rework materials from the ground up

[Noah Buttes]

bring back the additive barrel

No.
Materials should be research in it's own right, and not effected by chemistry.

I actually strongly disagree.

Adding chemistry into it did the following:
A) Unbalanced it terribly
and
B) Made another system rely on chemistry.
and
C) Neglected everything else with materials.
This lies with the inherent issues of my second point above: "Many unique properties/properties of materials are boring as heck." Something that is fun with chemistry could be applied to various ores/materials properties, but leave chemistry to the chemists.

None of these are good reasons to remove chemical additives, and only A) is even a valid complaint. Yes, balancing was an issue, but that would've been rectified over time as the system developed and things were changed and tweaked.

Point B is actually a good thing. One of the most important reasons behind why this game is so engaging is that so many different systems are interwoven into one cohesive mesh. Discouraging this would be detrimental to the very core of this game. Chemistry is an exceptionally robust system. Since it provides a very firm framework upon which to build other concepts, it forms the backbone of many other systems.

From a materials science standpoint, it makes a hell of a lot of sense to involve chemistry since the physical characteristics of most objects are based upon their chemical properties.

Point C flat out isn't true. Even if it was, it wouldn't necessarily have been a bad thing due to the aforementioned utility of the chemistry system and the relatively underdeveloped state of the materials system. With a firm chemistry based system to build upon, other non-chemical based features could've been added with less fear of ruining the whole thing.

Instead, we wound up with what is effectively an unfinished and unsightly system that's effectively isolated from all the other systems on station. No one uses it very much, so it just kind of sits there doing nothing.

To put it bluntly, I'll use one of your own sayings. Removing chemical infusion from the materials system was equivalent to throwing the baby out with the bathwater.


Unfortunately, since the chemical-materials system was completely gutted from the code, only someone with SVN access, i.e. a coder, could actually re-implement it.

Edit3: Contact me on IRC if you want to figure this out with me.

I'll get in touch as soon as I get a chance, but that probably won't be until somewhere around 9 hours from now.