This game loop will force you to make tough decisions

While I was in a challenging Frostpunk 2 campaign, I was distracted by a pop-up message.

"Administrator, some want changes to our quarantine policy," one of my faceless advisors explained. "Forced separation from loved ones is hard for everyone when they have to go into quarantine. It's especially hard for parents whose children are taken away from them and put in quarantine. Such a mother comes to the quarantine camp every day and asks to come in for to take care of her daughter. "She's scared to death of being alone!" she pleads. "Shall we allow healthy parents to enter the camp with their sick children?"

I had imposed the quarantine several weeks earlier in the game as a desperate attempt to eliminate a cold and hunger-induced illness that was, for all intents and purposes, a direct result of my poor leadership. The mountains of citizens succumbing to disease had burdened my reputation and, perhaps more importantly, robbed me of one of the city-building game's greatest resources: people who can work. And so into the quarantine went the sick to prevent the difficult situation from turning into a full crisis.