Goonhub
07-18-2023, 02:10 PM
(This post was last modified: 07-18-2023, 02:21 PM by mintyphresh. Edited 2 times in total.
Edit Reason: Changed some mentions on times and fixed formatting.
)
Ethanol! We all love it. Or do we...?
Despite having about 112 reagents in the "alcoholic" section of the code, ethanol isn't very useful to the crew. And that's OK! It's a solid RP element, fun to goof around with on Classic, and in high doses or with moonshine/bojacks it can be an effective poison. But uh, at least in my experience tending bar on RP4, players rarely like to enjoy a boozy drink on the job. Maybe that's just a symptom of people not playing characters that like to be buzzed at work, but I think there's some mechanical motivations behind this as well. Let's take a look at some numbers.
Depletion Rate
Ethanol (not the boozy drinks, but Ethanol itself) has a depletion rate of 0.05, which means that every two seconds one twentieth of a unit is removed from your body. This... is incredibly low, the same rate as Black Powder and Sea-4. The only two chemicals in the game lower than this are Space Ricin and Enzymatic Leftovers (from Booster Enzyme), and even poisons designed to last a long time in the body like cyanide have a depletion rate of double that-- 0.1. This makes drinking an alcoholic drink a huge commitment; getting 25 units in you means that (unless you take charcoal) you'll be at least a little boozed for 16 minutes. But, really, alcohol only has effects for 7 of those. During that time you'll be slurring speech, stumbling, burping, mumbling, and generally unpleasant to be around.
Admittedly, this problem has a simple fix in-game; assuming all of the drink has already metabolized into ethanol, a single unit of charcoal can purge 41 units of ethanol. A full bottle of Lime-aid can purge 400! But, well, personally, I don't like having to take an errand to grab a soda because my character's too drunk to function after a reasonable amount of drink. And because the drink takes time to metabolize (about 5 seconds per unit) and the depletion rate of antihol is so high, I have to WAIT and remember to take the treatment until after a majority of the stuff has metabolized.
alch_strength possible code error
But surely it's not so easy to get that much in you, right? It says right in the code that "ethanol depletes slower but is formed in smaller quantities." It, uh, well, let's look at the numbers, assuming the reagent is always in you from the first sip, and that ethanol depletes as it metabolizes... (As I found in my testing, these numbers will vary very slightly due to lag reduction code!)
Slow Metabolism
I've seen (and unknowingly spread) some misinformation on this trait. The ONLY thing it does is halve the depletion rate of all reagents. It doesn't do anything to scale its effects, which is crazy good for things like medical chems, blood replacers, stimulants, and restoring thirst from drinks. As a balancing factor, though, this also applies to poisons, sedatives, and (you guessed it!) drinks metabolizing into alcohol. Essentially, this makes your character into a total lightweight. Compared to the section above...
Addiction
This is the big one. One of the mechanics I've seen the most disdain for. And, uh, I don't know how it works. I'm looking at the code right now and I couldn't tell you at all how it works. Please help
Fixes to discuss
Depletion Rate:
Despite having about 112 reagents in the "alcoholic" section of the code, ethanol isn't very useful to the crew. And that's OK! It's a solid RP element, fun to goof around with on Classic, and in high doses or with moonshine/bojacks it can be an effective poison. But uh, at least in my experience tending bar on RP4, players rarely like to enjoy a boozy drink on the job. Maybe that's just a symptom of people not playing characters that like to be buzzed at work, but I think there's some mechanical motivations behind this as well. Let's take a look at some numbers.
Depletion Rate
Ethanol (not the boozy drinks, but Ethanol itself) has a depletion rate of 0.05, which means that every two seconds one twentieth of a unit is removed from your body. This... is incredibly low, the same rate as Black Powder and Sea-4. The only two chemicals in the game lower than this are Space Ricin and Enzymatic Leftovers (from Booster Enzyme), and even poisons designed to last a long time in the body like cyanide have a depletion rate of double that-- 0.1. This makes drinking an alcoholic drink a huge commitment; getting 25 units in you means that (unless you take charcoal) you'll be at least a little boozed for 16 minutes. But, really, alcohol only has effects for 7 of those. During that time you'll be slurring speech, stumbling, burping, mumbling, and generally unpleasant to be around.
Admittedly, this problem has a simple fix in-game; assuming all of the drink has already metabolized into ethanol, a single unit of charcoal can purge 41 units of ethanol. A full bottle of Lime-aid can purge 400! But, well, personally, I don't like having to take an errand to grab a soda because my character's too drunk to function after a reasonable amount of drink. And because the drink takes time to metabolize (about 5 seconds per unit) and the depletion rate of antihol is so high, I have to WAIT and remember to take the treatment until after a majority of the stuff has metabolized.
alch_strength possible code error
But surely it's not so easy to get that much in you, right? It says right in the code that "ethanol depletes slower but is formed in smaller quantities." It, uh, well, let's look at the numbers, assuming the reagent is always in you from the first sip, and that ethanol depletes as it metabolizes... (As I found in my testing, these numbers will vary very slightly due to lag reduction code!)
- 50u of beer, the third-lowest ABV reagent in the game, will leave you with 2.55 units of ethanol - 5.1% ABV
- 10u of old fashioned will leave you with 6.3 units - 63% ABV
- 15u of tequila will leave you with 20.95 units - 140% ABV
Quote:alch_strength = 0.4 //uses white wine since no brandy in game, but piscos are usually 35-50% alch by volumeWith an alch_strength of 0.4 this means that a pisco sour will add 0.4 units of ethanol every tick... but this drink depletes from the body at a rate of 0.4 units per tick. So instead of a 40% ABV, like the comment suggests was intended, we get a 100% ABV. This means that most drinks are probably around 2.5x stronger than they were intended to be, since most alcoholic drinks deplete at a rate of 0.4 units per tick.
Slow Metabolism
I've seen (and unknowingly spread) some misinformation on this trait. The ONLY thing it does is halve the depletion rate of all reagents. It doesn't do anything to scale its effects, which is crazy good for things like medical chems, blood replacers, stimulants, and restoring thirst from drinks. As a balancing factor, though, this also applies to poisons, sedatives, and (you guessed it!) drinks metabolizing into alcohol. Essentially, this makes your character into a total lightweight. Compared to the section above...
- 50u of beer will leave you with 11.275 units; a 442% increase from normal metabolism
- 10u of old fashioned will leave you with 13.775 units; a 219% increase
- 15u of tequila will leave you with 43.15 units; a 210% increase
Addiction
This is the big one. One of the mechanics I've seen the most disdain for. And, uh, I don't know how it works. I'm looking at the code right now and I couldn't tell you at all how it works. Please help
Fixes to discuss
Depletion Rate:
- Possibly increase depletion rate from 0.05 to 0.1. This would have notable balancing effects for poisons like Bo Jack Daniels and Moonshine, but 0.05 does seem a little low...
- Rework Antihol. Having it with a much lower depletion rate alongside a less potent purging effect would prevent the problem of needing to remember to take it.
- Go through all the reagents with a defined alch_strength and ensure they have reasonable ABVs (with exceptions for things like Moonshine and Bo Jack Daniels, as well as reagents that are obviously supposed to have unreasonable levels of alcohol like Rum and Coke). Probably going to PR this myself.
- Possible QoL change to how this interacts with reagents that decay into other reagents? Perhaps changing only alcohols, though the majority of decay chems are food chems and probably shouldn't be much more poisonous to slowmeta characters.
- I call upon your aid, codenerds. Everyone hates this but I couldn't get any numbers to explain why. It seems to have a relatively low addiction chance according to the wiki. Is it really as bad as everyone makes it out to be?