rework materials from the ground up

[Nnystyxx]

I guess that's my other complaint with materials
There's so much missing that parts of it change at completely arbitrary times for seemingly no reasons
We can't make some of the things we used to, we have arrows but still no bows even though they exist in the code, the combobulator doesn't. . do anything that I'm aware of

It just feels like the things that DID kind of work got removed and left things that don't (no prefix for materials, weird coloration, general bugginess)

[Grumpchkin]

I guess that's my other complaint with materials
There's so much missing that parts of it change at completely arbitrary times for seemingly no reasons
We can't make some of the things we used to, we have arrows but still no bows even though they exist in the code, the combobulator doesn't. . do anything that I'm aware of

It just feels like the things that DID kind of work got removed and left things that don't (no prefix for materials, weird coloration, general bugginess)

Yeah the bows are fully functional yet are still admin spawn only. Also any improvised weapons are just useless.

[Nnystyxx]

here I have an idea for a bow recipe:
rods and a cable. hell, wood, even, if you wanna get saucy with it
there you go. implement it jesus christ

[amaranthineApocalypse]

also, bring back fabric alloy jumpsuits, those sounded really cool and i haven't been here long enough to experience them D:

I thought you could still do this...

Only with flesh and blob.

Flesh because people can jump in and then you stick another piece of metal in.

Blob because it works for some reason.

And technically fibrilith but in practice it's completely useless because it causes you to accrue brute damage, randomly drop things, slow down and stun

[Arborinus]

For Fibrilith, you need to dilute it with repeated arc smeltings in order to get rid of the "itchy" property. Just examine it each time until you see that it doesn't say it feels itchy.

There's a lot of things like that, that no one knows about (another example I can think of is properly creating energy cells). A new Ore Processing wiki page would help.

[misto]

it was an ambitious idea, perhaps a little too ambitious, but it would be good to see it become remotely relevant again

[Sundance]

Hello, resident brainstormer here. Ore processing and the like has been on my radar for quite some time. Problem is there are so many opinions on what needs to be done and ALOT needs to be done with it. So best place to start is to iron out all the problems with it and then move onto actually concreting a solid plan to fix it.

Problem 1: Objects do not benefit from the properties of materials and there are near zero objects to build. Built objects are normally worse than their nonmaterial counterpart.
Want to build armor? It’s gonna take time and will normally end up less useful than standard sec armor. Ditto for pod armor. You have material that has insulative properties, but you have no option to make gloves. In-fact there’s a clear lack of items to make.

Problem 2: Many unique properties/properties of materials are boring as heck.
In comparison to chemistry, there’s very little that’s interesting about the properties. Oh great it’s radioactive, guess I can’t use it as an armor. Oh great it has high scattering, who the fuck cares. There’s literally so much sci-fi stuff that can be done to bring it line with chemistry. Antigravity properties, propulsion properties, materials that drain stamina/regenerate health. Imagine making barbed gloves with apply the sharpness of the object to it. Now you have knifes for hands. Or boots with low gravity, now you can move in space which speed scales with negative mass. Blob armor which has insane reflectivity and hardness that passes a threshold that reflects lasers and punches back at the person. Go fucking nuts.

Problem 3: The recombobulator is a bad idea.
The reasoning behind this is that I feel like material analysis should be hands on and not locked behind any computer. It’s already lengthy to gather materials, but also the averaging out and perfecting of a composite via the smelter and then attempting to apply it to an object in a meaningful way is already fairly deep as is.

Problem 4: The loom does not work/is counterintuitive.
Making cloth/metal composites should be simple as putting a smelted bar + material into the loom.

Problem 5: The workbench GUI is unwieldy as heck. The “parts” system is needlessly time consuming.
There’s already a GUI that works perfectly, has a search function AND can mass produce items: fabricators. I’m not saying the fabricators should replace workbenches, as the latter can use composites, while the former cannot. This just makes things so much easier. The parts system is irritating to work with too. Like take pod armor: it requires Armor Plate + Rods+ Crystal + Gears, when in it should require just x amount material (for the armor) + x amount material (for the coat)
Now you can make a strong pod with ruby gilded armor. Nothing convoluted with gears and rods.

[babayetu83]

bring back the additive barrel

[Sundance]

bring back the additive barrel

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

[Frank_Stein]

I've barely touched the materials system, so I don't know current material properties and how smelting and all that effects things, but I like the idea of things all having a full set of properties with each smelting averaging the numbers between the materials used. Most things should have desirable and undesirable traits that require smelting with other stuff to balance it into acceptable levels. Rare ores and gems can have strong negative trait reduction properties without adding much positive ones themselves for making really powerful items.

I feel artifacts should be folded up into the materials system as well, with with artifact ore that has special properties or high values with few negative aspects, or have the artifacts themselves something you can break down into materials so you can destroy useless noise artifacts and create useful things from them.

[Keelin]

Hey there!

Yep the materials are unfinished and boring.
It's gotten to the point where the code had become an unwieldy monstrosity from too many iterations as well.
I'm really unhappy with the situation in general and would like to fix things up but I'm not sure how to best solve it yet.

Edit: Also people can't actually agree on what they want the thing to be.  

Edit2:    

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

[medsal15]

From my personnal opinion (and experience), each material should have a little (or big) something that others dont have.
You want a great armor or a health regenerating armor? Want a gun shooting rainbows or shooting sparkles? What about an invisible spear or a plantable spear?
Why not both? Oh hey, you dont have enough room for both.

[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.

[Sundance]

http://forum.ss13.co/showthread.php?tid=4574
Just for reference, posted this sometime last year regarding material science. Note some of it was implemented particularly quality influencing material properties.

Noah i'll condense my answer to something a little more concise from my observations of quite the shitstorm the additive barrel caused:

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.
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.

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

Edit: Yeah Keelin, i'll drop a message of my shit ideas sometime today

[Noah Buttes]

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.