Odor and smelling (This thread stinks!)

[Frank_Stein]

Was thinking about Spaceman senses and realized smell is under utilized. I think smell could add a lot flavor and spice up a few existing jobs and mechanics.

The way I envision smelling working is like this:

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-Most organic things would emit an odor
-A sniff emote would be created that lets you smell the air when your hands are empty, or what you are holding when you have an item
-Detected smells show up in flavor text, with a description of said smell. Font color and style matching the severity of the smell
-Odors would have three levels of strength

• Weak - Needs special equipment or abilities to detect
  
• Mild - Can only be detected by manually sniffing
  
• Strong - Will be detected automatically
  

-Odors would have 6 levels of reaction

• Strongly negative - Causes severe reaction (Vomiting, stumbling, feinting)
  
• Mildly negative - Causes a unpleasant reaction (Gagging, vision blur, stamina loss rate increase)
  
• Neutral - No effect
  
• Mildly positive - Causes a pleasant reaction (Smile, Stamina regain rate increase)
  
• Strongly positive- Causes a beneficial reaction (Health regeneration, Harmful chem deplete rate increase) 
  
• Mix - Multiple effects (Positive reactions, but negative consequences and vice versa)
  

-Odors would have several degrees of potency that effect the range in which it's detected

•  Small - Effects the immediate tile the object is on
  
• Medium - The smell extends in a 3x3 radius
  
• Large - The smell extends in a 4x4 radius
  
• Lingering - The smell remains on tiles it's effected until it's cleaned or neutralized
  
• Pungent - The smell cannot be overpowered, and will remain detectable even if a stronger smell is present
  

-A weak odor can be overpowered by a mild one, and a mild one by a strong one. You'll almost always only notice the strongest scent
-Crewmen would have a weak, unique smell ID similar to fingerprints. This isn't noticeable to the average person, but a forensic scanner, animal, or someone with a smell enhancing mutation could pick it up.
-Chems would have different scents, similar to their appearance colors. While some would be similar, a suavy person could detect traces of poison in food or drink by sniffing it
-Likewise, some chems could have negative reactions if smelled. Think huffing bleach

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So now that mechanics of smell are covered, here's some fun stuff that this could bring

1. A bunch of new items based around creating, detecting, and getting rid of smells
   
2. Security tracking people based on their smell ID
   
3. People masking their smell ID with more powerful smells, like cigarettes or cologne
   
4. Security tracking people based on if they smoke or wear cologne
   
5. Scratch and sniff cards
   
6. People sniffing markers
   
7. Dead bodies leaving a Strong Negative smell, meaning cleaning them up or preserving them would be needed more
   
8. Various forms of "aromatherapy" i.e. people hunting down and creating positive reaction smells
   
9. The Chef's food being a source of good smells
   
10. The Chef's food being a source of bad smells
    
11. People coming out of trash cans with a lingering bad smell, meaning they need to go shower to get rid of it
    
12. Some atmospherics stuff can take advantage of this
    
13. People smelling farts
    
14. People passing out from smelling a particularly bad fart
    
15. Sniffing up lines of coke
    

[NateTheSquid]

i love this. especially the security implications.

*sniff "... that hooligan was just here! The farts still smell warm!"

[Crystalwarrior]

I actually enjoy this a fuckload. I think this would also fix a very big issue of hygiene the station suffers from and make janitors even more important.
Give Janitors air fresheners to mask strong smells! (not Very Strong ones though)

[HydroFloric]

http://futurama.wikia.com/wiki/Smell-O-Scope

[LuigiThirty]

I love this. We need to draft a coder.

[medsal15]

fainting*

Aside of that, yes. Let me smell one of these radioactive plants.

[Frank_Stein]

fainting*

Aside of that, yes. Let me smell one of these radioactive plants.

Thank you. I knew there was something wrong about that but I couldn't place my finger on it because I was like "Nope, this is spelled right"

[Nnystyxx]

we've had sight, sound, kinda touch, and taste (when it bothers to proc on really good/shitty food)
we need some smell

i want stink bombs

edit: a really powerful, awful smell should (infrequently) emit huge angry popups like when you get drugged really heavily on psychoactives
"HOLY FUCK WHAT AN AWFUL SMELL!!"

[Frank_Stein]

Couple of item ideas and tweaks around this concept:

New Items

• Cologne/perfume vending machines. Located in bathrooms. Put a few credits in, pick a scent, and get misted for a strong, mildly positive, medium sized scent
  
• Expensive cologne/perfumes. Purchasable from merchants and discoverable in crates. Generally more positive effects than the cheaper kind, sometimes harder to detect, sometimes greater
  
• Scented candles. Wider range than perfumes
  
• Febreeze like chem. Neutralizes odors.
  
• Air fresheners. Contains the above chem. Will dispense spurts of it at regular intervals for a consistent neutral smell across the station
  
• Artificial nose of some sorts, worn on the mask slot. Enhances your ability to detect the weaker scents while boosting the range of scents x3
  
• Enhanced smell mutation. Does the same as the mask 
  
• Rare truffles. Mushrooms that grow underneath floor tiles. Can be sniffed out by animals and people with boosted smelling
  
• Security Bloodhound. A sleepy, old, and slow dog with a smell detection range boosted x6. Can track a certain scent given to them, but is easily distracted by certain foods, affection from crewmen, naps, and the need to pee
  

Item Tweaks

• Gas masks would block all odor effects. 
  
• Other masks would mute them to being closer to neutral
  
• Certain chems gain different smell negative reactions. Severe ones could lead to tox damage, milder ones getting a little woozy and high
  
• Other chems get positive reactions. Food related ones like Beff or sugar can do things like boost the healing you get from eating
  
• Certain items and chems now leave a  neutral, but distinct smell on you. Cigarettes, weed, vomit, fresh blood, gunpowder, compost, oil, cleaners, medicines, etc. You might even be able to guess where people have been recently by walking up and sniffing them
  
• Farts would have smells that vary in potency, strength, and effects based on foods eaten
  

[NateTheSquid]

why is the dog under 'items'

good ideas all around

[Calebc789]

Yeah, this needs to be added.

[Nnystyxx]

good idea and good post frank_stein
always love more fun doodads

edit: i hope 'axle grease' and 'shoe polish' are possible smells, then i can make my spaceman's description canon
a hacked perfume vendor should give you shitty/weird colognes like "eau de bubs" or "clown sweat"

i also think it'd be hilarious if an ai or crewman vented a room into space to get rid of a bad smell, and the sheer potential of people picking up smells from where they've been/what they've done lends a lot of little strategy and nuance to both RP and non-RP interaction (although, smelling blood on a guy could throw some traitors off, but that'd probably require an uncomfortable level of closeness)

[Cyfarfod]

good idea and good post frank_stein
always love more fun doodads

edit: i hope 'axle grease' and 'shoe polish' are possible smells, then i can make my spaceman's description canon
a hacked perfume vendor should give you shitty/weird colognes like "eau de bubs" or "clown sweat"

i also think it'd be hilarious if an ai or crewman vented a room into space to get rid of a bad smell, and the sheer potential of people picking up smells from where they've been/what they've done lends a lot of little strategy and nuance to both RP and non-RP interaction (although, smelling blood on a guy could throw some traitors off, but that'd probably require an uncomfortable level of closeness)

Holy shit, an automated version of the "Space Station Namer" list would be GREAT at generating pretentious fucking scent names.

Bub's Asteroid Nosferatu ftw.

[BBEG]

Imagine getting stuck in a hallway with either the chef or the clown

[Nnystyxx]

Also I just realized, this means we can make cluwnes smell so horrible it specifically causes distress

EDIT: The "aromatherapy" parts would fit really nicely in the spa/sauna areas too, it'd be nice to treat people's diseases with nice smells (and maybe it'd work. . sometimes).
EDIT2: Sufficiently strong bad smells + enhanced smell should make it really, really distracting and intrusive, so people with weird nose mutations suffer when there is a deluge of fart