Make corpses generate disease

[Bauser]

If a dead body is left for some time (I don't know what's best for balance, maybe 10 minutes) without being inside a morgue or body bag (not for realism but rather for gameplay), then its (theoretical) rotting should start creating a risk of infection, similar to the miasma of an airborne disease.

Personally, my only experience with virology is a quick read-through of its wiki page. That said, it seems to me like an appropriate suite of symptoms for exposure would be something like...

Waiting syndrome (so it's not immediately apparent you've been exposed) -> headaches -> hyperacid syndrome -> toxification syndrome

So you don't get instant feedback to know for sure if you're infected, and then once you get your warning (headaches), you have a little time before anything serious happens... And if you fail to act, it eventually turns into a serious (and palatably generic, thanks to toxins) threat to your health. I welcome alternative ideas to this progression.

Benefits of this change:

This would give me as a janitor a better reason than HRP to wear my biohazard suit to cleanup sites (not that a better reason than HRP is needed, but it's good to have game mechanics reinforce RP concepts), it would encourage medical personnel to have some sense of urgency for bagging bodies, it would make crewmembers less likely to hover around corpses like we paradoxically tend to, it might lead to the morgue being used more often, and it could give virology something more important to do every round (like maybe they can vaccinate against the disease if they isolate it).

EDIT: I forgot to mention, one thing I think should be important about the implementation of this is that the resulting disease should NOT continue to be airborne from the person who catches the disease. In other words, for balance reasons (because we don't want outbreaks every round), you should only be able to get this disease from being around a corpse - NOT from being around someone else who was around the corpse, etc. So maybe make it only transmissible by fluids. The question I haven't been able to answer yet is: how do we make a disease that's airborne from the corpse but not airborne from the people who catch it? I worry the possibility doesn't exist in current code (maybe it does, I'm not a coder), but if it doesn't, I can imagine some hack solutions... Like just giving the corpse a small radius that has a tiny chance of inflicting the disease per every tick you're within range. All of this, of course, remains very open to suggestions.

[MO_oNyMan]

I like the idea of making use of janitor's equipment and consequence for mishandling the dead bodies. However the concept of bodies spreading disease 10 minutes after the death jsut doesn't feel right to me.

As an alternative to the suggestion I would offer "smells" system. Basically what it does it allows some chemicals and items to produce a "smell" (an effect in the area, originating from the open beaker or an item). If the item is properly contained or removed the smell fades over time. The effect has a percentage chance of displaying a message to anyone who passes through an affected tile, describing a smell. The more potent the effect on the tile the higher the chance of "smelling" something while passing through it. Displayed messages can also vary to reflect the potency of the smell.

Bad smells would cause toxin damage if the person stays in the area of efect long enough, potentially causing vomiting (because you smelled something disgusting). Containing the smelly item (closing the lead on a beaker, putting the item in the morgue tray, using the body bag) would stop the spread of the smell. Wearing protective gear (surgical masks, biosuits, gasmasks) would protect the wearer from the effects of the smell.

This would

- Allow people to smell chef's cooking

- Bad food causing trouble if chef won't dispose of it, making chef's job a bit more in-depth

- Make the chemist's job a bit more in-depth

- Allow to locate dead bodies by their smell (if they were left for long enough)

- Give actual reason for janitors, medics and security to wear protective gear to not get sick because of a foul smell on the crime scene/in the morgue/in the trash compactor etc.

[Bauser]

I like the concept you've presented, but I do worry about the relative difficulty of implementing it. I chose to just go with disease because the mechanical framework is completely already here and in-game. Adding a sensation of smell would have many obvious benefits for both gameplay and RP (imagine if you could actually find a body hidden somewhere because you smelled it when walking nearby!), but it does sound like it would require a lot more legwork.

[Azande]

Dead bodies are not generally infectious unless the person themselves had a disease. This seems really dumb and silly. -1

[Kaed]

The smells system seems interesting, though the idea of a disease from touching a rotting dead body also seems kind of intriguing.

Citing 'realism' as the primary disqualifier for a mechanic should not be a thing, this mechanic was intended to give some kind of penalty for leaving a dead body lying around to rot. Everything related to medicine and health happens in the round at an accelerated rate from 'real life' already, from wound mending to surgery and chemistry.'

[JMJ_99]

Rigor mortis the first stage that happens after death doesn't happen until several hours. Rotting takes several weeks to happen, regardless of the accelerated medical system(Which is just poor mechanics) it would still take a long time. As xander said disease would not really happen unless the person was already infected with one. This isn't to say that the smell wouldn't be awful or that a disgust system could be added. The way this is pitched is just silly so -1

[Guest Menown]

Let's have looking at the corpse or even being within ten tiles of the corpse cause heart damage.

[Bauser]

The purpose of enacting this would not be to approach realism. Contrary to popular belief, even severely rotting bodies don't pose a particular health risk or spread disease. The purpose of adding this would be to give mechanical substance to the idea that we, as characters, would naturally be disgusted and sickened by hanging around corpses. So it manufactures a believable (still fictional) hazard to discourage that behavior, WITH the side benefits of increasing the functionality of existing mechanics (biohazard suits, body bags, morgue trays, and virology).

I understand opposing it on the grounds of realism (although I'm with Kaed in saying that realism should not be the first priority where gameplay mechanics are concerned), but to say it's just dumb and silly really doesn't do justice for the benefits it offers.

EDIT: Plus, I mean, the miasma theory of medicine was the predominant school of thought regarding disease transmission for most of human history, so it should not be difficult for suspension of disbelief.

[Scheveningen]

Except you can't suspend your disbelief for it because that theory of medicine was given up for germ theory since the 1880s. Compare with the in-game 'now' of 2460 and you'd be hard-pressed to take anyone seriously if they posited that obesity is directly linked to inhaling the odor of food.

Study of germs is a major focus in virology. It wouldn't be very practical to take several steps back in our real-life understanding of disease in favor of adding arbitrary consequence to something that doesn't really need it. The better solution would be to remove the random generation in diseases as a part of events and instead create highly robust and developer-tailored common diseases with various levels of infectiousness, rate of progression and severity in symptoms. Some would be as simple as the common cold that aren't terribly difficult to kick, and other diseases should be extremely nasty but have exclusive ways of transmitting new germs.

[Bauser]

If you can't suspend your disbelief because it's too crazy to think that being near a rotting fucking corpse would make you sick, that speaks poorly of the player, not of the mechanic.

[Scheveningen]

No, it definitely speaks of the absurdity of the mechanic. Ad hominem doesn't suit to help you here.

[Kaed]

I have to admit I much prefer the stank method to catching a disease off of a corpse. Perhaps you could accrue nausea by being in the area with a rotting corpse, and eventually start throwing up if you stay there. The ability to detect corpses by their smell would also be really useful.

I'm not sure how viable that would be to implement, though.