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[Ulfarr]

I have been messing around trying to mod some syndromes the past few days and while the wiki page does explain how to make one, it seems to lack data on how exactly severity alters the syndromes effect. So I did some testing and hopefully other modders will find the results useful.

Disclaimer: I'm inexperienced to both how the testing arena works and DF modding so my test might not be accourate enough.

Acronyms:
io: indirect observer, when you don't control any creature
dc: direct control, when you control a creture like adventure mode


The Test:

The test itself involved a custom creature (basically a copy of a human) with a custom interaction that applied whatever syndrome I was testing. After the interaction has been activated (once, and it had the [ABRUPT] token) I would let time pass (usually without direct control of the test subject) and monitor the results. Due to my reaction times the actuall numbers in some cases might not be accourate but I believe they are still within an acceptable range to draw some conclusions.

Dizzines:

• SEV range: 0 - 9 899                            No effect was show in either wounds (io) or health (dc) screen.
• SEV range: 9 900 - 1 000 000               Both io and dc reported the creature as "dizzy". On dc mode, speed dropped from 1.0 to 0.500 whatever that means.

Fever:

Regardless the severity value on io mode, it only reported the creature's status as "Fever". On dc mode however there were more details.
Also, despite what the wiki page on symptoms say, no stunning was observed at these SEV ranges.

• SEV range: 0 - 9 899                           No Effect.
• SEV range: 9 900 - 499 899                 Slight Fever.
• SEV range: 499 900 - 999 899             Moderate Fever.
• SEV range: 999 900 - 100 000 000       Serious Fever.

Nausea:

Sev value seems to not have any effect on the amount of vomit produced and again cotrary to what is said in the wiki page, no dehydration status was observed even on the highest value after a test duration of ~37 000 phases/ticks.

• SEV range: 1 000    - 9 899                   No Efect.
• SEV range: 9 900    - 100 000 000         Nauseus.

Drowsyness:

1. This test relies heavily on the information given on the wiki page on sleep.The 0 SEV  values are taken from the wiki and repressent my baseline. I combined the 50 000 and 54 000 thresholds for sleeping and just used their average (52 000) for simplicity.
2. The phases/tick values on the Drowsy/Very Drowsy statuses might be affected by the fact that the test subject had be forced to stay awake and I used combat for that (set as "horseplay").
3. Despite having the [ABRUPT] token, CE_DROWSINESS won't make the creature fall asleep instantly.
4. Due to the very large SEV values, I will use 1 000 "SEV" as a base unit so 0.001 = 1, 0.5 = 500, 750 = 750 000....
5. The values under Sleep/Drowsy/V.Drowsy are how many ticks it took until the respective symptom showed up. Drowsiness Rate (D.Rate) is how many Drowsinness point on avearge the test subject acquired in each tick.

 
Severity           Sleep      Drowsy      V.Drowsy       D.Rate

• 0            52 000      57 600       150 000          1
• 0.001     50 092        N/A           N/A              1.038
• 0.1         25 125        N/A           N/A              2.0697
• 0.25        16 848       N/A           N/A              3.0864
• 0.5           8 515     10 305         N/A              5.8482
• 1              4 700       6 000         N/A             10.33
• 2.5           2 026        N/A           N/A             25.66
• 5              1 000      1 173        3 273            48.98
• 7.5              684        N/A           N/A             76.02
• 10               545        N/A           N/A             95.41
• 100            N/A          66            N/A              872
• 250            N/A          23             59             2 523
• 500            N/A          11             29             5 204
• 750            N/A          8              N/A            7 200
• 1 000         N/A          5               14             11 117
• 1 250         N/A          5               12             12 010     (At this point the drowsiness was increasing too much in each tick to properly measure it for the "Drowsy" level)
• 1 500         N/A          2                9              16 666

From the data above it seems like there is a linear correlation between the severity value and how quickly it reaches the point where it has to sleep. At low SEV values the creature will never reach the drowsy/very drowsy status unless it can not sleep for some reason. At higher levels the creature will jump directly to the coresponding drowsiness status but still it will not fall asleep instantly.

[Teneb]

Interesting stuff. You should update the wiki with this info.

And now I guess I need to check out various interactions to adjust severity.

[Ulfarr]

I don't know how. I've never edited a wiki before.

edit: I'll see if I can find a guide or something tomorrow

[TomiTapio]

Good testing!
Fancy testing how long duration paralysis kills (by being unable to breathe)?

[Teneb]

Good testing!
Fancy testing how long duration paralysis kills (by being unable to breathe)?

What I know from paralysis is that creature size affects how fast that happens.

[Ulfarr]

I did some initial testing on CE_PARALYSIS.

Testing was done in the same fashion as before although I tested it in three different sized cretures: the same custom human sized (70 000 cm3), an elephant man (2 535 000 cm3 acording to DFwiki) and an elephant (5 000 000 cm3). Sizes are the species averages reported from the raws or wiki.

Important Notes:

• The paralysis syndrome was NOT targeted at some specific body part.
• The [ABRUPT] token might have messed with the creatures size effect now that I think about it.

Results:

• SEV range: 0 - 9 899                      No observable effect in any test subject in either control mode.
• SEV range: 9 900 - 99 999 999       All test subject would lose the ability to stand (and grasp for the two humanoids) and show the "paralyzed" status on their
                                                         health screen on both control modes) by the 2nd tick. By the 3rd tick all subjects would also report the "winded" status.
                                                         Death by suffocation was achieved at 709 ticks in every one of the subjects.

[Teneb]

This is really weird, because Giant Cave Spiders only have 100 severity and yet can reliable cause creatures to suffocate.


EDIT: Oh damn it, I think I know what's happening. It could be that these things work differently in fort and adventure/arena mode, resulting in inconsistent reports.

[Ulfarr]

I don't know.

I tested all syptoms, except drowsiness, on fortress mode. The results are the same, at  SEV=< 9899 there is no reported effect and at 9900 everyone starts vomiting and dies soon after (due to the paralysis) within the same day the interaction was triggered.


edit: GCS has the size dilutes token,that explains the size effect but not the severity....

edit 2: I'm not sure if the effect of GCS poison relies on multiple applications of the poison syndrome that can add up and cause the intended effect. My test was specifically made to test a one time application.

edit 3: I am at loss, I have no idea about how GCS poison works. I tried the "low severity multiple aplications" approach and nothing happened.

[thefriendlyhacker]

This is really weird, because Giant Cave Spiders only have 100 severity and yet can reliable cause creatures to suffocate.
...

I have seen size 70000+ modded creatures survive GCS bites in fort mode many times (in fact, they often aren't even paralyzed). I booted up arena on an install that only has Meph Tileset and tried the same thing with dwarves (obsidianizing the GSC after it inflicted a injecting bite), and the dwarf would become paralyzed for only a moment before recovering and surviving. However, controlling the dwarf ala adventure mode while they were suffering from the syndrome would cause them to die from the paralysis.

[Teneb]

This is really weird, because Giant Cave Spiders only have 100 severity and yet can reliable cause creatures to suffocate.
...

I have seen size 70000+ modded creatures survive GCS bites in fort mode many times (in fact, they often aren't even paralyzed). I booted up arena on an install that only has Meph Tileset and tried the same thing with dwarves (obsidianizing the GSC after it inflicted a injecting bite), and the dwarf would become paralyzed for only a moment before recovering and surviving. However, controlling the dwarf ala adventure mode while they were suffering from the syndrome would cause them to die from the paralysis.

I guess based on this that most syndromes (except maybe necrosis?) in vanilla DF are horribly underpowered.


EDIT: Did some testing on my own by setting a Black Mamba against a Human. All humans eventually suffocated from paralysis, got knocked out with only a SEV 50 of unconsciouness, and were in a hell of a lot of pain. So the findings in this thread are really weird for me. One of the humans was controlled by me, while the other two were not. One of them actually managed to kill its mamba quite a while before dying of suffocation.

An aardvak man I accidentally spawned in also died from the after-effects of a single bite. So I really wonder what is going on.

[Roses]

I wonder if there is a difference between an interaction applied syndrome and one from a bite. It would be worth looking at the wounds caused by the interaction vs the wounds caused by the attack and the actual numbers being applied to the creature. I would suggest using gui/gm-editor to look at the paralysis, stunned, etc... numbers in unit.counters and unit.counters2 as well as looking at them in the unit.body.wounds.

Also, do you give START, PEAK, and END numbers for your interaction syndromes?

[Ulfarr]

This is the interaction and the can_do_interaction that I used for the test.

Spoiler: raws (click to show/hide)

[INTERACTION:HARSH_LIFE]
   [I_TARGET:A:CREATURE]
      [IT_AFFECTED_CREATURE:HYPAN:ANY]
      [IT_LOCATION:CONTEXT_CREATURE]
      [IT_FORBIDDEN:NO_AGING]
   [I_EFFECT:ADD_SYNDROME]
      [IE_TARGET:A]
      [IE_IMMEDIATE]
      [IE_ARENA_NAME:Apply harsh life interaction]
   [SYNDROME]
      [SYN_NAME:frail health]
      [SYN_AFFECTED_CLASS:BAD_HEALTHCARE]
      [CE_DIZZINESS:SEV:500:PROB:100:ABRUPT:START:0]
      [CE_DROWSINESS:SEV:100:PROB:0:ABRUPT:START:0]
      [CE_FEVER:SEV:500:PROB:100:ABRUPT:START:0]
      [CE_NAUSEA:SEV:500:PROB:100:ABRUPT:START:0]
      [CE_PARALYSIS:SEV:500:PROB:100:ABRUPT:START:0]

[CAN_DO_INTERACTION:HARSH_LIFE]                        
      [CDI:ADV_NAME:Grow old, frail and weak]               
      [CDI:TARGET:A:SELF_ONLY]
      [CDI:TARGET_VERB:feel weak and in pain:looks frail]
      [CDI:MAX_TARGET_NUMBER:A:1]
      [CDI:WAIT_PERIOD:3]                           
      

I didn't use peak/end because from my understanding peak was overwritten by [ABRUPT] and end was unnecessary for that type of testing. During testing I would zero the probabilities for the non-tested CE_X effects and adjust the SEV vaule accordingly.

I'm beginning to suspect that there is a difference between attack based syndromes and interaction based ones, maybe it has to do with [ENTERS_BLOOD]. I also gave the GCS's attacks (and poison) to my creature for testing. Somehow just a single aplication of the GCS poison can fully paralyze a dwarf but a whole stream of self inflected paralysis interactions does nothing.

Spoiler: arena report (click to show/hide)

[Roses]

Interaction and syndrome look good. I'd be interested in seeing what the actual numbers on the unit are. My guess is that one is applied directly to the unit, while the other is applied indirectly through the wound.

[Ulfarr]

Are these the numbers you wanted to see? They are from a new test round, both subjects are alive at this point and the dwarf has already been paralyzed once and subsequently overcame it. I have no idea why the dwarf's wound with id #2 is missing, it wasn't in the gm-editor's wounds report.

Spoiler: self paralysis interaction (click to show/hide)

Spoiler:  GCS poison target (click to show/hide)

[Roses]

Is that with the 500 SEV version of the interaction? If so, could you try with a 50,000 version? Also, it would be good to check the parts of the GCS wounds, hopefully at least one of them shows a non 0 paralysis and/or non 0 pain number.