Nerf poison bottles

[Noah Buttes]

Hi, I'm here to complain about why poison bottles are overpowered.

Poison bottles cost 1 crystal. In exchange for that 1 crystal, you get a bottle containing 40 units of one of the following reagents:

Code:

sarin
cyanide
sulfonal
initropidril
initrobeedril
royal_initrobeedril
coniine
venom
sonambutril (ketamine)
amanitin
polonium
curare
pancuronium
sodium_thiopental
gibbis
nanites (nanomachines)
prions
spidereggs
concentrated_initro (concentrated initropidril)
bacon_grease (pure bacon grease)
heartworms (space heartworms)
madness_toxin (Rajaijah)

Remember how the poison bottle is only 1 crystal because it's supposed to be a gamble and you might wind up with something you could've easily made or acquired for free otherwise?

Something is clearly wrong when only 4 out of 22 reagents could really be classified as disappointing, and that's only if you know the recipe for sarin although most people do at this point.

That means there's only an 18.181818...% chance of striking out on a poison bottle.

Furthermore, some of these reagents are so ridiculously overpowered that they shouldn't even be in there at all.

The most blatant example is definitely space heartworms though.

Code:

        disease/heartworms // please do not give a recipe, just a thing for testing heart-related things atm
            name = "space heartworms"
            id = "heartworms"
            description = "Aww, gross! These things can't be good for your heart. They're gunna eat it!"
            reagent_state = SOLID
            fluid_r = 146
            fluid_g = 93
            fluid_b = 108
            transparency = 0
            disease = /datum/ailment/disease/noheart

            on_mob_life(var/mob/M)
                if (!M)
                    M = holder.my_atom
                if (ishuman(M))
                    var/mob/living/carbon/human/H = M
                    if (H.organHolder && H.organHolder.heart)
                        qdel(H.organHolder.heart)
                ..(M)
                return

For those of you who know how the chemistry code works, you can immediately see why it's a BAD FUCKING IDEA TO HAVE THIS ACCESSIBLE IN POISON BOTTLES.

Heartworms is a disease reagent, but it functions like no other disease reagent. Unlike every other disease reagent, heartworms bypasses the minimum_to_infect check when performing its heart removal. In other words:

Even 0.01 units of heartworms will be enough to instantly delete the victim's heart.

Needless to say, this is positively ridiculous in a syringe gun since you are no longer limited in the slightest by the 40 unit supply of heartworms. You can just keep diluting it with water or welding fuel and go on a bloody, heart-removing rampage.

I should know since I did EXACTLY that a couple of weeks ago and I felt bad ever since.

TL;DR: heartworms are bullshit, remove them.

---

To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure what the best way to go about nerfing poison bottles would be. Besides the obvious steps of removing heartworms and adding more useless poisons (radium, atrazine, embalming fluid, regular old toxin, unstable mutagen, lipolicide, etc.), I'm really not sure how else to make them balanced whilst still feeling useful.

Maybe just remove the poison bottles outright and make the two unique non-cardiac disease reagents they carry, gibbis and coniine, available elsewhere.

[misto]

yeah sure. i like poison bottles because they help make sleepypens useful and help rare poisons actually get used occasionally rather than never because once people figure out the recipes they rarely bother going thru the chores necessary to actually cook up and use the shit manually, but some updates to their poison roster and the min_to_infect business you mention sound quite reasonable for their cheap tc price

maybe put in bottles of that shit that turns people into clowns or whatever it is in monkey cheese burgers that turns ppl into monkeys and lizards

[Erik]

Even 0.01 units of heartworms will be enough to instantly delete the victim's heart.

No, they do not this was fixed by Haine a while ago, all of the diseases now have a proper amount-required-to-infection set on them.

[Noah Buttes]

Even 0.01 units of heartworms will be enough to instantly delete the victim's heart.

No, they do not this was fixed by Haine a while ago, all of the diseases now have a proper amount-required-to-infection set on them.

How long is a while ago?

[Roomba]

- I don't think poison bottles really need to include initropidril, initrobeedril, royal initrobeedril, concentrated initropidril, pure bacon grease and space heartworms. That's 6/22 chemicals that are more or less variations on the same theme.

- More debilitating but not outright murderous chemicals in the poison bottles would be fun. This might be cutting into traitorous genetics or pathology territory, but more disease reagents unique to poison bottles with debilitating but not inherently fatal effects - like turning you into a clown at random, or making you sweat space lube, or fall asleep at random times, stuff like that. Some kind of super-concentrated alcohol, etc. Makes poison bottles more fun for just messing around if you don't want to get murdery, makes people get creative fulfilling their objectives if all they get is the weak/silly stuff. And yes, people could already make mixes like that with chemistry, but it's supposed to be a gamble anyway.

- Actually you could take a cue from the infernal contracts and have some of the reject contracts implemented as disease reagents as well.

- On the topic of space heartworms maybe it should be changed to a disease that eats one or more of your body parts at random (necessitating a title change, granted). Some guy has his arm disappear, another his eyes, the especially unlucky buggers get their heart  and brain eaten.

[Admiral jimbob]

- More debilitating but not outright murderous chemicals in the poison bottles would be fun. This might be cutting into traitorous genetics or pathology territory, but more disease reagents unique to poison bottles with debilitating but not inherently fatal effects - like turning you into a clown at random, or making you sweat space lube, or fall asleep at random times, stuff like that. Some kind of super-concentrated alcohol, etc. Makes poison bottles more fun for just messing around if you don't want to get murdery, makes people get creative fulfilling their objectives if all they get is the weak/silly stuff. And yes, people could already make mixes like that with chemistry, but it's supposed to be a gamble anyway.

I think this is probably the best way to go about it. When I get poison bottles I always try to mix things up in my pens so that - while often lethal - the results are more hilariously bizarre and debilitating than outright efficient murder.

[Vitatroll]

Odds could be tweaked a little if they're just flat odds. I've had no problems, but there's a lot in this game that hinges on turbonerds having the courtesy to not overplay their stacked hands. It's the most precarious sense of balance I've seen in a game, I think. It leads to great moments of creativity and novelty followed by the longest most out of pitch tuba solo ever... and it's somehow worth it. Shit's weird, man.

(I've been up for 32 hours. They're keeping me prisoner -- Send help! They have a monkey and it plays sax like Bill Clinton! Even has his hair! )

[somepotato]

They're pretty cheap to begin with

[misto]

theyre probably cheap because of the difficulty in using them effectively without say a sleepy pen, syringe gun, or emagged hypospray to act as delivery mechanism. theyre really the perfect complement to the sleepy pen especially.

i think it would be worth a try to fudge with the likelihoods of various poisons a little more and perhaps add some lesser poisons into the roster. it would still be worth the gamble for the chance to get your hands on real killer shit like spider eggs and royal initrobee. if you get a bad poison its not like you cant cook up some unstable mutagen or neurotoxin or something in a matter of seconds