Original Chemistry

[thebeoni]

So, for a long i have had this idea in my head, and so many people complained about this.

So, chemistry is easy. There is no doubt about it none of you can say it is not. To be perfectly clear gimme 20 minutes alone in scichem and i can hijack shuttle as non antag while wiping 90% of the crew and borgs.

 

My actual idea here is complete painfuly coded revamp of chemistry. If any of you do play lifeweb you might know how lifeweb alchemy works for those who do not, read:

Spoiler

Alchemy in lifeweb works based upon using actual supplies to do stuff like: use mortar to grind herbs, then put it into retort and heat it over jensen burner.

I do not propose a complete change of reactions i just propose using actual laboratory equipment instead of magical machine with all of chemicals. Still the basic chemicals could be given by the machine provided there is biomass or other fuel inserted into machine so it can do it's proton and electron changing magic.

[ZN23X]

So in a way sorta make it more like the kitchen where different tools (fryer, oven, mircowave) make different things out of the same ingredients. It'd definitely make things more challenging for good chems. I know it's as simple as following recipes on the wiki (I personally made my own cheat sheet for the important stuff so I don't have to jump back n forth on the wiki) but there ARE many chemists who struggle with it even as it is right now...and an under stocked meds fridge sucks

[EldritchSigma]

While a bit more complicated mechanics in the chemistry system would be nice I would like to say that making it too realistic might put off people from it. I am a chemist in real life and I must say... if the chemistry system on our server would be anymore realistic so that I need to purify my products and remove solvents... maybe analyze it via different methods (Mass Spectroscopy/Mass Spectrometry (whatever the english term for that i, seen both describing the same) and NMR for instants) to see if I even got the damn product I desire... I would not be using it as much as I do now. As for now some ratios are off which could be adjusted (Thermite comes to mind... Yeah its ingame as 1/1/1 Iron/Aluminum/Oxygen, but Iron(III)oxide is Fe2O3 so... something doesnt fit with the oxygen ratio in there just as a hint).

Also the poor Medchems... their lab is so damn tiny...

"Realistic Chemistry" often means tedium. Work some people might not want to put into it. However I am all down for altering the ratios and adding more intermediate products with different uses and applications. Come on we got Aceton and we cannot use it as a cleaner alternative? Diethylamine is highly combustable yet it is not nearly as combustable ingame and its really bad for your eyes if you get vapors of it directly into them... Also not every person can stand the smell of it, I had people already throw up because of its filthy smell...

Anyways getting carried away I guess... I would really like to see a more sophisticated Chemistry system ingame. But if its too complicated it will definitly put people off and ditch it altogether. 

By the way the "Plasma" is most likely a Nitrogen Group Element considering how oxophile it is and how exothermic it reacts with oxygen. Also the ratios it reacts with oxygen well seem to fit into that group aswell. Doesnt explain though why you wind up with Carbon Dioxide after reaction... probably some magic or that...

Edited March 16, 2017 by EldritchSigma

[Da Dman234]

All changing chemistry is going to do is make it more difficult for new players, I really don't see it having an impact on powergamers/validhunters, other than taking up a slightly longer amount of time. I can tell you it would probably take a day at most to tweak the PDF file I have of the best combinations, and the same can be said for pretty much any competent science player. So, if you're gonna nerf it you're gonna have to do so hard, and probably redo ALL the chems, or else you're probably going to see very little, if any effect.

That being said, it'd be cool if chem felt more sciency rather than "Push button for chems lel"

Edited March 15, 2017 by Da Dman234

[thebeoni]

I am not talking about nerf, i am talking about revamp. Memechems will stay. Magical dispenser should go away.

[froz-t]

You're not the first to think that this is what chemistry should actually be like. More involved, more scientific, and more advanced/in depth.

 

I had plans to go into it on a seperate branch of code, maybe port it here if people oblige me.

[ExGame]

This could maybe be the chemistry equipment for ghetto chemistry you can find around maint or a tool storage (for that real breaking bad experience)? Because I'd just assume that the chemists with their sooper-advanced chemistry laboratories have all that integrated into the machine.

EDIT: Then again, this requires some dedicated coding and spriting.

Edited March 17, 2017 by ExGame

[ZN23X]

On 3/15/2017 at 4:57 PM, Da Dman234 said:

All changing chemistry is going to do is make it more difficult for new players, I really don't see it having an impact on powergamers/validhunters, other than taking up a slightly longer amount of time.

I agree with this. Good chems can crank out whatever is needed very quickly, but even the current system, as simple as it may seem to some, causes alot of new chemists to hyperventilate and go SSD. There are all ready too many shifts that have chemists who are in over thier heads with a poorly stocked chems fridge. Making chemistry more complicated would only make this happen with more frequency.

I'd be more for adding more complex recipes that even experienced chems needed to do some work for. Sorta like the cryoxadone pill. Can't make that just by pushing buttons on the dispenser. I personally like toying around with different types of non lethal disabling or helpful grenades (non slip cleaner grenades that use smoke instead of foam). If the chems fridge is full I like to make some "oh shit" pill bottles for sec officers to keep on them in case they are in a bad spot. I'm sure there are plenty of  useful unlisted recipes I'm unfamiliar with.

On top of all that...I imagine it'd be a real PITA to reprogram all of this unless it's something that could somewhat be copied from another station.

Edited March 17, 2017 by ZN23X

[DeadBySmiley]

Well i am new to the game and i have played a med chemist about 5 times already and i have one thing to say:

ITS REALLY FUCKING BORING

its not the job thats boring of mixing the chems its that theres no work for you after the first 30 minutes after that the fridge is filled with pills and patches and you have no idea what to do as a new player.

So a perfect example of why a chemist job is boring is this round i had :

So i joined as a chemist and i start to work straight away making the 3 or 4 different medicines you need to stock up. After 30 minutes i get bored becouse we are stocked full in the fridge so i start to play around from the recipes on wiki. I make some cola and drink it....... its does nothing "well that was rewarding,, i said and went straight back to the wiki and as i was looking through the wiki i found the great recipe for napalm and said to myself "why not make this?,, and got to work after about 5 minutes of making the great napalm i noticed that my text said "one of your targets is ded,, when this appeared i suddenly found out i was a traitor and one of the guys i had to kill just died or something but i had another more to get myself so i just left the chem with the napalm to purge the guy (it didnt work the napalm didnt get set on fire).At this point the other skilled chemist went SSD to cryo or just changed his job and nobody was at the chem to make medicine. On the whole time i was doing the traitor stuff not once anybody at medical asked where the chemists went becouse all of the basic medic supplies i myself already oversupplied and all the hard to make usefull stuff was already made by the other guy before he even left.

All of the 5 times i played chemist i didnt know what to make becouse litteraly nobody asked for anything.

If the guy in shinig had this job instead he would rather write: NO WORK AND ONLY PLAY MAKES JOHNY A DULL BOY  

All and all its just a really dull job and you either leave after youve supplied the fridge to the extend or just start to do stupid shit like drugging your co-chemist who is afk and getting banned.

 

Edited March 17, 2017 by DeadBySmiley

[Fox McCloud]

On 3/15/2017 at 4:57 PM, Da Dman234 said:

All changing chemistry is going to do is make it more difficult for new players, I really don't see it having an impact on powergamers/validhunters, other than taking up a slightly longer amount of time. I can tell you it would probably take a day at most to tweak the PDF file I have of the best combinations, and the same can be said for pretty much any competent science player. So, if you're gonna nerf it you're gonna have to do so hard, and probably redo ALL the chems, or else you're probably going to see very little, if any effect.

That being said, it'd be cool if chem felt more sciency rather than "Push button for chems lel"

This summarizes things quite nicely.

 

Adding additional complexity to a system for the sake of complexity isn't a good thing. As a matter of fact, it just makes a system harder to learn, more inaccessible, and more time consuming. Take old botany for instance--it had a lot of complexity for complexity's sake....and very few people actually mastered it. With new botany, there's a lot more people playing it and generating far more interesting strategies of how to use botany on-station.

 

Adding more equipment with no difference in result is just adding a time sink and additional button presses for "realism". That's not a good thing. Take the addition of the chemistry heater. Yes, it was a realistic addition, but it wasn't added just for this purpose. It was added to create more depth and gameplay for chemistry itself--namely the addition of temperature. This added completely new interactions that didn't previously exist and would make the chemist have to engage in more actual gameplay than he did before (adjusting recipes for said temperature).

 

Systems are best when condensed to their purist form. Yes, this means they can be simplistic at times, but that's not necessarily a bad thing--cutting to the core gameplay of an action/system makes things far more approachable and easy to understand; it also makes balancing easier and cuts down on frustrations.

Edited March 17, 2017 by Fox McCloud

[froz-t]

3 hours ago, Fox McCloud said:

As a matter of fact, it just makes a system harder to learn, more inaccessible, and more time consuming.

I honestly consider this a good thing. If the system is more tricky to master, it'll mean less of a "make this, this, and this and go to Cryo" mindset, which I've been seeing recently. Besides, have you seen Mannitol's recipe? For such an essential drug, it's very simple to make.

 

In fact, Chemistry is so straightforward, it just takes knowing the right combination of button presses in order to output the most/best drugs for the rest of the round.

[ZN23X]

Depends on your mindset I guess. I usually play chem when I might need to cryo (like close to dinner or whatever) but once the fridge is full I'm not like "time to cryo". Instead I use it as an opportunity to either try making new things, RP, or help medbay out with the pile of bodies.