From what I understand about illnesses in the game, there's only a few things that can really determine the whole "No Illness" thing:
- The Sim does not have a visible symptom. (Rashes or Cysts, mostly.)
- They only exhibit symptoms that don't affect the external body. (Dizziness, Headaches, Fever) This doesn't mean they don't *actually* have an Illness, it can just be a false positive. You should still test the Sim to make sure they aren't overreacting.
I think the part that bothers me most with patient Sims is that if you spend time watching their symptoms, you'll notice over time the symptom they are exhibiting goes away; this includes visible symptoms like rashes. The game will still treat the Sim as having the illness as far as the career lot goes, but they won't have the moodlet.
In regards to testing samples, using the x-ray, or the treadmill, the dialogue for those tests tends to just simply default to a few types; it would be interesting to see the dialogue for these be a bit more dynamic, kind of like the extra message you get when you test an Alien sim.
I broke down the possible outcomes of each of the Doctor Career object results.
Chemical Analyzer:
- Inconclusive: Failed Use
- Strongly Indicate: Successful Use
X-Ray/Treadmill: (Treadmill gives more progress to diagnosis, but higher chance of failure.)
- Inconclusive/Can't Read: Total Failure
- Inconclusive: Limited Failure
- Detects Presence of Illness: Limited Success
- Detects Strongly Indicate Illness: Total Success
I'd agree though that any sort of indication that the patient is actually healthy would be helpful; I don't think it should be revealed by simple tests (Take Temperature, Scan Body, etc.), but should require use of the Chemical Analyzer, X-Ray, or Treadmill.There's already the time it takes to use those objects that factors into a doctor's decision to run that test, and the chance of the object breaking or just getting a bad result to put everything back to square one.
- B
