Penoxycyline

[Baby Jesus]

Ive played countless hours of rimworld, but I might just be plain stupid. When it comes to penoxycline are you supposed to apply it like a regular antidote for the sicknesses it prevents or should you use it when someone do get sick from example the plauge? I've always used it when someone gets sick and thought it will help in getting an immunity but it hit me I might be doing this wrong.
Always thought off it like an antibotics which you take when you get types of sicknesses IRL, but it says it prevents diseases like the plauge or sleeping sickness. Am I doing it right by applying it when someone gets sick or do you have to apply it every 134th hour? to be safe your colonists doesnt get sick.

[HunterSilver]

It does nothing if applied after you're sick. You have to preemptively use it regularly and if a disease event hits it will tell you it blocked it on that colonist.

[Chilli Dog Dave]

truth be told i almost never use it because it requires a schedule, time to craft more and a bunch of research where as treating the sick is faster.
be nice if it DID partially work even when sick, might actually get more use out of it then

[Païtiti]

I played a lot of hours on jungle maps and not once used it. It seems too much work for not enough benefit.

[VonArens]

It needs to be active in order to work, which means you should take it every 5 days (use policy setup).
Whether it's worth it or not depends on your luck (and to a degree what map type you're on I think), I've had playthroughs where I've been hammered with diseases and some where I rarely get any.

[flu007]

I tend to put a few pawns on a penoxy regime, usually the best medics, to make sure those are up and healthy if a mass plague hits the colony. On rainforest maps, it has proven crucial a few times.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by flu007:

I tend to put a few pawns on a penoxy regime, usually the best medics, to make sure those are up and healthy if a mass plague hits the colony.

Another group to put on it would be pawns with liver or kidney damage, or really old, since they gain immunity slower and are at greater risk from dangerous diseases. Especially malaria since that further suppresses their immunity gain.

[Von Stroheim]

I don't even bother with keeping with regimens or scheduling, if a pawn winds up injured, I automatically schedule to administer it (i understand clean living/doctoring spaces mitigate most of this anyway). This may or may not have helped with reducing infections, however I only purchase, research and manufacture Penoxycyline when time and resources permit.

[Security Cam #7]

I don't use it because they require neutroamine and I'm usually short on that resource because it can't be crafted, but it may also be because I rarely ever live in a rainforest. Boreal forest for days. A balance between difficulty and fun for me.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by Von Stroheim:

I don't even bother with keeping with regimens or scheduling, if a pawn winds up injured, I automatically schedule to administer it (i understand clean living/doctoring spaces mitigate most of this anyway). This may or may not have helped with reducing infections, however I only purchase, research and manufacture Penoxycyline when time and resources permit.

Peno literally has no effect other than to stop the random disease event. It does nothing for immunity or infections, and it does nothing if the pawn is already sick with one of the listed diseases. You either set a schedule for colonists to take it every 5 days or it's a useless item.

As far as how useful it is. By the time you can afford to be buying neutroamine and crafting it into peno to feed to your entire colony every 5 days, there are usually much better uses for that neutroamine, like crafting medicine, or making combat/utility drugs. Diseases at that point are pretty trivial to deal with using 2-3 meds and treating on a bed, you usually don't even need the colonist to be resting while sick anymore since the hidden stage was removed.

[Cultist]

Back in the old days (way before 1.0) penox would give pawns around 50% instant immunity to whatever disease they were suffering from (this was before parasitic diseases were introduced). It even worked with infections. This was pretty OP, so it was changed to be an immunity drug instead, with the downside of draining a material you can't produce yourself (neutroamine).

It is very much worth it putting your main doctor on a penox diet as soon as you can afford (and produce) it. I don't think it's worth using on pawns that aren't doctors, unless they are absolutely integral to the colony. For instance, if only one pawn is capable of cooking it might be worth it.