Chemistry nerfs

[McDougie]

It seems like anytime anyone finds anything that works well in chemistry it just gets nerfed. 

The propellent/smoke change broke about 20 groups I had overnight - wasnt even mentioned in changelog. I spent ages on those groups and had some that were over 170 characters long but are now just useless strings of text. I had no idea what had happened except they suddenly didnt work and it took ages to figure out what had changed. 

The new flamer has a nice UI and its great that you get gun like noises but functionally its not capable of killing monkeys before they beat you down. I appreciate someone put a lot of work into it so I feel bad for saying this but given a choice I would take the old flamer back in a heartbeat.

It used to be the challenge with the flamer was dealing with the beepsky curse and not dying yourself from your own hellflamer. Now its hard to find any mix that cannot be countered with a just fire extinguisher. Yes you can fill it with sarin and it might actually kill a monkey but gone are all the fun mixes. Even glowing fliptonium and colorful reagent didnt work with it - colorful reagant unreliably applied to very few tiles and glowing flip didnt apply at all. Its got more settings but is far less versatile.

I know plenty of people who share my views of the new flamer and I don't know of anyone that actually prefers it. It seems to universally be considered a massive downgrade. You dont see any of the regular nerds using them anymore.

Im actually at the point where I feel like its pointless trying to find new things with chemistry because if you do find something that works well and use it then it just gets nerfed and if it works really well then it gets nerfed hard.

Sorium drips are another example - easily countered by magboots - so its not like there wasnt a way to deal with them. Could have probably been changed to make the reaction affect the person standing on the same tile but instead it just doesnt cause the explosion at all. Could have been changed to only accept medical chems unless emagged like a hypo or something... but just breaking it? Thats not a fix at all. Its reactive vandalism.

I know some people don't like chemistry at all on account of how potent it can be but its not like you get traitor scientists every round and when you do half the time they are in toxins making TTVs and canbombs that are far far more devastating than anything chemistry can cook up. That isnt a suggestion that toxins needs nerfing. Just pointing out that breaking sorium drips whilst leaving bombs that can actually remove quarter of the station just seems disproportionate.

Im not expecting anything to actually change or the nerfs to stop so this is most likely a pointless rant but I very much want to say that the constant nerfs really have killed the fun and drive to experiment for me and others have indicated that they feel the same.

[Mouse]

Forgive me if I don't have sympathy for being unable to make killmixes by C&Ping something from a text file and then pressing a few buttons.

[McDougie]

Ah mouse, I had a feeling you might pipe up in this thread.

Anyway it was not just killmixes. I had healing groups broken aswell, ones that I used a fair amount to be honest.

[Caro]

As far as I'm aware, the only thing that changed about aerosol is that it cares about its volume now (you need 20u now to affect 9x9 area now, which is what 10u of old aerosol did, and it scales up to 50u)
I'm not a fan of that change either, but it makes more sense and is consistent with how fluorosurfactant and smoke powder behaves.

And when it comes to old flamethrower behaviour, yea, I share similar feelings about the rework. Old flamethrower with incremental spray mode was a much more versatile tool than the current flamer (although the new modes, especially the auto are quite cool).
I'd be more happy to see the behaviour of the old incremental mode back, alongside with keeping the current flamer modes. That's less of a suggestion and more of wishful thinking tho. Likely I'll just accept the change and move on. Which I sorta did already actually.

[McDougie]

Theres been atleast 3 nerfs to propellent that I am aware of.

The change to both smoke powder and propellent that broke loads of groups made it so that it uses all ingredients regardless of the amount used.

For example just add 5u of potassium, 5u of phosphorus and 50u of sugar. You'd expect a cloud of sugar but the remaining 45u just vanishes.

The other nerf I just discovered today when it made my traitor scientist shuttle mix be pretty meh. I'd have done something different if I had known it was going to not work.

Rather than specifics Im more talking about the general direction of chemistry and the fact that half the time theres not even any warning or patch notes. You just find out something else doesnt work right when your wanting to use it in earnest.

[Mouse]

The change to both smoke powder and propellent that broke loads of groups made it so that it uses all ingredients regardless of the amount used.

For example just add 5u of potassium, 5u of phosphorus and 50u of sugar. You'd expect a cloud of sugar but the remaining 45u just vanishes.

If I'm not mistaken that's to fix an acknowledged exploit that results in reactions that last indefinitely as long as anything that metabolizes chems is in the cloud.

[Drago156]

A lot of recent chem nerfs are legitimately exploit fixes. The reason aerosol and smoke recipe eats up all reagents is to prevent infini-smoke. As for LDM and Sorium drips, magboots really aren't that common at all, rarely being found in engineering unless it's got a singulo engine and being ordered either reliably with one pair from EVA crates or unreliably through shoe crates from Cargo, and personally I'm glad those are gone and I'd say drips entirely need a nerf but that's just me.

I can't speak much on the flamer, new or old I think it sucks and it's more complicated than it really needs to be. As for most everything else though it just sounds to me like you enjoyed using exploity stuff to make balance broken mixes, which aren't fun nor difficult. And actually yes, Chemistry can be just as destructive as Toxins, considering how easy it is to melt walls and floors of an entire room with a CLF3/phlog chembomb, add in fluorosulf acid and that melts any objects on the ground as well on top of hats and masks being worn. This isn't even counting the triviality of making nitroglycerin and just bombing the station by mixing it in people.

Really chem is busted powerful, and not in a good way, so I'm more than happy honestly to see these things nerfed and changed from how they used to be.

EDIT: since I'm here fixing format and grammar, I'll also mention how easy it is to make a mix of 30 total units and kill someone with that alone because of separate stacking damage types.

[Lady Birb]

if chemistry nerds are complaining, then it's a good change.
nerf chem more. revel in the nerd tears

[McDougie]

LDM drips kill the person using them pretty reliably. Sorium drips whilst pretty incapacitating don't really do that much damage unless a glass table or vending machine is involved. A

"As for most everything else though it just sounds to me like you enjoyed using exploity stuff to make balance broken mixes, which aren't fun nor difficult."

I mean ive spent literal hours designing and figuring single groups and spent entire antag rounds just on a single artbeaker mix for the shuttle. Call them not fun if you want, each to their own but certainly they aint easy.

"This isn't even counting the triviality of making nitroglycerin and just bombing the station by mixing it in people. "

Personally I dont tend to make nitro much, gibbing people isnt really my style but its no different from erebite in that respect.

"Really chem is busted powerful, and not in a good way, so I'm more than happy honestly to see these things nerfed and changed from how they used to be."

Im not saying things shouldn't change at all but many of the fixes break other stuff nothing to do with the thing it was intending to fix - the propellent/smoke changes are an example of that. Combine that with nothing at all in the release notes and hours of work lost and I hope you can appreciate it was pretty frustrating. I was told it was reliant on HFCS so just changing that could have fixed the exploit without breaking lots of other stuff.

Also compared to real life goon chem is extremely tame. CF3 splashed over someone wouldnt even leave much if any body behind, it burns straight through concrete. Considering a large beaker is 2 full drinking glasses, one large beaker of sarin would kill the entire station. For the one round in several dozen you get antag people can suffer a few hellmixes, most people are quite happy to chew through piles of meth that chem produces when we are not allowed to set everything on fire. Even that got a lot more annoying when they cut the size of water cooler tanks in half and artbeakers got loads rarer.

Lord Birb I cant say I know you from in game but damn thats a really unhelpful and immature comment especially for a mentor.

Just saying the fun of it is rapidly depleting as every change seems to be a nerf and the process of discovering and experimentation is pointless as anything fun you find is just temporary.

Anyway its clear there are a few vocal people that simply dont like chemistry so this is unlikely to go anywhere so rant over.

[Carbadox]

While I do believe that Chemistry has a number of balance issues, I don't see how your comment Lady Birb really brings anything useful to the discussion. You've admitted yourself to being overly hostile in regards to discussions on the state of pathology so I don't really get why you need to act in the same manner here.

As for the actual discussion, like I said I do think that the amount of effort it takes to commit to things in chemistry for the results you get is ridiculous, on both sides.

The fact that it's so easy to make a hole in the floor and depressurise an entire area with some many chem by just adding it to areosol powder is completely unfair. You shouldn't be able to make a mix in less than 10 seconds for a result that requires over 15 minutes + to patch up.

I also find acid to be problematic and non-sensical. The ability to instantly melt any item is over the top. I think the best way to solve that would be for acid to require a specific amount before it could start melting something. After it latches on, it would take some time for it to melt through the hole item, with a higher concentration resulting in a faster melting time.

On the other hand and from what I remember when I last looked at the secret chem leaks, the amount of effort to make some of the non-lethal, non-benefitial gimmick secret is way too much to even bother with. I don't play alot of chemistry so maybe im wrong with that one.

[warcrimes]

chem groups? a mistake.

[Azrun]

To echo Carbadox’s point:
Individuals find a way to wreak havoc on the station.  One person’s enjoying high! Crew’s enjoyment is low.  As long as there is sufficient counter-play available to the crew and/or the efforts of the individual is sufficient then there is a sense of balance.  Right now the option seems to play wack-a-mole on certain reactions/mixes or let chemistry ruin everyone day.  Thus the changes.

Power gaming is typically fun for the power gamer at everyone else's expense.

chem groups? a mistake.

Honestly I think this is the most interesting point brought up thus far.  In an imaginary world where you could only create chem groups for reactions you have discovered the feature seems like a wonderful quality of life add.  You put in the time (over multiple rounds) and are rewarded!  Back in reality you can just copypasta something from Discord or Reddit and now you can be a medical genius and/or a murder machine.

Add some cost to using chemgroups, because that seems like what everyone is actually pointing to.  Make it an "action bar" (of the dispenser).  Have the duration scale with the number of reagents in the group, have additional penalties if it is over certain amounts, increase duration if it detects a reaction has occurred (“dispenser failsafe”), random chance chemgroup aborts, random chance an amount is incorrect, random chance reagent is skipped, chance chemgroup feature breaks and requires repair.  Have it reject certain combinations of reagents as known explosives in order “to protect Nanotrasen property” (possibly have it notify Sec),  then add modules/mechanism to circumvent that.

[rando212]

To echo Carbadox’s point:
Individuals find a way to wreak havoc on the station.  One person’s enjoying high! Crew’s enjoyment is low.  As long as there is sufficient counter-play available to the crew and/or the efforts of the individual is sufficient then there is a sense of balance.  Right now the option seems to play wack-a-mole on certain reactions/mixes or let chemistry ruin everyone day.  Thus the changes.

Power gaming is typically fun for the power gamer at everyone else's expense.

chem groups? a mistake.

Honestly I think this is the most interesting point brought up thus far.  In an imaginary world where you could only create chem groups for reactions you have discovered the feature seems like a wonderful quality of life add.  You put in the time (over multiple rounds) and are rewarded!  Back in reality you can just copypasta something from Discord or Reddit and now you can be a medical genius and/or a murder machine.

Add some cost to using chemgroups, because that seems like what everyone is actually pointing to.  Make it an "action bar" (of the dispenser).  Have the duration scale with the number of reagents in the group, have additional penalties if it is over certain amounts, increase duration if it detects a reaction has occurred (“dispenser failsafe”), random chance chemgroup aborts, random chance an amount is incorrect, random chance reagent is skipped, chance chemgroup feature breaks and requires repair.  Have it reject certain combinations of reagents as known explosives in order “to protect Nanotrasen property” (possibly have it notify Sec),  then add modules/mechanism to circumvent that.

 As a big chem nerd i don't see the point of nerfing chem groups while it could stop joe smoe from copy pasting the latest station melter 3000 in any one whos put in even a small amount of work into chem can be faster and more precise then chem groups. As well as I think there would be massive backlash from the people who use chem groups as med to make stypic and the like to have random rng go ohhhhh noooo your chem group randomly added 20u instead of 10u for no reason. Adding random rng or just nerfing chem groups so hard that they would be used as much as the chem compiler doesn't feel like a fix more of just get rid of it so the problem might stop.

[warcrimes]

If it were up to me, "chem groups" would instead be data diskettes that spacemans cram into chem dispensers.
maybe like 3 disk slots or so, and medbay would start with diskettes for various medical chems.

edit the diskette at your computer or something.
find weird diskettes floating in space full of illegal mixes. whatever.

anything to make it more interesting than ok google goonstation nerd mix haha

[Cal]

If we're going down that route I would like for the chem dispenser in medical to just already have styptic and silver sulf ready to go as buttons