Public Order in Cure Mode
Articles Notes
- Written by Seb
- Research conducted from February 2024 to April 2024
- Game Version: PC (1.19.1.0)
- All the text was written by me as well as I took the screenshots and extracted the files from the game. All content related to Plague Inc. is copyrighted by Ndemic Creations.
- Approximately 10 ∼ 12 Minutes of Reading
Article Contents
- Introduction
- General Disease Expansion
- Healthcare System Overwhelmed
- Public Order Change
- Effects
- Irreparable Changes
- Point of No Return (aka the Prion section)
- Extreme Cases (aka the Bio-Weapon section)
- Disease Prevention
What is public order in Plague Inc.?
Public Order refers to all the factors that interfere in order to measure the stability of a country, in the case that a country has a high public order, it means that it has not been affected by the disease, most of the population is calm and the government is competent in issuing actions that prevent new contagions or avoid the death of the affected population.
The public order will start to break down as soon as the number of infected cases starts to increase, causing the health system to be overloaded, if the necessary measures are not taken, this will cause the country's contribution to the development of the cure to be much lower, in addition to the country being more likely to take more desperate measures in order to control the population.
This can be seen in the City Cam, which will progressively change from “Business as Usual” to “Total Anarchy”, where it will become much redder and it will be seen that the country is suffering from a crisis, if the player does not take the necessary actions to contain the outbreak and calm the population.
Every time a country falls into chaos, this will reduce the authority bar by a lot, so prioritize the countries that have a large number of cases, especially the place of origin and the vacant countries that are usually the most affected. So always try to check the country tabs to see what gov. actions are taken as well as the city cam status to see what stage of public order the nation is in.
General Disease Expansion
It can be noted that when a country reaches approximately 10% of its population infected, it begins to slightly alter the public order, where it goes from "Business as Usual" to "General Disruption".
According to the game files, the government action bar for each country will show the player how infections are increasing in a specific country. These messages are:
- "Local infection clusters reported" (Approximately more than 0.001% is infected in the country)
- "Infections reported nationally" (Approximately more than 0.05% have been infected in the country)
- "Infection growing exponentially" (Approximately more than 1% of the country's cases)
Notes
The data is taken directly from the game files. Specifically from the variable "condition_local_infected_percent:" where the decimals are converted to percent.
Healthcare System Overwhelmed
In the event that a country has a large number of cases, the country will quickly go from "General Disruption" to "Close to Anarchy". There are different options where the public order can improve or decline depending on the player's actions.
In the event that the player prioritizes certain countries, they can use responses and use the Field Operatives to control the situation in the most affected countries, but in the event that the player doesn't make an immediate intervention, there is a possibility that most of the infected will die causing mass panic in the country, making the public order much more unstable and the player loses a lot of authority points for that.
In this case you can see in the video how Canada's overloaded health care system after a bacterial outbreak causes the government to quickly lose control of the situation in the country, this can be seen in how the City Cam quickly changes color.
Public Order Change
The player can improve the public order of a specific country, but to do this he must increase operations that specifically help to increase the resilience of the country's health system such as "New Infrastructure" and "Staff Expansion", as well as use Field Operatives to reduce the infection and lethality of the affected country.
Although it depends on the situation, the player is required to do everything possible to prevent deaths, as well as to isolate the infected, and then when the infected are isolated to recover quickly, this can be done much faster in the case that the player acquires the operation "Infection Control" and "Emergency Care", which make the effects of Field Operatives much more efficient.
Some response triggers government actions, the more actions the government takes, the more likely it is that the country can stabilize, the responses mentioned as "New Infrastructure" will make governments prioritize that hospitals are not overloaded while "Staff Expansion" will make governments try to recruit more doctors in order to meet the demand of cases.
Effects
This example shows how Field Operatives have to deal with a virus outbreak in the Philippines. In which you can see how the use of Responses and the work of Field Operatives can move the country from "Widespread Order" to "General Disruption".
Depending on the disease it will take time for the population to recover but it is necessary for countries to establish a traceability system, in addition to the fact that testing capacity helps to monitor infected people more closely to avoid new cases. As long as the player focuses as much as possible to contain outbreaks in the affected areas in a timely manner, it can effectively neutralize the outbreak and bring public order to another phase.
Irreparable Changes
Even if you get the entire infected population to recover naturally from the disease, there is a certain limit and despite that the public order will not change, one of the main factors is that if a large percentage of the country dies from the disease, the population will still have to live with that causing the public order to remain the same
Another factor to take into account is that if the country experiences a large increase in cases, causing mass panic as well as part of the medical infrastructure will collapse. Therefore, it is necessary for the player to take preventive measures in a short period of time before the situation becomes unstable in certain areas.
Point of No Return
Some plagues are somewhat special when it comes to dealing with lethality, an example of this is Prion, in which at first it starts to spread around different places without beign lethal. However, when it finishes its incubation process, it will become as lethal as possible.
Extreme Cases
This often occurs with Bio-Weapon, where it has the ability to quickly annihilate a large part of a country's population in a short period of time. So it is common for affected countries to go into "Total Anarchy".
This can be reflected in the City Cams as well as in the Gov. Action Tab where Martial Law can be declared, additionally in this tab the player will be informed about the collapse of a country's government., in case this happens, no more government actions will be taken, making the life of the civilian population much more difficult to cope with the disease.
This can cause a strong decline in authority, and for every country that falls into total anarchy, there is a greater chance that the player loses the game, so in Bio-Weapon there are operations that alert the population that it is not possible to protect people in affected countries, so in this plague the Field Operative functions mainly to isolate the affected countries from the rest of the world to prevent the spread of the pathogen.
Because Bio-Weapon is capable of destroying the public order quickly, the Field Operatives have to take over the role of the country government, which could collapse at any moment as the disease sweeps through the country's population.
Disease Prevention
The player can use various responses in order to establish and ensure public order, for which the country's government must first take certain measures to prevent the escalation of contagions.
Among one of the responses that are important to establish is a tracking system, for this it is necessary to acquire the response of “Contact Tracing 1”, although the result may vary depending on the country, sometimes countries can establish a good infection tracking system but there is the possibility that some governments use a tracking system for infections of very poor quality, making these actions less effective over time.
Additionally, the player can use "Testing Capacity", this response makes it possible to increase the effectiveness of infection tracking systems, where countries will increase testing to avoid infections.