Goonhub
09-25-2023, 05:02 PM
(This post was last modified: 09-25-2023, 05:17 PM by TDHooligan. Edited 5 times in total.)
Chemistry rework's been in for close to a month now? I'm curious what people's thoughts are overall on it. As a chemnerd for at least 6~7 years now I'm going to throw my thoughts into the mix.
I'd like to hear peoples goods/mehs/bads and see if I'm clued in, or just an old fart getting dinosaured.
I've really enjoyed some things about it:
I've had middling feelings about:
I've had negative experiences with these:
Overall:
I think this change has some really strong positives and is a great framework. The tools it introduces are really fun and open up new ideas that are worth expanding upon.
However, It also introduces some really demanding, unrewarding processes.
I don't mind planning everything, setting it up & waiting for my reaction to complete after - I do mind having to repeatedly futz with all 3 of my condensers at the same time as manually handling certain reactions, where at the end I get something as unexciting as 'your spaceman dies less in crit for 2 minutes'
My personal experience for newer chemists also looks worse - I do see the chemical locker used more, lots of complaints about oil. Once the chemical locker is empty, people often just walk out. The skill floor for a job that was already hit and miss has been kicked up much higher.
Final thoughts:
Chemistry can be engaging without directly requiring intervention so regularly! I love watching my oil reaction tick over slowly, drip-feeding through several systems until it turns into meth.
Acetone using 0.1 chlorine is a cool idea that I want to see more of, topping off 50 units of chlorine every 10 minutes is SO much better than having to pour 90 units of fuel into my heated oil reactor every 40 seconds.
I *really* hate that acetone is not usable in a condenser unless your recipe also requires Phenol. Let us build cool infini-drug machines! It was already easy enough before to make more drugs than you could ever use. Why not make it easier to make barrels of drugs for EVERYONE, rather than just 300u to last your whole 90 minute rampage?
I'd like to hear peoples goods/mehs/bads and see if I'm clued in, or just an old fart getting dinosaured.
I've really enjoyed some things about it:
- The condenser is an *incredible* piece of equipment for both new and old recipes. It is the star of this rework. It creates so many ideas for greatness, but we need more catalysts and chems that are barely used up as part of a reaction!
- A few new avenues of quirky chemistry grenades weapons, like sulfuric heating and duplicating. Cyanide + acid, Sealed beakers shattering into spills. I'd love more of this and some bugfixes to explosions + puddles (this stuff is actually what i'd thought would improve chem ages ago, and it has)
- Bunsen burners are cool. They pair really well with condensers. I can see them being really fun down the line as this rework gets refined.
- It's so easy to make thousands of units of things now. Arguably even easier than making a beakerful sometimes. It *feels* like I should be making enough chems to give to other players, rather than just hoarding 30u of everything to myself.
I've had middling feelings about:
- Heat retention on reaction, it just makes hot reactions need less heating? I can automate heating now. I can't automate cooling reliably. Gimme a way to cool stuff. And don't go telling me to put cryo in beaker #4! I'm already bouncing back and forth on 3 other condensers!
- Niche ore requirements - Oh. there are no miners. Or they aren't working. What am I gonna do, *their job*? At least the main consumers of fancy ore (robotics) can actually go mining when they want stuff. I don't mind putting in extra chemistry effort to work around this requirement!
- Weird gimmicks for Sulfazine/Styptic - I dont get it. OK, the consensus was to stop making it instantly at the dispenser. Why not just make it a standard slow reaction? Sulfazine's is just weird, and it makes pouring the reaction mix act oddly. Styptics' is cool but who's making small batches of styptic? These are boring chems that can have boring syntheses, surely?
I've had negative experiences with these:
- The raw tedium for intermediate chemicals:
- Basically every precursor requires a lot more time/effort/attention/setup, and they are used in lots of boring chemicals. It's hard to justify putting the effort into anything but the most powerful chemicals now. Would you rather make Epinephrine or Meth?
- Unreliable output volumes for things like oil. I don't see why the reduced output is even necessary. It's not stopping me making MORE oil - I can easily pour in hundreds of units of fuel. All it does is make balancing reactions annoying/unreliable. So, now I have to eyeball everything I make... Or, ignore condensers and wait for all my oil to be made, then measure out everything manually. So it's the same as before but with a boring step.
- Split reactions for Acetone/phenol, it's an interesting idea. However, all it really means is that I have to cram a beaker in a chemmaster every time i make it. I can't use any of the new tools to automate it! And it's made with Boring Oil I Need To Manually Measure!
- No way to balance uneven reaction chains - if 1 reaction makes 3u/tick, and something down the line makes 1u/tick, there is no way to build a chain of equipment that stops a condenser overflowing. I can at best, make 3 seperate reaction vessels.
Overall:
I think this change has some really strong positives and is a great framework. The tools it introduces are really fun and open up new ideas that are worth expanding upon.
However, It also introduces some really demanding, unrewarding processes.
I don't mind planning everything, setting it up & waiting for my reaction to complete after - I do mind having to repeatedly futz with all 3 of my condensers at the same time as manually handling certain reactions, where at the end I get something as unexciting as 'your spaceman dies less in crit for 2 minutes'
My personal experience for newer chemists also looks worse - I do see the chemical locker used more, lots of complaints about oil. Once the chemical locker is empty, people often just walk out. The skill floor for a job that was already hit and miss has been kicked up much higher.
Final thoughts:
Chemistry can be engaging without directly requiring intervention so regularly! I love watching my oil reaction tick over slowly, drip-feeding through several systems until it turns into meth.
Acetone using 0.1 chlorine is a cool idea that I want to see more of, topping off 50 units of chlorine every 10 minutes is SO much better than having to pour 90 units of fuel into my heated oil reactor every 40 seconds.
I *really* hate that acetone is not usable in a condenser unless your recipe also requires Phenol. Let us build cool infini-drug machines! It was already easy enough before to make more drugs than you could ever use. Why not make it easier to make barrels of drugs for EVERYONE, rather than just 300u to last your whole 90 minute rampage?