Feedback Required EXP 1.7 - STATUS EFFECTS rework

Would be good if the color codes for yellow/blue etc would show up in game somehow.

Currently it takes so long to read the tooltip on the status effect and figure out the right medicine or medical device to use that I just spam F on all of them in order to cure it before I die.

Less medical devices would be great too (e.g. One for trauma, one for detox, one for healing)

 

Aren't Disease and Infection the same thing though? Both caused by some foreign microorganism trying to live in you. The treatment is the same, antibiotics or antiviral medicine. Parasites are different though as they are macro-organisms.

A wound is different from a bone break and should be treated differently. Wounds can lead to infection if not treated promptly. Bone breaks can lead to deformity, loss of function (permanent), and internal bleeding.

All detrimental conditions have one thing in common and that is pain. I'd suggest having one plant be a general analgesic (paracetamol, morphine) which temporarily limits the effects of those conditions. They progress normally and still need a proper treatment.

 

Would love to test as much as possible since I tend to stockpile medical remedying items. Is there any way to inflict them by console commands?

 

Thank you.

 

Suggestion
Dermal burn:

• remove speed debuff

Other than the excruciating pain, there should be nothing else that can limit movement speed to my understanding. Forgetting about the wound contracture. That takes weeks to occur.

Infected wound

• Consider food debuff (minimal)

Rationale: infectious process consumes more energy for immune response and healing process.

Sepsis

• Make duration infinite
• Consider speed debuff, stamina, and food drainage

Sepsis is also organ failure in a sense, added infectious cause to it and thus may still be reversible with antibiotics. Without treatment, however, the effect should become more severe, and not expire on its own. Sepsis also consumes a lot more energy and muscle fatigue is common (think of ill-looking patients to get the idea), thus speed debuff and stamina drainage is plausible.

Closed fracture

• Add health drainage (less than open fracture)
• Increase fall damage threshold to 75

Closed fracture also bleeds. Each femur can bleed up to 1L, in fact. Just that there's limited space to bleed internally. The health decrease rate, if added, should be less than that of open fracture.
Fall damage threshold is my personal bargain, based on how severe the fracture debuff is. Should make it a little harder to incapacitate oneself. Especially when there's still a bug when entering cockpit without colliding with any surface first and the character randomly suffers from massive fall damage later.

Open fracture

• Add infected wound along with the necrosis before or when expire.
• Alternately, change necrosis to osteomyelitis (bone infection) specifically for closed fracture.
• Increase fall damage threshold to 120

The very serious complication of bone infection, which is hard to reach for the IV antibiotics, distinguish itself from the closed counterpart. If it's not hardcoded, I'd like to also see the infective element.
Osteomyelitis usually take a few hours to occur, requiring surgical removal of infective product. Gameplay-wise, making IV antibiotics mitigate it is acceptible, just that it should barely reduce the duration. This will also make medic station superior in such regard, as removing source of infection will drastically and more rapidly improve the outcome.

Necrosis

• Add speed debuff for consistency in injury progression
• Decrease stamina drainage, consider using stamina cap

The damage on fractured/frostbite legs aren't healed yet. Speed debuff seems reasonable enough. Also, necrotic legs are good source of infection, so a punishment on stamina comparable to that of infection progression maybe more suitable. That limb also becomes non-functional, thus decreased stamina cap may help representing the handicap.

Indigestion

• Remove health debuff
• Consider max stamina decrease

The new indigestion is over-exaggerating this self-limiting condition, unless it's implying massive gastrointestinal bleeding. Preventing food buff already has a value in its own. Probably limiting max stamina at most, as in you cannot perform a vigorous movement without throwing up or worsening abdominal pain.

PoisonFood Food poisoning

• Change to infectious disease.
• Increase duration, and consider stamina drainage
• Foodborne toxin should directly afflict intoxication instead

The term food poisoning implies a spectrum of foodborne diarrheal disease; aka more of an infectious one than intoxication. Those like mucous bloody diarrhea warrants the antibiotic use to alleviate the severity and length of hospital stay. In game, the trigger to this should be poorly cooked/uncooked meat or eggs. Untreated, it isn't called intoxication; it's chronic diarrhea. From persisting pathologic microbes.
More specific foodborne toxin, like in puffer fish, does not start with food poisoning. It goes straight to intoxication. In this case, muscle weakness rapidly develops and soon involves diaphragm paralysis and inability to breathe.

Bad trip

• Remove food debuff

Essentially it's hallucinogenic effect. I'd expect the substance to also induce vomiting, diarrhea, or increased metabolic rate to justify having food debuff. Which I don't know if there's any substance that this 'bad trip' is based on.
====================================

Painkillers

• Deals nothing with food poisoning (as it's supposed to be an infectious disease now).

Antibiotics (oral, IV)

• Should not have antiparasitic effect
• Consider bringing back the antiparasitic medications or creating a separate parasite category
• Deals with food poisoning

Some antibiotics can deal with small parasites such as metronidazole against certain protozoa. But usually, antibiotics and antiparasitics do not overlap. As those two are vastly different organisms, so do the drug targets. I understand the effort to simplify ailments and treatments, but this should not be overlooked. Sadly I also cannot think of a better term that covers both antibiotics and antiparasitics.
Purple color is still available I believe? Maybe parasite can be purple.

Antitoxic pills

• Make it prevents organ failure from poison bite 2

This has to do with another suggestions down below; namely adrenaline won't cure poison bite 2 (making no low level treatment can prevent tier 3 status, unlike antibiotic line.)

Decontamination kits

• Deals with both parasite and radiation ailments

Antiparasitic pills

• Cleanse endoparasite 1
• Modify endoparasite 2 and 3, later curing it

Antiparasitic injections

• Cleanse all endoparasite

Medic station vs kits

• Surgical bed: deals with trauma and disease
• IV device (the one with fluid cylinder): deals with toxin and infection
• Decontamination device (the CT-ish bed): deals with parasite and radiation
• Supplement device (the one without fluid cylinder): restore HP only
• Consider making sepsis, organ failure, and mutilation only curable via medic stations. To compensate, those three cannot directly occur without prior stages, guaranteeing a time window to react. Kits should then only reduce their effects to a mere nuisance.

The suggested medic stations are consistent with the three kits, and should help with the confusion.
The last suggestion gives medic stations a unique, superior benefit to the kits and their necessity as a safeguard. Plus, all three statuses are irl severe enough it'd be a miracle to treat with a box of field equipment.

Others

• Remove ointment items for simplicity and consistency
• Separate parasite from radiation in treatment
• Adrenaline should not cleanse poison
  • It is indicated for anaphylaxis. Against hematotoxin or neurotoxin, to pick a few among many more toxins, it is not beneficial.
• Pills, injections, kits, and stations should all restore HP, but only when applied correctly to the existing status ailments. (If possible)

 

I really like the rework, especially the added "mitigate" functionality -- it makes more sense that some treatment is better than no treatment at all.

However, I completely agree with @Full Metal Panda here: disease and infection should be merged together, if they both represent foreign bacteria. A solution would perhaps be in renaming "Disease" to "Viral infection" and "Infection" to "Bacterial infection". Then we would have three types of foreign organisms -- viruses, bacteria and parasites.

What I also think needs to be done, is to completely differentiate flesh wounds (both open and internal) and bone fractures. The latter can cause the former, but the treatment is completely different. So it's only logical to separate them both in treatment and in effects.

 

While I understand that it will most likely not be implemented any time soon, I think it is worth mentioning the following.

One distinct feature Empyrion has in it's survival mechanics is the abundance of "simple" effects. What I mean by "simple" is that these are just effects affecting the player, independently of any conditions. They may have been caused by something, but now they are separate, and independent from each other. They in themselves contain the debuffs, the future evolution of the affliction, and the treatment method.

While this is a valid way to go, it adds a magnitude of design complexity -- the devs must balance the effects, sources of the effects, and their treatment all-in-one effect.

What many games do instead -- and this actually both enriches player experience and simplifies development -- is they add an intermediate layer -- the human body instance. Long-term afflictions dwell there, in the body, or its parts -- the organs and, perhaps, limbs.
The body and it's parts has a number of properties, such as the ability to move, to breathe, current pain level, consciousness level, sight, hearing, metabolism, current bleed rate, etc. These values of these properties directly transform into in-game quantities: stamina regeneration, food consumption rate, max health, walking speed, (vision and hearing distortion?).
Rather than directly debuffing the player, afflictions affect the functions of the body, ultimatelly resulting in same in-game debuffs, but in a more immersive and easy-to-understand way.

For example, an indigestion influences the stomach, increasing current pain level and impairing both metabolism and consciousness. This automatically leads to decreased stamina regeneration, reduced perception, and max health loss, as those are deduced from the body functionality, not from the effect itself.

Another sweet thing about this approach is that any balance adjustments regarding, say, affliction stackability, their severity or applicable treatment method, can be made easily.

 

Something like this would be cool and much simpler... hehe...



But let's just wait for a "crouch" first. Or I could trade "crouch" for some of these...

 

I think the loot tables regarding medical items need a revamp.

 

As a colorblind person half those effects look the same. Use high contrast oppossitional colors. Purple (or is it fusia, I cn't tell) is really easy to confuse with blue or light red. Green and yellow are essentially the same, etc.

Other games have done a bit of research and either created colorblind modes or created icons that are high contrast and easily recognized.

Or better yet: Maybe we don't need 20 different statuses? Simply poison, physical damage and illness can be represented? Most players seem to make the three packs that fix everything and move on because no one really is making individual injections and pills.

The system here has 4 basic types with 4 various degrees of effect, so make 4 icons and put a number over it.

 

This has always been one of my favorite features of Empyrion - the system of injury and illness and progression, so I'm glad to see this getting some much-needed attention. There are a few things I would love to see done, along with what's already in the works:

1. For parasitic and disease based ailments:
A longer onset time from the time of contraction to notable status impact. People often contract diseases and parasitic infections and go about completely unaware of it days, weeks, months or longer. Catch a cold, carry it around spread it around, and not have so much as a sniffle for several days before you wake up and go "Ugh, I feel like crud, maybe I should see someone." Catch a parasite, same kind of thing - you don't realize it until something actually happens that makes you go "Huh, maybe something is wrong....". The status could be applied normally, but not indicated on the HUD until it has actually progressed to a more serious level.

2. Hand-in-hand with this should go some additional vectors for infections. Walk around an alien world without a helmet on, you run the risk of contracting an airborne illness. This could be done in much the same manner as Radioactive areas - being in these areas without a helmet on puts you at risk for catching Alien Pox. Hungry enough to eat raw alien meat? You run an increased risk of eating alien tape-worms or other parasites, and contracting them yourself.

3. Barring the addition of any future scanner updates, infectious/contaminated regions should not have any visual or audio clues as to their nature, with the possible exception of a larger-than-normal number of animal skeletal remains in/around these sorts of areas, as we typically cannot see pathogens with the naked eye.

4. Natural Remedies/Herbalism - We already have some of this, as a number of plants can be used directly to treat various conditions, which is a major boon. Some of this has been reduced however. Medicinal Leaves (or herbs, whatever they're being called currently) once gave a small health recover, for example. Long ago things like Phoenix Fronds had a role in the production of some more advanced medicines as well, now they're just something to sell to merchants. I'd also love to see a return in both function for these sorts of things, as well as some additional focus on this. Remember, we're in the middle of another galaxy, dropped onto an alien world, displaced in time, with only an escape pod, a handful of supplies (maybe) and our wits. I don't know about anyone else, but my wits have put on some weight and really need some exercise!

As this is built as a Survival Game, and not a build-and-blow-up ships game, it would certainly fit the theme, add some additional challenges to the survival aspect, and put some focus on Survival, beyond simply crafting/accumulating as many Ration packs as possible and never really thinking about surviving again.

Finally... I would love to see more longer-term Positive effects. We have a very few right now. Well Fed, for example, allows for a faster, natural health regen while the effect lasts. Sitting down at a table, chair or sofa gives a temporary boost to stamina recovery. The addition of a "Well Rested" positive status from using a bed would also be nice. In single-player mode, using a bed at night allows you to skip ahead in time to morning, along with finishing pretty much any and all production in one's constructors. In multiplayer, beds are merely decorative, since it would be disruptive to everyone else if one person decides to sleep through the night, while everyone else is off gathering, raiding, or blowing each other up, and while Minecraft did address this simply by waiting until all players climbed into bed to fast-forward the game clock, this still might not work so well in Empyrion. However, adding a multiplayer interaction to beds, to allow the player to lay down for a while and build a "Well Rested" positive status simply by staying there for a period of time, regardless of what the rest of the players are doing, would be a suitable trade-off.

Some other positive status effects could include:

1. Clear-Headed - interact with certain deco objects, such as a TV or console for a period of time to gain this status and gain a temporary boost in XP gain.

2. Focused - Interact with certain consoles or data-pad objects to gain this status, granting improved repair rates for the duration.

3. Hearty - Gain this status by staying Well Fed and Well Rested for a period of time to enjoy increased resistance to catching alien diseases and parasites.

 

Well, I like the look of the new system, but not sure it is working - unless I have misunderstood how it was supposed to work. Got an open fracture thanks to the Legacy. Now, if I understood it, bandages don't cure it but are supposed to stop it progressing to necrosis. The tooltip told me to use bandages, so I did. Though I got some healing, the bandages didn't seem to do anything else. At the end of the time, it progressed to the next stage, necrosis. Haven't put in a bug report yet, as wasn't sure if I had understood the new system correctly!

 

Along the lines of Foofaspoon's comments, the first time I ran into one of the modified ailments I found the tooltip confusing.



All my past experience told me that either med would cure it, which is now not the case. I had to look up that Painkillers only mitigate this. Would it be possible to somehow format the text for meds that mitigate vs meds that cleanse? Either some nice color-blind-compatible colors for the text, or maybe italics for mitigating meds and bold for cleansing meds? Or some symbol following the cleansing meds?

Without this I feel it's going to lead to more med spamming until you memorize the table above. Which...won't happen.

 

Yeah, you need to change the tooltips, because the way you have worded it in the tooltips leads us to believe ALL those things are equal treatments..... and they aren't.

I'm confused here too. They told you they used a bandage and it still progressed to necrosis at the end of the timer anyways.
According to the original post in this thread, I'm led to believe that bandages are supposed to "prevent OnExpire effect (Necrosis)"
and they are telling you it still happened anyways.
Is that not a bug then?

Also, when you list all those things together in once sentence in the tooltips, you give the impression that all the listed items are equal for that treatment.
You need to be more clear with the tooltips because the way they are currently written is wrong. Ideally this should be corrected before this leaves the experimental stage.

Does this say it is supposed to prevent necrosis when the timer runs out? Or do I not know how to read?
It looks clear to me.....

 

I'll check it again this evening and see, thank you for checking

 

Okay, tested again with new configs. Bandages still did nothing to Open Fracture. As far as I could tell, they didn't reduce its effects while ongoing, and then didn't stop it progressing to necrosis on expired.

Some additional things - curing yourself of necrosis using first aid kit can kill you - as mutilation is applied on debug, with big hit to hp. This might not be super fun?

You have an anti parasite injection not antibiotic, this confused me!!

Painkillers do nothing against heat stroke though the tool tip says to use them. Doesn't stop progression to hangover either if that is intended!