Am i the only one getting frusterated with diseases?

[XeronX]

Wow last game (randy extreme perma-death) I broke down and dropped with two colonist (one no violence).  My main colonist got gutworms in the first 5 days (survived), flu in the first 2 seasons, and as I was about to survive that got mechanites (still survived). Then ended up with plague a season later (Didn't survive).

Then got raided with no pawn that could shoot back, gotta love the Rim.

[Limdood]

at least 3 seasons in without penoxycyline is asking to die.  Its like being in season 3 with nonviolent pawns and no turrets...i suppose you might figure out some way to survive, but you're skipping a basic survival tool.

first 10 days plagues?  yeah, those suck - legitimately feels like the game is just making you lose or cheat.  45 day plague?  well, at that point there's really no complaining?  if disease isn't deadly, its a nonissue.  if any medicine can treat it on any halfway competent doctor, its a nonissue. 

[OFWG]

at least 3 seasons in without penoxycyline is asking to die.

With elderly or otherwise compromised pawns maybe, but I personally haven't had much trouble managing diseases with herbal meds and a good (9+) doctor in A16. If the only good doctor gets it he's gonna die, sure, and that sucks - but I actually think diseases are one of the things that is currently really well balanced. I use penoxy as a late game quality of life booster.

[TheMeInTeam]

at least 3 seasons in without penoxycyline is asking to die.  Its like being in season 3 with nonviolent pawns and no turrets...i suppose you might figure out some way to survive, but you're skipping a basic survival tool.

first 10 days plagues?  yeah, those suck - legitimately feels like the game is just making you lose or cheat.  45 day plague?  well, at that point there's really no complaining?  if disease isn't deadly, its a nonissue.  if any medicine can treat it on any halfway competent doctor, its a nonissue.

Slamming half of your colony into forced bedrest on pain of insufficient immunity gain --> death is not "non-issue".

By 45 days new arrivals can at least manufacture penoxy.  For tribes even 15-30 days in these disease are identical in practice to pre-cooler heat waves.  You plant your colony near someone else (trade for penoxy or at least raid spam a pirate for medicine/glitterworld meds) or you will die at random.

Penoxy production costs 3000 research for tribes, and that's only if you're willing to first skip stone-cutting (600).  3600 research by 30-45 days is not consistently realistic, meaning you can easily die to this nonsense even if you sell out on investment to get it, delaying electricity, complex clothing, and more. 

If someone is willing to cut out large benefits just to get the counter to an RNG death, you expect that the counter to RNG death is viable.  Right now it is not viable, and thus the mechanic is inconsistent/broken compared against the game's standard mechanical implementations.

[Miridor]

What I also dislike is it always seems to take out at least half your colony. On Random Randy or other story tellers (I chose Iron Dan), you can have more than 10-ish colonists. My main colony is about 50 in size. Even while I have 2 hospitals of 6 medical beds each, with monitors and, currently, 3 15+  and 3 10+ doctors I get into trouble when 26 colonists attract the plague - at the same time. I rotate through the patients, getting everyone at least patched up (normal medicine) and let the old ones eat penoxy (else they will not survive even if I perma-put them into bed) and fatigue out my doctors (of whom some are infected themselves) and everyone not sick (because my main cooks of course are) to keep the colony from not starving. Medicine reserves get low ... enough neutroamine in store but a volcanic winter and blight were not kind on the herbals grown that year...
And then get hit with a 30+ pirate raid of course. Knowing most of the plague victims must keep bed rest to survive the darned disease, that makes for some diabolical choices. I do have good IED and turret defences ('natural' defences, not AI optimized kill boxes) but I know much of it will be blown away by the doomsday rockets those raiders will carry... So I HAVE to draw from the sick and essentially pass a death sentence, unless I micromanage-savescum-saveedit the hell (and fun) out of my game...

In that situation, diseases do become annoying. Verily so.


At my current save game I survived the raid who tried to tunnel my outer walls and so bypass my second line of defence. Fielding 20 man. Miraculously I lost only one colonist from enemy fire and only a few had serious wounds. However, 3 more will die for they are now more than 5% behind in immunity with disease progression at 70+%. Most other colonists are a few % ahead. The elderly who ate penoxy are maybe 10% ahead but if I take them out of bed I know I still risk losing them. Oh, and I'm now officially out of medicine (and herbals ofc.)... no merchant or trade ship has arrived and I'll need one last round for most of the colonists to get them in the clear.

Most raids don't bother me. But diseases are the main killers in end-game... Oh. I play a mountainous area, temperate forest environment with 3 seasons/year of growing capabilities. However, that volcanic winter did some amazing work on stunting growth, especially herbals. Is there a specific reason why it's so hard to grow herbals? Most of the years I only get one harvest in, while I have three harvests easily on food crops...

[SpaceDorf]

What I don't like is that one lost kidney in combination with a sickness is a death sentence, no matter how much medicine you pump into that one.

[TheMeInTeam]

What I also dislike is it always seems to take out at least half your colony. On Random Randy or other story tellers (I chose Iron Dan), you can have more than 10-ish colonists. My main colony is about 50 in size. Even while I have 2 hospitals of 6 medical beds each, with monitors and, currently, 3 15+  and 3 10+ doctors I get into trouble when 26 colonists attract the plague - at the same time. I rotate through the patients, getting everyone at least patched up (normal medicine) and let the old ones eat penoxy (else they will not survive even if I perma-put them into bed) and fatigue out my doctors (of whom some are infected themselves) and everyone not sick (because my main cooks of course are) to keep the colony from not starving. Medicine reserves get low ... enough neutroamine in store but a volcanic winter and blight were not kind on the herbals grown that year...
And then get hit with a 30+ pirate raid of course. Knowing most of the plague victims must keep bed rest to survive the darned disease, that makes for some diabolical choices. I do have good IED and turret defences ('natural' defences, not AI optimized kill boxes) but I know much of it will be blown away by the doomsday rockets those raiders will carry... So I HAVE to draw from the sick and essentially pass a death sentence, unless I micromanage-savescum-saveedit the hell (and fun) out of my game...

In that situation, diseases do become annoying. Verily so.


At my current save game I survived the raid who tried to tunnel my outer walls and so bypass my second line of defence. Fielding 20 man. Miraculously I lost only one colonist from enemy fire and only a few had serious wounds. However, 3 more will die for they are now more than 5% behind in immunity with disease progression at 70+%. Most other colonists are a few % ahead. The elderly who ate penoxy are maybe 10% ahead but if I take them out of bed I know I still risk losing them. Oh, and I'm now officially out of medicine (and herbals ofc.)... no merchant or trade ship has arrived and I'll need one last round for most of the colonists to get them in the clear.

Most raids don't bother me. But diseases are the main killers in end-game... Oh. I play a mountainous area, temperate forest environment with 3 seasons/year of growing capabilities. However, that volcanic winter did some amazing work on stunting growth, especially herbals. Is there a specific reason why it's so hard to grow herbals? Most of the years I only get one harvest in, while I have three harvests easily on food crops...

For the time being, my policy is to carry 1/2 total pop in penoxycillin or more, and take it instantly as disease shows on every colonist.  Trying to fight it with meds is terribly inefficient and prone to still losing people, as you've discovered.

Put luciferium on the doctor and your top producer once you're kind of rich.  I guess if you're really rich you can afford to put everyone on a 5 penoxy/year schedule (1/12 days) and have little risk of down time from disease, and no chance of death from it.

The main issue is early game you can contract disease where doing so isn't possible, on starts where you don't get lucky of carefully choose starting loc to guarantee you can send out a caravan easily.