Chemistry should be less about finding the correct recipe for devastating one-shot chemicals. And more about experimenting with combinations, temperatures and side effects of chemicals.
Right now, there is little reason to stick to chemistry once you have completed your recipe worksheet.
The easier chemicals are also the stonger. You can do extreme damage with napalm smoke; but try smoking itching powder (harder to make and with a low yield), and the scratching will last maybe a minute.
Few chemicals intereact with each other. ClF3 and firefighting foam explode on contact, and there are ways to control when the reaction happens and turn that into a weapon.
There should be more reactions like that, and built-in ways to trigger them.
For instance, mixing certain reagents could also create some byproduct that would complete another reagent in the same container, and trigger a reaction.
The crank explosion, or the fumes from some poisons are other cool reactions that can be weaponized.
Pyrosium is unreliable for anything other than setting somebody on fire. Even with stabilizing agent, controlling its heating rate is impossible.
It would be more useful if it started eating when inside a mob, or if it heated suddenly when in contact with water (like the mixtures in self-heating cans).
The changes to smoke do not allow many reagents to transfer to mobs, preventing many reactions to happen inside them.
It has killed a lot of neat tricks, and taken away another reason to experiment for new combinations of chemicals.
Special note on sarin, which is being used a lot to take out traitors and wizards.
It should get the same change that black powder did, and require some reagent that can only be obteined outside of chemistry; not something impossible, but time consuming.
Pyrosium is awesome for subtle, untraceable terrorism. Set up a couple dozen Azide bombs around the station inside glass bottles and enjoy the devastation. Most of the time, people won't even realize what's causing the booms.
Cogwerks has come out and said that Sarin is a boogeyman. It's a whole lot scarier than it actually is deadly. I could probably fuck people up a hell of a lot faster with a shitton of sugar than with Sarin. Diabetic Comas are scary.
There are lots of cool things you can do with chemistry as it is. You just have to be creative.
Sure you have to go out of your way for them, but if you can't be bothered with that then what's the point.
Hi, I wouldn't be too afraid to say that me and Clarks are two of the more experimental and creative chem-focused dudes playing and honestly it's getting sort of dulled down recently.
Mobs don't absorb chemicals properly right now, smoke powder has no real advantage over foam now that it holds less reagents which spread slower and that many chems now have effects on touch, hard chems generally have low yeilds and are thus kinda pointless (and hard as hell!) to use properly...
A quick example is that one of the most effective sleepypen poison mixes I've found includes a plain basic chem from the dispenser, and if you were stuck you could fill a pen with just that chem and probably do fairly well.
It's a combination of a lot of tiny changes that have made chemistry a lot less potent and a whole lot less interesting; if there's no way for us to fuck about with our knowledge, what's left to do?
a few things I can think of that'd be nice again:
- get pyrosium to PROPERLY heat reagents inside people, maybe with a high decay rate, at the moment it's super unreliable I've found
- stabiliser should stabilise a hell of a lot more chems!!
- uh I dunno at the moment fuck I'll think of more
- maybe add some large beakers idk
please note: this is not to say chemistry is currently nerfed to shit oh god fix it fix it, it's just a big pile of tiny things that are "bleh" to make it a bit shitey at the moment. I know just from the notes on the big chemistry recipie post cogs made a while ago that there are lots of plans to rework chems so that's great
Weavel Wrote:- stabiliser should stabilise a hell of a lot more chems!!
Mind expounding on this a bit? I'm not the most chemistry-focused person, but I believe that every chemical Stabilizer used to work on it still works on. The only two chemicals I can think of that are unstable when created, and don't work with stabilizer are Pyrosium (Which would be silly, honestly, to require heat to activate a chemical whose entire purpose is to heat up) and Azide, which is intentional, and not at all hard to work around. I can't honestly think of a single other chemical which could use Stabilizer.
Actually pyrosium does still heat stuff properly from what I've seen, just for some reason it defaults the temperature of the beaker to 0 when mixed.
As for the other stuff, try some different chemical combinations, there is some crazy stuff that you can do + look at the shit faffotron has been up to and laugh.
I mean it should create a lot more stable versions of things that already exist
It could both create more actual chemicals
- stable foam, heat to expand
- stabliser + ingredients for crank heated, doesn't explode
- stabliser + medical chem mix, creates an the equivalent of that fallout chem that removes addictions temporarily what is that called shit
OR
it could completely neutralise any reactions when present
- stabliser, oxygen, silicon and water to a beaker, doesn't make space lube until the stabliser is removed
- stabliser + ~shiny new chem called neutraliser~; stabliser + ingredients for sarin, add neutraliser, removes stabliser without need for Chem Dispenser
just for the sake of being more interesting. Yeah it shouldn't work on azide of course, but 15 units of stabliser 30 units of pyrosium injected into a person would cause a delayed reaction as the stabliser exits quicker than the pyrosium does, for example; that opens up a whole new world of reactions!
And yes readster there is some crazy stuff you can do but we know it all now, really a lot of the experimental stuff is based on shit me or Phil do. I hate HATE how much that sounds like bragging but I've seen dudes spend rounds trying to recreate my old foam mixes, or find out how to make the fabled Bomb Monkey, and a lot of those neato things are based on ourselves or other similarly silly chemists breaking everything in a great ways
Captain_Bravo Wrote:Pyrosium is awesome for subtle, untraceable terrorism. Set up a couple dozen Azide bombs around the station inside glass bottles and enjoy the devastation.
I'm pretty sure you have never actually done this, because the one azide reagent that you *might* get from heating causes a different reaction than you would expect.
Readster Wrote:There are lots of cool things you can do [...] Sure you have to go out of your way for them, but if you can't be bothered with that then what's the point.
Telescience is cool every once in a while. But having chemicals as prize for a fetch quest does not make chemistry more fun.
I would like more reasons to experiment with chemicals, and find combinations or methods of delivery.
Right now there's very little reason to stick to chemistry once you have completed your recipe list.
Captain_Bravo Wrote:Pyrosium is awesome for subtle, untraceable terrorism. Set up a couple dozen Azide bombs around the station inside glass bottles and enjoy the devastation.
I'm pretty sure you have never actually done this, because the one azide reagent that you *might* get from heating causes a different reaction than you would expect.
Haha, I told you this. Azide has one use and one use only: blow up chemists. It is not a slave to man, and will not allow itself to be used as a weapon (unless you complete the fetch quest that means you can force it to).
Clarks Wrote:
Readster Wrote:There are lots of cool things you can do [...] Sure you have to go out of your way for them, but if you can't be bothered with that then what's the point.
Telescience is cool every once in a while. But having chemicals as prize for a fetch quest does not make chemistry more fun.
Contradicting yourself is very fun:
Clarks Wrote:Special note on sarin, which is being used a lot to take out traitors and wizards.
It should get the same change that black powder did, and require some reagent that can only be obteined outside of chemistry; not something impossible, but time consuming.
Clarks Wrote:I would like more reasons to experiment with chemicals, and find combinations or methods of delivery.
Right now there's very little reason to stick to chemistry once you have completed your recipe list.
Style points. Boom. There's your reason.
Also, completed your recipe list? Do you know boosters, werewolf serum and initropidril? If so, hot damn, that's amazing, if not, join the hunt.
Learn the mechanics of stuff like foam or newsmoke, calibrate penmixes that can kill someone dead in five different ways.
There is LOTS to do in chemistry already, just because you can't muster the effort to go do something for the experience of it doesn't mean it can't be done by more devoted chemnerds than yourself.
It's not like you're incapable of science (see your chlorine, fluorine, carbon, phlogiston pills for an example).
Dude, get a grip. Me, isaac, damian and dave were doing chemmurder by the heaps while you were still toying with napalm.
There even used to be two ways to explode azide on command, but then some changes happened, and they couldn't be performed.
Fetchquest doesn't mean going to hydro to get X, it means bothering with telesci to get spider eggs.
Initro, serum and all the super complex recipes add nothing to chemistry. They are a fun puzzle, but solving incredibly hard recipes is not what I like about chemistry (in fact, the new medicines are a step in the right direction).
Chemistry should become more flexible, have less hard recipes and more mechanics.
Wow, I'm feeling a lot of arrogance radiating off of you.
Clarks Wrote:Telescience is cool every once in a while. But having chemicals as prize for a fetch quest does not make chemistry more fun.
Oh you mean that single chemical that does this that does nothing other than make you an antagonist. Yeah this is a huge problem with chemistry please fix.
Clarks Wrote:Right now there's very little reason to stick to chemistry once you have completed your recipe list.
There's very little reason to stick to anything once you have X. That's why you don't see pro burns in the engine as much and why QM's don't experiment with buying and selling. Hell, this is why nobody goes into toxins anymore.
Clarks Wrote:Dude, get a grip. Me, isaac, damian and dave were doing chemmurder by the heaps while you were still toying with napalm.
So modest
Also so ironic as I've been working with SpyGuy recently and we have been having all kinds of fun experimenting with chemistry while you've been sat here complaining.
I don't delve into chemistry, it's something I've never really bothered with because patience and all that. But ever since Cog's spilled the beans on chem's, I've started experimenting.
I gotta agree with Clarks on this, there needs to be more reactions with various chemicals, both negative and positive. I'd love to see more backfires in chemistry, I'd love to see types of reactions that you know took effort to tweak rather than "oh, look, black smoke+napalm foam again horray"
The smoke change was kinda disappointing I guess, before the change smoke or foam had actual advantages/disadvantages depending on the situation, now foam is almost always the better choice.
I still find a ton of stuff to experiment with or silly things to do, especially since my 'list' (ugh) was filled up several months ago. e.g.
I wonder how chemicals x and y would react together? Wow I wonder if I can make a foam that is entirely non lethal but also debilitating as heck, Wow i wonder what this foam would be like, etc etc.
Clarks Wrote:Dude, get a grip. Me, isaac, damian and dave were doing chemmurder by the heaps while you were still toying with napalm.
So modest
Also so ironic as I've been working with SpyGuy recently and we have been having all kinds of fun experimenting with chemistry while you've been sat here complaining.
please try and avoid a bitchy whiny I-am-a-better-chemist-competition because repeatedly saying "oh well WE can find things to do" is not addressing any of the actual points or suggestions thanks
not that I'm defending clarks there but this is something that can stop right now
Nubcake Wrote:I wonder how chemicals x and y would react together? Wow I wonder if I can make a foam that is entirely non lethal but also debilitating as heck, Wow i wonder what this foam would be like, etc etc.
I love shit like that, one of my favourite recently was a grog-pepperoni-piss-mutagen foam that made you a sliding captain captain unknown swedish epileptic deafmute
shit like that is great fun, but to be honest it's just a lot of foam/smoke stuff and it's not really as expansive as it could be I think
Goonhub
