Plagues - Any cure yet?

[Osito]

Thanks for your opinion Ashbery, but I'm just trying to establish the facts, not complain about the difficulty.

[KAHUNA]

Medical facilities do add happiness to a colony so altho they may not deter any plagues they will allow my suffering with boils and pus-filled colonists a happier death[;)]

[ASHBERY76]

ORIGINAL: KAHUNA

Medical facilities do add happiness to a colony so altho they may not deter any plagues they will allow my suffering with boils and pus-filled colonists a happier death[;)]

Indeed medical facilities would not know how to deal with a Alien flu until some time later which is already abstracted into the game.

[KAHUNA]

I think I'l keep adding them as I do for healing troops and the happiness factor altho having them not being useful for plagues is counter-intuative in my opinion.[:)]

[Erik Rutins]

Just a quick comment from a design standpoint. The Plague event was added as part of the Legends events that represent truly extraordinary disasters. These include things like an earthquake that causes the crust under part of a continent to collapse, sandstorms so massive and violent that they destroy most above ground structures on the entire planet, mega volcano eruptions that change the planetary climate and habitability for years, etc. Medical Centers give your colonies a bonus to happiness and troop regeneration based on their ability to deal with all normal diseases. The Plague event diseases are intended to be incurable when they initially appear.

In Shadows, we did find that there were instances where the Plague could get even worse than we intended. It sounds like one of those was the cause of the original post. Apologies for that. They should be much less likely to go quite that crazy in Shadows and we did implement a mitigating factor for medical tech, though it still cannot solve the plague.

Regards,

- Erik

[KAHUNA]

Thank you for your confirmations and also for the update info on the upcoming installment of the overall game.

[Mansen]

Makes sense.

[simsum]

Real documentation for this game would be so very appreciated.


Anyway... I just wanted to suggest that plagues aren't very interesting in their current form. There's no real gameplay considerations involved, just crossing one's fingers and hoping a plague doesn't spread too far before it goes away.

As they are, plagues are really just a "stupid game hates me" kind of thing.

If, for example, you could tech stuff that could contain plagues or decrease their severity in some other way, you'd suddenly have an interesting problem: do you avoid the low quality colony sites, skip the anti-plague tech and hope for the best? Or do you go for the low quality colony sites and the anti-plague tech both? Or do other concerns force you to skip the tech and tempt recurring, severe plagues?

[Kayoz]

ORIGINAL: simsum
Real documentation for this game would be so very appreciated.

I think you'll find that there are very few games around which document the game in that level of detail. The vast majority of games take the line, "Find out in the game", thus encouraging players to test out their theories in the laboratory of the game. It's also a reward mechanism - the moment of insight when one figures out a mechanic is a "warm fuzzy" to most people.

If they did as you suggest and documented everything - this would just be a spreadsheet with a graphical front end.

If you want 100% documentation, I advise you to stick to chess or the like.

ORIGINAL: simsum
As they are, plagues are really just a "stupid game hates me" kind of thing.

I think that's a design decision, to occasionally throw the dice of fate. Most games have it, be it the deviation of bullets from your cross-hairs in a FPS, to a volcanic eruption in Civilization. I think you have to consider the intent of the design decision. It is, or was intended to be, a fairly minor event which would disrupt a player's plans but not cripple them. That it spread so far and wide with such a devastating effect as in Osito's case, was a bug - which Elliot has hopefully exterminated.

That said, I agree with you that there should be something that a player can do - crash research for the plague, quarantine of the planet or the like. But given the time and resources available to Elliot however, it's probably a not on his "red flag" list.

If you really dislike this sort of thing, you can disable disasters on the "victory conditions" panel when starting a new game.

[Kull]

If you get a message like this:

"A swarm of Giant Kaltors have appeared near your Fleet and many of the crews have come down with a strange illness"

Well, NOW it's time to worry....

[jpwrunyan]

ORIGINAL: Kayoz
schadenfreude

That word doesn't mean what you think it does.

[Kayoz]

ORIGINAL: jpwrunyan

ORIGINAL: Kayoz
schadenfreude

That word doesn't mean what you think it does.

Do tell.

[Mansen]

ORIGINAL: jpwrunyan

ORIGINAL: Kayoz
schadenfreude

That word doesn't mean what you think it does.

No no no - You're doing it all wrong (on the internet)

Observe...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2y8Sx4B2Sk

[Kayoz]

ORIGINAL: Mansen
No no no - You're doing it all wrong (on the internet)

I went to the trouble of providing a link to the Wikipedia entry for the word, and my usage of the word is consistent with that article. Furthermore, I have checked several dictionaries and the definition remains largely consistent.

If jpwrunyan has some knowledge that he can use to correct the deficiencies of Wikipedia and all the dictionaries, I believe they would be most interested in hearing his enlightening wisdom.

Schadenfreude means to "take pleasure in the misfortune of others". Or that is the meaning multiple sources explain it as. Perhaps jpwrunyan would care to enlighten us. If he wants to do it the "right" way on the Internet, then perhaps he should accompany his statement that I am incorrect with an explanation to support his assertion.

*edit*
I thought I had embedded a link - but it seems I didn't. Here's the sources which I believe correctly define schadenfreude:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schadenfreude
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/schadenfreude
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/schadenfreude
But I suppose they're all wrong and jpwrunyan is right.

[Osito]

ORIGINAL: Kayoz

ORIGINAL: Mansen
No no no - You're doing it all wrong (on the internet)

I went to the trouble of providing a link to the Wikipedia entry for the word, and my usage of the word is consistent with that article. Furthermore, I have checked several dictionaries and the definition remains largely consistent.

If jpwrunyan has some knowledge that he can use to correct the deficiencies of Wikipedia and all the dictionaries, I believe they would be most interested in hearing his enlightening wisdom.

Schadenfreude means to "take pleasure in the misfortune of others". Or that is the meaning multiple sources explain it as. Perhaps jpwrunyan would care to enlighten us. If he wants to do it the "right" way on the Internet, then perhaps he should accompany his statement that I am incorrect with an explanation to support his assertion.

Jpwrunyan had me worried for a minute that it didn't mean what I thought it meant. I, too, sought relief in wikepedia and other solid reference works. On the other hand it's hard to believe he would have made that post without either checking the meaning or being German.

So perhaps the answer is that he has elicited the desired response ...

On the other hand, I doubt that's the interpretation Occam would have put on it.

[Mansen]

Humor - Apparantly also not Kay's strongest suit. [:'(]

[Kayoz]

ORIGINAL: Mansen

Humor - Apparantly also not Kay's strongest suit. [:'(]

jpwrunyan may have posted that in jest. It's not inconceivable.

[Shark7]

I know earlier in the thread that some one mentioned setting the populace to do not accept to manage the plague...

One might also note that simply setting that to exterminate also works to end the plague (though it costs you control of the planet). [;)]

Yes, not a serious answer, but I have been tempted to do just that when a plague jumps back and forth between 2 planets over and over. [:@]

[vonHart]

Speaking as a native German: Kayoz's use of "Schadenfreude" is correct.

[AminMaalouf]

Does anyone remember how long in game time it takes for the effects of the plagues to go back to zero in Legends, approximately?