Goonhub
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:
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.
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.
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)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)
returnFor 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.