather narrow suggested changes topics before commenting).

One suggestion there does address how tribals might consistently address disease WITHOUT trivializing it for survivor factions (I literally cannot think of a different way tribals could consistently combat disease without trivializing it for survivors - any positive changes to power or supply of medicine affects survivors far more, and any negative change affects tribals for more (as was seen in A15 to A16 meds change))

[cultist]

(lots of text)

That's all great advice and such but you're kind of missing the point. This is about diseases (specifically plague) in the very very early game, as in the first season. There is no penoxycline... there is no glitterworld medicine, there are no traders or any of these things unless you get extremely lucky. It's just your starting pawns with no hospital beds and regular medicine at best. Plauge hits, you're dead. RnG at its worst and very unwelcome in a game that has so far been quite clever when it comes to disguising/moderating its RnG bullshit.

You realize medicine was massively nerfed in A16 right? Herbal is now the equivalent of rubbing dirt on a wound and regular medicine is what  herbal used to be. Glitterworld and ONLY glitterworld gives a good chance of survival. Everything else is a gamble when it comes to diseases and especially operations.

[Limdood]

in the first season. There is no penoxycline... there is no glitterworld medicine, there are no traders or any of these things unless you get extremely lucky.

A16 made your faction finally able to dictate WHEN you traded with others.  It also made you NEED to trade with others (or risk the silent, disease death that befell so many isolated civilizations in history)

I do think that plague should probably have about a 20 day minimum grace period before hitting, but i also think that you could generally call a caravan to you or more likely, visit a nearby outlander town within the first 10 days easily.  I'm not saying you HAVE to settle next to one...even a 20 hex march isn't too bad considering the first season is spring or summer by default (or you're in hot enough climate that season doesn't affect travel time).

It isn't fun just "losing" - of course not.  But how would you change it so that disease is more survivable for tribals, but still an actual threat for the survivor type colony?  A longer grace period still "forces trading" it just gives you more time to do it.  Modifying the diseases less deadly or medicine more effective completely removes disease as an actual threat for survivors.

[TheMeInTeam]

in the first season. There is no penoxycline... there is no glitterworld medicine, there are no traders or any of these things unless you get extremely lucky.

A16 made your faction finally able to dictate WHEN you traded with others.  It also made you NEED to trade with others (or risk the silent, disease death that befell so many isolated civilizations in history)

I do think that plague should probably have about a 20 day minimum grace period before hitting, but i also think that you could generally call a caravan to you or more likely, visit a nearby outlander town within the first 10 days easily.  I'm not saying you HAVE to settle next to one...even a 20 hex march isn't too bad considering the first season is spring or summer by default (or you're in hot enough climate that season doesn't affect travel time).

It isn't fun just "losing" - of course not.  But how would you change it so that disease is more survivable for tribals, but still an actual threat for the survivor type colony?  A longer grace period still "forces trading" it just gives you more time to do it.  Modifying the diseases less deadly or medicine more effective completely removes disease as an actual threat for survivors.

A longer grace period is all it "needs", as in plague would not be completely unsurvivable then.  You have more time to set up, more time to trade more distant target locations, and enough time to research penoxy yourself.  Right now a tribe with scheduled researching can complete every tech in the game in ~ 3 years (faster if you double up on benches, but that's not too realistic or necessary).  If you give them 2 seasons then stonecutting --> drug production --> penoxy is an attainable path, sacrificing electricity being available earlier.  However, tribes can survive anything other than ice sheet/sea ice a long term w/o electricity.  They can not survive early game plague.

So a tribe that isn't in a position to trade fast would then want to prioritize penoxy or take the risk of dying to disease.  In contrast to the current configuration, that's challenging and conditional, but not entirely unreasonable/optionless.

[cultist]

A16 made your faction finally able to dictate WHEN you traded with others.  It also made you NEED to trade with others (or risk the silent, disease death that befell so many isolated civilizations in history)

I highly doubt the point of the caravan system is to shut down your game unless you send one out right away.
Disease isn't the main focus of the game - it's one threat out of many. Your entire first season shouldn't be a race against time to aquire top-tier resources in order to deal with an event that may never come, but will effectively end your game if it does. The way the whole thing plays out is frustrating, from the random nature of disease, to the fact that there is no realistic counterplay until you are several seasons into the game.

[Shurp]

So I know this thread has been dead a while but I just had an incident which highlights how poorly the disease system works currently.

I'm 33 days into my current colony.  One of my colonists just now got the plague.  The disease was at 50%, and he was at 40% immunity.  Uh oh, trouble, right?

Nope.  Earlier a random drop pod dumped 25 units of Penoxycycline on me.  So I gave him one.  His immunity jumped up to 60%, and now keeping him safe is trivial.

This is not a fun game mechanic.  In the early game keeping a player with the plague alive should be a challenge -- not a "heads" he lives "tails" he dies event.  I presently play with buffed medications, so using my 85% effective medkits makes keeping plague infected colonists alive a challenge, like it should be.  This makes the plague event fun.  You don't know that you're going to save him but you have a reasonable chance of doing so.

Penoxycycline should be a late game guaranteed survival when you no longer want the annoyance of treating diseases, not a necessity.

[dragonalumni]

Tribals in tropical rain forest are harder than Ice sheet for just this reason.