More Awesome Than You!

HOW THE PLAGUE WORKS:

Every disease has a "Severity" value, a "Death Severity", a "Contagiousness" value, and a type. There are 5 predefined types of plague, with predefined attributes (don't recall them right now) and symptom,, as well as "mysterious" plagues that a mathematically determined (generally random) set of exactly 2 symptoms per plague, and customizable values of initial severity, contagiousness, and deadliness.

A sim with the plague has a chance of leaving behind a "plague spread" tile that has a lifespan depending on the contagiousness of the plague approximately every half hour. Every hour, the sim has a chance of exhibiting a plague symptom, and his recovery total is checked. Every 6 hours, the recovery total is subtracted from the disease severity unless lethality of disease is -1 (special). Curepoints are then reset. A lethality -1 (nonlethal) disease will only be cured when curepoints > severity, but curepoints never reset for a "nonlethal" disease. Death will occur at this 6-hour interval if severity has exceeded lethal dosage.

Recovery works as follows:
+8 if a sim is sleeping. Ignore all subsequent values below.
+6 if a sim is sitting
+4 if the sim's comfort/energy (each)  is >= 50 (75%)
-4 if a sim's comfort/energy (each) is < 0 (50%)
Sims do not recover or worsen if they are "off lot". Sims do not recover or worsen unless they are visitor type 0 (resident).

The recovery value earned per interval reduces the "Severity" value by that amount (or increases it!). If the severity of the plague reaches 0, the sim recovers. If the severity of the plague exceeds the "deadliness" value for a potentially fatal plague, he dies. Recovery is not checked on community lots. In fact, nothing is checked on community lots as of sometime after TS2Original, and as of this writing (TS2OFBp2), sims cannot suffer any plague symptoms, nor spread the plague, on a community lot.

The exact effect of the medicine from the medical station is somewhat odd. Thorough examination of the curative mechanism suggests that, based on our present knowledge of the Manage Inventory code, the code is broken and does not function at in most cases, reading the token value of the index of the token inventory index of of the disease token, which in most cases is a large number and therefore is invalid (false return), causing the medicine to have no effect. In rare cases the plague token may be of sufficiently low value that the index IS valid and therefore a garbage value will be written into the severity value of the disease, with unpredictable consequences ranging from instant cure, slight improvement/worsening, no change, or change to a deadly value. This appears to confirm empirical evidence that the biotech station medicine is apparently broken and has no useful effect. On the off-chance you somehow manage to induce an effect, it will likely be bad for you as a random garbage value will be written, causing unpredictable consequences.

The available types of standard plague will be summarized shortly. "Mysterious" plagues can be acquired through the Biotech station (gives a randomly generated plague), or through a nefarious deeds (by installing hacks and objects that produce plagues!).

STANDARD PLAGUES
Morning Sickness
LD: -1
SS: 1d20 + 29
CT: -1

Food Poisoning
LD: 120
SS: 1d60 + 59
CT: -1

Cold
LD: 40 (special)
SS: 1d20+9
CT: 80
Special Note: Becomes pneumonia if severity hits lethal dosage. If this is not possible for some mysterious reason, death results (normally cannot happen).

Pneumonia
LD: 120
SS: 1d20 + 69
CT: 20

Flu
LD: 120
SS: 1d10 + 29
CT: 70

Mysterious
SH: 1d100 + 99 (symptom hash determines resulting two random symptoms)
LD: 120
SS: Variable
CT: 1d90 + 9

Diseases with CT: -1 are non-contagious. Diseases with LD: -1 are never lethal, and never decrease in severity, and can be cured if curepoints > severity.

I really thought it would be more complicated than that. It's also a real shame that the plague can't spread on community lots.

Might we have a list of every disease and their respective contagiousness values and severities?

That is a trivial change. One that I am already field-testing. Or at least, allowing people to suffer and be miserable, anyway. I'm not sure allowing full-scale spread is a good idea given that it will leave a ton of junk objects with possibly corrupt attributes around.

In the works already.

I figured out a while ago that when you get a sick sim with lots of energy, just stick them in a closet with a chair and a bookshelf. Then make them study till they're too tired to study or they get well.

But some of us want the opposite to happen Dizzy.

I have NEVER had a sim die from disease.  I'd like to see it happen in my game - it would make a nice variation to death from old age.  I've tried making them work out on exercise machines or making them work on the workstations from OFB (flowers, robots, toys) or making them smustle.  These should help to deplete their motives, increasing their chance of dying.  But they always recover.

I have the same problem!  I think that Maxis was way too generous when they set this up.  Getting a Sim well should be hard!  I just play my Sims normally when they're sick, aside from keeping an eye on the motives that particular illness is draining.  They all get better after a day or so, and about 90% of the time nobody else gets sick.

I'd like to see some sort of physical symptom, too. They should have extended the use of the acne to represent buboes which they could get all over their bodies. I've never had an epidemic because I have always operated a very strict quarantine policy on sick Sims, they get no contact with anyone until they are better.

Well, if you wanted to make their condition worse then do the opposite. Have them mingle as much as possible and spread it around. You probably need at least 3 or 4 sims sick at the same time to see their condtion get bad enough to render sim damage.

In my original Pleasantview it was hard to find anyone who didn't have the 'flu, but only two people died of it.  One fell victim to the "Recovered on Another Lot" bug before it was sorted by some patch or other, and the other was a bride who caught the 'flu at her wedding (I think about 14 of the 18 guests had it and she was socialising with all of them for the entire time).  She died under the wedding arch and THAT'S what I call surprise value.  Anything that would produce more stuff like that would be extremely welcome. 

I should add that I never do anything to stop disease spreading either, neither do I treat the Sims any differently.  They still go to work and socialise, but sooner or later the epidemic always disappears.  I've even had Sims with a cold, the 'flu and pneumonia all at once and they've always recovered.  I think it needs some random effect popping in somewhere.

It just plain needs to be more common, more contagious, more serious, and more deadly.  The way I'm able to ignore their condition with impunity is ridiculous.

I had a sim get sick from the medicine maker gimmick and she kept skilling, 8 hours later and she was magically better.

I had one recently went to work and while he was there a message came up saying he'd caught 'flu.  Before he got home, another message popped-up saying he was better again.  Can't remember what job he does now, but obviously he obtained a magical cure from somewhere.

The "diseases" are ridiculous. I never bother to make them rest, and no one has ever died.

I've actually had that happen to me too, Ancient. I think my Sim was in the Science career when it happened, but I don't remember all that well. An increase in the deadliness of diseases would definitely be appreciated, but not to the point that it was killing everybody that happened to contract the disease. Maybe if I let my Sims live like the pigs they are they might actually contract diseases, but at the moment they are all being micromnaged by me, so it's not like they really get exposed to much.

How much of an effect does the medicine created by the science reward have on disease?

The Science Reward reduces the severity of the disease by a few points. Since the effects are not particularly noticeable in game, and I don't have the file open and sorted right now, the short version is "not a lot".

I did actually have a sim die of flies the other day, although it wasn't from being a slob (although as it happens he is).  I noticed that all the flowerbeds were dead, so I deleted them with moveobjectson and replaced them with new ones.  Normally this works, but suddenly everyone was holding their noses and going on about smelly rubbish piles.  I couldn't find any anywhere, but I could see rather a lot of roaches and there was no way the family could get rid of them.  The Exterminator did (took quite a while), but the smell business continued and the roaches came back.  Then just as I was about to get my Sim to call the Exterminator again, suddenly he turned into a pile of ashes and the Reaper arrived (how come that fly death is so quick? Blink and you miss it). 

Anyway, I didn't save it - went back in and used the burn invisible objects thingy and it got rid of at least 20 piles of rubbish, a similar amount of smell emitters (never knew they existed),  a load of roaches ... all the new flowerbeds, two windows, two flamingos ...

A "Black Death" kind of disease would be fun. Well, maybe not so fun for the sims... But yeah, the Maxis plagues are hardly dangerous.

Maybe a maximally Mean Sim with maxed logic who is also a Mad Scientist could actually use the Virus they create.... if only they could release it on a community lot it could be a fun way to cull an overpopulated neighbourhood.

The problem with illnesses now is the fact that the aging system makes the lifespans of sims extremely short.  Essentially, when they can't work for a day they lose a year of their life.  For a sim to die from an illness they have to have it for 5-10 years, and "stressing" them pretty much the whole time.  In addition, diseases are completely random so if they were always fatal people would be complaining that the game is too hard.  I believe if they make a TS3 they need to introduce some sort of Stress system that determines illness.

People who would complain that the game is too hard are wusses and should be ignored.

what if they started a home business and infected the customers?

It is possible to spread the plague with or at a home a business, yes.

sell the plague? make it part of your stock?

What about the little blurb I read in the manual to the original TS2 about Body skill affecting resistance to illness.  Any truth to this?

Also, do certain careers have higher chances of making a sim sick?  I've noticed that when my sims do get sick its usually the scientists.

Not that I've found, but mostly I've been studying the mechanisms of an existing plague, not how one contracts the plague to begin with.

There is zero evidence to support this. Career-operation is nearly entirely handled in semiglobals, which makes them identical in this regard.

I think there should be some chance that the plague would be disfiguring, if the sim recovered. That would add some spicy realism to my medieval 'hood.

You could always get sussiissogoodsims2.net (?) and get her boil and scars make up and costume mask and plaster those on your sims that get sick.

That smacks of effort.

Cockroaches can go through walls, right?

I believe they can, although how they do this is a great mystery to me. I'm sure it involves some form of quantum-tunnelling.

Hmm, in that case I've got an idea.  I need to turn the thatched-roof peasant cottages in my medieval neighborhood into proper disease-infested slums.  I figure if I put a pile of garbage under the foundation then there'll be plenty of disease to go around, especially since they won't be able to clean it up when I'm not looking.

try to leave alone one sim and one broken "cleaner robot"...
when it's broken the robot will will spit out trash on every empty square of the lot..
in 10 minuts your lot will be filled of garbage and in 20 mintus you game will be uncontrollable 'cuase Cockroaches are everyware  ;D
that's happen to me when i leaved alone a sim and open for business 'bot ... lol

BTW, to stay in topic, i didn't undrestand if the game have an internal calendar.. if so, on the winter the sims shold be more infectable than the summer... they could get "cold" or "flu" just for visiting out-door community lot

Oh, I love that idea. The plague house!

I guess then you could have a broken cleaner robot, and a servo. The servo would then run the business, because it could continue to infect people without dying itself. I mean it's a robot, so I assume they are immune to disease?

Then the only problem, I think, would be to keep the customers coming to your lot. I imagine it would be difficult to get a star and increase the flow of people if everyone freaks out about the garbage and complains.

PLAGUE ROBOT

How is the virus from the biotech station consumed?

This has been the greatest sim mystery to me since the question of why they always think about a wall when they eat pizza.

It isn't. The Virus is a vestigial feature, rather like an appendix, only some of us still use that. Its only "perk" is that it has, strangely enough, no risk of infection when creating it solo for logic-training. Which is not really a perk because the chessboard is faster than the Biostation, without a trainer, and WITH a trainer, you can't do the virus thing. Plus it's only available around 7 or 8 points. At one point, you might have been able to sell it the Burglar, but this feature seems to be inoperable or cut.

And they think about a wall when eating pizza because the wall is blocking one of their navigational possibilities when moving away from the pizza box.

Always with the riddles.

So it just infects sims now and then while they're making medicines?

Yes, based on a fancy algorithm that determines infection risk based on hygiene level, personality, skill, and aspiration. The Skillinator actually takes these factors into account and won't have your sim use the Biostation unless it's safe.

Crappy biotech station, I want a hack to sicken other people with the virus. Stupid Maxis, what's the point of even making it?

Ahem. Cracks in walls. Or holes. Cockroaches are good at that sort of stuff.

Do you suppose due to the infamous guinea pig disease Maxis was being extra cautious introducing another potentially fatal disease in the neighborhoods considering how everyone was unhappy with the guinea pig disease?

I'm wondering if you perhaps had 'move objects on' when you put the new flowers out after manually deleting them?

The reason that I ask, is because I did this once. There were a lot of dead flowers and it would have taken several sim hours to clean all of them up. So I deleted them like you did. But I couldn't place the new flowers without 'move objects on'.

Like you, afterwards they kept complaining about the smell. Then I noticed that there was one flowerbed left in a corner that I missed. I deleted it also. I started to put out more flowers again and still couldn't place them. So on a whim, I decided to 'burninate' the spot rather than do 'move objects' again. To my surprise, it said "One object deleted-smell emitter. So then I used the burninator on the rest of the flowers that I had just placed. Each one deleted 2 objects, the flowers and the smell emitter.

So it looks like the smell emitters were left behind to bug the sims and spread disease.

(I know that this response is a little late compared to the original post, but since no one responded to that post I am guessing that others were not aware of the way the dead flowers work and might want this info for future reference.)

If you have cracks and holes in your walls, you have a bigger problem than roaches. Hull breaches are extremely bad.

Bah. Like they wouldn't buy it anyway?

TreyNutz was conducting experiments (http://www.simposieum.net/component/option,com_smf/Itemid,27/topic,1544.0) on Sim sicknesses.  He also was bothered at how easy it was to cure the Sim with minimal effort.

TreyNutz found it easy to cure his sims because passing out makes your sim asleep, which means he gets +8 recovery, and all other factors like comfort/energy are ignored. In order to maximize the harm, a sim has to be kept AWAKE, NOT be allowed to sit at ALL, *AND* have comfort/energy < 0. Sitting, whether or not comfort is high or low, grants a +6 recovery bonus, although having bad comfort and energy is -4 each (the sitting bonus does not ignore comfort/energy like the +8 sleep bonus does). Passing out will give him +8, so you can't allow that either, if you want to intentionally kill him. Note that a chair is not required for a sim to "sit"! A sim can be considered "sitting" on a wide variety of things: Terlets, stools, in cars, hot tubs, even the ground. TreyNutz therefore actually created a number of factors that made it much HARDER to die. Optimal RECOVERY would occur for a sim that is sitting and macrocaffeinating when not sitting.

Would optimal DYING be working at a craft station? Or might you have one better?

I believe that with TS2U it is possible for a sim to suffer symptoms and spread illness on a community lot, so that was changed sometime after university.  I had a sim catch a mysterious illness from Loki Beaker on a community lot.  There seems to be some special disease related scripting with the Beakers though, so it may have been a special case.  At the time that it happened, the patch for University (the one that came out around the same time as NL), was not yet available.

Also, is it really possible for a Sim to come home sick from work?  I've only ever seen a sim get sick from the biotech station, food poisoning or roaches, and even then it's really rare, not to mention that any of those scenarios are pretty unlikely unless you're incredibly careless or trying for them.

I've had Sims come home sick from work. Almost without exception this has occured when the Sim has been using the last charge of a noodlesoother. I'm not sure whether this is some effect of the item's expiration or if it is simply a coincidence, however.

I've played sims with static motives that are constantly maxed (and therefore do nothing except go to work) get sick from work, so it is definitely possible.

Would a workout machine be considered sitting? I could see a sick sim maybe getting worse from working out (especially the radio workout).

But the
The problem with that is that you have to keep comfort in the red for days in order for the sim to die of disease, and in that state they won't do anything but complain.  They absolutely won't obey your commands to work out or anything else for that matter.  Further, even if you deprive them of chairs, they will gain a marginal degree of comfort from autonomously gazing out of windows!

I've managed to kill 3 or 4 sims from disease to get the green ghosts, and none of mine died in less than 3 days, even when I had them confined in a window-less, door-less, quarantine room with nothing to sit on but the cheapest toilet.  I've never had them recover either though, so if you're determined you can definitely kill them this way. 

Throwing up seems to send comfort down a good bit.  Not coincidentally, my fastest sim death (by disease) was a low-logic sim who contracted the biotech virus, and then was fed a steady diet of spoiled food, all while confined to quarantine.  During normal game play though, I can't see how any of my sims would die by disease.

Sitting on the terlet is still sitting, which is +6 recovery, giving a net of +2 even with the -4 for bad comfort.

I don't really see it happening either, unless you had -energy and -comfort symptoms, and thus managed to net -8 recovery from comfort and energy, for a rather slow -2 while sitting. Unless the gap between initial severity and lethal severity is small, the fact that you will go to +8 when the sim finally runs out of power and passes out or goes to sleep will offset the -2 drain...which won't persist long, if he runs out of energy. Probably the only way you're going to achieve a kill is if you meditate with < 50% comfort/energy, which I think still qualifies as sitting, thus allowing you to keep the -2 drain going indefinitely...maybe.

So, it would seem that emailers confined by a fence rather than a wall, with a bush rather than a toilet, would have a quicker mortality rate.

Well, fences and walls make no difference to the plague.

I was following up on the suggestion that looking out the window raises comfort. Fences tend not to have windows.

The biotech viruses must be very lethal for a low-logic sim, because as I posted _every_ sim I have quarantined without a chair nor a bed, died from it. 

Some take longer than others, but once their comfort is in the red, sitting on the toilet once a day isn't enough for them to recover.  Further, passing out doesn't even get their energy into the yellow.  Unlike pregnant sims who occasionally pass out while eating, these sims wake sooner, essentially when energy gets slightly less urgent than comfort.  Keeping both energy and comfort well below 10%, after the first day is trivial. 

I haven't timed how much time they spend awake and complaining vs. passed out, but possibly putting speakers (or something else which can't be turned off) in the death cell could speed their demise by keeping their sleep intervals as short as possible.

The difficult issue is having these sims in the household to spread the virus around.  There are so many actions which can increase comfort, that they require more micromanagement than I can tolerate to keep them sick.

I think they also get comfort from watching the clouds...

It's a wonder that anyone can get a sim to die of disease at all.

Yea, but they can also get squished that way, too :)

Yes, I did - the flowerbeds can't be deleted unless it's on and I know I never bothered to turn it back off.  Oddly enough, exactly the same thing happened today on another lot and I had to burinate again.  There were hidden rubbish piles and smell emitters on that lot as well.  I noticed that one of the Sims went over to one of the new flowerbeds and picked-up a rubbish bag to throw out, even though there had been no rubbish to be seen, just a new flowerbed.  I've no idea why it works like this and it never used to, because I always used to get rid of dead flowerbeds like that. 

Maybe Maxis added that way in so we have to make our sims clean up the dead flowers rather than deleting them.

That sounds stupid enough to be true.  ::)

I've had a lot of problems with sickness in my favourite 'hood.  Couldn't eliminate the epidemic.  Sims came home from work sick, they met sick people on community lots and got sick, they invited over visitors and got sick, they invited over visitors who I knew were not sick (having just gone to the visitor's lot and made them well again!) and got sick again and finally some sims just wouldn't get well no matter what I did!  I went all round the 'hood curing sims and kept finding them turning up sick again! This was base game only  >:(  Since installing OFB and changing my save habits (I used  to save with visitors on lots pretty regularly - didn't know it was a bad thing).  I've been round the 'hood again and managed to get rid of it - I think.  DK which helped, the new improved SAVE habit or if OFB made it easier.

Messages about sickness also caused me grief.  When you load a lot, you don't always get messages about sick sims.  You get a message that A and B are sick, but not that C is sick when you can see them coughing and sneezing. (may be base game problem - not sure if it still happens with OFB)

Couple of questions...
If a sim goes to work sick - are other sims in that career track at risk?
If a sim goes to school sick - are other kids going to get sick?
Can you ID these plague tiles?  Are they the various squares the sim stood and sneezed on? (I'm wondering if I had one on a portal square so all the visitors got sick as they arrived!)
Does the emitter sometimes keep broadcasting after the sim is well again? (might explain why I couldn't seem to cure a sim - he got sick again immediately I cured him!)
When do you get messages about "sim is well again"? I've thought before that Sims were well long before the message popped up and, if the health check is done every hour, it sounds like a lag must be built in.

Pleased to hear sick sims on community lots don't spread disease any more!  Not realistic though - if you want it harder, unfix that.

I had this in a notepad file - I don't know where I cut and pasted it from, but I guess it's Prima Guide

Cold
Symptoms = Coughing, Sneezing 
Source = 1% chance of catching a cold anytime Sim goes to work or school.
   (It seems a higher chance to me?)
Contagious? = Highly 
Potentially Fatal? = No, if left untreated becomes Pneumonia.

Flu 
Symptoms = Coughing, Diarrhea 
Source = Up to 5% chance if near roaches.
Contagious? = Highly
Potentially Fatal? = Yes

Pneumonia
Symptoms = Coughing, Fatigue 
Source = Untreated Cold
Contagious? = Slightly
Potentially Fatal? = Yes

Food Poisoning
Symptoms = Vomiting, Nausea
Source = 5% chance when eating spoiled food 
Non contagious but fatal if left untreated.

Virus 
Symptoms = 2 random symptoms
Source = Mishandling of Virus created with Biotech Station with severity determined by Logic skill and manifested by darkness of the colour of the vial.
Contagious?= Highly
Potentially Fatal? = Yes.

Edited for questions already answered- rtfm

actualy the stuff spreads realy fast in my game, and i´ve had a teen die because he kept playing drums wen sick.
And they seem to recover best when at work. is that because they sit at work?

Yesterday I had a child bring home another child from school. While the visiting child was on the lot, she caught the cold that the family had. The visiting girl is one of my playables on another lot.

The next day the little girl called my child. I left them talking on the phone for awhile. Then I got a popup saying that several of my sims were now well. I also got a popup saying the visitor girl on the phone was now well!

So I was wondering if I could note all the sick sims and call them to get them well? I've had a cold plague going around the neighborhood for quite some time now.

Anyone else had a similar experience?

Maybe things would spread more if NPC's weren't immune.  I have a feeling that if you remove their immunity in SimPE, the game puts it back, but I'm not sure.  I particularly don't see why the nannies should be immune, it would serve them all right to be hacking all over the place at the same time as peeing their pants.

It treats the girl at the other end of the phone as a resident of the lot doesn't it.  Just like them getting stuck on the lot if the phone conversation doesn't end properly.  aaarrgh
Definitely worth exploiting if you are trying to get rid of a plague!

Awful thought -If you can cure them by phone, maybe you can spread them by phone too! 
Calling all their friends is one of the things I let them do if they are sick!  Have to stop doing that I think!

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

I don't think it spreads by phone. I think the reason the girl on the phone was cured was because it treated her like she was there timewise, therefore enough time had passed for her to get well. I think they have to walk near a spot where a sick person was to get sick, but I'm not 100% positive.

Yeah, sims on the phone are a weird case.

In some ways, the game considers them "on the lot", but not for most things.  So magicmoon is probably correct in that it simply took her recovery rate and time passage into consideration and cured her, but that actually transmitting a virus to her via the phone is likely impossible.

-Kitt

What's the point of sims getting sick if they're so unlikely to die from it?   :P  Maxis might as well have left it out entirely -- starving a sim sounds easier.

From what I've read, it was easier for sims to die from sickness in the base game, and maybe in Uni.  But since NL (and definitely since OFB), the chances of death from sickness have gone way down. Maybe they figure there are enough other ways for a sim to die, or maybe it's a potential problem if a sick sim dies on an owned business lot (which seems more likely to me).

Well, if it's the latter, we know JMP can fix that.

Happened to my sims regularly in base game only.   Haven't got Uni or NL.  Haven't noticed in OFB.
Of course if there was a plague tile at the portal, that could have been co-incidence!

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

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.

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  ;D

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!).

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.

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

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

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.

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!

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.

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

NO VACATION FOR YOU!

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).


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.

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.  :D

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?

Doesn't the flu already to this?

Yes. There are already motive-drain related symptoms.

Is there anything other than the sudden motive drop when the Sim shows a symptom (coughing, throwing up, etc.)?  If not, I'm talking about more of a "background" motive drain like in pregnancy.  If so, then I've certainly never noticed it and it therefore ought to be increased.

[Piratey Translation]

If ye stack th' diseases (MakeMeSick Tester) wi' pregnancy an' run at 3x game speed that makes th' situation challengin'. ;D

Does multiple "compatible" (Flu & Food Poisonin', fer example) infection tokens effect th' overall decay rate?

[Original Post]

If you stack the diseases (MakeMeSick Tester) with pregnancy and run at 3x game speed that makes the situation challenging. ;D

Does multiple "compatible" (Flu & Food Poisoning, for example) infection tokens effect the overall decay rate?

I didn't notice whether it increased the background motive drain, but because the afflicted show multiple symptoms, the key motives related to each symptom can take an additive hit.  In the example I'm thinking of, my sim had a hacking cough from the biotech virus, and then he started horking after getting food poisoning.  Ultimately, he died of the virus first, but I kept getting warnings about his food poisoning for several hours after his death!  :D

If you want curing sickness to be hard, you have to disallow using energisers.  Any sim in gold or platinum can use the energiser to get all their needs up and be well in no time flat.

It's funny how merely sitting in a chair with high comfort and energy scores produces (6+4) a faster recovery rate than sleeping (8 only). On the other hand, you can't sleep until your energy drops to 70%, I think, whereas you can sit down anytime.

That is a good idea.  Most of the time when you are sick you always feel tired.  What if you lower the maximum amount of energy you can recover while suffering from the plague?

There's already a "fatigue" symptom. The symptoms and how they work will be documented later.

The game already lowers your energy cap?  So if you contract the plague you can only recover up to 80% (or some other arbitrary number) of your energy not the full 100% or am I not following correctly and you are referring to the rate at which you recover energy?

One of the symptoms causes energy loss when it strikes.

I can't even remember the last time I used an energiser (for any reason, not just sickness) in my game.  Several EPs back I think?  I do just the opposite with my sick sims - I make them use the exercise machine, smustle or use the crafting stations to drain their needs.  They still get better within a day.

... wanders away muttering something about stupid sims who refuse to die on her ...

About the only sims in my game that use the energizer are those crash-learning crafting station skills.  Particularly Mad Scientists on the robotics station, because they have those late working hours and would otherwise not have enough energy to go to work.

I use the energiser mainly to keep knowledge sims going and also in running businesses.  That and the knowledge cap are the only two I'm using now.  Plus elixir of course so my sims don't die of old age.  soft hearted? who me?

No, sorry if I gave the wrong impression. What I meant to say was that using sleep/energy as the sole factor in plague recovery is risky because normally speaking the option to sleep or take a nap doesn't appear until a Sim's energy ear has reached a certain level (70-75%). So, if the comfort + sitting recovery bonuses are nuked and if a Sim comes back sick with a 90% energy bar there's nothing he can do about it until he gets tired enough to go to sleep.

I thought I would try and make a hack to make sicknesses more realistic.
Topic in Peasantry (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=8062.0)
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+8 if the Sim is sleeping (skips other variables)
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+2 if the Sim is sitting
+2 if the Sim's energy is >= 50 (75%)
+1 if the Sim's comfort is >= 50 (75%)
=+5 Max improvement, while awake
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-6 if a sim is not sleeping or sitting
-4 if a sim's energy is < 0 (50%) 
-2 if a sim's comfort is < 0 (50%)
=-12 Max deterioration, while awake
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Real-Sickness.Package.Zip by Bigupload.Com (http://www.bigupload.com/d=DDAA79C7)

It's usually nicer to start your own thread for hacks & stuff, so that if you have to troubleshoot or whatever it's not hogging someone else's thread.

This looks interesting though. I'll give it a crack & let you know what I think - in your own new shiny thread.

Ok.  Which forum, the names of them confuseth me.

Peasantry would probably be your best bet.