Survival Disease mechanics (from HC Manager)

[The Inept European]

(As mentioned in a thread which I think is now deleted) I am going through the HC Manager script to find out how diseases work in survival. Hopefully I am interpreting the script correctly - mainly I'm just reading the comments and numbers.

Info so far:

Swimming (immersion in rad water) can bump your disease risk pool up to ten times a day for a max 30% (10 x 3%) pool increase, and triggers a check roll.

Rain can bump your disease risk pool up to twice a day for a max 6% (2 x 3%) pool increase. (External call into the HC_Manager script from a Fragment).

In general a roll is ignored unless your risk pool is >25% (this threshold may be scaled by some other factor? - maybe not)

Enemies considered disease risks add 5% to your pool, per non-weapon hit, and trigger a check, but there is then a timer that ignores further hits for a while - default 10? game minutes.

Every time you eat an item it adds minimum 1% to your disease risk pool (even if the food is not hazardous) but does not force a roll.
Drinking most safe drinks (not Dirty Water) adds 0% and does not force a roll
Drinking Nuka-Cola adds 2% but does not force a roll.

Ingesting certain high risk items triggers a roll as well as increasing your risk pool.

You can't gain a new disease until a day has passed from the last one you got, and a day has passed since the start of the game.

Doctors cure you by setting your risk pool to zero and basically giving you antibiotics (they use the same effect script).

Bethesda can't spell and often calls them "antiboitics" in the code. But they don't even mis-spell consistently. :-)

Eating normally-risky foods adds 7% to the pool.
Eating high risk foods adds 12% to the pool.
Chem use (all chems?) adds 7% to the pool.
Cannibalism adds 5% to the pool (same as a monster bite) - human flesh is relatively healthy it seems ;-)
Cannibalism removes all hunger - tasty and nutritious as well!
Cannibal Ravenous Hunger zeroes out the beneficial effects of all food other than human flesh - for a period of time that's not overly clear

Chems, other risky ingestibles, and cannibalism all trigger a check, as well as increasing the risk pool - like bites and swimming.

Autoimmune suppression increases your risk pool value by x 1.2

The max risk pool value is capped to something called wellnessCeiling that is an average of sub-ceilings based on hunger, thirst, and sleep. So basically if you are well rested and hydrated and fed there is a lower ceiling on how high your risk pool can go, and a lower floor on how low your risk can go. Conversely, if you are fatigued, there is a higher ceiling and a higher floor.

(High risk events cause an almost immediate re-check, in 2 game minutes.)

The risk pool drain-down rate is also affected (linearly) by a very similar calculation.

There is a generic timer that controls the interval between disease risk pool draining, with a default of 3 times per game hour.

The risk pool drains slightly after every check(?) and/or at every pool drain event, maybe 1 - 1.75% ?, if you DON'T get a disease on the check. The pool drains fully, to zero, if you do get a disease. The default drain rate is 1% per drain timer event, but is modified by a lot of other factors.

The amount of drain-down IS linear with the amount of elapsed game time, even if drain-down doesn't run continuously - for example during Wait. There is a function to catch-up the drain amount, that runs one-off after events such as Wait have ended.

All timers and all disease functions are all suspended during Sleep. (Detailed discussion in the thread)

Antibiotics will PREVENT disease, not just cure it after the fact, if taken 'recently'. Not sure what the timescale of 'recently' is. But it means shortly before the check. At a guess, 20 game minutes (the drain effect timer cycle time), or maybe effect duration from the antibiotics item? Taking antibiotics immediately before sleep should work (but it is more sensible just to take them IF you wake up with a disease).

Antibiotics clear the disease risk pool fully (down to the current Floor value) as well as curing all diseases. This is the exact same function that NPC doctor healing uses.

Disease type allocation (parasites vs lethargy etc) is almost random, the only exception being if you roll the same disease as the last one you contracted, it will pick the next one in its internal list, which is supposedly thematically related, being an expected progression of the previous one. But there is no actual causal link at all between your actions in the game and what kind of disease you get. It is possible to get the same disease again, just not consecutively. (It can appear to be consecutive if you got an intervening disease before the first disease ended, then roll the first disease again).

If you took the relevant herbals recently - again not sure of the value of 'recently' - you get a reduced chance to get the randomly selected disease. Not a zero percent chance, just reduced. Default 20 chances in a hundred. Best taken just before sleeping or very quickly - like, hotkey quickly - after being bitten/scratched.

But it looks likes your pool still clears down to zero if you beat a disease due to a herbal? If so that's an additional (minor) benefit of herbals. More testing needed on that question.

[Edit: Updated with further information from the thread]

Disease risk event types - post #31
Disease risk values of foods and other events - post #50
Creatures whose unarmed attacks trigger checks - post #51
Disease durations - post #87

[The Inept European]

There are Floor values as well as Ceiling values that set a floor (minimum) disease risk pool, based on on the average of sub-floors derived from hunger, thirst, and tiredness levels. I have not yet found what the values of these floors (or ceilings) are.

(Probably I will need to look at the hunger, thirst and tiredness parts of HC_Manager for that, rather than the disease part.)

[The Inept European]

To correct what I said above, you will never get the same disease twice in a row in immediate succession. What is possible is you get disease A, then you get disease B, then you get disease A again, even though you might currently still have it, uncured. In which case it looks like there is a special message you get for that situation. Possibly "[disease] continues..." - I think I might have seen that sometimes? It would be a rare event.

While the comments talk about pairs, the diseases aren't organised in pairs. They are just saying the diseases are listed in an order such that the next one after is somehow thematically related to the previous one, in their opinion / intention. The last disease in the list, if randomly selected and was also selected the immediately previous time, rolls over to the first disease in the list.

[Out Of Bubblegum]

Originally posted by The Inept European:

In which case it looks like there is a special message you get for that situation. Possibly "[disease] continues..." - I think I might have seen that sometimes? It would be a rare event.

Correct. I have seen that message. Mr "The Overthinker European"
Meh. Taking things apart to see what makes them tick is fun. I am too lazy to do that anymore.

[spared_life]

Thinking about that mispell for antibiotics. If that is a variable there may be more than one method to antibiotics. If they are mispelled anywhere but text or comments there might be a secondary disease associated with it.

[spared_life]

For the most part I leave the disease active unless I am taking a hit from spreading. Since most every way possible to get infected I do regularly :)

[The Inept European]

Originally posted by Out Of Bubblegum:

Originally posted by The Inept European:

In which case it looks like there is a special message you get for that situation. Possibly "[disease] continues..." - I think I might have seen that sometimes? It would be a rare event.

Correct. I have seen that message. Mr "The Overthinker European"
Meh. Taking things apart to see what makes them tick is fun. I am too lazy to do that anymore.

I'm having fun yeah - busted!

[The Inept European]

Originally posted by spared_life:

For the most part I leave the disease active unless I am taking a hit from spreading. Since most every way possible to get infected I do regularly :)

It's not a bad strategy.

[Arondight]

Is there more information regarding food tier levels? Would be really interesting to know

[spared_life]

Originally posted by Arondight:

Is there more information regarding food tier levels? Would be really interesting to know

Balls in your court TIE

[The Inept European]

I will keep digging and report back.

Edit: see this thread -

https://steamcommunity.com/app/377160/discussions/0/1640915206443373006/

[Arondight]

Originally posted by The Inept European:

I will keep digging and report back.

thanks

[The Inept European]

You are protected from getting a disease in the first 24 hours of the game - probably to lull you into a false sense of security - by the same mechanism that protects you from getting a new disease for 24 hours after you got the last one.

It might be as much as '24 hrs after you leave the vault'? Or it might just be 24 hrs.


The timer blocking additional disease risk/check (which? both?) for disease from a bite/claw/etc attack is ten game minutes, thirty real seconds.

[The Inept European]

As far as I can see, disease checks occur:

Every 20 game minutes (3 per game hour) [edit: these are just pool drain events not disease checks]
2 game minutes after high risk events such as bites
On ingesting certain items (not just normal food and drink)
On sleeping

Disease checks cause some drain down on the disease risk pool with every check, if no disease occurs.

As noted earlier:

No check in first 24 hours
No check 24 hours since last disease
No roll if risk pool is below 25%

If antibiotics were taken, no disease occurs but the antibiotics are cleared
If a relevant herbal was taken there is a chance (default 20%) that the herbal blocks the disease.

It looks like the minimum disease pool risk level may be 5%. That's the default value anyway. I don't see the default being overriden anywhere yet. But bear in mind there's no roll unless the pool risk reaches 25%.

[Bored Peon]

No mention of the bed type used. Which goes to the whole coincidental thing.

It also reinforces the whole only get illnesses caused from your activities.

You might want to look into massive expenditures of AP, such as sprinting. I notice when I sprint across long distances my chances of getting a tiredness type illness seems to increase.

[The Inept European]

The bed type is all handled under sleeping which I haven't looked into much yet. So far I have not seen anything in the sleep code affecting disease risk but tbh I wasn't looking for it either. The bulk of it is about healing and fatigue effects. As you would expect.

But yes I will look carefully to see if bed types directly drive any disease effects. Or not.