rework materials from the ground up

[BBEG]

It essentially hijacks material science. Nobody is going to give two shits about the hardness of an item if you can make a sarin infused shard. Note during that time you could also make .22s with the material system, so you'd have people going around with kuru bullets. Go figure.

I'll concede that reagent infused bullets were fucking stupid and basically turned silenced pistols into tranquilizer rifles on steroids. Never bring them back, ever.

Chemistry is a good backbone, but it's literally in everything. It's not that much a stretch to request something that isn't chemistry based. The additive barrel as it stood during that period WAS material science, which was really sad, as it was meant for miners. Add 1 and 1 there and you see the big issue.

Material science definitely shouldn't be limited to just chemistry. Ideally, it will eventually grow to become backbone worthy itself.

However, I think it'd be a monumental effort to make a completely new system from scratch. Like a young plant, the materials system needs to grow around a protective wire framework so that it has proper support and doesn't turn into a tangled mass of vines.

The additive barrel could be introduced back, but I would only like to see it in some form which doesn't infuse the chemical, but rather chemically treats the properties, raising and lowering them depending on the chemical. And it would be very specific chemicals that do it, acids and such. Akin to the relationship between medical and chemistry, in which specific chemicals are required for medical, as would specific chemicals would be required for ore processing. This would make chemistry a side thing rather than a requirement

I believe this is the direction that the system was beginning to head in before it was removed. If I remember correctly, infused materials adding chemicals directly to the bloodstream was only a placeholder before individual effects could be worked out. I know for a fact that some chemicals did not get added to the bloodstream and instead directly impacted the stats of the material.

For instance, Triple Meth infused armor, contrary to what you might assume, didn't give you a never-ending high. Instead, it maxed out your bullet resistance but dropped your melee resistance to zero. Or vice versa. I don't quite remember.

I think that all chemicals should have some sort of effect when added to materials, but there needs to be a great variety rather than just one or two outliers in a sea of reagent injection.

I think we'd need a huge brainstorming session to come up with a unique effect for every possible additive, but I'm sure if a properly extensible framework were set up, it'd be relatively easy to add said effects.

to be honest i think the material system should work a bit like chemistry in that certain alloy combinations give you different properties and such and i do think that there should be more fantastic metals with weird properties and maybe some have some hidden alloy combinations