Obviously you'd want to scan a planet to get as much information about it before landing. And after landing you'd want to stay inside a protective suit until you had some time to analyze the risk of contamination. Is that too much for Starbound? I don't know enough about the developers' vision of the game to know. The game attracts me, personally, as an explorer, so any exploration-related challenges like this would interest me.
I love this idea, and all the additions to it below it, but here's what I'd add/ change/ get rid of. The system shouldn't be random, but procedurally created, like the planets. It wouldn't make much since if a virus that infects the lungs of your PC happens to be on a planet consisting of already terrible air quality. Or something that can infect via bloodstream if there are no hostile/ carnivorous creatures. There should be a plethora of systems that can infect the player through, and multiple effects of the virus/ infection in question. Some virus likenesses probably have some upsides to it, like while it gives your character powerful headaches or something, it also gives you added strength or something. Being able to research the air quality for airborne viruses then containing it with a polar opposite of that virus would be really cool actually. It could be part of terraforming a planet. Though I'd like there to be no time limit hindering the progress of catching and taking the specimen back to the station. You could store specimens of viruses and diseases and perform research on them to create vaccines and such, and eventually just a way to wipe it out altogether. Not many changes, but I like this idea, and really enjoyed it in Space Station 13, back in the day.
You could study sicknesses in a lab, and use them to make poisounous darts and bullets or swords! That's genious!
Use bio-warfare? I totally like where this is going! Perhaps it can be a weighted decision: Land on a planet normally and deal with its normal native flora and fauna, or blanket the surface with disease, killing off some tougher enemies, but also eliminating some useful plant life or something of the like from the entire planet. Perhaps the disease can be refined to different levels of purity, and the lower the purity the higher the chance of turning a fraction of the planet's creatures into mutant abbhorations instead of killing them.
lol good ideas there. I was thinking it would be cool if we had test tubes with water and you could see the disease floating there, SO cool as a mental picture.
For sure, would be an awesome detail to see! The same microbes could be floating around in the water bodies of some planets, so if you have them researched you'll know what they are and what they're capable of without having to learn the hard way!
Love this idea, this could also extend to parasites invading you,your crew or even your mechanical items.I would also like to add to this different player altered status depending on environment. For example in a extremely cold environment you would get a body temp gauge that would appear and if it gets to low you freeze to death. Where as in a extremely hot environment you get a body temp gauge and if it gets to high up you would start to lose life until you manage to cool yourself down. Also ailments that can occur during these weather related conditions could occur when your body temperature reaches near the extreme hot or extreme low. Such as blackouts,heat stroke,hypothermia,frostbite,etc all of which would occur as a visual and audio que to the player they need to either warm up or cool down soon or they gonna die.
You should be able to craft/purchuse medical scanning equipment, so you can find virus's on worlds before you accidentally send something infected onto your ship. Or maybe you can have a medic follow you to help cleanse virus's. We definatly dont need a halo-esque flood outbreak sweeping across our galaxy just because we wanted to bring a vase filled with strange dust onto our ship
I will LULZ so hard if my astronaut catches the space-clap off that space-hooker from the space-bar. Or space-crabs, with which he ends up needing to shave to stop the itchies Yes, that is right. If you add space to a word it becomes better.
This sounds like a real bitch to run into randomly. If I got a virus and my whole crew and I died, I know I would shut my computer off and go do something else. You could add cures but I think that would make the game overly complicated.
I'm sure it wouldn't be random. it'd be procedural like the planet and the creatures on the planet, and it would be according to the threat level. It would make the player play smart, and be more conscious of their surroundings, and research every facet of the game. Better to have stuff to combat other than with swords and guns imo.
