Vulture playtests of advanced chem changes

Development Feedback
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The Maintainer team is seeking playtesting feedback from players in regards to the following two PRs:

PR 39464:

PR 39472:

These will be alternated between on Vulture over the next coming days, and we ask anyone who have had a chance to playtest these changes to leave feedback here. Which PR is active (if any) will be listed in the Message Of The Day, which shows up when logging into the server or upon a round returning to the lobby. This thread is primarily to gather feedback from those who have tested the changes live; if you just want to share general thoughts on a PR itā€™s preferable if you leave those on the corresponding Github thread(s).

Please note that enabling one of these PRs on Vulture requires manual action from a staff member and therefore we have no guarantee one will be enabled at any given time, and disabling/switching between them requires a server restart.

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Did test the brute, and advance brute change. i do personally love them needing different temp to make bic, punc and lace. it make it more interactive for a chemist to be working on chem. havent tried the burn, and other change so far but from what i read on paper it sound good. i would like to see more interaction on how to do chem if possible in the future this the right step towards making chem more interactive and fun!. example of thing that could be cool would be needing colder temp for chem ( would need probably a machine to cool down chem, or having to do a physical reaction, walking with a chem/ throwing a chem in a sealed container stuff like that.)

i tested 39472

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Testin Slams changes, aka 39472.
I REALLY like new Lace, new bruiz is sorta just the same shit but now they need 5 saline to stop bein so damn thorsty.
Punct though?
I got mixed emotions on.
I feel the genetic is either too high or the punct is too slow.
As it stands 1 genetic damage for 5 units is far too much to sustainably fight with for just .5 extra healing than bic.
I do not think the idea itself is flawed though.
The recipes on the other hand.
I REALLY REALLY enjoy them.
The fact they all need the same shit means you cant just put it on the plate and wait, you actually have to be precise.

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Testing 39472, The recipe changes have really thrown me off when it comes to speedchemming. I tried to give med Ultravas but they wanted diph. ultravas is kind of just never going to be useful

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Putting this here, since I didnā€™t know it was a thing.

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I am going to give feedback from a chemist perspective.

Before this, the only temperature game were Diphenhydramine, which is:

Too low: Nothing
293-500K: Diphen
500K+: Charcoal

Now itā€™s gonna be completely different talk, when
Too low: Lacerinol
315-335K: Puncturase
335K+: Bruizine

Temperature-based chemicals are considered the hardest tier for new chemists, as it requires precision and knowledge to make. For new chemists, making Diphenhydramine (Diphen for short) is a slow process at first. Chemists tend to save Diphen for last. As you spend time making it over and over again, you figure out many methods to make Diphen (so far there are 3 methods to make Diphen fast, pre-heating and normal heating included). A bonus point for Diphen is that beginners can figure it out on their own. This makes Diphen a rewarding chemical for mastery.

However, Puncturase does not work like Diphen. Making Advanced Brutes requires a chemist to pre-heat their beaker. Pre-heating beaker can be considered department-exclusive knowledge, as young chemists have to talk with experienced ones to know about it. A new chemist can figure out how to make Diphen on their own, yet they can not with Puncturase. With temperature-based chems introduced into the essential list of chems, medbay might not have Puncturase in the first 20 minutes of the shift because of how gimmicky the pre-heating is.

Pre-heating should be talked about because:

  1. The guidebook lacks a clear explanation of how temperature works in game. It goes like this: ā€œPut a beaker on a hotplate to heat the solutionā€. It does not work with Puncturase, because a chemist would make Lacerinol before they can heat up the solution. Lacerinol does not change into Puncturase if heated on the hotplate.
  2. Pre-heating is an in-game bug. This bug is interesting because it serves no other purpose than to make chemistsā€™ lives easier. Pre-heating the beaker so it gets to the right range for Puncturase feels unintuitive. (20K range leaves little room for error)
  3. Chemists already receive orders from crew members. They also have to make 13-15 jugs of chemical in 15 minutes. They are gonna get rolled over by something the game never taught them. That does not feel fun.

Meanwhile, making Diphen is slow, but a competent chemist can make it without the help of others.

Temperature-based chems may not pose an issue for veteran chemists, but it is going to be a challenge for casual/new chemists. Expect lots of razorium, veteran doctors and CMOs to jump into chems, and chemists hitting cryo. To combat this, someone can write a guide on pre-heating or adjust the range on Puncturase.

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I played some rounds of 464 as a chemist and I will say Ultravasculine being this insane anti-rads/poison chem that deals brute like Arith is so fucking cool and honestly itā€™s probably fine how it is in 464 because botany will never make it so the only time it will happen is if chem goes out of their way to make a botany tray or use maints botany for it. Had to pull teeth to get enough lingzhi to make not even a full jug of lingzhi cause botany was more interested in gold apples and deus.

I miss Bic evenheal and I feel like brute evenheal could be added to that spacemanā€™s trumpet chem with little issue cause botany never makes it. Most it would be is a 3-4 evenheal brute which when mixed with Bic is 4.5 heal per tick though considering it requires botany it would barely be an issue, most likely sitch I see that happening in is antag botanist grows it with either omni or poppies for super anti-brute chem.

I regrettably did not get an antag round with either test even though Iā€™d try to go loud to provide some kind of data/feedback on how it feels using the chems going as a loud antag

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Im a chemist main, I havenā€™t played much recently but I came back just in time for these changes. I also mainly play on low pop so dont have too many patients to test on.

At first glance Ultravasculine+Histamines mixed together in a specific ratio seems really good, unable to test but it looks promising. I also like it because it means you can skip several chemicals if you do get it which would speed chemistry up a lot which I think counters a lot of these issues.

It also should be possible to use this without dealing any brute with some maths.

The downside is that if you balance around a faster chemistry then it makes chemistry even more reliant on botany can leave antag chemists with next to no time to antag.

I really really like how the advanced brutes have side effects, it seems like a fun silly thing to give patients chems and tell them not to worry about the cancer etc. Good for RP.

As far as I can tell theres no +35 chem button for the chemmasters which means theres no clear/easy way to make punc without making razorium which feels really bad. (There might be a way by adding a very specific amount of hydroxide then a multiple of 5 bica but i dont think so).

I dont mind the different temps for making advanced brutes, its just a different thing for chemist mains to experiment with to find the optimal amount of chem to put in a beaker to rapidly heat it but not overshoot. However I am iffy about the lava beaker being required to make punc. Maybe give punc its own seperate recipe? Or have punc be made from lace+hydroxide at a certain temperature? (I think this would fix two birds with one stone, allows you to make lace without razorium and still use a correct temp lava beaker if planned properly and doesnt use the lava beaker mechanic).

It did feel like we had to spend a lot of time experimenting so we had very little time to mess around with the botany chems we did recieve. The slower chems are to make/the more time we spend doing them the harder it is to do other things like making topicals/grinding botany chems/making botany chems/making all chems to heal the unique types of damage etc. I can imagine this being especially frustrating for antag chemists/doctors with an antag chemist.

I made Sigy but there were no patients to use it on and my companion chemist complained about Sigy requiring too much prep to make (I personally dont see the issue). Still just feels like normal siggy didnt really change our game much.

They also had issues with doctors causing insuiz ODā€™s in past rounds. This is an RP issue/not a knowledge issue but it would be nice to see doctors place an emphasis on only having one doctor treat a patient at a time so im fine with this happening because the more consequences for this the more likely people will learn to be careful about putting drugs inside of people.

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I personally am biased towards the 72 implementation, while Iā€™ve not been able to get into the chemlab, I feel that it more appropriately introduces trades that need to be considered using the chems.

For example, punct is a prominent example of a chem that ends up being used a lot but it actually has a prominent downside to it, unlike 64 which still keeps the brute damage and the mixing. I do like the effects introduced by 64 for dip, even if itā€™s just RP getting high though.

Both pulls could be combined together to some degree, but as a MD/Paramedic, I like the challenges that 72 introduces more.

Thereā€™s also going to be a PR soon for chemical temperature baths which, assuming the issues are fixed will help chemists manage beaker temperatures more accurately instead of having to repeatedly shift click the beaker and hope you donā€™t overshoot your target temperatures before mixing.

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Howā€™re the chemical baths going to work? Is it a way to set or store a chemicalā€™s temperature? Thatā€™ll be interesting to see.

Having been playing on Goob more often as of late (although I havenā€™t actually played the past week or so - bit burned out after trying to get SmartGit working, Iā€™m probably just gonna uninstall and try GitHubā€™s desktop app as was recommended in the earlier thread) I would love to see some more powerful chems with stronger drawbacks that require more involvement. The aluite recipes Goob has are particularly interesting solely due to the fact they require the chemical to be below a certain temperature, which in Goob is done by making Dex+ in order to lower the temperature of the plasma for the mix.
Would love to see something like that in WizDen, even if it isnā€™t the exact same format, purely because itā€™s something new for chemists to learn.

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New round new me (Round #90047) if you want to watch it
I rolled syndie chemist (finally) so I was able to test the various changes on the chems. It was currently 72ā€™s changes so punc was doing genetic. I had a bluespace bag full of chems but I wasnt able to get a hypospray cause I tried to rob CMO. I had an Elite web, northstars, and no slips. I had 5 lube bombs ready, a jug of PolypBic, tranacid, saline, phalanx, omnizine, puncturase, and pyderm. most of which was unused. I did use phal with omnizine to deal with the cellular damage that punc caused. I had to use the syringe which sucked. If I were able to get the hypospray it would have been much easier going on a rampage. The chems seem fine. I did fumble a few times going loud like getting disablered by a random guy in the bar after I was loud for a bit but i was able to take out HoS, Cap, CMO, and some others but i just didnt have enough time to loot any of them for tools I could use. It was also an extremely ideal sitch for an antag with a ton of drugs for use in the loud run. I do think if I was able to get the hypo I wouldā€™ve wiped sec. Simply because instant injection is such a powerful tool. The chems are fine anyways.

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At the current moment, 72ā€™s chems are a lil too weak to justify the genetic (just needs to be boosted up to like, 3 per second or reduced to 0.5 genetic per 5).
Also on that topic, I am here to ask when the next cycle comes around, are we getting these changes or a reversion of your PR.
Alot of people are discontent with the current state of medbay, alot of people would take the still cooking bun/s (72/64) or would just rather a full reversion.
Genuinely cannot think of a person whos been content with the current state of chems.

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I think people are still not happy with the change because these PRs have not hit the nail in the head. Here is a breakdown of the current discussion:

Community wants fast healing speed back
Devs said ā€œspeed is not on the table for negotiationā€
Devs tried to fix by doing math

I can go on and on about how speed is important to medbay. Instead of trying to make up for what is already considered good, how about we think outside of the box and not compromise speed? I will refer to my suggestion in another thread.

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Are the chem tests over now? Havenā€™t seen them uploaded for a few days.

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I was unable to start a test on Tuesday due to IRL obligations, so the PRs got 2 days each for testing (friday/saturday/sunday/monday). Since staging lock is today, yesterday I queried the maintainer team to look through the feedback and PRs to make a decision on how to proceed. The goal is to reach a decision before the staging lock so that we can get a change in for the next update, so weā€™ll see what we end up with!

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Ok, I spend over almost two hours now looking at all three PRs and made my own giant spreadsheed. Some feedback from me:

39472 (Slamā€™s PR):
It has some very nice ideas that are trying to make more use of the existing chem/med gameplay mechanics. Heat mechanics are currently underused, but I think this has to do with the fact that they are currently not very well implemented:

  • The chemmaster temperature bug (lava beakers)
  • Temperature is badly communicated, the only way to see it is repeatedly examining the beaker with chem goggles.
  • The only way to affect temperature at the moment is the hotplate, so there is no way to do ghetto chemistry, or to make the meds if your equipment breaks. I would like to see this expanded, for example allowing welders and lighters to be used to heat up beakers.
  • Cooling reagents down again is not possible except by repeatedly mixing them with something else and filtering them out again.

So I would like to see something like Milonā€™s hotplate PR merged first before we rely more on temperature mechanics.

For the recipes, recuding the reliance on carbon is good, but the particular recipes you chose are a little too cheap material-wise in my opinion. Hydroxide is free and infinite by electrolyzing water from a sink. I would like to keep the amount of chems somewhat restricted by the reagents you have, so that cargo orders or other methods of obtaining them donā€™t become obsolete. I would suggest adding a different third reagent to each of the recipes.

The small downsides to the advanced chems are a good idea in my opinion, it requires you to either make multi-med mixes that cancel them out, healing them separately, or - maybe in a combat scenario - ignore them. However I do agree with the other commenters that the choice of genetic damage is a little too punishing and should maybe be replaced with something else.

Returning the Bic to Razorium reactions is a good thing in my opinion. It prevents too powerful combat mixes and the potential for mistakes when treating patients makes the gameplay more interesting. I like how doctors have to coordinate with each other and communicate what they injected to inject this.

39464 (rumacsā€™ PR)
Mostly just balance changes increasing the metabolism rate again, along with some buffs to compensate for the lower rate.
Iā€™m a little worried some of them might be a little too strongnow, for example Ultravasculine, which is now one of the strongest meds, but I guess botany can just as well make Omnizine instead.

I also would prefer to bring back the Bic to Razorium reactions.

My suggestion on what to do

  • Merge 39464 for now to quickly bring the medical balance into a healthier state for the next release (the staging cutoff is today).
  • Optional: Re-add Bic-to-Razorium reactions to that PR
  • Prioritize fixing the current chemmaster temperature bug
  • Prioritize finishing up Milonā€™s hotplate UI to make temperature better communicated
  • Optional: Add some way to heat up beakers without a hotplate
  • Then polish up Slamā€™s PR and make use of the more interesting mechanics he proposed
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