Suggestion for an improved plague model.

[dogscoff]

The exploit was that you could send a med ship with a cure level of 10 to a planet with a severity 80 plague. The med ship would (eventually) bring the severity down to 20, and then you could send in your other med ship (with cure level 20) to finish the job.

I like my second Version better=-) You lose the "low level ships can partially cure high level plagues" bit, but it's much simpler and maybe that could be added in some other way. It's still an improvement over the existing system.

Oh, and I love the idea of increased risks from messing around with biological weapons.

Infection rates would be cool but it would mean an awful lot more data to track. Would be very cool though.

[dogscoff]

Much as I hate posting on top of my own Posts, I had to add this:

If this were to be implemented I think it would be better to turn all the numbers upside down, and rather than have "0% Plague" have "100% Health."

Is this sensible?

[Baron Munchausen]

Contagion is certainly a good idea. It's rather odd that the presence of plague on a planet does affect morale (happiness) in the entire system but it doesn't have any real chance to spread to other planets.

The percentages thing is certainly better than the flat levels we currently have but there are some other features you have not considered. Different plagues would have different rates of infection, that is, different degrees of contagion. And, why does a plague have to kill everyone outright to be damaging? What about a plague that makes everyone very sick, killing some but weakening the rest of the population and reducing production? So, 'contagion' and 'virulence' could be two completely seperate factors on a given plague. Add these two very different factors to the much finer 'scale' of effect you have proposed and things get interesting.

But there is one more thing that no one ever seems to consider. Why is it that the SAME biological weapons (or 'natural' plagues) can affect all of these 'alien' races equally??? Lizards and humans and birds and crystals all affected by the same biological agent? Is this bizarre or what? It really should be necessary to research a bio-weapon specific to the race you want to use it against. The simplest way to do this would be to have a 'named' bio-weapon for each race. But that's not the best way to do it. The best way to do it is to build some sort of 'code' system into the AI that has identifiers for the biological characteristics of the races. You could then have various degrees of 'relationship' (as in 'genetic similarity') between some races and varying degrees of effectiveness according to the closeness of the match for the bio-weapon being used.

Now THIS would get interesting if plagues could be long-standing events that infect entire systems and hang around for a while. You might see a system swept clean of one race by a plague and another race move in. Does the other race want to reclaim the planets yet? What if the plague is still there? They may be killed by it even if they successfully retake the planets by military force.

[ August 29, 2002, 20:27: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[TerranC]

The idea that a simple sick bay would cure a plague that is ravaging an entire colony of at least 34 million is unlikely, IMHO.

What I think should happen is:

3 types of plagues depending on their method of infection

Spreads by air/food/water spreads the fastest
Spreads by Touch the next
STD (Maybe... I don't know.) the Last

Then there would be 3 types of cures BASED on the sick bay component:

Sick bay cures all 3 at basic level 1-10%
Antibiotics cures Air at 10-100% must have SB to work
Chemicals cure STD at 10-100% must have SB to work
Physiotherapy cure Touch 10-100% must have SB to work

and contagion should work if there are no military ships in the system, but the rate should be increased with any transport, yours or others.

If there are military ships in the system, they work to stop the disease by:

if garrisoned on a planet, blocks that planet and moon(S) ONLY

If garrisoned on the infected planet(S) they stop the contagion for the entire empire

Just my 2 cents

[dogscoff]

Of course, you're both right about the different types of illnesses and their effects on diferent species and stuff... but it would be a massive task to implement them. Hell, what I'm suggesting is a pretty massive task, so I guess I can't really complain

Anyway, I love the idea of "blockading" your own planets to prevent the spread, and of adding a flat increment to contagion rates according to the number of population transports.

As for production... Well hapiness would modify production, and be directly affected by plagues, but why not just go a step further and multiply production by health? 50% health * 1000 minerals would adequately represent all those workers unable to go to work...

I'm going to compile all the ideas from this thread, and then when the thread dies off I'll mail the whole bag to Malfador...

The idea that a simple sick bay would cure a plague that is ravaging an entire colony of at least 34 million is unlikely, IMHO.

Well... yes and no. Firstly I think the medical bay is supposed to be more than a simple sick bay. All ships would have a sick bay as part of the crew quarters, which would deal with the crew's health and nothing else. You could model this with a component with a med level of just one or two. It wouldn't cure much on it's own, but it might be able to help out in a large scale effort involving more specialised ships.

A medical bay, on the other hand, would be a large facility specifically designed for the kind of tasks we are talking about. Whether or not that single ship could cure an entire planet... I don't know. Star Trek certainly seems to think it's possible=-) If they had the very latest technology and the best staff (which is kind of implied by the research points you spend to get it), then they might be the first to come up with a solution which can then be administered by the local health authorities. It's hard to say. Th e thing to remember though, is that it's an abstraction. It's a way of representing the fact that you (as emporer) are diverting resources into helping the problem on planet X. You could argue all sorts of "invisible" support for that ship, just like the "invisible" transports which move your resources all over the place.

Anyway in light of all this, I think that med bays should be larger and/ or more expensive.

[ August 30, 2002, 09:46: Message edited by: dogscoff ]

[Wardad]

Maybe.....

Troops could have a medical componant....

[Krsqk]

In addition to the other ideas for risk and spread:

-Chance for spread to other (known) empires, increased by level of treaty and percentage of trade. Of course plagues can affect more than one species--look at Star Trek! Of course, then 95% of all alien species are misplaced humans, too.

-Increased risk of plague for building plague bombs (risk affects commissioning planet)

-Increased risk of plague for researching levels in Biology, Biological Weapons, or Medical Technology (risk per research facility, affecting those planets). Of course, this isn't likely to happen, because of the ability to mod these tech areas; but it would still be cool.

Slightly OT, but it would be cool to mod tech areas so there was a risk to researching them. It could function somewhat like the current events/intel model, including fields for risk percent, risk type, and effect amount. Why not go one step further and create a SideEffects.txt with component and facility family numbers, too, to assign risks to building those items. SEV, maybe.