Most secret chems shouldn't be secret.

[KikiMofo]

I don't care either way. I for one am not going to try to figure out the recipes because I feel as soon as I do they will be changed again. I'm still salty about all my recipes being gone. But yeah I don't really care if they are secret or if everyone can know. BACK IN MY DAY we would have recipe leaks and then it happened enough that most of the chemistry chem recipes were made public knowledge because people realized keeping chem recipes secrets was dumb.

[Xaltonon]

I've always found it strange how chemistry secrets were kept so safely guarded. Other areas of the game (station network, alloying, engine) are documented on the wiki, but to have a deep understanding of all their interconnected systems requires a lot of experience. Just knowing the steps to do a particular thing won't get you very far especially considering most of the power of these systems revolves around coming up with clever combinations of them on the fly.

Perhaps it's just a byproduct of how comparatively simple chemistry mechanics are, but gating the most powerful chemicals behind a D-notice seems like a poor option. Maybe a chemistry rework (oh god I'm going to get crucified for this) to make it more nuanced could alleviate this?

[Spy_Guy]

The secret chems are balanced by the effort it takes to make them, not by their obscurity. You can kill someone just as well with publically available chems as you can with a beaker of sarin.

Case in point:

This thing had no secret reagents in it whatsoever, except for colourful reagent, which only added an aesthetic flair.

Most games have a progression or a power curve. In MMOs it can be an epic mount to prove you are the biggest poopsocker. In FPS games you obtain the rocket launcher towards the end. In multiplayer games you might earn hats or new guns as you rank up.

In chemistry you gain knowledge. It allows you to show off and do things someone just starting out can't do. But they could. With patience, practice and diligence. This is as it should be.

Sometimes you simply can't do it all straight off the bat. Then you just have to put the time in and learn the secrets yourself. That spaceman who fed you rajaijah and locked you in the monkey pen did. Nothing saying you can't too.

[Readster]

https://forum.ss13.co/showthread.php?tid...4#pid23404

[fosstar]

The secret chems are balanced by the effort it takes to make them, not by their obscurity. You can kill someone just as well with publically available chems as you can with a beaker of sarin.

Case in point:

This thing had no secret reagents in it whatsoever, except for colourful reagent, which only added an aesthetic flair.

Most games have a progression or a power curve. In MMOs it can be an epic mount to prove you are the biggest poopsocker. In FPS games you obtain the rocket launcher towards the end. In multiplayer games you might earn hats or new guns as you rank up.

In chemistry you gain knowledge. It allows you to show off and do things someone just starting out can't do. But they could. With patience, practice and diligence. This is as it should be.

Sometimes you simply can't do it all straight off the bat. Then you just have to put the time in and learn the secrets yourself. That spaceman who fed you rajaijah and locked you in the monkey pen did. Nothing saying you can't too.

Chemistry already has many ways you can gain knowledge, chem combinations, dosing, little quirks of the engine that let you do amazing things. We don't need secret chems for that part and they generally only foster the sekrit club mentality in my mind.

[Nnystyxx]

Silver Fulminate still shouldn't be a secret chem. The reason it's secret is really dumb and it provides very little benefit, especially when brobots can spam gunshot noises. I think some things would honestly just be best if argued on a case-by-case basis. Furthermore, considering I know at least part of how it's made and it's kind of a pain in the ass, people shouldn't get in trouble for revealing it when it's so totally unlikely to cause any actual issues.

[fosstar]

Silver Fulminate still shouldn't be a secret chem. The reason it's secret is really dumb and it provides very little benefit, especially when brobots can spam gunshot noises. I think some things would honestly just be best if argued on a case-by-case basis. Furthermore, considering I know at least part of how it's made and it's kind of a pain in the ass, people shouldn't get in trouble for revealing it when it's so totally unlikely to cause any actual issues.

We should take the sol policy when it comes to secret chems, Noone cares if they're revealed just keep it off the wiki/forums/irc/discord and allow basic discussion of them.

[Vitatroll]

- QGP? Easily outdone by hellmixes.
- Initro? Far better to use chem cocktails for proc stacking.
- Raj? A super neat chem that went completely unused because it took too long to make too little. We need more weaponized monkeys in our lives, srsly.
- Anima? It used to be OP vs. effort, and it was one of the most annoying to make -- but they nerfed to oblivion IIRC.
- Glowing Flip? Deceptively destructive... to eyes and servers. Also the hardest chem to make, pre-leak.

Yes, I know they aren't balanced on secrecy, but there were times when some were. Don't do that. I'll get the hose I will, I swear it!

sekrit club mentality

Nothing inherently wrong with sekrit clubs. It was only ever bad back when every chem was a secret chem. Now that was some high quality circle-jerkin'.

[Readster]

We should take the sol policy when it comes to secret chems, Noone cares if they're revealed just keep it off the wiki/forums/irc/discord and allow basic discussion of them.

This is literally how it works currently.

[fosstar]

We should take the sol policy when it comes to secret chems, Noone cares if they're revealed just keep it off the wiki/forums/irc/discord and allow basic discussion of them.

This is literally how it works currently.

I mean lax the rules more, as in make it like the rules for medals where people can discuss hints and stuff as long as they don't reveal it.

Also i'm still in favor of making most secret chems public, stuff like rotting/silver fulminate doesn't need to be secret.

[Superlagg]

sekrit club mentality

Nothing inherently wrong with sekrit clubs. It was only ever bad back when every chem was a secret chem. Now that was some high quality circle-jerkin'.

Now *that* would be interesting, not so much keeping all chem stuff a secret, but leaving it all thoroughly undocumented. Might make it all seem more mysterious and deeper than it actually is. Not illegal to talk about, and in a way, aside from finding it out on your own, that'd be one of the few ways to actually learn how to mix stuff, by asking the jerkass chemistry cliques to teach you how to make rum and coke.

[Sov]

I like the idea of things to find and strive for

I just wish there were more ingame methods to learn how some of the chems were made. Maybe you find a partial document torn from a chemistry book in an abandoned shuttle. Maybe you get a rambling hint from shitty bill after you get him drunk

It doesn't need to be a complete recipie by any means. Just enough to get the ball rolling and ideas flowing

[Readster]

Chemistry was at its absolute best immediately after the cogwerks rework. Everything was secret but all the recipies were based on their real life counterparts so you could do actual online research to figure it out (bar the gimmicky chemicals). Unfortunately the code leak ruined this mostly but oh well. Personally I think that the wiki now gives away too much but that's just me.

Also

I mean lax the rules more, as in make it like the rules for medals where people can discuss hints and stuff as long as they don't reveal it.

This is still literally how it is now. Me and SpyGuy built a friendship working together to hunt down chemicals. Honestly I don't think you'd even get shouted out for just giving out the recipies as long as it's not something new or something like glowing flip.

[Mordent]

My counterpoint to this: why?

Secret chems come in two flavors: deadly/dangerous, and gimmick.

Yes, you can make deadly/dangerous things without secret chems, and in fact if you make a cocktail of deadly/dangerous things it will often be more dangerous than a single secret chem, so why do you need to know the secret chem? Is it just so you can add another thing to your hellmix that murders and gibs people in 2 seconds?

For gimmicks, gimmicks are only fun if they're not run into the ground. People run things into the ground. Do you want rotting-smoke in the bar every round making a good portion of the crew uncloneable? Do we need to have more big discussions of what is and what isn't okay to use on people as non-antag?

Putting the "it takes time to figure out the secret chem" gateway in means that people who aren't serious about it probably aren't going to find it out so aren't going to run it into the ground, meaning that you get more of a trickle of "this person learned this chem and is showing it off for a few rounds" every so often over "oh, good, another chemist just made <annoying secret chem #17>".

Generally when I see people complaining about secret chems being secret they're people who haven't worked out any of them or only the super-trivial ones. (Reminder: "generally", I know some of you have worked out some more and are complaining about it.) If you're not willing to put any work in I don't see why you should get to play with cool secret chems that do quirky things, just as learning packets or exploring telescience takes a multiple round investment.

For people who say that finding secret chems is just a case of "throw everything into an artbeaker until you get it": there are hints on the wiki, for one, which should reduce your search space. Additionally, chemistry is a science. Follow the scientific method! Record results of combining various chems such that you don't waste time trying them in the future. Repeat.

Regarding the "make it okay to talk about": I'd give it 2 rounds until people are spamming the recipes they know over the radio, at which point it's no longer secret. That's the nice thing about secret chem recipes: once you know them, you know them. Yes, there have been times where recipes have been tweaked; this doesn't happen often. Most people complaining about it seem to be complaining about them being changed post-2016 leak. You've had 2 years to find the new recipes if you really cared about them.

TL;DR: the argument for making them non-secret doesn't have weight, and if we ever did it we can't take it back.

[New525]

This thing had no secret reagents in it whatsoever, except for colourful reagent, which only added an aesthetic flair.

Holy hell