Variable difficulty modes

This is somewhat a long-term feature suggestion, rather than a "right now" thing. It would involve a lot of research into medical stuff and adding in a lot of things to the game. If implemented, I think it would make the game a bit more immersive for players who have been or are being trained in medical sciences.


The difficulty setting would range from where it is currently, where things aren't super specific (IV antibiotics = could be anything, realistically) to the most difficult level designed to cater to people more familiar with medical terminology. At this most difficult level, the more wide-arching symptoms and treatments would be broken down into more specific types. Instead of just IV antibiotics, you'd instead have things such as erythromycin, amoxicillin, tetracycline, and obviously others. NSAIDs would become the specific NSAID prescribed. Symptoms such as "leg pain" would become more specific, depending on where the pain is being felt. A trained medical professional would be able to name the specific area that a patient is talking about after enough examinations have been conducted. Over time, and with examinations, "leg pain" would change to "Soleus pain" accompanied with an image of the lower leg depicting the region where that muscle is.

It's something I probably wouldn't make the most use out of personally. I might stick it on a medium setting if one were coded in. Felt it more than worth suggesting for immersion though.

The amount of work and detail you would have to put in to make something like this feasible is quite daunting. Having said that, it is something I would absolutely love to create if there was enough interest from the community. I'm currently working on a very ambitious mod that adds around 150 new diagnoses complete with new symptoms, examinations and treatments. Once that project is finished (and I'm only about 20 % done at this point) perhaps I can gauge the interest for an ultimate medical realism mod. Needless to say, I would definitely need lots of help from other physicians.