Infections in a17

[giltirn]

This is only true if you think this is a game meant to be won. If it's a story generator, then those RNG tragedies are just fine. Of course there does need to be a balance, and that is the line Tynan tries to find I believe.

Like I said, I'm fine with failure if there is a lesson to be learned. But what is the point in investing so much effort into something that a fickle RNG God will eventually decide to wipe out? "Bob landed, contracted malaria within a month and died. The End." Sounds pretty boring to me. No, I'd much rather a story where a colony used guts and guile to overcome a seemingly endless stream of disasters.

[DariusWolfe]

giltirn:

Perhaps the lesson you could have learned was make sure you have more than a single hauler? Maybe trade for medicine as often as you can, until you can readily supply it yourself? There are rarely situations where you can't have done anything better; when there are, they're usually early enough in the campaign that you're not losing much.

I had malaria strike two colonists at the same time last night; No big deal, as I'd been hoarding my good medicine pretty tightly; Except one of those colonists was almost two days away, on a quick caravan to a neighbor. (That seems like a bug, btw? How is malaria hitting two colonists who are literally days of travel apart from each other?) So I had that colonist buy a few shitty herbal meds and self-treat; Unfortunately, I had to wait until she'd gotten a full tile away from the camp she was visiting before I could "settle", self-treat, form a new caravan, abandon base and move on. After doing this a couple times, she made it back (after a manhunting pack of two rats; FML) at around 60% infection, where it was a damned nail-biter for my doc to break out the good meds and treat her; Luckily her room was spotless, as I hadn't yet built a dedicated medical facility; That happened as soon as both of my colonists were back on their feet (the other had a sad-wander break at about 98% immunity, so that wasn't good, but he survived just fine)

[ymc]

Like I said, I'm fine with failure if there is a lesson to be learned.

Was there any point in that game where you had the option to NOT capture/rescue one more mouth to feed who wouldn't haul? Or did you have your same starting pawns the whole playthrough? Sounds more like it's the story of "Bob, Dick, and Jane landed. Dick and Jane wanted to play horseshoes while Bob did all the work. Jill wandered into the compound, seeing there was free meals, and because they had an uneven number they had to recruit Jack the raider because silly Bob wouldn't join their horseshoe tournament. Bob got malaria and died. Everybody starved/froze to death."

Again, I have noticed it is much more brutal, but I've gotta ask if Bob was in bed with malaria or out in the fields doing "one last haul, ya bastard" with malaria. That 10% increase in immunity gain from even a shoddy bed makes a huge difference. I haven't personally seen malaria yet in A17, but I'm beating infections by a comfortable margin, and the other fellow above beat malaria with somebody who had to journey back home from another town.

What just killed my colony was sensory mechanites and a psychic drone. Ended up with 1 berzerk in my fridge, 1 person in a daze (freezing outside in bad clothing, already starving and exhausted), and the only female not affected by drone going to grab a quick bite and catching a chain shotgun blast instead. She bled out, pawn outside froze, berzerk guy eventually collapsed from exhaustion. Looking back, I could have had my female arrest the dazed mostly-naked guy, forced her to eat raw rice from the barn or a frozen corpse or something, or NOT had weapons equipped on people with Major Break warnings, but I didn't do any of those things. That's why they died.

Perhaps if I could have held out another 10 minutes I'd have gotten drop pods with something useful, like smokeleaf or beer or packaged meals or wool!

[makkenhoff]

I can't help but die from an early game mad animal with infection, if the colonist(s) in question cannot doctor (because that negates self-care).  That said, I can appreciate the increased risk of infection, I suppose I just wish I had a way to 'deal' with it under all conditions, even if that meant a heavy penalty.

I do have to admit, that given you have enough healthy doctors, the current infections aren't impossible to deal with. It has really made doctors feel special.

[ymc]

Hate to be a stickler, but even in the modern western world, the largest percentage of hiking deaths for years have been consistently attributable to three things: lack of knowledge, lack of experience, and poor judgment.

If a rich explorer runs off to start their own colony with 0 ability to tend wounds, or even worse, misgivings about modern medicine that cause them to not participate in any such practice, they're gonna have a bad time.

If you've crashlanded on an alien planet, and your only doctor gets kidnapped by raiders, you're gonna have a bad time.

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[giltirn]

Like I said, I'm fine with failure if there is a lesson to be learned.

Was there any point in that game where you had the option to NOT capture/rescue one more mouth to feed who wouldn't haul? Or did you have your same starting pawns the whole playthrough?

I did a single-pawn start with no starting items. The game decided to give me two crappy pawns who both decide they are too stuck up to haul even if they have to die for it. The only meds I had were the wild healroot because none of them were sufficiently skilled at growing. My base was sufficiently advanced that I had a dedicated, clean hospital room, a fridge room, 3 bedrooms and adequate defenses. I also had another guy who was a good doctor and grower but also who refused to haul, but he died soon after being rescued because he went berserk from his wounds and attacked a panther.

Oh yeah, and one more guy the game handed to me refused to do basically anything. Haul, fight, you name it. I made a solo caravan for him and sent him off to die in the wilderness; no way am I wasting my time for such losers.

[giltirn]

Again, I have noticed it is much more brutal, but I've gotta ask if Bob was in bed with malaria or out in the fields doing "one last haul, ya bastard" with malaria. That 10% increase in immunity gain from even a shoddy bed makes a huge difference. I haven't personally seen malaria yet in A17, but I'm beating infections by a comfortable margin, and the other fellow above beat malaria with somebody who had to journey back home from another town.

Oh yes, and Bob was in bed as soon as malaria appeared, for the entire time, and treated every time by a skill 6 doctor with herbal meds the instant he required tending. I micro'd the hell out of it, and still he died.

[DariusWolfe]

So you started with the roughest possible starting scenario, with absolutely no RNG-mitigation built in, and you weren't expecting to fail, repeatedly? Lemme guess, Randy Random too?

That's the sort of scenario you choose because you want to tell the story about about how you survived against all odds... But most of the time, you're just going to lose.

[giltirn]

Cassandra rough.

And I just lost 2 guys to infection from some rabbit bites. This totally sucks. If this is not changed I don't see the community being particularly happy about A17.

Edit: I think that's me done with A17 testing. Way too frustrating.

[giltirn]

So you started with the roughest possible starting scenario, with absolutely no RNG-mitigation built in, and you weren't expecting to fail, repeatedly? Lemme guess, Randy Random too?

That's the sort of scenario you choose because you want to tell the story about about how you survived against all odds... But most of the time, you're just going to lose.

If you don't cheese your rolls, after a few months once you have gone through your initial meds you will be in the same situation as me even if you started with rich explorer or crash landed.

[DariusWolfe]

Cheese my rolls?

I've got a year-long Vanilla crash-landed that's doing quite well. My colonists aren't ideal, but they're okay; I divide labor up so that they get good at their specialties, and they all get basic competence in the grunt work.

Two cannot haul, one is staggeringly ugly, and only two are even vaguely competent with a gun; I've got one doctor, one cook; the rest would bandage a nearby tree trunk by accident or regularly burn water.

So, tell me again how I'd end up in the same situation? I'm not even good at this game.

[giltirn]

Cheese my rolls?

I've got a year-long Vanilla crash-landed that's doing quite well. My colonists aren't ideal, but they're okay; I divide labor up so that they get good at their specialties, and they all get basic competence in the grunt work.

Two cannot haul, one is staggeringly ugly, and only two are even vaguely competent with a gun; I've got one doctor, one cook; the rest would bandage a nearby tree trunk by accident or regularly burn water.

So, tell me again how I'd end up in the same situation? I'm not even good at this game.

The situation I was referring to is having no meds then losing multiple people to infections. Perhaps you had a skilled grower capable of seeding healroot?

[DariusWolfe]

Only just, and it's still too cold to get started. I've had okay luck with wild healroot, but I've only harvested maybe a dozen, and bought half that again. I don't use any meds at all for initial injury healing, but I keep them ready in case of infections.

I probably would have lost at least one person to the malaria if I didn't have the real meds on hand, but that's what I meant by having RNG-mitigation. Since I only break out the meds when I really need to, I'm likely to survive anything that doesn't straight-out kill my pawns, until I can finally get my medicine production up and running.

[giltirn]

I've noticed that a large number of effectiveness rolls for bandaging without meds are coming up 0%. This perhaps explains the fatality rate for treating disease without meds; most bandages may as well not be there at all. Is this intended?

[Shurp]

It sounds like someone has cast "Foul Air" on Rimworld a17:

Death:
Thau 6 Foul Air D5A1 75
Any unit that gets wounded will automatically gain the Diseased affliction. Unrest increases worldwide.

I suppose this also explains why bubonic plague kills 100% of untreated colonists and 50% of treated instead of only 50% and 10% respectively.