bring back disease, make tea useful and clothes, ++RP

[viktor]

alright i have an idea here that may take time to figure out programming for but it gives an idea on math and prevention etc... trust me check it out

i remember when we had sneezing sickness, it was used in roleplay, and the reason people complained so much is because it was an arbitrairy pandemic with no cause, no prevention and no cure, but here below i have ideas to bring back disease but make it reasonable and worthwhile feature to reintegrate some rp!!!!!

the sneezing sickness should return. it should be caused by leaving a body for more than half a year, people who are near the body (if the body is in the town center, the people out there, or if the body is in a room, the people in that room) have a 1% chance per hour of contracting the disease. realistically, if you are standing by the body for 12.5 days, it's like a guarantee to catch it one of those days.
then for the spread of the disease, people who are standing around someone who sneezes, should have a 5% chance of catching the disease per sneeze.
and anyone who physically touches a corpse that has sat for over half a year, or a person who is infected with the disease should have a 10% chance of getting it.
this disease should also double tiredness effects on infected people

now we get into prevention,
a cotton or silk facemask should make you immune (or dramatically reduce risk of infection) to catching it ONLY from people who are sneezing
and wearing gloves should make you immune (or dramatically reduce risk of infection) to catching it only when dragging an old body or an infected induvidual.

now moving onto curing it and this may get people's attention...
remember when tea was one of the greatest things in game? and some places went hardcore into making it and then it was made a useless resource? well why not make it a method of curing the disease? i mean once we impliment thirst and/or stomach capacity w/e is being done, we can make it worth drinking to cure the sneezing sickness.

this brings back some of the old rp and usefulness for hospitals, usefulness for a once useful product and gives real value to a few clothing items (gloves and some of the facemasks), doctors will have more of a purpose, it just really picks up the game a little without making it as arbitrairy and hopeless like before.
with this series of things rolled together how can we go wrong?!?

[Addicted]

Yes to the effect = tiredness
Yes to the cure = tea and healing potions (only for illness related tiredness)
Yes to the symptoms = sneezing was way cool
No to the cause, there must be a better one, since we already have dead body one
Unsure to the way it's spread. Perhaps leave that to the programmers.

[viktor]

well the tea was just to cure the disease itself.. maybe with a %chance to cure per certain amount consumed (capacity consumption idea), i dont think the game engine can be made to recognise tiredness caused by the illness to recover it with tea, i could be wrong

and... what dead body disease exists in game now?? i'm totally unaware of it

when sneezing sickness first appeared originally, it seemed to have started in the vrayllnuets area(from what i observed in game),my char even roleplayed that the corpse in the kitchen contaminated the food they ate from there and got them sick, not sure if thats what really happened but rp'd that way, and it seemed to spread across the island from there

[EchoMan]

You get the eating sickness (feeling faint, weak and eat lots more than usual) from dead bodies.

[Doug R.]

Why not make a disease that people WANT to catch? Having diseases that negatively affect the characters, while realistic, is really just a pain in the ass. Eating sickness makes us bury bodies. That has a use (though it bugs me that half-buried bodies can still get you sick, because I don't know they're even there until I'm sick), so I'm not going to complain about that, but the sneezing sickness was probably just Jos being curious about epidemiology, and nothing else.

Wouldn't it be interesting if there were diseases that people wanted to catch? What if there was a disease that made you transiently stronger? Made you walk faster? They may not even have bad side-effects. If you want a mechanism to bring people together in the game, do this.

(And you can file this as my out-of-the-box brilliant idea for 2011).

[Piscator]

It would be nice if an illness would give you a bonus in situations in which it is likely to contract the disease. For example, you could get rabies from animal bites which would increase your strength and make it more likely for you to survive in the wilderness. (You might also start biting people randomly. After all, it should only be an advantage under certain circumstances.)

[EchoMan]

I love the random bite thing!

[muidoido]

We should have poisonous animals and poison effects too...

[viktor]

ah so corpses do cause something already, then how about
the same idea i had except the cause being overexposure to the elements

everything the same except likelyhood of contracting the illness would be determined by terrain type you are standing outside in.
mountains would be the worst maybe 5% chance per hour to catch the disease fully exposed

the masks and the gloves would work the same as mentioned above, but more clothes would be given a special value to protect people against catching the illness from exposure.
wool clothes would be given the highest value,
fur clothes next
cotton
silk
hide

clothes of each type would have more value determined by amount of material (would make sense)

i had a backup plan in my head this morning

[Addicted]

I was thinking animals in my head, but couldn't see how it could be implemented. Bites would be good.

Whatever happened to the rats disease discussed recently?

viewtopic.php?p=447813&sid=027fc97e69364b7bcd8cd8567086b7e3#p447813

[viktor]

oh.... you know what, the poisonous bites idea gave me an idea
certain animals.. being all snakes, bats, and scorpions.
a certain % chance when they attack that you would get injected.. this would not be a contageous disease. but would take off 5% life per day
of course we would need to make these animals leave behind a small amount of venom when killed
the venom can be combined with something on the apothecary table to make antivenom which would be an antidote
alternativly the poison could have other applications like poison darts for weapons.

[RedQueen.exe]

have a 1% chance per hour of contracting the disease. realistically, if you are standing by the body for 12.5 days, it's like a guarantee to catch it one of those days.

Grrr... am I the only one that tensed with irrational rage when reading this? I want to beat you with a statistics textbook.

That, on top of the fact that recent studies have shown that dead bodies don't actually spread disease UNLESS they died of a disease/had it when they died. Burying bodies during natural disasters has been ratcheted way down on the priority scale during natural disaster because of these recent findings.

I would much much MUCH prefer diseases caused by animal bites. Although that doesn't impact civilized cities much and puts a further cramp on places that are already struggling. =(

[Piscator]

I would much much MUCH prefer diseases caused by animal bites. Although that doesn't impact civilized cities much and puts a further cramp on places that are already struggling. =(

Unless the disease gives you an advantage in a survival situation, but not so much in a civilized environment.

[RedQueen.exe]

have a 1% chance per hour of contracting the disease. realistically, if you are standing by the body for 12.5 days, it's like a guarantee to catch it one of those days.

Grrr... am I the only one that tensed with irrational rage when reading this? I want to beat you with a statistics textbook.

I'm a little rusty and don't have a decent calculator on me, but I worked it out to a roughly 63.4% chance of catching it within 100 hours with a 1% chance per hour. Anyone care to argue that figure?

Sorry, I'll stop derailing. It could have the advantage of causing animals to not attack you during a set period or the duration of the disease. Like, they sense you're diseased and stay away from you. This wouldn't mean much in a civilized society, and likely wouldn't outweigh the downsides, but in a survival situation, especially if you don't have a shield, it could be a significant benefit.

[Piscator]

I also get about 63%. I think for this kind of problem (x events with a 1/x probability) you alway get a value approaching this figure. I darkly remember reading about this in a maths textbook some time and I wondered "why 63%?". It seemed so random at that time.

Being immune to animal attack while infected sounds like a good idea.