Slime Diseases
The idea is that every slime on your ranch has a very tiny chance of getting sick, potentially leading to epidemics if you don't come to the rescue. The chance of a slime sickness obviously rises if you keep more slimes but the idea is that you can expect to have to deal with an outbreak on average maybe once a week, no more. The actual danger is also limited, in keeping with the low-stress vision of the game.
I suggest the following ailments, ranging from least to most challenging:
Shiver Fever
- Indicator: Affected slimes will periodically shiver.
- Effect: Slimes that have the Shiver Fever cannot produce plorts.
- Contagious: Extremely. The Shiver Fever can spread to 2 other slimes, twice in a day, leading to an exponential epidemic! Additionally, the spread radius is large enough it can spread to a slime in an adjacent corral.
- Cure: A quick splash of fresh water is all that's needed to treat the Shiver Fever.
Slime Sniffles
- Indicator: Slime will trail a little booger. Or is it just more slime?
- Effect: Occasionally, the affected will sneeze, sending it flying in the opposite direction and possibly out of its corral.
- Contagious: Moderately. The slime may infect up to one other slime twice per day, in a small radius. But beware, if it goes flying out of its corral it could infect other corrals!
- Cure: The disease will go away after a while. However, if unattended a corral of infected slimes can just keep re-infecting each other to keep the illness circulating!
Flubberbutt
- Indicator: Slimes with Flubberbutt look extremely happy! Maybe it's not so much a disease as an inconvenience for the rancher...
- Effect: A slime with Flubberbutt is extremely bouncy, and will delight in leaping vast distances across the ranch. It's almost impossible to keep contained.
- Contagious: Slightly. The spread is similar to sniffles, but because the affected slime is bouncing around it may not occur that any other slimes are in range when the disease attempts to spread.
- Cure: A pulse from the vacpack at close range. Good luck getting close enough...
Slime Flu
- Indicator: Slime will have darker spots on its skin and will look miserable and uncomfortable.
- Effect: High risk of player heartbreak at seeing an affected slime.
- Contagious: Slightly. Once per day, the disease will spread to another other slime nearby.
The radius is not large enough to jump corrals, however. - Cure: Slimes with the Slime Flu can be fed Wild Honey, cheering them right back up! But it's hard to obtain, so quarantining the affected slime is highly reccommended.
The Slurps
- Indicator: No obvious visual indicator, except the slime will appear hungry even after eating, and will not become agitated either. Watch for slimes behaving oddly!
- Effect: A slime with The Slurps has never-ending hunger, and will eat stuff outside of its diet. It will also eat its own plorts!
- Contagious: Minimal. The slime will only infect another nearby slime if not treated for more than a few days.
- Cure: A steady diet of carrots. If the slime eats nothing other than carrots for 6 hours, it will be cured.
Poppups
- Indicator: Slime will hiccup every now and again.
- Effect: Whenever the slime hiccups, there is a small chance it will go *pop* and disappear. It will then reappear nearby a few hours later.
- Contagious: Somewhat. If a slime Pops, there is a chance that adjacent slimes will get infected.
- Cure: Booping it on the nose with a slime toy will cause it to Pop, but it will be cured when it reappears.
The chance of an outbreak would scale inversely with the challenge rating of the disease. The diseases would not start appearing until the player has the upgrades to deal with them.
Yes, I realize you could just chuck diseased slimes in the ocean and replace them. You monster. But it makes the feature somewhat more optional for mons- players who don't want to care for their- um, players who want to focus on other gameplay features.
Possibly such a feature might introduce a new plot type, the quarantine pen. The tradeoff is that it takes up a space but makes dealing with the more challenging diseases easier. It is a cube with full glass walls, and comes with a sprayer that releases a soothing, cleansing mist. Slimes within the quarantine pen would not produce plorts, not infect each other, making it safe to put slimes of different kinds inside.
This would also require a bit more attentiveness on the ranch so personally I would suggest such a feature required a dialing down of the timespeed, or at least a way to alter timespeed on the options.
Thanks for reading.
