Rats and Public Health

[Geras]

What would people think about making the rat population impact the public health metric?

I was thinking something along these lines:

Rats spawn in random appropriately flagged rooms according to a logisitic function. For those unfamiliar, a logisitic function describes exponential growth constrainted by resources. So basically, if there's a small number of rats in game, a small number of rats spawn. If there's a medium number of rats in game, a large number of rats spawn. If there's a large number of rats, a small number of rats spawn. If there's a max number of rats, no rats spawn.

Make sense?

From there the rats would wander, and it would be up to us players to ensure the number of rats stays low, lest a rat infestation take hold.

[Ani]

I like the idea. the only thing I'm having trouble with is the max number of rats. I get the large number of rats, but like... What does the max number have to do with the no rat spawnage? I make up words, yes. But anyway, I do like the idea though. It would add realism, especially if the health is low.

[Geras]

Eventually the rats run out of food. I think from a game design standpoint too having 50 rats in every room would be a problem. I'm not sure what an ideal maximum is though... enough to make rat catcher a valuable and worthwhile occupation at least.

[Starstarfish]

I have a concern about systems that punish people at large for the activity or inactivity of others. This is one of my primary concerns with the Metrics system at large where your IC livelihood can revolve around other people being active in an OOC sense.

Whose responsibility would killing these rats be? Would the only way of getting rid of them be combat? (IE - the Rhyming system - which if you as a brand new player do not know the lore about rhymes and try to fight rats like you would in most other MUDs you get destroyed, rats do incredible damage in traditional combat versus what most people might expect.)

I'd personally prefer something like this happen based on people not cleaning in some fashion private spaces - IE - an object in rooms (shops or houses or Guildhalls) that shows that a room has been cleaned lately. Clean rooms don't spawn nasties, rooms left dirty too long could spawn flies/rats/etc that might cause disease.

Which could open up RP for low level Guildies (Acolytes/Pages/Students/Cadets et al) who could be responsible for that activity which is mentioned as one in most helpfiles - clean things. If there was an associated craft, it use soap or vinegar, thus opening up potential avenues for player sales. This would contain things to spaces specific PCs/Guilds should be responsible for versus the entire grid in general - and would lead to more direct ability to instruct certain people to get the job done.

[Geras]

[quote="Starstarfish"]Whose responsibility would killing these rats be? Would the only way of getting rid of them be combat? (IE - the Rhyming system - which if you as a brand new player do not know the lore about rhymes and try to fight rats like you would in most other MUDs you get destroyed, rats do incredible damage in traditional combat versus what most people might expect.)
/quote]

If rats are OP then that should definitely be fixed to something realistic. The intent is for this to be something accessible to new players.

The idea of being collectively punished for each other's lack of action is entirely the point. Funding rat catchers would be something a Seneschal could do for example.

[Geras]

It's a collective problem to be solved collectively. Ideally I'd like there to be several systems like this affecting different metrics. I just can't think of any others right now.

[Voxumo]

I do not feel there should be another system in place to affect Health. You already have weather conditions which can trigger diseases, certain other 'situations' can lead to certain diseases, and then you have the health metric itself which if low typically involves an outbreak. Con also affects how likely you are to catch a disease.

The Disease system already has too many items that trigger it, let's not keep adding on to it.

[Geras]

It wouldn't be a new system Vox. Just a new input for the existing health metric.

[LonelyNeptune]

It wouldn't be consistent for rats to affect the Health metric without a similar system for the other Metrics. When you can affect one metric with rat slaughter, but the others cost IP, it's unbalanced.

However it would be interesting to have it the other way around - for the Health metric to affect rat numbers. If rats then spread disease, it would be a consequence for having a low Health metric.

[Geras]

I'm proposing that this and other metrics could be affected by multiple things.

So for example, suppose health is at +2 due to the IP game. That +2 would be modified up or down by 1 depending on the rat population.

I agree the reverse would be interesting too. Or both?