Suggestion for an improved plague model.

[TerranC]

Originally posted by Zanthis:
Ships suffering from a plague suffer the same combat penalties as weapon platforms and troops on infected planets unless they use a master computer.

Before I go to sleep...

Ships and Bases with master computers should, I think, do 1 of either 3 things.

1. Behave normally, but spread plagues to planets with space yards or stations with space yards/repair bays or ships with space yards/repair bays.

2. Have a combat penalty and a defensive penalty but effective as a ram device to ships and planets.

3. The MC is destroyed, and must be cleaned before salvaging. (Or number 1 happens)

for troops, If doable, include an option to KILL the population and DESTROY the colony. The massacering troops are also killed to stop the contagion. This would be a simple plan to destroy the colony, or a dire Last resort.

This would have a negative effect on the empire (Even if you are a dictator, Free speech is bound to apply somewhere) as people would revolt against a murdering ruler. Other empires, however would be more humble, and only stop trading with you.

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

[Zanthis]

Just thought I'd add three minor tweaks:

1) Full coverage of a planet should occur based on the medical "weapon platforms" having enough total coverage to cover the population times the infected percent. So if you drop enough "field hospitals" to cover 100M people on a 200M planet, and it is at 50% infected, you've got full coverage.

2) Planetary plague treatment should never be automatic, even with full coverage. Instead, it should be 50% successful +5% per level the plague is below the level of the centers.

3) Instead of reducing plague levels on planets, each successful treatment reduces the infected percentage by 2-4 points. If you have a solid multiple over fully covered, multiple this reduction by that amount (e.g., if 20% of a 100M planet is infected and you have 60M in coverage, that is three times the minimum for full coverage and so you get 3-12 points knocked of the infected percentage each time treatment is successful). Round down to the nearest whole multplier (i.e., you can get x2.5) and you don't get penalized with a fractional [Edit: Oops, didn't mean factional ] multiplier for having less than full coverage.

There, that should do it. I'll leave genociding populations to contain plagues to someone else .

[ August 31, 2002, 21:55: Message edited by: Zanthis ]