The Plague: A Detailed Study

[jsalemi]

I've had sims come home sick since OFB, but never had a sim die from it.

[Ancient Sim]

Oh, god! Typhoid Nanny. Now that would make the game interesting, considering the number of households one nanny can be working in.

Maybe, maybe not.  I only have one maid in my custom neighbourhood.  She's a playable Sim and has been the neighbourhood maid since she started as a new CAS adult.  She's an elder now and cleans more or less every house in the neighbourhood.  She currently has 'flu and is spreading it to everyone who hasn't already got it.  This has been going on for a while (it's some time since I played her lot) but nobody seems to be suffering unduly.  It all started with Gvaudoin Tricou's family, as I recall.  There were 8 people living there until recently and they all had it - Nylissit even died of old age while suffering from it.  They've had it for ages but they don't seem to get any worse, they just keep recovering and catching it again over & over.  Her eldest set of twins are due to start Uni very shortly, so maybe they'll infect the campus, although that's happened before and not come to anything either.

It was definitely easier to die of the 'flu before NL - I had several die of it with that glitch they eventually fixed, where they'd die on their own lot if they recovered on another.  Apart from my bride under the wedding arch, it's the only way mine ever did die of the 'flu.

[cwykes]

They've had it for ages but they don't seem to get any worse, they just keep recovering and catching it again over & over. 

That's the kind of thing that happens in my game.  It's very annoying.  I'm wondering if  I have "plague spots" in strategic places that won't go away - like doors and portals....  How do we ID these spots?  Would be nice if the lot debugger cleaned them up 

[Ancient Sim]

Well, mine are catching it from each other.  One household member recovers, then immediately recatches it from another who hasn't recovered.  Sometimes they get better at work/school, then catch it again as soon as they get home.  It all seems totally pointless when it never gets any worse.  I certainly don't treat mine any differently and they rarely stay off work - no point when they're always told "You don't sound ill" and lose a day's vacation (which I immediately give them back via Insim because they were ill, damnit!).

[Jelenedra]

Really? My sims never got told that they didn't sound ill. Even when they were giggling into the phone.

Then again, my sims are always in a hellish good mood in the morning.

[cwykes]

whether they are believed or not is supposed to depend on that job performance bar...  or so I was told....

[Jelenedra]

That's been my experience. Hence the good mood in the morning = good job performance.

[J. M. Pescado]

Well, mine are catching it from each other.  One household member recovers, then immediately recatches it from another who hasn't recovered.  Sometimes they get better at work/school, then catch it again as soon as they get home.  It all seems totally pointless when it never gets any worse.  I certainly don't treat mine any differently and they rarely stay off work - no point when they're always told "You don't sound ill" and lose a day's vacation (which I immediately give them back via Insim because they were ill, damnit!).

If a sim is not faking, as in, they really are ill, they will always lose a vacation day if they have one for calling in sick. The logic for testing for faking does not occur and they won't ever sound like they're really REALLY sick to the point where they get to keep their vacation day. They always lose a vacation day if they have one, so the only advantage of calling in sick is if you don't have a vacation day and catch the plague. Otherwise there's no benefit.

[cwykes]

I thought you got an extra vacation day - shows how observant I am.

What about the messages?  What is the timing on those.  It doesn't look to me like they pop up straight away or sometimes at all.  If the sim is coughing and spluttering, but you haven't had a message - are they counted as sick.  If they look fine, no symptons but you haven't had a message, I've learned from experience, they are still sick!

[J. M. Pescado]

If you have plague symptoms, you definitely have the plague, even if the notifications haven't popped up. If you don't see anything AND you have not seen any box, you may or may not have the plague.

[Ellatrue]

Heh, it would be funny if that were a difference in the American vs. International versions.

NO VACATION FOR YOU!

[rohina]

Here, for those of you who want accurate diagnoses of your plagues, there is this quiz:

http://www.quizilla.com/users/maidenfair/quizzes/Which%20Medieval%20Plague%20Do%20You%20Have%3F

[Li'l Brudder]

I reeeeeeeeeealy want a fix fox the diseases.  Something that makes them get sick easier and makes it harder to cure, with greater chances of death.  I have never had an epidemic in my game.  It's always been "A has the flu!"  ANd then, like 3 hours later, "A is better now!"

Jeeze.  I'm tired of boolproping my sick sims to death.

[J. M. Pescado]

Well, the average flu severity is 35, so if you brutalize your sim as much as possible, it will take him 8 hours to die. Assuming the more NORMAL case, where you simply ignore the plague and carry on as usual, your sim will probably be sitting (+6), have high comfort (+4), and probably average energy. He will thus recover at about 10 pts/hr, so yes, about 3-4 hours to recover, although you won't be informed of this until at least 6 hours or so due to the way RHC works.

So pretty much most everything you do causes your sim to get better. Any proposals for how it can be made worse, without actually making everything instantly lethal?

[dizzy]

You could maybe tweak comfort down a bit. Make it less of a factor. Doesn't make much sense that it is such a factor in the first place.

I'd really prefer Hygiene, Serious, and maybe the Logic skill to be the main factors in how well a sim recovers.

[J. M. Pescado]

Well, "serious" isn't a skill, and I frankly don't see why it would help. Not sure why logic would help either. Hygiene is a consideration, but that's more preventative than something that will help once you already HAVE the plague.

[Flamingo]

Actually, Pescado, I remember a relative of mine had caught some disease after coming out of the hospital that caused sores on her skin to develope, and if she had not been hygienic and cleaned it out three times a day, it would not be healed by now and probably would have gotten much much worse.

[Dopp]

Do any of the plagues give the victim nasty pus-filled sores? I thought they were all invisible flu-type *cough* *cough* *drop dead* plagues.

The reason why the comfort motive has the greatest impact on recovery is probably because the designers want the Sim to sit down more and waste time. However, a Sim can do a lot of things while sitting down (skilling, eating, socializing) and can gain comfort rapidly. Even taking a dump bumps his comfort meter up a noticable amount.

I suggest that only energy and perhaps hunger affect recovery/death. Good hygiene doesn't help you recover from flu, it just helps prevent you from catching it in the first place. Comfort relates more to relaxation than to proper rest (energy), and thus has a negligible effect on the progress of the illness. Sleeping in bed will help you recover, merely sitting in a chair most likely will not. The energy motive is a lot slower to replenish, even in the best beds, and the Sim will be unable to do anything else while sleeping. He can woohoo, I guess, but since that drains energy it might prove fatal.

[Flamingo]

Yes, well, maybe we need some more sicknesses. Some more powerful ones that are a tad less common, but a bit more fatal. That and they could have unconventional methods of curing. I don't know how or if anyone would go about doing that, but it sounds good to me.

I do agree with our idea of how a sickness should be cured, though. Most people sit down for their entire day doing work and they don't recover from it in 3 hours.

[J. M. Pescado]

I suggest that only energy and perhaps hunger affect recovery/death. Good hygiene doesn't help you recover from flu, it just helps prevent you from catching it in the first place. Comfort relates more to relaxation than to proper rest (energy), and thus has a negligible effect on the progress of the illness. Sleeping in bed will help you recover, merely sitting in a chair most likely will not. The energy motive is a lot slower to replenish, even in the best beds, and the Sim will be unable to do anything else while sleeping. He can woohoo, I guess, but since that drains energy it might prove fatal.

Well, hunger doesn't really make any sense, because hunger's NORMAL range runs the full gamut of the bar, and it's not even POSSIBLE to effectively eat anything until -50. Thus it's impossible to gauge anything meaningful from hunger until you hit the starvation slowdown line at -85. I suppose we could start adding a penalty for that.

Actually, simply negating the "sit" bonus, which is a huge, whopping +6, would really slow things down a lot, as your recovery rate drops 5-6 points right there, as sims spend a lot of time sitting, simply parked out of the way.

[Weaver]

I'm waiting for the potent and extremely fatal decay disease game mod in conjunction with a contest challenge.
Entertainment is all about survival and out-of-luck odds - just look at television. Oh, something about drama and explosions too.

[Dopp]

Actually, simply negating the "sit" bonus, which is a huge, whopping +6, would really slow things down a lot, as your recovery rate drops 5-6 points right there, as sims spend a lot of time sitting, simply parked out of the way.

Yeah, just nuke the sit bonus. Keeps it simple and yet increases the difficulty. But then maybe you need to increase the influence of energy or something to compensate, otherwise the Sim would recover as fast from working out as from vegging in a corner. Make them have to go to bed or something inconvenient.

You could also create a deadly guinea pig virus that cannot be cured except by medicine. Guaranteed death in three days. Of course the original guinea pig virus was also hard to catch (had to be bitten while playing with a dirty guinea pig). Or maybe a zombie plague that drains motives at an ever-increasing rate until death occurs, whereupon the victim becomes a zombie (this last is wishful thinking).

Entertainment is all about survival and out-of-luck odds - just look at television. Oh, something about drama and explosions too.

I agree. Sometimes I wonder if Maxis should go a step further and introduce a "disaster" expansion pack for Sims 2 with triggerable mega-disasters like in SimCity. Imagine your Sim family having to deal with a sudden flood, meteor shower, house party getting gatecrashed by aliens with head-mounted lasers, or an invasion of plague zombies. The best drama always has a healthy dose of real danger and excitement mixed in, and I don't mean retarded Baked-Alaska-set-yourself-on-fire kind of excitement.

[seelindarun]

Is it possible to make the plague drain motives faster, like pregnancy?  I notice that when I'm playing poor families, I do have to pay a little more attention to them.  Especially if you don't have OFB, feeding them before they pass out is non-trivial.

Add in some projectile horking throughout the sickness, and I think we'd have a pretty inconvenient plague. 

[Avalikia]

Why not make it so that if comfort or energy (or hygiene maybe) bottoms out entirely they get a major hit to their recovery time.  Clearly if any of these empty out the person is not even trying to help their sim get better.

I do like the idea of pregnancy-style need-draining.  What is the Flu without the overwhelming need to do nothing but lay in bed and nap or maybe watch a little TV?

[Dopp]

I do like the idea of pregnancy-style need-draining.  What is the Flu without the overwhelming need to do nothing but lay in bed and nap or maybe watch a little TV?

Doesn't the flu already to this?