Re: Disease headaches

[Peter Mardahl <peterm@tesla.EECS.Berkeley.EDU>]

Hmm, thanks for the feedback.  Have you got any comments on tuning/playability,
other than you've given already?

> * the arguments to strstr() were reversed (!) when matching race/name=20
> for infectivity

Yeah, at one point I was thinking of diseases affecting monsters of
multiple races, i.e., goblins would have race = "humanoid,goblin"
and not the disease having multiple targets.  "oops".  Thanks for the
catch.

> * there is no race 'humanoid' defined... kobolds, orcs, etc. are all=20
> race 'goblin' as shipped, hill giants, titans, etc. are race 'giant'. =20
> Annoyingly, there is no concept of subraces... this may be something=20
> I'll need to work on, cleaning up race definition structure.

lib/races also effects the race field:  another annoyance.  Same thing,
two places.  I'll change the diseases to specifically list things I
consider "humanoid", if you haven't done it already.
It'd be really cool if you could do something with this.

> * a diseased needle would insert the disease (or any other object it=20
> contained!) even if you had an immunity... intentional or not?

If you have an immunity you would become a carrier.  This was intentional.

> * cause disease spells 'miss' entirely too often on low-infectivity=20
> diseases... intentional or not?

Not intentional.  I never got around to fixing it.  I tolerated it instead
because disease spells don't suck grace if they fail.  I'm not sure
causing disease should work all the time, though, since they've been toned
down, maybe this is OK.  Your hacks are useful however and I'll put them in
as they are pending comments from people-at-large.

Opinions?

> * an immune carrier only keeps the disease for as long as it would=20
> ordinarily last, not indefinitely... intentional or not?

Intentional.  The disease "food" can be set very high for these specific
disease objects:  that way they'll live a long time.

> * IMHO too much NDI_UNIQUE, making wild disease spread spammier than=20
> it needs to be

Also reasonable.

> This patch changes:
> 
> * humanoid -> goblin,giant on disease archetypes

This is fine for now:  I had also wanted these disease to work on
humans so there would be the possiblity of backlash.

> Anyway, I figured that since you seemed to be the disease czar, I'd=20
> run this patch by you before putting it out for general consumption.=20
> :-)  Let me know what you think (or just integrate it if you want,=20
> it's reasonably tested :-) )

I appreciate the feedback and the help.  I wrote nearly all of the disease
stuff and since I'm still around I take an interest when people mention it.

The whole point of the disease stuff was to give some of the cause disease spells
to deficient religions to balance their power:  have you got any thoughts
on which religions need "help"?

PeterM