Fun with cholera and typhus

[endocore]

Historically speaking, disease has killed far more combatants in war than force of arms could ever possibly hope to achieve. The miserable standards of living in a post-apocalyptic world would seem to be ripe conditions for the ravages of plague, tuberculosis, cholera, and other old foes of mankind to spread like wildfire, yet this topic has never really been touched on in any of the Fallout games.

If I can ever conquer Max-Violence's fiendishly difficult "Rebellion" map which is currently taxing my tactical skills, I've been thinking of somehow exploring the issue of endemic disease and incorporating the hazards of communicable and fatal diseases into my next map. The problem, however, is how one would go about simulating a contagious and debilitating disease in FOT. Something that worked along the lines of radiation poisoning would be perfect: player characters are affected (i.e. become "infected") when entering areas full of disease-ridden people (think radiation area of effects), and can be cured by medicines (such as Rad-Away does with radiation) or can avoid the effects entirely by being inoculated (again following the radiation example, this would work similar to Rad-X).

Some sort of "poison" area of effect damage might conceivably be used to simulate communicable diseases, but I was just looking around at my options for that in the Entity Editor and didn't really see any relevant sort of way to create such an effect.

I don't think this sort of thing could be accomplished strictly by the use of triggers either, since the only triggers that can affect the health or stats of actors (Kill Entity and Zone of Death) have immediate and quite drastic consequences.

Perhaps some debilitating item could be inserted into the inventory of a character infected by disease (What's this virus doing in my backpack?), but the effect would last only as long as the player didn't get rid of the offending item, which they would certainly do immediately.

I haven't put a lot of thought into how to accomplish this sort of thing yet, but I thought I'd see if anyone else had worked on this before to save myself from a few of the many dead-ends I'm sure I'll encounter.

The question, then, is this: Anybody think it's possible to simulate a disease like plague or cholera in FOT?

Endocore

[Max-Violence]

If I can ever conquer Max-Violence's fiendishly difficult "Rebellion" map

My job here is DONE!

If you think RB1 is hard... you might not want to play RB2. Ever. (just kidding, of course).

I really like the idea of having sicknesses in FOT, but, like you, I don't have the first clue how to make 'em (aside from what you've mentioned). Why don't you post in Section8's "Requests/Suggestions/Stuff" thread or email him directly?

Man... this is interesting indeed...

[OnTheBounce]

This is "do-able", Oh-Prodigal-Map-Rat-Who-Has-Returned-To-His-Own-Vomit-Like-A-Dog ( :mrgreen: ). It will take a bit of modding, but you could definitely do it.

Want infected critters? Easy, give them the "Glowing One Perk", but mod the light entity that goes with it so that it doesn't throw off any light. (Test this, so you're sure that the negation of darkness penalties aren't a balance issue.)

The other this you could do is to change one of the text files to display "Disease Resistance" instead of "Radiation Resistance". Contamination areas could be littered w/Radiation entities. "So-and-so is glowing" and other radiation sickness induced messages to be more disease-oriented. ("So-and-so is sniffling".)

I'm not sure you could change the effects of this disease since you're actually giving the people radiation sickness, but I think that this "idear" has some real potential.

Edit: BTW, if you're looking to simulate Malaria, don't forget to have your immunizing agent be "Quinine". To bad you can't simulate it's nasty taste. I retched like a maddog when one of those horse pills disolved in my mouth. No wonder the French washed theirs down w/wine... 8O

OTB

[endocore]

Thanks for the suggestions, OTB. They're a good starting place.

I actually thought at first of just changing some of the GUI text files so that "disease" would replace "radiation," but the downside to this is that as a Twisted Bastard Designer I then wouldn't be able to subject the PC's to the double-whammy of disease and radiation poisoning in the same mission.

Not to get off topic, but as a fellow history buff I'm wondering if you've ever read two of the relatively few (at least back when I was in college) scholarly books on the subject of disease and history, William H. McNeill's Plagues and Peoples, or Hans Zinsser's Rats, Lice and History. If not, you might want to check them out sometime, as they're both fascinating. The book by McNeill in particular is quite good, and contains quite a bit of quantitative analysis (as opposed to anecdotal analysis) on the subject.


Endocore

[OnTheBounce]

I actually thought at first of just changing some of the GUI text files so that "disease" would replace "radiation," but the downside to this is that as a Twisted Bastard Designer I then wouldn't be able to subject the PC's to the double-whammy of disease and radiation poisoning in the same mission.

Oh decisions, decisions...

Not to get off topic, but as a fellow history buff I'm wondering if you've ever read two of the relatively few (at least back when I was in college) scholarly books on the subject of disease and history, William H. McNeill's Plagues and Peoples, or Hans Zinsser's Rats, Lice and History. If not, you might want to check them out sometime, as they're both fascinating. The book by McNeill in particular is quite good, and contains quite a bit of quantitative analysis (as opposed to anecdotal analysis) on the subject.

I've heard of both of those books, but haven't read 'em yet. IIRC, Guns, Germsn and Steel by Jared Diamond used them as sources. Thanks for the info.

OTB

[Flamescreen]

I guess that my suggestion probably crossed your mind already, but have you tried to do it with "poisoned" food in the said areas(or possibly the entire map)? Endurance and strength might be thrown in to make you more or less succeptible to disease. After all, a great number of diseases occur after eating something(e.g. in this case a steak of a poisoned and killed Brahmin) that can spread the infection. You can force the player eating it, by not giving any stimpacks after early combat.

[Jimmyjay86]

That would make for an interesting game - the local brahmin burger fast food joint starts selling virus-laden burgers. Suddenly a mass epidemic starts killing off everone in the village and your squad must try to save everyone as quickly as possible by finding the antidote and using it on the people before they all die. It would be a refreshing take instead of the typical Tactics game of killing people. Depending on how many people you managed to save would give you different outcomes.

[Flamescreen]

Great idea JJ86! I would really like seeing it in a map(its perfect for a single-mission map)made by Endocore or anyone else who would do it...

[RawonaM]

I guess that my suggestion probably crossed your mind already, but have you tried to do it with "poisoned" food

How about a "dirty stimpak". Just make a consumable and give it the normal healing effects of a stimpak but also put it to give it an poison effect.
If they are the players only stims(and he doesnt have First Aid Kits) and he gets hurt then he has to use them.

[endocore]

Everyone has interjected some excellent ideas. Flamescreen's suggestion about poisoned food has definite possibilities (as jimmyjay86 mentioned), although not really in the context which I planned to implement diseases. I'm looking more for a way to do this which requires no interaction from the player (and hence provides no way to avoid becoming ill except through a specifically defined innoculation procedure).

RawonaM's suggestion about "dirty needles" (so to speak) is particularly creative as well, although again I want to set up some sort of mechanism whereby characters will become ill regardless of any actions they do or do not take. I think I may in fact use this idea in a small non-combat map I made some time ago which could be called something like "Friday Night at the Frathouse" (the true title is rated NC-17; yes, I am serious, and no, don't even bother asking, I will never make this map publicly available for any reason.). Seriously, it's a good idea, RawonaM.

Does anyone remember a discussion in the past about the deployment of poison gas clouds? I think it was OTB's topic. Were these types of area effects something that worked, or were they something that were broken? I'm still thinking that this may be my first route of experimentation when I start fooling around with new ways to have the characters meet their doom through fatal diseases.


Endocore

[OnTheBounce]

...([T]he true title is rated NC-17; yes, I am serious, and no, don't even bother asking, I will never make this map publicly available for any reason.).

~*Not bothering to ask*~

Does anyone remember a discussion in the past about the deployment of poison gas clouds?...Were these types of area effects something that worked, or were they something that were broken?

Are you thinking about Deathtrap entities? Those won't work for what you're looking for since all they do is cause damage. Sorry, but you can't set them to do anything else like raise an actor's Rad or Poison Count/Level. (IIRC they were only used on two occasions in the Core campaign, both in Great Bend. One was the downed electrical wires, and the other the heavy, metal press. The latter smacked of console gaming, but that's another story. )

OTB