Wizard's golem spell, among other things, and the smoke change

[Lurkey]

New smoke is a disaster for creative chemistry. It's just become "mix one of like three chems that crits people in 5 seconds and call it a day" now, and the wizard's golem spell took a heavy hit. You're either using acid for your golems or you're wasting your time making/finding good poisons/flammable chemicals. Nobody wanders into a 3x3 cloud and just kinda stands there for a few breath cycles so your gimmick golem can harm them. Chemistry in general has taken a huge hit, smoke mixes are like 90% of chemistry and none of them are of any use now. Bringing back old smoke with or without the choice of plasma (the worst possible reagent for that recipe, but something I see a lot of talk about making part of it) won't unbreak golem either.
The new smoke is fun now and then, but if anything should itself be given a new recipe. Old smoke restored, new recipe for new smoke, I've talked to a lot of chemnerds and this really feels like the best way to do it.

[moistgrandmas42]

Agree 100%. Wizard golems are a joke with the new smoke. New smoke isn't that much fun since it's mostly mix acid, a poison, cryostylane, and smoke reagents superheated for the additional damage. It's strong in it's own way, but it's no where near as fun or interesting as old smoke. While I do like the fact that clouds can combine and react on their own, the limited range on new smoke makes it really difficult to deploy effectively due to it's tiny range and it feels slower than old smoke. Everyone just runs away immediately once the sound effect plays. Old smoke at least had a big enough range and immediately applied the reagents to players that you'd catch some of your targets in it.

[Lurkey]

Agree 100%. Wizard golems are a joke with the new smoke. New smoke isn't that much fun since it's mostly mix acid, a poison, cryostylane, and smoke reagents superheated for the additional damage. It's strong in it's own way, but it's no where near as fun or interesting as old smoke. While I do like the fact that clouds can combine and react on their own, the limited range on new smoke makes it really difficult to deploy effectively since everyone just runs away immediately once the sound effect plays.

The one positive in newsmoke is you don't need to prep with gear to make sarin. The downside is, for the same reason you don't have to gear up, making sarin is an absolute waste of time now. At best you can splash a beaker on a single target before sec is all over you and you're not getting back in the lab again so you'd better choose that target wisely. Haven't seen a single interesting smoke mix since the changes rolled out. Not one bombing, not one department burnt out, no mass poisoning with advanced poisons late-round, it's just killed chem right at the root.

[Frank_Stein]

Are there ways to mess with smoke properties? Like making a smoke that spreads quickly VS a smoke that is denser?

[The Gorog]

I tried using 50 units of smoke powder and 400 units of smoke powder, and it didnt seem to make a difference as to how big the smoke cloud was. I used the cog1 reasearch test chamber, and it wasnt even filled with either. I think it only influences the time until it dissipates.

Also I tried using 10 smoke powder and 390 saline. I had about 11u of saline in my body max, which seems weird for the resulting cloud having over 250u of it.
I didnt take any times on this and can only estimate, but I believe the 10u one went away faster than 400u smoke powder.

Also the bug where heating a beaker wont make the smoke powder react happened to me 2 or 3 times in a round now, so that got worse too.

[moonlol]

I personally don't like new smoke as its very difficult or borderline impossible to smoke gnesis with it as it only goes like three tiles with 370u of gnesis and 30u of smoke. I think reverting this and making new smoke a different recipe would be the best change.

[mbc]

i can decrease the required unit amount for a spread to happen, which would make most clouds a bit bigger and easier to expand
old smoke is gonna come back under a new recipe, i just havent gotten around to implementing a patch yet

edit : also just to preserve the old instant-apply function of old smoke, i'll change new smoke to force-apply a basic touch reaction on any mob standing on a tile when smoke expands to touch that tile



edit edit : increased smoke size a bit, lessened required reagent amounts to spread, and forced an initial touch() apply when a mob first enters a fluid instead of waiting for a breath

[moonlol]

thank