Nerf Chemgroups by adding an actionbar

[cyberTripping]

Due to recent discussions, I'm making this suggestion thread as a precaution against total removal. There seems to be balance concerns with the ease of use in chemgroups as a way to mass manufacture chems. As an alternative to removal, I believe that if chem groups are nerfed, using them should take time proportional to the number of individual chems, taking slightly longer than it would take for the average person to find and click the appropriate buttons. (this is very vague, and would likely need tweaking).

The benefits of this method are obvious. The utility of mass production goes away, as it's not much more efficient than doing it manually, but the accessibility benefits of chem groups remain, putting everyone on an even playing field where being differently abled in a way that affects your memory, word recognition, or dexterity has less of an impact on your ability to make chems if you are willing to come prepared.

[Mordent]

I would have no issue with making dispensing a chemgroup take 0.1s per unit of reagent in that chemgroup (so e.g. a 96u chem group to produce a bunch of silver sulfadiazine takes 9.6 seconds).

That seems about right to me in terms of speed; I'm not married to it, I could easily be convinced of 0.1s per 2u. I would be against blocking regular dispensing behind a similar timegate because that is a pretty poor UX (if I want 30u of something, having to wait a second between clicks or messing with the dispense amount is lame).

I wouldn't necessarily mind it being a delay after the chemgroup was dispensed (i.e. click to get the chemgroup, have to wait time to dispense any more). This would still allow for the case of "I need some silver sulfadiazine now" while mitigating mass production of chems (which is botany's territory, imo).

I am relatively ambivalent on whether other chems could be dispensed while the chemgroup is working/recharging. I would probably go with not, for the sake of simplicity.

I think there's probably some fun that could be had with the chemgroups being dispensed a bit at a time (rather than all at once either at the start or end), but suspect that might cause issues with weird amounts of reagents due to precision errors.

I think there is also some merit into moving chemgroup storage off of IDs (or the lack of an ID, which is the most common case) and putting it on to floppy disks (probably with several groups per disk). This is a separate facet and could be added either in addition to or in isolation from the above.

[Flaborized]

Some thoughts not directly related to whether or not chemgroups should be removed of delayed or what-have-you:

- I think chemgroups existing as a crucial part of the chemistry system is sorta indicative that mixing chemicals is very uninvolved and bare bones. Once you've set yourself on making a particular chemical there's practically no decision making at all from then on, it's just efficient button clicking. I think it's a system to skip over boring gameplay for the most part.

- While chemgroups existing gives an option for making chems that's perhaps less strenuous for people who find rapid repeated clicking discomforting, it's not 'full accessibility', especially if they were slower than regular mixing like your post proposes. Accessibility would be not having rapid repeated clicking being the best way to use the system in the first place, as there will always be situations where it's faster to click really fast over inputting a code.

Both of these points lead me to believe that chemgroups are a *band-aid*, to chemistry, and if chemistry were designed in a way that required more active decision making while creating chems, chemgroups would have basically no reason to exist at all. Regardless of whatever changes to chemgroups if any are appropriate right now, the 'best' solution long-term IMO is to make chemistry into a system where chemgroups don't make any sense to have. I'm not sure any other systems have an equivalent to 'Click a button to do the job without doing the job', every one I can think of is perfectly fun without it, and chemistry ideally would be in a spot where it would be too.

[cyberTripping]

-snip-

 I'd definitely agree with both your second point and your conclusion. I think full overhauls to chemistry are a bit out of the scope of this thread, though.

To clarify, there's two reasons I suggested that chem groups be slower. The first one is simply because there's more things that adjust the time like clicking multiple times vs adjusting output amount, etc. The second reason is because this suggestion is being made not as an alternative for the current state of chem groups, but as for the total removal of chem groups. Ensuring that people who have an edge without chemgroups keep that edge makes it a lot easier to sell the idea to them when they may otherwise support total removal.

[THISISANICEGAME]

Make chem dispensers have internal chemicals containers that replenish themselves over time at the cost of power, no power, no new chemicals, and using the chem dispenser would use those chemicals, this way chemists would have to think before dispensing chems, would give people a reason to make their chemgroups super effective and not wasteful, I would love to have to keep chemicals I usually just dispose off in some bottle because they might be useful in the future and the chemicals are worth something.

[Frank_Stein]

and putting it on to floppy disks (probably with several groups per disk). This is a separate facet and could be added either in addition to or in isolation from the above.

I like the idea of having chem groups on disk because that means you could do things like stick floppy disks in places that having some useful chems pre-saved to them.
For instance, giving medbay a disk that had styptic saved to it.

[Azrun]

Hmmm actionbar...

Previous conversation on chemgroup nerfs: https://forum.ss13.co/showthread.php?tid=15961