Should chemistry machinery be unviewable by ghosts?

[Crazylemon]

As it stands, ghosts can observe chemistry machinery. According to Fox, this causes some problems with players trying to keep their special mixes secret - should I shield their interfaces from ghostly observation? Ya or na?

[Keroman]

I would argue that observing as a ghost is one method for new players to be able to figure out game mechanics. Secret recipes be damned, if you're going to make your super-special one-hit-kill spray-bottle flamethrower you better be prepared for someone to figure it out and use it on you sooner or later.

[davidchan]

 

-1

 

We aren't goon, this isn't sekrit chem, if someone wants to observe a player and learn how they do things, that should be an option, especially for a new player.

 

[FoS]

 

Yes. It should not be view-able by ghosts. I find it highly unlikely that a new player is going to actually learn anything from observing as a ghost. It's far more probable that they learn via the wiki or in-game. It seems like viewing chemistry machines as ghosts would lead to more harm than good. People already seem to have a difficult time remembering they're not supposed to 'remember' things they saw when dead if they get cloned and we certainly have a problem with people being extra metagamey. Suppose we cant forget the people who specifically observe to grief/troll with friends either.

 

We may not have the same super-secrety-stuff like Goon but it doesn't make sense for someone to essentially learn what older players may have taken a very long time to figure out by simply observing in a way that a player cannot defend against. At least in-game you know when some random person is trying to peak at what you're making and honestly - knowing absolutely what everyone at a chem machine is up to seems like it would ruin any mystery.

 

If a player wants to learn then the wiki can teach them, all the information is there and available if they actually want it. If they want to perfect a mix or something then that should be up to them and actually experimenting in the game. Do we really want more people making terrifying mixes when they don't even understand why what another player is doing works the way it does just because they peaked at a machine?

 

[NTSAM]

yeah no, let's not make it easier for baldies to make hellmixes.

[Keroman]

 

I find it highly unlikely that a new player is going to actually learn anything from observing as a ghost. It's far more probable that they learn via the wiki or in-game.

 

It may be rare but it absolutely does happen. I would very much rather leave new players the option of discovering stuff by watching rather than jumping into Chemistry and mixing water and potassium in a beaker because they don't know any better and they didn't check the "pyrotechnics" section of the Chemistry guide because they're trying to make medicine, not bombs.

 

It really feels like there are so few people who play who are just not willing to take the time with new players to show them even the basics. I get that Mentors are there to answer ahelps but in-character I see too many new players get ignored while asking questions in "say" or over the common radio channel.

 

People already seem to have a difficult time remembering they're not supposed to 'remember' things they saw when dead if they get cloned and we certainly have a problem with people being extra metagamey.

 

But reading through a wiki and then using that info in-game is somehow a better option? I get that with that statement you're more referring to people who get killed, see a bunch of stuff as a ghost, then try to use that info in-game when they're revived. I just don't think it applies to learning about jobs while observing.

 

We may not have the same super-secrety-stuff like Goon but it doesn't make sense for someone to essentially learn what older players may have taken a very long time to figure out by simply observing in a way that a player cannot defend against. At least in-game you know when some random person is trying to peak at what you're making and honestly - knowing absolutely what everyone at a chem machine is up to seems like it would ruin any mystery.

 

I don't get what the deal is with "muh super sekrit mixes" but then again I'm not the kind of person who likes to hoard knowledge. Hell, if anything I'm excited to show people new stuff that I've figured out and share how to make it because then everyone gets to use it and have fun. I would argue that a new player whose options for learning are limited would be more likely to damage the station and/or injure innocent bystanders through ignorance than someone who knows just the right mix for a lethal syringe that will silence, stun, and poison their target as an antag.

 

[Shadeykins]

 

As someone who can recite recipes backwards and forwards for pretty much any formula, and drain two dispensers in about 10-15 minutes flat I'm thoroughly against changing this.

 

The fact that there's any amount of secrecy about any mechanic is ludicrous in the first place.

 

As an example (and as an incredibly useful tactic) I didn't realize you could even screwdriver false walls into full walls until recently, and I've been here for over a year. It's not documented anywhere and nobody seems to know about this, and I'm only aware because I was lucky enough to witness a player doing it (who's the only other person who knows about it, to my knowledge).

 

The "top-secret knockout mixes" are generally just a mixture of Capulettium Plus and Ether/Morphine (Hydrocone/Ephedrine also works great for stunning people/making them unable to properly react), by the by. Capulettium Plus also takes a considerable amount of time to make unless you're aware that setting a chemical heater to 1000k heats things faster because it requires a Capulettium component, which needs a Neurotoxin component, which requires space drugs.

 

A lot of taters actually skip this step and hack a Med+ vendor, because it'll dispense Pancuronium.

 

There is no point to having a wiki/guides if we're going to have super sekrit formulas, and allowing ghosts to view chem dispensers harms nothing/nobody.

 

If anything it'll hopefully draw attention to particularly annoying mixes which may prompt coders to make them inert (causing them to turn into an inert compound would be great, I'm looking at you, annoying bomb-sound sprays).

 

yeah no, let's not make it easier for baldies to make hellmixes.

 

Baldies never get the opportunity to make hellmixes, chemists get rightfully fired for doing that stuff in medchem, and scientists generally kill themselves in the making of or utilization of hellmixes.

 

I fail to see the issue.

 

[Keroman]

 

As an example (and as an incredibly useful tactic) I didn't realize you could even screwdriver false walls into full walls until recently, and I've been here for over a year. It's not documented anywhere and nobody seems to know about this, and I'm only aware because I was lucky enough to witness a player doing it (who's the only other person who knows about it, to my knowledge).

 

I discovered this just two days ago when I went to open a door with the wrong hand selected which just so happened to be holding a screwdriver because I was helping fix up an IPC friend. I was super confused when I switched hands and couldn't open the door, then realized what happened and had to cut through the wall again.

 

[Earthdivine]

Absolutly not. I already said I was not allowing the Chem Squad to be formed on this server when Chemistry was ported, this will only make it worse.

[Fox McCloud]

 

In support of this for a number of reasons:

 

1. It strongly discourages research

 

What's the point of doing research when you can just observe one of the more skilled chemists and just mimic what they do? Toxins is secret in part due to this; the inner mechanics are deliberately obscured so toxins bomb makers have to experiment and try for themselves what mixes of gases, temperatures, and ratios works out best and generates a particular result; then then can go back and make tweaks to get better results, in the future. If this were opened up, then it becomes trivial---the stereotypical min-maxer can just observe an experienced bomb-maker, copy their numbers and duplicate it; they don't learn anything in the process of things, mechanics wise, and they just got a free ride to the max-size train without putting a single bit of actual gameplay worth of investment to do so.

 

Chemistry is no different in this regard. A complaint leveled against science is that it's not very science-like; R&D is not experimental at all; it's literally shove things in until it hits max level (and not surprisingly, most players don't bother to learn the underpinning of this either, and just copy-paste use a list of what to do based on the few that are willing to give it out). Toxins and chemistry at least have some experimentation about them (even if only initially for toxins).

 

 

2. Metagamers.

 

Yes, this is an administrative issue, but quite frankly, it's not something that's particularly easy to pick up on. If so and so gets killed by, say, a traitor chem and suspects it's Joe McSleepypen who did it (but isn't sure), and happens to observe that person and see they have X-traitor chem in their chem-master (or what have you), well...they can act on that and it's going to be very difficult for administration to determine if they are metagaming or not. I'd apply this to Virology equipment as well; if someone dies to a virus, it's pretty easy to go on over to their machines and see what they have loaded to see if it was an event virus or if they're up to no good.

 

[Regen]

 

So.. Basically the elitists wants to hide their recipes from ghosts?

 

Seems legit.

 

[Keroman]

 

I think we all agree there needs to be some middle ground between forcing a player to figure out everything on their own and handholding every step of the way. That's not the topic of this thread but if someone wants to start a discussion about that in a separate thread I'll be only too glad to participate.

 

With regards to Crazylemon's original post I feel I've made myself clear. Observing players and how they interact with the game is an absolutely valid method of learning which, combined with the wiki and help from Mentors in-game, can lead to a better, more informed player-base. Players who are prevented from using methods of learning are more apt to cause problems out of sheer ignorance.

 

[Crazylemon]

The reason I put this thread up was in response to this comment on my smartfridge ghost-viewing PR - As I thought that the change proposed there would be rather controversial, as well as not directly related to what I was doing in my PR, as part of my resolution to include the main body of the community in controversial decisions, I put this question here.

[FoS]

 

It may be rare but it absolutely does happen. I would very much rather leave new players the option of discovering stuff by watching rather than jumping into Chemistry and mixing water and potassium in a beaker because they don't know any better and they didn't check the "pyrotechnics" section of the Chemistry guide because they're trying to make medicine, not bombs.

 

The sorts of people who randomly mix chemicals don't seem like the sort that would even observe a chemist as a ghost. If someone isn't willing to use the wiki to learn then why would they even view anything as a ghost? The people that randomly mix things are probably going to do so regardless.

 

But reading through a wiki and then using that info in-game is somehow a better option?

Yes. Reading the wiki gives players an explanation. Watching someone as a ghost tells you nothing except what they are placing in a beaker. You're not getting a description or an explanation for their actions. You're literally only getting what you can see and you probably wont understand what's going on unless you already know chemistry.

 

It's easy to replicate something you can observe but it isn't quite so easy to understand it if you didn't take the babysteps to get to that point in the first place.

 

Players who are prevented from using methods of learning are more apt to cause problems out of sheer ignorance.

 

Making machines not viewable by ghosts isn't preventing someone from learning. People can easily learn via the wiki or in-game if they want. If anything it feels like an inexperienced player observing a chemist without any additional information would be more of a risk. They could very well replicate something someone did (to the best of their knowledge) and end up causing more damage because they don't fully understand the process they merely watched. Then they can argue "well i watched ____ do it! I didn't know it would do what it did!"

 

[Coldflame]

 

If players are are allowed to know it, all players should be allowed to know it

 

The mindset of "But dicks can use it to do x!" confuses me. Should we remove toolboxes so baldies can't hit people with them?

 

Chem mixes weren't secret to begin with, either, so I'm not sure what this solves.

 

[scrubmcnoob]

 

This just seems like an update to promote more secretive behavior and more inner jerking of the people with the KNOWLEDGE of some chems. I feel this game has so many different mechanics that if a person learns of one of these secrets, they will not always resort to it because there are many other ways to do one single objective.

 

And why limit the KNOWLEDGE of other players in the game? All you are doing is actively masking content they are unaware about and keeping them from using it. Even if people know about these "hellmixes" they will not always resort to them for there are so many options in this game, you will probably branch out into many different methods for achieving your goal. Each round will always hold a new challenge and a simple syringe of mute roofies will not always work.

 

[TullyBBurnalot]

 

In purely practical terms:

 

 

1. We do not make a secret of any recipe. Deathchems are freely available to anyone who looks at the wiki and, as has been said here before, most "hellmixes" are just a mixture of harmful chemicals, whose effects are clearly detailed in the wiki;

    

2. Learning by mimicking is a thing. Someone can very well observe a Chemist/Scientist produce chemicals, then cross-check them with the wiki to see what they do. In fact, this way, they can learn how to effectively make medication without wasting a bunch of energy (seeing as it takes bloody forever for the MedChem Dispensers to recharge);

    

They can't really do anything with deathchems. Seriously, why is this even an issue? If they're an antag and use them properly, that's fine. If they aren't, they get BWOINK'd and/or fired and/or jobbanned and/or banned;

 

Experimentation is also a thing. I already make a point of reminding Chemists who randomly experiment to take Scientist instead (which, I'm happy to say, they then do). The entire point of adding a Chem Lab to Science was to allow people to randomly mix Chemicals somewhere that won't be missed when it blows up. Like Toxins;

 

People can literally just ask. I learned Toxins on my first shift working it by just asking the RD how it worked. Boom, instantly knew how to do Toxins, always. Ask around Science, and people will gladly tell you how to do stuff. So if that's happening anyway, why not just let people watch and see what happens? As mentioned in my first point, literally every recipe is available on the wiki

 

 

All in all, I fail to see why chemistry machinery should be unviewable. The possible negative effects stated in this thread seem to massively overinflate what actually happens in-game. MedChem rarely blows up nowadays, and most useless chem mixing goes on in Science anyway.

 

[Cupcakes_n_Hacksaws]

This isn't goonchem, there aren't any sooper seecret recipes that aren't meant to be known by the masses (goon admins say the actually change the recipe if it gets too well known). Why are you do you seem to insist this should be the case?

[MarkvA]

Why is there an argument in the first place. If people want to meta, there's plenty of better ways of doing so.

[Jey123456]

 

any job whose sole enjoyment rely on learning secrets / tricks, is a job that should be reworked / improved. Learning is fun sure, but when its the only thing a job has to offer for fun then once you did learn it, its not fun anymore.

 

Sure metagaming happen, but it will happen with or without the machine being viewable by ghost. Once someone is ghost theres very little they cant figure about a round as it is. If that so called metagaming was so much of a problem then maybe we should simply remove the vision / hear of ghost, hell remove dead chat too so they cant use that to metagame with each other !.

 

[saywat_the_15th]

 

So.. Basically the elitists wants to hide their recipes from ghosts?

 

Seems legit.

 

Exactly

 

[Da Dman234]

I"m 100% for this, it's really easy for non-sci players to say, "muh chem circlejerk", but many of us have put many, MANY rounds into perfecting our formulas. Half of the fun of science is taking time and experimenting, anyone who wants to forgo this is just in it to irresponsibly abuse the power of the science department. There's also the fact most of us will reveal our recipes to anyone who asks nicely if we feel you will use them responsibly. Even if I choose not to reveal the recipe I always make it a point to tell them if they at any time need help improving theirs to just ask me and I'll give them suggestions for improvement.

[saywat_the_15th]

 

Screw that, who the hell cares IF* someone sees your fuckingsecretkillrecipewhichyoucreated, they can't use it if they aren't antag, it does absolutely no harm seeing the recipes, it only damages the egos of scientists.

 

* it is not like there is 100% of time someone stalking the machines as a ghost.

 

[Jey123456]

 

By that logic, ghost shouldnt be able to see main atmo either (not that it matter on this server). Some people spent multiple rounds optimizing their change to its piping to achieve top air distro / scrubber performance.

 

I'm sure there are many other example where special method / arrangement can be used to optimize the result. Theres absolutly no reason why some should be hidden and other not.

 

[Keroman]

 

Half of the fun of science is taking time and experimenting, anyone who wants to forgo this is just in it to irresponsibly abuse the power of the science department.

 

It's important that everybody understands that something that is fun for one player is not necessarily going to be fun for another player.

 

You know what's not fun for me? Blowing myself up early in the round because I mixed a chemical grenade wrong. Now I'm out of the game for 15-20 minutes getting fixed up/cloned, or possibly out for the entire round because something major happened and there's no time or resources to spend on bringing back the stupid scientist who can't mix chems right.

 

Next round I know better so I try a different recipe and go boom again.

 

Next round I know better so I try yet a different recipe and go boom again.

 

Repeat ad nauseam.

 

If someone knows this stuff and is willing to share it with me so I can avoid round after tedious round of tweaking and refining that I personally do not feel is either fun or a good use of my in-game time then I'm absolutely going to ask for help. That doesn't mean I'm going to run around griefing people with these fancy new formulas that someone showed me, but it does mean that when I finally turn on all the secret antags in my game preferences I might actually stand a chance and make it interesting for the other players trying to hunt me down.

 

Hell, if I'm being completely honest about this whole topic it's that I mostly want to know about some of these cool tricks so I have a better chance at becoming a Mentor someday down the line.