Filth

Filth is a general label encompassing the spread of miasma as well as disease transmission. Like other decay vectors, it serves as a progressive threat that the crew must mitigate over the course of the round. Unlike fires or rust, filth is both created and affects solely living creatures, giving it a unique mechanical area. It mostly directly integrates into systems which create pests or animals on station and things which may lead to those beings dying. The cleanup of dead bodies and filthy material is also highly relevant to mitigating the effects of filth.

As a thematic element, filth combines general "grossness" with sickness to create a feeling of hazardous contamination across the station. The point is to model the kind of poor conditions that leaving dead bodies and organic filth causes.

Miasma

The main component of filth is miasma, which can occur in a few different ways, most commonly being dead bodies. When a dead body is present, miasma will slowly seep out of it and begin to fill out the room. Additionally, things like pests and blood stains can also create miasma.

As a general rule of thumb, anything which is "filthy" tends to create miasma. The presence and amount of miasma in a room is a measuring stick for how filthy a location is.

When enough miasma builds up in a room, the room will become covered in dirt decals. Players inhaling miasma will also gain a sickly status effect for a time, not making them ill but increasing the chances that they gain an infection. Additionally pests like flies and roaches may spontaneously generate in areas with high miasma.

Disease Clouds

Once enough miasma has built up in a given area, disease clouds become capable of spawning. These are temporary non-living threats that are capable of giving players infections. When someone walks close enough to one of the clouds, it will lunge towards them. If the player makes contact, they may be infected, the chance of which being modified by status effects (sickly) and equipment (biosuits, face masks).

The disease clouds serve as a more tangible and skill-based expression of the transmission of diseases, giving people realistic counterplay. However, due to the conditions that filth and bodies often pile up in (small enclosed areas, dark hallways), they can still be quite difficult to avoid. Additional mitigating equipment gives players a tradeoff with dealing with filthy areas while not putting themselves at risk for being infected.

Infections

Infections are non-transmissible ailments that players can receive when coming into contact with disease clouds. Unlike typical wounds or injuries, infections do not directly harm players and do not have the capacity to kill them. Instead, infections afflict the player with various status effects and conditions which weaken them. This creates a secondary type of injury which does not need to be actively treated with the same urgency as something like a gunshot wound while simultaneously opening up potentially interesting effects.

Generally speaking, a player carrying an infection is not able to transmit the infection to other players. Even if they are coughing, simply being in proximity to or coming into contact with an infected player does not cause the infection to spread. This is a pretty major departure from traditional Spation diseases, intentionally so, as to not punish infected players for engaging in normal routine social interactions.

Cures

Curing infections is a pretty simple process. So long as the infected player remains out of contact with any miasma and consumes the correct medicine for their infection, they will be cured after a short amount of time. Medicines are not meant to be difficult to acquire: they can easily be made inside medical or foraged from plants. Instead, the difficulty with medicines comes with the side effects.

Although taking medicine will cure your ailment, the medicine can have fairly impactful side effects. Because of this, it's best to seek out safe locations with others or in a secure area so that your temporarily weakened state isn't taken advantage of.