So you land on a random planet. You don't see anything bad, you knockdown some walls, kill some things etc. You don't realize that there is a chance that you could be infected with a virus. That virus will render you weak, and will maybe lower your health. ALOT. It can spread to other NPC's and possibly kill them. The scientests on your ship/space station would have to halt what they are doing inorder to make some medicine for that sickness. What do you guys think?
Wow amazing idea. maybe these illnesses/viruses could also be randomly generated with different effects. I also like the idea that different planets effect your character on different planets making you change your strategy to survive
This + it should be randomly generated. So its not just 10 sicknesses but rather unlimited variations. And hopefully not just debuffs, ex: -10 health but other cool effects
I love this idea. It would really add a sense of caution for the planets you were visiting, and it would give a strong base for medication on your ship! Love it!
The idea of vector-borne diseases would be fascinating. The diseases themselves could be procedurally generated temporary debuffs, but what if players could "collect" diseases and store them in a vault on the space station. It would be a challenge getting a disease and carrying it all the way back in itself, but then the players could splice or experiment on them to make a beneficial disease in the form of a temporary buff instead of a debuff. Of course, once you get a disease and it wears off, you'll be forever immune to its effects later on, so getting a disease back to the station vault before it wears off would be sort of a mini-challenge.
this would be nice, I would love just in the end having a long list of all the illnesses I had got and had to cure in my digital logbook.
I don't know about random generation, but the idea is very nice. My only issue with random generation is that there's a chance it could kill you instantly or halt movement all together. If the devs could cap these reasonably, I don't see why these virus and sicknesses couldn't exist. It would just suck if, for instance, it had a slowing effect and it would likely randomly calculate a number /100 and transfer it to a percent, and that's the percent it slows you. As long as it didn't slow you 100%, where movement would be impossible, I don't see an issue with the whole system. It would be even cooler if you could develop vaccines for certain symptoms so when you get a different virus the effects of those symptoms aren't as potent. Also, a period before the full onset of the virus where you show light symptoms would be amazing, so you could finish what you're doing and return to your ship before the full force of the virus sets in. Maybe in order to cure it you have to travel to a certain type of planet (even the host planet the virus came from?) and gather samples of the virus and/or bacteria that causes the sickness. Sorry for rambling, but I really liked this idea.
I think you're mistaking "randomized" with "completely random," the latter of which is actually impossible. There's no chance it can kill you instantly or halt movement altogether if it's not coded explicitly to allow that sort of thing, just like there's no chance it actually deletes the game entirely from your hard drive. There is a horrible yet delightful BYOND game called Space Station 13 which actually gives players a semi-random genome which they can experiment with using radiation, which semi-randomly changes the genome sequence for a given test subject and alters their attributes. Having psuedorandom bacterial diseases and researchable cures would add a lot to the mystery and danger of visiting a new world for the first time, and could allow for "counter" research that advances the player's medical technology or terraforming abilities (assuming things like that are implemented). I might also note that, if I understand basic biology correctly, you would not be at risk for viral infection visiting another world. Viruses evolve to infect very specific organisms. Bacteria, however, can certainly have a War of the Worlds effect on alien life.
Thanks for clarifying that "random" situation for me. But on the virus note, you are both correct and incorrect. Viruses evolve to infect very specific types of cell. This is how humans can get sicknesses like H1N1 from pigs. It's not impossible, thought admittedly unlikely, that a viral strain evolves for a cell on another planet and happens to also fit the cells in our respiratory or nervous system. (On a side note, could you link me to Space Station 13? That sounds amazing.)
http://www.byond.com/games/Exadv1/SpaceStation13 The BYOND engine is nothing short of terrible, but Space Station 13 does a lot of things that are germaine to a Starbound discussion and it's probably worth investigating. It's basically a game of intrigue set aboard a space station with players taking on crew roles from captain and AI all the way down to cyborg slave and janitor. It's a unique game but it's very, very clunky. I spent about a week mostly enjoying it, then I moved on.
Space Station 13 is one game I would absolutely love to see done "right," as opposed to being done in that kludge machine of the BYOND engine. There's a ton of creativity in it now, and enormous amounts of potential for a remake.
I thinks this idea would be pretty interesting in-game, but i think that there should be clues given about planets and places where there is a chance of you catching a virus, such as being told before you visit a planet how poisonous the atmosphere is (ie. on planets with say a 3% toxic atmosphere you wouldn't be very likely to catch any illness, while on a planet with a 89% toxic atmosphere you would be very likely to get ill). It would also be nice if sickness gradually appeared and got worse over time, instead of appearing in full effect instantly and suddenly you're taking 5 times more damage than normal just out of nowhere. Maybe you could also show slight symptoms indicating you have an illness, such as your character coughing occasionally. That way if you notice you're getting ill you still have a chance to stop it before it gets too out of control.
