GOONCHEM 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO

[DNS]

Let me clarify before you read any further, goonchem is a raw and clunky port, it is still tailored to goon specs where damage, crit, and medical is handled a LOT differently, so yes, it is not effective currently, but it is being tweaked. At the moment it is in a very shitty transitory period, which absolutely nobody understands that it has a TON of potential to change around the dynamic of chemistry and medical in the future. This port may not be taking it far into the right direction, but at least its facing the right direction.

Alright so it has come to my attention a shit ton of people dislike goonchem for whatever reason so I'm here to drop the nitty fucking gritty on all the shitty.

GOONCHEM: What is it?

"Goonchem" is the accepted term for the "goons" chemistry system that is a lot different from our old system, what some refer to as "star trek" chemistry.

GOONCHEM: Why is it?

"Goonchem" was added in to replace our old chemistry system, which was shallow, gave the very thin illusion of choice by having two- three chemicals with one superior, required very little if any effort to mass produce mega healing consequence free pills or medical supplies. By side effect, having goonchem added in changed the way our medical system worked/ will work, with addiction and overdose being two side effects to keeping the old medbay mentality of eating every pill in sight till you feel better, because you will get your -shit wrecked-.

This has the added effect of making medical doctors have somewhat of a purpose, instead of just letting people in to slap themselves with a bunch of instanthealing shit, people would actually have to let a doctor heal them or at least be more aware of what they do when they attempt to heal themselves. Rather than just being a useless white wearing assistant in your own job department where everybody did your job for you.

GOONCHEM: Why do people hate it?
There are a variety of reasons. Two of the most prominent that I've personally noticed are the removal of super mega instant healing, and the incredibly minor amount of effort chemistry has to actually put in to produce a majority of the new healing chems. There are also complaints of the meds just being outright shit or unusable, which, refer to the first statement of this post.

To cover the topic of instant healing, frankly, good riddance. Medical doctor was a complete fluff role with old chem, you would just stand there and people would flood in and take care of themselves by slapping their shit silly with bruise packs and taking showers in sticky white ointment. And god forbid you actually tried to -treat- someone. Many a times people would/will beat the shit out of a doctor trying to take a crit patient off their hands so they can treat them, or completely ignore a doctors attempts to heal them and just grab the nearest bruise pack. Not only that, there was always 1 clear choice in medication as to heal a certain damage type, there was the allusion of choice IE dexalin vs dexalin plus, but there was always a clear cut superior case.

With goonchem, there are a variety of different chems that are useful in many different medical/damage situations, such as syclic acid being useful in cases where you only had a minor scuffle and took a few punches, but stypic powder being useful for more severe brute damage, along with stypic powder having to be applied topically, since eating a stypic powder pill will kill your shit dead with toxins. This not only introduces alternative chemicals with uses dependent on severity, but different applications of said chemicals.

GOONCHEM: Why is it better?

As previously stated, it is putting the medical and chem system on the right track to improvement, giving players of the departments more depth, actual choice, variation in gameplay and an attempt at a real purpose for medical doctors. As also previously stated, it is a transitory port and it must be tweaked to /tg/ standards, at which point a bevy of other medical changes are planned that I will not be covering currently. So, while even I myself agree that -the current, raw, untweaked port is crappy-, I am incredibly excited for the future of medical and chemistry departments.

If you have any legitimate concerns or arguments about goonchem please feel free to post them.

[Snakebutt]

So, a thread about the merits of Goonchem, rather than bitching about it? Well, we've already broken it down and deconstructed why it's bad, let's build it the fuck up.

Yes, many of our chemcials heal too damn well, sleepers are chem dispensers, and kits are incredibly powerful. Too often, even when I try to treat people as a doctor, I feel utterly powerless as I open the door to bring in an injured person only to have the person dragging them pull them right to a sleeper and then cryo, punching me when I pull them out even if they're taking damage from ongoing poison in cryo, or cryo wasn't set up. Frankly, the fucking chef and bartender got more player interaction than doctors did.

At first, I was very optimistic about goonchem, as it provided new chemicals and opportunities. What we got was... less than stellar. Yes heals needed to be toned down, but not as hard as they were, there's a difference between instant healing, slow healing, and sitting with a thumb up my ass as I wait for saline to heal a stubbed toe. Many of the new chems were complex to a fault, having upwards of fifteen lines of code going into their effects.

So, how do we fix it? Well, first off, requiring a dozen assorted bottles of oil, diethylamine, acetone, phenol and salt cluttering up the workspace is just fucked, and makes learning new chemicals more painful than it needs to be, particularly when all these intermediate chemicals have no use other than to sit around the desk and get mixed constantly. The dispenser is supposed to do that for me if it's supposed to be used that much. Just counting through the meds, of 30 chemicals, 6 can be made without using another chemical and fucking with bottles and beakers and droppers and the chemmaster. Silver Sulfa, Synap, Styptic, Mannitol, Potassium Iodine and Salbutamol. One in 5 medicines can be made directly at the dispenser, while the miscellaneous reactions can almost entirely be made right from the dispenser, including a lot of deadly poisons. Why? Because fuck you.

Second, healing less is one thing. Having a chance to not heal at all is just wrong. Why would I bother using a chemical that might not even do anything, or takes an absurdly long time to have a small effect? Main offenders are Salicylic acid and Saline-glucose. Make medicine harder to make, or make it less effective. By doing both, you nerf it all the harder.

GIVE US SOME TIME TO ADJUST. Holy shit, this shouldn't even need to be explained. Don't dramatically overhaul an entire department in just a week, give us some time to learn the ins and outs, balance things out, let us get our feet wet before you kick the cinderblock off the pier.

Make patches stack. As is, a 50u patch of silver sulfa/styptic is on par with old bruisepacks/ointment. Disregarding the fact that it takes 50u to accomplish this, the fact that I can't stack them means that they eat up space for a small amount of heals. If I could still make a 100u beaker and make it into 5 20u patches in a stack, they heal less and go farther than spending all my time cranking out maxed patches, and make it actually possible to refill medkits, possibly with improved chem mixes, providing a benefit for the chemist to make a trip down to storage to 'improve' the kits for everyone. Or fill them with poison with the normal name, because lolantag le funny healgriff.

Remove complexity. I'm not saying make every chemical do just one thing, but having to remember the effect of each chem injected, patched and if it works in our out of crit, what the side effects are... it's a fucking lot to take in. Start off simple, then add stuff like overdose and application later, going back into the weaning us into the idea thing. If we start off with styptic being a decent replacement for bicard, people get in the habit of using it once bicard is pulled, then adding in overdose levels and side effects, people will already be acclimated and not bleat as loudly.

I'll probably be adding more later.

[Snakebutt]

4. 5 if you count the sleeper thread.

[DNS]

thanks for the input snakebutt instead of being a peanut.

[danno]

why did you make another thread for this you fucking goober
your opinion is not important enough to warrant its own thread
use the feedback thread