General mechanics / strategy questions

[DiscoZombie]

I'm still just an hour or two in (on Life mode) but there's a lot I don't get. Don't know if anyone has the patience to answer all of these (or if anyone even KNOWS the answer to some), but any help is appreciated!

• What is the correlation between symptom severity, number of symptoms, disease severity, and system collapse speed? At first, I assumed a 3-bar symptom implied it goes along with a 3-bar disease, but that doesn't always seem to be the case. On the Diagnosis stage, I only had 1 symptom left, and it was a 3-bar symptom, but it turns out it only belonged to a 1-bar disease.
  
• Is it random how sometimes a disease will have only 1 symptom and sometimes it will have multiple? Any tricks to figuring out what disease a symptom goes with if there's only 1 symptom and like 10 disease possibilities? I know more symptoms can show up over time, but is it mostly lucky guessing?
  
• I assume the little yellow icons next to the systems on the main screen are risk factors? old age, etc? What do they do? Make systems collapse? increase the speed at which diseases make systems collapse? both?
  
• How does collateral damage to other systems work? If a disease is in 1 system, does it also damage all other systems a smaller amount over time, or only certain other systems?
  
• What usually makes sense to go for first? I know this definitely depends highly on the level, but in general, does it make more sense to go for the cheap to diagnose diseases that might not be as severe, or the more expensive to diagnose and treat but might be more severe?
  
• What does the "effectiveness" of a treatment affect? At first I assumed it meant chance of success, but now I'm guessing it means how much will the system collapse speed be mitigated by the treatment?
  
• Are there advantages and disadvantages to playing on fast forward? Seems there are a lot of lethal runs on Youtube that play with it on, but I don't know if it's a strategic choice or just to get the game over with faster.
  
• I'm sure this one is highly subjective, but are there any "best" boosters, or any worthless ones to avoid at all costs?

[Non-flesh Interface]

1) 2-bar symptom might belong to 2-bar disease, 3-bar disease or 2 different 1-bar diseases. I don't know why it is like that but you will rarely use bars to diagnose. Only helps if there are no multiple diseases with same symptom.
"1 symptom left, and it was a 3-bar symptom, but it turns out it only belonged to a 1-bar disease."
Are you sure only 1 disease? or 2-3 different diseases with 1-bar? Maybe bug.

2) First thing to do is following the path. If symptoms of dementia checks but nervous breakdown is impossible, it is not dementia. You can do this with risk factors too. If you think it is sepsis but there is no "dehydration" risk factor, it is impossible (because you need dehydration to get kidney stones). Another one is checking system damage. You can practice this at death campaign. If you don't know type 1 diabetes does no damage to digestive system (instead it damages circulatory, nevous and renal systems) you might skip it. But be careful doing this. Risk factors, bad treatment, lifestyles make it harder to guess.
Tip1: Don't even check fatigue, almost all diseases have fatigue as symptom.
Tip2: AI never evolves useless risk factors. Meaning is if you have symptom of bronchitis, chronic bronchitis and asthma check risk factors at systems panel near John. If there is a flower thing (allergies risk factor) it is probably asthma and AI evolved allergies so it can evolve asthma.

3) Yes they are risk factors. Increases damage done to a system by X%. Also sometimes lowers the cost of diseases. For example with all weight related risk factors + smoking you can get first diseases of circulatory system for free and other ones really cheap.

4) Stroke damages both circulatory and nervous systems (click on it and look bottom at death campaign). It belongs to circulatory system so damage done to nervous system by stroke called "collateral" damage. Some diseases have collateral damage, some haven't (like kidney cysts). Clicking on disease shows which systems it damages and how much damage it deals (only at death campaign)

5) I go for more severe diseases and systems collapsing first. Because usually if you diagnose severe ones you also diagnose little ones. One thing I always do, leaving muscular system to last. It is so hard and expensive to diagnose... Even treatments are expensive. I try slowing it down with strength training and etc... Or simply restart stage until muscular is not a big problem. Sorry can't really give advice about it.

6) You are right. 50% treatment will reduce damage 50%.

7) Most boring thing in game is collecting bio-points. So people want to skip this part. I don't see any advantages other than that.

8) Never to use for me: Slow hands, cheap upgrades, instant lifestyles/risk factors, bio point rush, sabotaged operations, fewer symptoms.
Some weak ones can make combos like: random diseases + random risk + head start gives you a really big head start at AI race.
My favorites: Better resources, emergency room (at some stages you get +1 bio points from bio poing upgrades. you will have +2 per resource), weak diseases, weak risk, better treatments, recovery head start (only if objective is reaching 100% recovery), slow/quick collapse, collateral damage, no prerequisites, disease boost, overweight, poor treatments, long strikes.

My advice is play both campaigns, at least their first stage. By playing death campaign you will know if a disease requires another disease or risk factor. By playing life campaign you will know which diseases are harder to diagnose/treat.

[DiscoZombie]

Thank you! So much good info, it should be stickied! I should have known that not knowing the death campaign was part of the reason I didn't understand some of the life campaign. I didn't even realize that end-of-path diseases meant they have to also have all the diseases in between. I know what I'm doing tonight.

[Non-flesh Interface]

Good luck with death campaign! Also if you notice anything wrong with things I said, tell me. Don't want to give false info. Giving false information is worse than giving no information in my opinion.

[Shivver]

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