[MERGED PR] Purgatives and dialysis machine rebalance

[github_bot]

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[Balance][Chemistry][Game objects][Input wanted]




About the PR

This PR reduced the strenght on several purgative chems and increased the numbers on the dialysis machine.

Chemicals that purge all chemicals have their effectiveness reduced by 40%. This applies to the following chemicals:
- calomel
- pentetic acid
- hunchback

To compensate for these changes, the dialysis machine was improved significantly. It drains and cleans blood with an 60% increased rate.

Why's this needed?
When it comes to purging chemicals, the dialysis machine is vastly outclassed in effectiveness against purgative chemicals.

Purgative chemicals, while dealing damage and having negative implications like stuns/slowdowns, are easily transportable due to pills and work with a very high efficiency. The dialysis machine, in contrast to this, is bulky and purges chems fairly slowly. the positive is being able to selectively purge non-whitelist chems only.

What this creates is that the dialysis machine is very much unused except for very serious poison cases and on RP. This makes purging chemicals, a task medbay should be the most competent for, to be relegated to people running to the bar or having a few pills prepared in chemistry.

This PR aims to make the dialysis machine, a medbay-exclusive item, able to outcompete general purgatives. From my tests, with the numbers from the PR, purges chems from a victim injected with 100u plasma with almost the same speed calomel does.

Under this point, calomel is faster for the task than the dialysis machine, above that number the dialysis machine is faster, due to chems in blood scaling with the amount of chemicals in someone.

This should be a step to further move doctors away from being glorified chem dispensers. And Purgatives are still effective due to having the ability to be very easily transportable from A to B.

Changelog

Code:

changelog
(u)Lord_Earthfire
(*)Calomel, hunchback and pentetic acid were found to be far less effective. To compensate, NT has greatly improved the effectiveness of its dialysis machines.

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[Cal]

Seems cool to me, I'm for test merging this.

Immediate balance implication is that death mixes are stronger

[Meggal Bozale]

Strongly against this. The ability to purge toxins from yourself should not rely on a singular machine in medbay. What is the counterplay if a traitor mass poisoning everyone removes the machine? Will QM have to order one, or it will hopefully be scanned? And having only one, a mass-poisoner shouldn't need to care, since only one player would be able to be hooked up a time.

I don't see this as serving any real purpose except to strengthen poison mixes.

[JOELED]

I'm all for buffing the dialysis machine, but nerfing chems so strongly in favour of it feels like it'll be really frustrating whenever more than one person is poisoned at a time (which is a lot of the time)

[DummySian]

Buffing the machine - sure, but im completely against nerfing purgatives. If multiple people get poisoned you wont be able to save them with just one machine and i'm not even talking about how easy it is to get rid of it.

[saccharineChampion]

Big fan of this change.

It doesn't remove purging toxins entirely, just weakens the ability to have some instant-fix pill in your pocket you can easily make. Makes things rely a bit more on other vectors of healing and for going to medbay and/or getting treated by others. I think increasing this reliance is a positive thing - much like a microcosm of interdepartmental cooperation and its troubles getting done, actually needing to rely on others more is a positive thing for a game that is best when it has social parts. That, I believe, is what is generally meant by wanting to weaken/reduce powergaming; I agree with weakening powergaming in that case.

Also making something more concrete that a traitor intent on mass-poisoning should target is good; clear targets like a particular machine needing to be taken out works a bit like an early warning system for the crew and provides clarity for personal "objectives" to have for a given route one wants to go as traitor.

[JOELED]

Maybe if cargo can order a new machine? Like the cloner

[Ikea]

Keep in mind that changeling is currently by far the most common source of poisoning, this pr will affect changelings the most. Very strongly against the purgative changes, this is an incredibly large buff to changelings. Currently with calomel, if you inject it pretty quickly after you notice the effects, you can avoid being knocked out. This pr makes it to where in order to avoid being knocked out, you have to inject yourself with calomel literally the cycle that the effects become noticeable. This means that in the vast majority of cases, even with calomel, you will be knocked out. Keep in mind that calomel already deals lots of damage to you, this pr makes it to where using calomel now just gives you a bunch of damage and you get knocked out anyways. Changeling is already in the top 3 strongest antags when it comes to station wiping, they really dont need this buff.

I have no thoughts on the dialysis change

[saccharineChampion]

Being able to get a new one from cargo sounds good to me; reduces the bottlenecking of just having one while still being a fairly clear thing a traitor can disrupt. The cloner is an analogy I like for that, especially since, if it would be mech-scannable as well, I think it would be good to have a non-typical requirement like how printing a cloner requires honey; continuing on the talk of having disruptable things, it would be a bit too much to keep up with if it could be printed with basic materials.

Calomel not being an instant "out" from being ling-stung is exactly one of the main cases why I think this change is good, and where the "shift to relying on others' help" shines. Yes, changelings are very strong as-is, but in this case it's a bit of the cart being before the horse; because purgatives are so easy, people are disinclined to ask for help when they could just calomel themselves okay anyways, and that weakening being able to trivially save one's self from a neuro sting would help encourage calling out for help some more. Or, if you're not the first victim of the ling, not wandering off on your own.

[Ikea]

Yes, changelings are very strong as-is, but in this case it's a bit of the cart being before the horse; because purgatives are so easy, people are disinclined to ask for help when they could just calomel themselves okay anyways, and that weakening being able to trivially save one's self from a neuro sting would help encourage calling out for help some more. Or, if you're not the first victim of the ling, not wandering off on your own.

I dont have no help for changelings because I didnt ask, I dont have help for changelings because Im on classic and the changeling has already killed 3 secoffs and 30 crew members. Also calomel isnt a silver bullet to changelings, calomel deals a bunch of damage to you, any half decent changeling will have a backup method of killing you (ie sec gear or abom arms), which is made far easier by the 60 tox you now have from using calomel.

[Lord_earthfire]

Keep in mind that changeling is currently by far the most common source of poisoning, this pr will affect changelings the most. Very strongly against the purgative changes, this is an incredibly large buff to changelings. Currently with calomel, if you inject it pretty quickly after you notice the effects, you can avoid being knocked out. This pr makes it to where in order to avoid being knocked out, you have to inject yourself with calomel literally the cycle that the effects become noticeable. This means that in the vast majority of cases, even with calomel, you will be knocked out. Keep in mind that calomel already deals lots of damage to you, this pr makes it to where using calomel now just gives you a bunch of damage and you get knocked out anyways. Changeling is already in the top 3 strongest antags when it comes to station wiping, they really dont need this buff.

I have no thoughts on the dialysis change

After this change, calomel is still equal to smelling salts, which should be the go-to used counter to changelings. (Curently purge of smelling salts: 3u/tick. Calomel: 5u/tick reduced to 3u/tick by this PR). Smeling salts have a lower decay, though.

This PR does neither removes nor makes the purgatives useless. It reduces their effect to more sensible values.

[TDHooligan]

i dont think calomel needs nerfing that hard, if at all, as it's already got a hefty downside.
pent can live without its ridiculous purge power (on top of being the BiS TOX healer) - its value for healing TOX is already really, really good.

you could get away with buffing dialysis WAY more than it is right now. as i think it's actually slower than pent right now.

dialysis already super limited, niche, requiring you to stay still... kick it up to be 2x. maybe even 2.5x stronger. i'm not even certain that's enough in the case of someone eating a MONSTER or something crazy. I've typed up this whole post while under dialysis for 250 units of cholesterol and it's still not done!

[Meggal Bozale]

I like getting one from cargo - but it has to be faced that it is not a cure-all.
Few issues are:
1. Cargo has not enough budget.
There is not enough time to accrue x credits before the patient(s) die. Purgatives are used in conjunction with healing chem mix to give a best effort at healing.
2. There are no QMs/available crew with access.
Good luck?
3. More of a continuation, the patient has to be BROUGHT to, or the machine BROUGHT to, the patient.
They're still poisoned!

The downsides of having to bring a patient (even yourself) to the machine can end up being significant enough that I imagine no matter the nerf, purgatives will still be superior due to their availability. You can't use what's not there, after all.

There are significant downsides to ordering from QM should the dialysis machine 'dissapear', and I find it unlikely that it will be every shift, let a lone a few, that multiple will be created/ordered- outside of gimmicks.

On lings, uh, I guess? I have no problems with it being harder for people to counter ling stings outside of ammonium bicarbonate (smelling salts). They should be able to KO people pretty reliably, otherwise it's tough luck for the ling.

Also, calomel just straight up sucks. I would love a PR that does nothing but make it harder to create, and more punishing and/or less effective. It's too good for how trivial it is to make.

[Ikea]

Keep in mind that changeling is currently by far the most common source of poisoning, this pr will affect changelings the most. Very strongly against the purgative changes, this is an incredibly large buff to changelings. Currently with calomel, if you inject it pretty quickly after you notice the effects, you can avoid being knocked out. This pr makes it to where in order to avoid being knocked out, you have to inject yourself with calomel literally the cycle that the effects become noticeable. This means that in the vast majority of cases, even with calomel, you will be knocked out. Keep in mind that calomel already deals lots of damage to you, this pr makes it to where using calomel now just gives you a bunch of damage and you get knocked out anyways. Changeling is already in the top 3 strongest antags when it comes to station wiping, they really dont need this buff.

I have no thoughts on the dialysis change

After this change, calomel is still equal to smelling salts, which should be the go-to used counter to changelings. (Curently purge of smelling salts: 3u/tick. Calomel: 5u/tick reduced to 3u/tick by this PR). Smeling salts have a lower decay, though.

Why should smelling salts have the same effect as calomel? I like the current dichotomy smelling salts have of a chemical that is harm free and easy to get, but using it will probably have you knocked out anyways, while calomel is a chemical that is harder to get and damaging, but you probably wont get knocked out. It makes ling encounters interesting and dynamic. I think balance changes should make the game more interesting, not less. I think a big part of this discussion is the divide between RP and Classic balance when it comes to changeling and I do have a comment Im typing out that should be more constructive in what to do here

[saccharineChampion]

I don't think it's a Classic/RP thing; for my part, at least, I only had Classic in mind when I wrote my advocation of shifting the focus on ling countering being self-sufficient stuff vs. making it more reliant on other people. And I do think that the nerfs to purgatives would make the game more interesting, not less, for the reasons described in my first post here.