The 'Dirty' State

[Wolfguarde 108]

This relates to items like canteens, open food and the like - or really, anything that can touch your mouth or a wound.

Dirty items will have a chance of inflicting sickness on the player when consumed, or applied, or fired at another player. Different things would obviously have different degrees of impact; dirty water would have a good chance of sickening you, while dirty food would be proportionately more likely than water, as it stays in your system longer. This could also apply to the character's hands after picking up or holding a dirty item, and require some form of sanitisation to make eating completely safe again. Dirty bandages would almost always result in infection, morphine injectors/epi pens as well. Dirty clothes could result in sickness or infection, or both, if they are separated at some point. Dirty trash items could be used by bandits to infect the wounds of captive players.

 

This could also be expanded to stuff like weapons and car parts. Oily substances might be applied to guns, making them have lower accuracy when fired in bursts, or greater recoil, due to difficulty gripping the weapon and holding it still. Melee weapons might have a chance to fly out of your hands when you swing due to a similar application (or they could simply be found like this). A dirty engine might degrade over time; a dirty fuel tank in your car might taint your fuel and cause the car to stop working. Obviously I don't know the specifics involved with how vehicles work IRL, but you get the picture.

The severity of the sickness/infection would depend on the item and its application. Dirty blood would probably sicken your character to the point of killing them. Eating with dirty hands would have a small chance to make you sick.

Different items are cleaned in different ways. Car parts require a specific tool to clean. Hand sanitiser or soap could be found in residential buildings. Bandages could be boiled over a fire. Bad medical supplies would have to be thrown away. Weapons could be wiped down with a rag and some kind of solvent. Needles could be heated over a fire.

And, of course, this state doesn't actually show up on the item unless it happens as a direct result of something you do. For example, you might put an opened can of food on the ground. You know that's dirty. You could probably safely assume that a person could identify damage on a blood bag, and thus judge it unfit for use. However, if another player were to tamper with something and give it to you, nothing pops up. You might pick up an axe and not use it immediately, thus not triggering the label because you have gloves on; you pull it out later to use, and it slips out of your hands. You wouldn't actually know until you've swung with it or raised it whether it's dirty or not, and so the status label doesn't show up on the item until that trigger is activated.

And so on, and so forth. You get where I'm going with it. One more little detail that would make the game that little bit more complicated and interesting.

[Slyguy65 499]

clean levels will be a thing im sure badly damaged food will have a high chance of sickeness, same with other stuff, the health system is very easy to maintain right now, they don't seem to have a lot of things actually affect the health system but im sure that will change seeing as how they are working on rain and it making you wet.

[akafugitive 244]

I've thought about this also when I saw the wet status and having things like disinfectant in the game. I would go so far as applying it to clothing, optics, windshields, etc. That applies the dirty textures to them.

Damage and external cleanliness should be separate. Badly damaged will come at a large risk of containment loss or unseen illness(food/water/medical)

Dirty status can be seen and comes at a risk of hygienically causing illness(food/water/medical/wearable), blocking visual abilities(optics/windshields), or causing malfunctions(weapon jams/vehicle stalls). This can also be cleaned with disinfectant or water sources(causes wet status)

Edited February 18, 2014 by akafugitive