Nerf Radium

[Dr_Bee]

We've all been victim of it. some yahoo comes in a splashes a 100 unit beaker of radium on you. by the time you notice your poisoned you already have 20 rads in you. A base chemical from the dispenser really shouldnt be as powerful as it is. simply making it not penetrate skin would be a simple change but still keeping its effectiveness in smokes and foams. no base element should be as powerful as radium is right now. mixes should be the go to for chemical murder, not filling 5 beakers with a base element and going to town.

[lifehole]

I'd say I agree, but I'd say there needs to be something as powerful as radium in terms of radioactivity that can be mixed at a dispenser. Nothing that gives as many +RAD's that is mixable at the chem dispenser as far as I know.

[Dr_Bee]

I'd say I agree, but I'd say there needs to be something as powerful as radium in terms of radioactivity that can be mixed at a dispenser. Nothing that gives as many +RAD's that is mixable at the chem dispenser as far as I know.

that's what Im going for. at the moment a person can fill a bunch of beakers, empty them out on people, and then run back and fill them again very quickly. med-bay has limited supplies and it takes a large amount of them to counter 100 units of radium in someones bloodstream. having the power radium currently has locked behind a recipe of some kind would at least make creating it require some time, and be a little more obvious.

[Jerkface00]

My opinion on the current status of Radium: Fuck it.

As it is a base chem on it's own, it probably should have remained a "hey lets make the floor glow" gimmick subtance.

The radiation that gets ramped up to super-lethal levels with no efffort can pretty much only be countered by near-instant injection of anti-radiation chems, anti-burn chems, anti-tox chems, and brute chems is silly for being able to run up to a chem dispenser and spam out one base thing.

Hell, radium right now is probably about as lethal as sarin if not more so due to the likelihood of getting turned fat and dropping all your stuff or some other horrible mutation like blindness (Blindness,for any otherwise unaware, mind you is a death sentence if no one is immediately helping you).

A lethal chemical that does radiation damage is cool and makes sense considering the large swaths of chems available and the medications to fight it. But having it be as simple as gaining access and clicking one chem without any knowledge of chemistry (or at least the wiki) is silly when compared to every other dangerous chem.

Suggested solutions:
1) reduce radium's lethality - preferably back to joke-levels
2) create or change a space-chem (that may or man not include radium in it's creation) that does what radium does now.

[BaneOfGiygas]

Hell, uranium is much more difficult to find (and you can't even make it at all) than radium and yet it's significantly LESS dangerous than radium. The only thing that irradiates you more than radium is polonium, which is strictly poison-bottle exclusive.

[Random Asshole]

While I don't personally see why 'it's a basic dispenser chem instead of a compound' is a factor (CLF3 takes, what, 10 seconds to whip up and kills much faster), I do agree that radium is currently unbalanced, mainly because once you have 50 or 100 units of it in your system potassium iodide can't keep up with it. Frankly, nerfing radium doesn't fix the problem unless all radioactive chems become poison-bottle only. I think a superior solution is to provide better options to TREAT radiation poisoning on the station. Here are some ideas:

1) Make potassium iodide much better at purging radiation
1b) possibly have it heal small amounts of tox (and burn?) damage while you are irradiated?

2) Have med vendors carry one or two doses of pentetic acid, for heavy radiation poisoning - I only suggest this because this way p. acid would at least see SOME use

3) Make pentetic acid slightly less ridiculously hard to make, like closer to synthflesh. I mean, c'mon, it's significantly harder to make then SARIN is/was.

4) Possibly create a middle-tier radiation treatment chem between pi and p. acid, either have it be easy to whip up in chem but otherwise unavailable, or in med vendors but otherwise hard to make.

Thoughts?

[Marquesas]

I will apply 5u of hitler (INGEST) to this whenever I get around to sitting down in front of a code.

[lifehole]

While I don't personally see why 'it's a basic dispenser chem instead of a compound' is a factor (CLF3 takes, what, 10 seconds to whip up and kills much faster), I do agree that radium is currently unbalanced, mainly because once you have 50 or 100 units of it in your system potassium iodide can't keep up with it. Frankly, nerfing radium doesn't fix the problem unless all radioactive chems become poison-bottle only. I think a superior solution is to provide better options to TREAT radiation poisoning on the station. Here are some ideas:

1) Make potassium iodide much better at purging radiation
1b) possibly have it heal small amounts of tox (and burn?) damage while you are irradiated?

2) Have med vendors carry one or two doses of pentetic acid, for heavy radiation poisoning - I only suggest this because this way p. acid would at least see SOME use

3) Make pentetic acid slightly less ridiculously hard to make, like closer to synthflesh. I mean, c'mon, it's significantly harder to make then SARIN is/was.

4) Possibly create a middle-tier radiation treatment chem between pi and p. acid, either have it be easy to whip up in chem but otherwise unavailable, or in med vendors but otherwise hard to make.

Thoughts?

I agree, either make the ability to cure it more prevalent, or just make radium +1 RAD so it's less effective and requires less treatment to cure. But I think in general treating radiation should be easier now that radiation is so prevalent both in chemicals and genetics.

[Random Asshole]

After looking up what potassium iodide does on the wiki, it DEFINITELY needs a boost - I'd say either -2 RAD guaranteed or 75% chance of -3 or -4.

I think +2 RAD for radium would be a better number, that way it's still dangerous (like mercury), but potassium iodide can counteract it and it isn't deadlier then the compound it's a part of (unstable mutagen). +1 would also probably work, but that MAY be swinging the pendulum too far in the other direction.

[FloozyBarge]

Yes Marq please don't nerf this into uselessness thank you.

[Grayshift]

A thought: Cap the maximum amount of rads radium can inflict. That is, it can push you up to 10 rads but won't go higher. Just lowering the amount of rads it inflicts per cycle would work too, but the primary nastiness of radium is that by the time you realize you're poisoned and dying the rads have scaled to the point where you die rapidly, and lowering the rate at which it reaches that point is less helpful. Keeping radium alone from triggering the nastiest of rad effects would limit its effectiveness. Plus it can take quite a while to purge a 100u splash from someone's system.

Most of the other suggested solutions have other consequences, primarily to polonium and the radbow. Those should still be deadly; making pentetic or potassium iodide, or other anti-rad chems better/easier would nerf those as well.

[Marquesas]

Yes Marq please don't nerf this into uselessness thank you.

I reserve the right to make a straight-outta-the-dispenser chem non-lethal on TOUCH, thank you very much >

[Amuys]

RIP Assistant radbow. The fun days of throwing glasses full of radium are over

[Dr_Bee]

RIP Assistant radbow. The fun days of throwing glasses full of radium are over

If marq is making it no longer a touch chem you can still use it as a very potent poison in smokes with a simple beaker assembly, or if you are a traitor you can still fill a sleepypen with it and cause chaos.

[atomic1fire]

If you want an assistant sleepy pen, scalpels are relatively easy to grab from medbay.

http://wiki.ss13.co/Construction#Poisoned_Scalpel

On that note I managed to set up the instructions for dipped scalpels on the construction page.

Don't overdo stabbing people with clf3, radium or alcohol. Blood is messy.