Internal Infections way too damn strong?

[LetzShake]

I don't know if I just don't know how to treat them (Spaceacillin, sterilizine, dylovene) but I've been having a problem lately where someone with severe wounds, no matter how well those wounds were treated comes back with severe internal infections that quickly spread, then bring the person down and kill them so fast that even cryo can't save them (and also keeps their body temperature so high, Cryo really CAN'T save them.)

I managed to, with frantic constant injection of dylovene and spaceacillin, that required constant attention for nearly half an hour of real time, save a patient, whose infection went away entirely. Then, what happens? He reports he's not feeling well, again, even when the body scanner reported him as being completely clean of infection, and drops dead before he even makes it back to the medbay.

I think internal infections (of organs, and internal tissue) spread and kill way too fast and seem to be impossible to treat. Unless I'm missing something on how to treat them.

[Garnascus]

The thing about infections is the longer they go untreated, the harder they become to treat. I don't know how you are getting patients with so many INTERNAL infections but if they wait that long to come to medical after getting hurt there isn't a whole lot you can do outside of immediate amputation.

[Frances]

There's actually a phantom infection bug, which is rare but completely untreatable. I don't think it has anything to do with infection stages, as I saw it happen from minor things we tried to treat quickly.

Anyway, there's no way to treat patients with it that I know of. Like, even admin rejuvs don't fix it. So it's pretty much terminal, lmao

[Jboy2000000]

Ive run into the phantom infection three times, two of them fatal. The last time I ran into it, we removed his arm surgically. I /THINK/ that cured it.

[Frances]

Ive run into the phantom infection three times, two of them fatal. The last time I ran into it, we removed his arm surgically. I /THINK/ that cured it.

We tried that (and the admins got mad at me for it -_-), but the infection just came back in other body parts some 10 minutes later. Also tried to remove kidneys, which should make the mob immune to toxin damage (at least it used to, idk if it was that or liver to I took out both to be safe), and the infection somehow still kept going.

[canon35]

Infections on the whole are absolutely annoying. Wish we remove them.

[Zundy]

Was it not their appendix?

Edit: Or a viral infection?

[Garnascus]

Infections on the whole are absolutely annoying. Wish we remove them.

 

Uhhh no. There needs to be risks to combat and infections are an important part.

[rrrrrr]

Here are the many risks to combat: dying

[Guest]

Tip: There is a fix for this and someone already gave a hint for it. This "phantom infection" is basically limb necrosis.

This is what happens when you take severe damage and don't pack first-aid to treat it right away.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

I actually really like how infections are, and even the phantom limb infection bug gives me a tickle. Requiring amputation rather than a bunch of pills is just the kind of tough decisions medbay should make sometimes.

Also necrosis is horrifying.

Granted admin rejuv should fix it.

[LetzShake]

Tip: There is a fix for this and someone already gave a hint for it. This "phantom infection" is basically limb necrosis.

This is what happens when you take severe damage and don't pack first-aid to treat it right away.

 

Well then it should show up on the scanner, because all it said was 'acute infection', and then after a stupidly long and difficult treatment, there was no infection, then boom, dead patient.

I like infection as a concept. I just think the way it is right now requires more hands than the game allows, and, for one thing, encourages people to just let the patient die rather than go the difficult route (not something I would ever do, but definitely an attitude I've seen) and also takes up SO MUCH time and resources, it's really a bit absurd. I think infection and consequences are good. I just think it advances into borderline untreatability way too quickly. What I would do is make necrosis a thing that pops up, so amputation or organ replacement is necessary, but maybe don't make it deadly so quickly and suddenly? Also I think the time it takes infection to set in is probably too fast. The patient should AT LEAST have time to make it to the damn medbay if they head there immediately. Or at least make it more obvious to the patient that something is wrong.

I guess IC, currently, the best solution is if anyone has a decent amount of damage taken, to keep them under observation to make sure they don't get an infection, which is probably realistic, BUT maybe not the best thing in terms of game mechanics.

[canon35]

Infections on the whole are absolutely annoying. Wish we remove them.

 

Uhhh no. There needs to be risks to combat and infections are an important part.

 

It makes no godamn sense. You don't develop a killing infection in 1-2 hours. Also, there's other risks to combat (Breaking limbs, losing limbs, pain, being killed) but our guns are so weak that it takes 3-4 laser rifle shots to kill when it's easier to just stun the guy and bash his head in with a extinguisher.

[Frances]

Infections on the whole are absolutely annoying. Wish we remove them.

 

Uhhh no. There needs to be risks to combat and infections are an important part.

 

It makes no godamn sense. You don't develop a killing infection in 1-2 hours. Also, there's other risks to combat (Breaking limbs, losing limbs, pain, being killed) but our guns are so weak that it takes 3-4 laser rifle shots to kill when it's easier to just stun the guy and bash his head in with a extinguisher.

The purpose of infections was to prevent people from shrugging off injuries without visiting medbay.

I'd like to see an overhaul of the injury/healing system, but you gotta admit injuries in SS13 are pretty unrealistic as a whole, so superfast infections aren't a standout offender tbh.

[LetzShake]

I don't care about realism too much, but I just think as they are right now they're really not fun.

[Frances]

I don't care about realism too much, but I just think as they are right now they're really not fun.

Well, keep in mind phantom infections are a bug, and are not meant to be like that by design.

Other infections are fairly easy to cure, no? Ointment/treat infected areas, give spaceacillin and antitox, and you're good to go.

[LetzShake]

I don't care about realism too much, but I just think as they are right now they're really not fun.

Well, keep in mind phantom infections are a bug, and are not meant to be like that by design.

Other infections are fairly easy to cure, no? Ointment/treat infected areas, give spaceacillin and antitox, and you're good to go.

 

No, that's more how old infections went. Now, the infection goes internal and in a matter of maybe a minute, the patient goes from "mild infection" to "ACUTE INFECTION +++" on the advanced scanner, and starts crashing so hard that cryo doesn't work, and it took two doctors with two full beakers of medication to keep them alive and clear it up. Also each injection was bringing up a message saying "you don't see any useful way to inject this person" because they were crashing so hard they needed cryo but couldn't go in the cryo because of their body temperature.

And then he died afterward anyway. I don't know if it was 'phantom infection' or what.

DO we have medicine IVs? I know we have them for blood, but it's been a damn long time since I've had to use one. Can you put medicine on them? That'd probably help, keeping the person on a drip of antitoxin or something.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

We are already on the cusp of the Post-Biotic Age IRL. The overuse and misuse of antibiotics has lead to strains of super-bugs resistant to antibiotics.

"It’s conceivable that in 20 years, treatments such as chemotherapy and simple surgery will become impossible because they rely on antibiotics. We are facing a future where a cough or cut could kill once again." - Liz Bonnin, in that second link of mine.

Medicine is in a constant, life-and-death arms race. We can easily lore-justify disease as having taken horrifying new directions in our setting.

Infections are deadly and advance quickly because they're the breed of bugs that evolved after we already cured and killed off the less serious ones.

Phantom infections are the dreaded super-bugs immune to modern medicine. Just like before antibiotics were discovered, and in a decade or so when disease evolves defenses to what we have now, basic infections are/will be super dangerous.

We have a virology department that can splice and cure entire diseases in the course of a few hours. Most diseases advance at a super quick rate (relative to the game time) and it's clear that we've apparently cured all the old types of diseases, and what we have in our setting is what evolved out of the .001% of bugs that survived the great 25th century medical advances.

So, all of this, even phantom limb infections, are "realistic" if you explore the concept of modern antibiotics becoming outpaced by disease evolution. And that's what scifi does.

Of course, the bigger question is if these things are consistent with our setting, not if they're realistic according to what we understand in the 21st century. And, of course, their impact on the game in a mechanical sense.

And yeah, I think they're consistent. I also think they provide challenges to medical staff, and other players.

[LetzShake]

A few hours in Space Station 13 is an eternity. WE're talking here about infections that go insurmountably lethal in a few minutes. That's not fun. This is still a game, and that's not fun.

[Guest]

The only issue I have with infections as it stands is that most injuries save for burns or radiation heal over time, and medicine is often not required until you get shot.

I'd only be behind infections being a little more nasty in the long term (and a bit nerfed in the short term) if we remove automatic, non-resting healing altogether.

[Frances]

Seconded. I don't understand why we have health generation, in this day and age, in 2457, when infections will screw you over for not seeing a doctor anyway.

[LetzShake]

The only issue I have with infections as it stands is that most injuries save for burns or radiation heal over time, and medicine is often not required until you get shot.

I'd only be behind infections being a little more nasty in the long term (and a bit nerfed in the short term) if we remove automatic, non-resting healing altogether.

 

This is the perfect solution to me. Slow down the rate of infection, nerf or even entirely eliminate automatic healing so people can't ignore that half their chest is melted off. Gives the medbay more meaningful interaction and actually makes them important.

[Carver]

Because having to visit medbay every ten minutes for the 5 brute after a dude threw a pen at you is such a fun and immersive experience.

[Skull132]

Going to necro this.

I was thinking, I had a patient die on me from something similar to what you lot are describing. I checked their bodies after a sweep of antibiotics and internal surgery, and they had no infections. But they were still gaining stupid amounts of toxin damage, very rapidly. After their death, I went through their vars to figure out wtf had killed them. I opened up their reagents, and saw 140 units of Spaceacillin in them. Overdose for spaceacillin is 30, meaning that after two full syringes, the drug is going to be giving them toxins damage.

This leads me to believe that 90% of the times, these deaths are not broken code, nor ghost infections, but simple cases of very severe overdosing.

I did some digging as well, and found out how infections are processed.

http://puu.sh/lDhRn/4085c495a3.png <-- This is the curing process. You need to maintain at least 5 units of spaceacillin in their body every tick. (Simply-stupid: a tick is faster than a second.) At worst case, this takes roughly 5 minutes or so.

http://puu.sh/lDigO/cf7b1a0d2e.png <-- This is the spreading process. Long story short: cryo-ing people stops the spread, and enables spaceacillin to be more potent. (As it doesn't have to fight the spread of the infection anymore, and can simply do its thing.) Germs will spread from one organ to another after about 15 minutes. After that amount of time, the initial organ will start taking damage. After another 15 minutes, roughly, the rest of the organs start taking damage as well.

So yah. Stop cramming people full of them drugs, it ain't good for'em! And have some patience.

EDIT: Also, the infection system is basically a lazy workaround to no one wanting to deal with actually fixing the health regeneration rates. The goal is the same: make wounds more serious, and punish people for skipping a trip to the medical bay in lue of simple first aid.