Artificial Chemistry Difficulty?

[Midaychi]

 

(Sort of a stupid/silly idea and won't be surprised if a codermin is one of the first few replies giving me a detailed recount of the number of ways I am dumb.)

 

Basically, even with goonechem, since the recipes are in plain text in the source in an easy to find state, chemists can crank out almost whatever chemical they need five minutes into the round. Chemicals that require reagents that have some effort to acquire not included.

 

I get the feeling that the idea though is to have some basic essentials out of the way and then have the chemists spend the next thirty minutes figuring out how to make the rest of the chems while the station undergoes its throes and frenzies in preparation.

 

So, the idea:

 

1. Randomize all the temperature requirements for reagents on round start.

 

2. Give every chemist that spawns (late or roundstart) a handbook. The handbook contains the recipes (and the post-randomization temp for them) of what are considered bare essentials for chemistry to produce. Basically stuff that you want them to have in the fridge within 10 minutes of round start.

 

3. The handbook also contains a few freebies: The recipes for few a randomly selected chemicals and their post-randomization temp. (About three, or whatever works.) This is just to reduce some of the tedium and allow chemists to beat eachother senseless for their secret pocketbooks compare notes (and potentially get lucky)

 

 

The result would be a totally artificial difficulty curve where the chemists have to experiment to find the temperatures their intended recipe reacts at, giving the rest of the station time to prepare for whatever they could throw at it (Or at least traitors a window of opportunity in which there aren't crazy lifesaving/life-ending chemicals available.) They'd still be able to look up the recipe itself, if they wanted, or experiment and write it down to remember later, whatever. Just the reaction temps randomized once on roundstart.

 

 

If this proves to actually be too tedious/difficult, you could add a little Stoichiometry minigame to the chem heaters to give hints at what sort of energy you need to put in or remove.

 

[CrAzYPiLoT]

I like this, and it wouldn't really be so hard to code, but I really don't know if this should be added. This would be interesting to see, but if we want to keep the game to be with as much reality as possible (please don't kill me if you think we don't strive for reality, and I exempt the xenos and other creatures of imagination here) this wouldn't really help. As I said though, I like this.

[Dinarzad]

 

But why would a chemist not know all this?

You're a trained chemist, with degrees an shit, how do you not know how to make these medicines that see very clear and wide uses?

A Chemist on stated is not there to experiment, he is there to be the medical's pharmacy making a needed supply of medical supplies/drugs or things like Sulfuric Acid for circuitry construction, fertilizer and mutagen for botanists to do THEIR experimentation and general plant growth.

 

This is literally the reason you're even hired on, and you're telling me you don't even know how to make this stuff without just fumbling to figure it out once on board? (ICly speaking.)

Wouldn't that just result in NT saying "Ha ha, you;re fired, don;t come back."

 

The only thing this would apply to, would be the Chem related alt-title for Scientists, since experimentation -is- their job, they are working with bold new fields in chemical ickery an doing this or that an seeing what the fuck happens.

 

[CrAzYPiLoT]

Hm, this science-chem alt title thing might even work. Coders and admins make up new medicine or chems, and let the sci-chem staff try to figure out how to make them, with only hints on what they are supposed to do. On the other hand, I am afraid this would be too hard to make new ideas for meds/chems and too hard to play.

[Fox McCloud]

 

Sorry. No, introducing randomness for the sake of making something more "difficult" or take longer is about the worst way to make something harder--it just introduces frustration and time consumption with no other reason than to do so.

 

There's also really no reason for it mechanically or from a realism standpoint...having black powder ignite at -23K one shift and 0K the next would not only be retarded, but also induce HUGE amounts of frustration to players (and admins)---"oops, I just caused a max size explosion because it rolled for 0K black powder this shift.."

 

The purpose of scientists experimenting with chemistry is to test out reagents as they already exist---not to test out how to get those reagents. The vast bulk of Goonchem is largely the same; with the exception of a veryyyyyy small subset of chems, most of the recipes are posted and publicly available---most "wombo combo's" don't even involve secret chems; it's just run of the mill stuff that usually ends up being the most deadly.

 

Gameplay mechanics aside--from a realism standpoint...random activation temperatures make literally no sense what-so-ever; you don't wake up one day and the freezing point of water is suddenly 95C and the next it's -1000C.

 

[davidchan]

 

-1 RNJesus on mechanics that routinely blow up both Medical and Science Chem Lab anyways. It's needlessly time consuming, and lots of Pharmacist/Med Chemists have a hard enough time creating what they need anyways, can you imagine if they had to waste 5+ minutes just to find what temperature Oil turns to ash at? Or attempting to make Haloperidol, but accidentally making CF3 because the ignition point was lower than room temperature?

 

It makes no sense, and what may be an attempt to cease griefing/blowing random holes in the station is going to cause MORE holes in the station.