Thalpychem / fermichem / phchem feedback

[Intercept0r]

Changelog below.

add: Adds a new reaction mechanic that allows reaction to occur in an incremental fashion. This uses temperature to determine reaction rate and pH to determine purity. The hotter it is, the faster it reacts. Keeping your pH within the range (default 5-9) will keep it pure, with the further out you are affecting your purity. Reactions are also H+ consuming/producing and exo/endothermic.
add: Adds purity mechanics for reactions - if a purity extremely low at the end of a reaction then it will convert into viscous sludge or a failed chem. When a reagent is consumed; If a reagent is very impure it will inverse into another chem. This inversion will remove all of the original chem and take its place instead. If it's slightly impure then it will split into an impure chem with respect to purity. The ratio of original to impure is determined by the purity of the original when consumed.
add: Adds the following basic impure reagents to accommodate the changes above: Chemical isomers, Toxic sludge and Viscous sludge.
add: Acidic and basic buffers. These will self-consume when added to a reagent holder will other reagents in it, and alter the pH towards their respective extreme. Thereby altering the pH without affecting the volume.
adds; Optional catalysts - these reagents will speed up the reaction of a certain type. Presently Palladium synthate catalyst exists and works on medicine reagents only.
adds: Competitive reactions - Tempomyocin and Purity tester are reactions that compete based off temperature. Tempomyocin is a reagent that will instantly speed up a reaction based off its purity and the purity tester reagent will fizzle if the solution it is added to has anything impure in it.
add: Adds an overheat/impure mechanic during reactions - overheating your reaction past it's overheat point will reduce the yield of your product by 2% per tick, with some reactions having special explosions instead. If overly impure it will reduce the purity of all reagents present in the beaker.
add: 1 dropper and 1 bottle of acidic buffer (you can make this) to the chemist's locker. Gives chemists a starting dropper and random buffer. Added pH booklets to the chemists chemdrobe - these can tell you the pH of a beaker by ripping a sheet out of them and using it on a beaker or reagent holder
add: Adds a pH meter than can be researched and printed from the med lathe. When used on a reagent holder it will tell you a detailed breakdown of the reagents in the beaker, including pH, volume and purity. It will also detect ongoing reactions.
add: Adds pH to all reagents - the pH of a beaker/holder will be the sum of all reagents with respect to volume. pH is an abstracted potential of hydrogen that affects reactions.
tweak: heavily edited the chem heater into a reaction chamber, showing multiple details on a reaction, edited chem master and chem dispenser’s UI to show pH.
tweak: You can now use droppers and syringes directly on heaters to affect the beaker inside of it (provided there’s a beaker in there)
tweak: Tweaks most reagents to use a default handler. The ones omitted are ones that rely on being instant. This default has a minimum reaction temperature of 100, an optimal temperature of 500 and an overheat temperature of 900+. Their optimal pH range is 5-9; which will result in a purity 1 reagent when kept within this window. If the reaction is within a pH window of 1-4 or 9-13 the resulting purity will be dependent on the deviation from 5 or 9. <1 or >14 will create impure chems for every step. If your final purity on the end of a reaction is less than 0.15, then it will collapse into Viscous sludge. The reaction is mildly exothermic and H+ consuming.
tweak: tweaks chocolate milk, firefighting foam and hercuri reactions to work better with the new mechanics. These inherit the same pH windows as above but are cold reactions instead.
soundadd: added several sound effects for chemistry
imageadd: added melting beaker icons, pHbooklets and pHmeters
code: changed reagents code, created equilibrium.dm
refactor: refactored main chemistry mechanics to use reaction rates, pH and purity mechanics


Discuss.

[Intercept0r]

Mine is:

Speed:
* It slows chemistry down considerably, 2x - 3x.
* Fundamental ratios of chemistry - beakers, chem dispenser charging, effective drug amounts - have not been changed
* It introduces no mechanics to compensate for this slowdown.

Risk/reward:
* The penalty for non-interaction are weaker chems, or sludge
* The reward for interaction is it works as well as before
* There is no way to make a better chem. There is no "bonus" or interesting things happening when the system is mastered.
* With low risks and low rewards, the skill ceiling for PH is also very low
* Because of mild risk and reward, the margin of error is high. Because of that, there is no benefit from mastering the system and good enough is as good as it gets.

Complexity:
* Cobbychem introduced chemistry complexity by method of ingredient ratios and intermediate products. For example, an unupgraded chemical dispenser can only produce at minimum 45 units of phenol, assuming no leftovers.
* Thalpychem adds a perpendicular system that adds another dimension of complexity but doesn't simplify existing systems
* The depth of the system is greatly exaggerated. While internally complex, this does not translate to any emergent/interesting gameplay.
* Interaction with this system is optional for many recipes, making it conditionally self-obsoleting.

Design / impact:
* Reaction speeds needed to be kept fast enough not to discourage players but slow enough to allow interaction with the reaction as it goes on. The result is a middleground of boredom where the reaction is slow enough to evoke the same feeling of annoyance when you have to wait for the hourglass cursor to go away, but too fast to allow PH limits to be narrowed to something non-trivial and the system to realize it's potential.
* The system is toothless and while unwanted isomers from a failed reaction are probably accurate, smoke and fire is more fun and interesting.
* Makes the chemist spend even more time in the lab fiddling with the TGUI. This makes the buttons the chemist presses nicer, but adds even more ( fairly mindless - low skill ceiling ) button presses.
* Jobs can be rated by their "systems speed". Slimes are a slow system, bartending is a quick system and chemistry was somewhere in the middle. This shifts chemistry towards slow.

TLDR:

The current middleground is the worst.
Maintainers got enamored by technically competent code and assumed the design has to be leading somewhere sensible, but didn't bother to check. The single person who did have thoughts on the wider impact of this was Cobby and then it was as part of his larger vision of chemistry.

Chemistry sucks so bad I want to claw my eyes out now. There's always revert, but I see the potential for PH being fun if it gets teeth. That'll need changes in basic chemistry values (recipes, beaker sizes, medicine OD thresholds) to put some velocity back into chemistry.

[oranges]

that's so cool wow

[CDranzer]

It'll probably go through a few update cycles because that's how these things always go, but you are correct in recognizing that this is ostensibly a nerf. My main issue is a practical one - chems start reacting immediately, which means if you want good chems you have to either practice speedrun tactics in order to get the beaker into the reactor before your PH or Temp goes to shit, or you have to pre-cool everything and extend the prep time in the process. Maybe that's meant to be gameplay, but it feels more like struggling with a bad UI than a difficult challenge. I'd like to see the dispenser and the reactor merged, honestly. I think the main issue is basically as you said; everything got harder but nothing really got added.

[cacogen]

Good feedback, OP. Intelligent, informed, rational. Hopefully they're able to do something with it.

[Mothblocks]

The current middleground is the worst.
Maintainers got enamored by technically competent code and assumed the design has to be leading somewhere sensible, but didn't bother to check. The single person who did have thoughts on the wider impact of this was Cobby and then it was as part of his larger vision of chemistry.

You're completely wrong on this. The discussion happened in coding-general, where I spent the better part of a month being the contrarian to Rohesie on whether or not this is ultimately better for the game.

Ultimately, Fermi and Rohesie put enough serious work into a system they legitimately felt bettered the game that I didn't feel justified shitting on all that work (especially since Fermi has been extremely nice to me). I'm still about as skeptical, but after giving it more of a good chance, and seeing what Fermi has planned for the future (yes I "bothered to check", we've been talking in DM's ever since I made my opinion known for quite a while, and they have some cool stuff in the works) I don't think I made the wrong move.

[Mothblocks]

* Interaction with this system is optional for many recipes, making it conditionally self-obsoleting.

I don't understand what you mean by this at all. Being optional doesn't make it "conditionally self-obsoleting", it means it's optional. It's a tool for designers to use to create more interesting chemical recipes. That's like saying the chemical heater is "conditionally self-obsoleting" because a lot of reactions happen at room temperature.

[Intercept0r]

has planned for the future

cool stuff in the works

Whether thalpychem PR is better for the game is a separate question from whether it lays groundwork for potential future work that ultimately may be better for the game. I see the potential, same as you, and have said as much. But that potential is not an acceptable answer as to why this change, in an of itself, is beneficial to the game. This confirms what I've suspected - that the value of this change is seen by maintainers not by what it delivers today, but what it could be used to build tomorrow - a classic case of "it'll get worse before it gets better".

If that's the case, then good - we agree the PR in isolation sucks, chemistry is in flux, needs a fundamental rebalance and the next step is to figure out the scope of changes.

If you insist that this PR in isolation, as it is now, is good for the game and puts chemistry in the right place, (by extension, that thalpychem fallout is small and no major rebalancing is needed) you need to argument that without referencing this future potential.

Being optional doesn't make it "conditionally self-obsoleting", it means it's optional.

Simple chems where PH tweaking is not needed still take time reacting. There is nothing expected of the player during the react phase, there is nothing to do that can improve the outcome. You have to wait until the system does it's arbitrary thing. Waiting for the chem to react is not optional.

Chems that react at room temperature do not require an arbitrary step of putting them into a heater to react.

The difference is, heaters are either required or not used. Reaction times are either required or not required, but used always.

[Cobby]

I wasnt lucky enough to try it in TM fully cuz people who saw we were TMing it explicitly for maintainers to check out on live decided to vore the slots, and RNGesus was feeling particularly ill mannered towards me.

From the chem setups I have played post-merge (note i do plumbing most of the time) I havent felt like ive really touched the system. Maybe im poisoning people without knowing lol.

[ragevirus]

The tragedy of this post is that you're complaining to a community whose maintainer has openly expressed their desire to nerf chem for years.
No matter what you say, any criticism will fall on deaf ears. Like writing a thesis on the immorality of genocide and mailing it to Hitler.

[Thalpy]

Ah, Hello! I think I found this a bit late, but hopefully I can clear up a few things!

So, 2.4 just got merged, which is the first part of tweaking the recipes to fit the system - I've been trying to code as fast as I can, but I needed to get some of the other systems in place - the recipe lookup, and the tweaks to ghetto chem. Right after this I need to update the wiki a lot to match the changes so things might be up in the air until I’ve done that. I’ll try to address some of the issues raised in the forum with the benefit of 2.1- 2.4.

Speed:
While it does slow chemistry down, there’s a number of methods you can use to speed it up easily. I disagree with 2x -3x. When I had a speedrun race with another chemist (previous vs fermichem) to make 10:10 ox:sali pils. Under fermichem the decrease in speed was about 0.2x slower (I'm not even optimal here, you can definately shave off 10 or more seconds).
https://puu.sh/HkKOe.webm
* Optional catalysts (palladium synthate catalyst for all medicines) which I will be expanding upon which almost make the reactions instant. The trade off for which is using up 10u of beaker space.
* Burners - Crafted tabletop objects that can be lit to heat up beakers quickly, and using the right mix of chemicals lets you set the amount your reagents are heated up by - the downside to this is that there’s less feedback about what you’re heating (unless you craft a thermometer too), you’re using up some of your energy/reagents, and it takes up one of your small beakers. You can also cool reactions by burning Cyrostylane / Cryoxadone in the same burner (see the ghetto chem wiki for details on what reagents burn at the moment - I will be expanding on this).
* The reaction chamber doesn’t turn off when you remove a beaker anymore either, so hot swapping beakers in and out is encouraged.
* Tempomyocin will instantly speed up a reaction that you add it to (though the reaction at the moment is way too hard for what it is and will very likely change, I probably will reuse the reaction though!)

Risk/reward
C2 chems all have an element of risk reward to them, though their intended products are easy to make (intentfully, since these are supposed to introduce some of the mechanics), however, they have teeth if you want some of the inverse/impure effects.
In addition, all C2 chems outside of reactions are by default 75% purity - i.e. have the standard effects that they previously had. If you put in the effort to go to 100% purity, then you get on average a 33% increase to all of their beneficial effects (or a change in mechanics - such as multiver needing 2 additional medicines instead of 3 when 100% pure.) I plan to bring this sort of thing to all of the chems, where chemistry made reagents are always better than other sources. It’s not really my intent to nerf chemistry - so hopefully this reflects that.
On top of that, some of the inverse chems are really cool! (or at least I think so!) and I want to continue to be creative in the inverse chems, as apposed to having a chem that does a simple invert of what the base chem does (i.e. inverse salbutamol doing oxy damage is something I’d rather avoid doing) Unfortunately because I can’t code anything simple it takes a while to bugtest these things, but I have put a lot of work into making easily accessible debug tools and methods in case anyone else wants to help out! Here’s an example of inverse helbital:
https://puu.sh/HkKVY.mp4
C2 reactions generally aren’t too dangerous, I want to outright avoid killing chemists if they fail, but I do want to ramp up the danger from the precident set by C2 (Though the heartbeat explosion in penthrite is kinda dangerous) but here’s one of the fun effects when you try to make inverse helbital
https://puu.sh/HkKW9.mp4

Complexity:
You’re right that it’s optional and pointless for most of the reactions, I figured having a one size fits all would help players acclimate to the change, rather than suddenly dropping everything, as well as ensuring that the foundations were rock solid. I’m hoping to add new in reaction methods and features to some of the more involved reactions too. The suffocation C2 chems are an example of optional reagents which I hope to expand upon on the other reagents.
The adjacent completive is kind of intended for some of the easier reactions - I want new players to be able to make medicines fine, then grow into the other effects as they get a good handle on the basics.

Design / impact:
I think the whole it’s too slow thing has me confused - most of the reactions will react very quickly provided that you heat the thing up (the first webm kind of shows my expectations), and the idea is to set your temperature higher than where you’re aiming - to heat it up even faster. There are some reactions that I’m working on that will catch you if you “play it safe” by not aggressively heating against a reaction’s change.
The purity part is an attempt to displace the extra time with stronger results, so that the lower volume produced per second is displaced by the increased effective healing (or otherwise) per second.

In general
I (hope) a lot of the issues you have with the system are primarily because of the transitional aspect of the change. It sort of seems that way from my perspective. Let me know what you think of the burners, optional catalysts, and other changes too, though! I can definately confirm my intent to add teeth to these reactions, I really like the idea of skirting the line between catastropic failure and success. I can only write so much code (and subject the poor hardworking maintainers to so much too). Also a lot of the stuff I had coded I was atomised out because it was requested, and giant mammoth PRs are frowned upon, but all of my backlog is cleared up (once 2.3 is in) and I can start coding without dealing with my own code mass conflicting again.

Thank you for the feedback as well!!

It'll probably go through a few update cycles because that's how these things always go, but you are correct in recognizing that this is ostensibly a nerf. My main issue is a practical one - chems start reacting immediately, which means if you want good chems you have to either practice speedrun tactics in order to get the beaker into the reactor before your PH or Temp goes to shit, or you have to pre-cool everything and extend the prep time in the process. Maybe that's meant to be gameplay, but it feels more like struggling with a bad UI than a difficult challenge. I'd like to see the dispenser and the reactor merged, honestly. I think the main issue is basically as you said; everything got harder but nothing really got added.

One thing I am tempted to add is the ability to set dispenser temperatures but I'm worried it would undermine some of the reactions, and it also makes it harder for me to set pitfalls for some of the reactions.

The tragedy of this post is that you're complaining to a community whose maintainer has openly expressed their desire to nerf chem for years.
No matter what you say, any criticism will fall on deaf ears. Like writing a thesis on the immorality of genocide and mailing it to Hitler.

Well, that's not true! I really care about feedback and I appreciate it, infact the current implementation of fermichem has been shaped from the feedback given! I appreciate Intercept0r's comments because it highlights concerns I might've missed, and it makes me want to do my best on it so I can change their mind about it. I do have a bit of trouble managing hostile feedback though, and I can't say I've experienced anything in line with your maintainer sentiment either, they've been nice to me.

[Denton]

From my brief testing, the pH range and purity being obfuscated results in Chemistry being a pain in the ass, especially for new and casual/cross department Chem players. The purity tester only fizzling and not telling you the exact amount of impurity is especially bad in this regard.
I can't see much value to this system in its current state (yet), other than it being a learning cliff for new players and a big source of tedium for the rest.

[Thalpy]

From my brief testing, the pH range and purity being obfuscated results in Chemistry being a pain in the ass, especially for new and casual/cross department Chem players. The purity tester only fizzling and not telling you the exact amount of impurity is especially bad in this regard.
I can't see much value to this system in its current state (yet), other than it being a learning cliff for new players and a big source of tedium for the rest.

Hmm, I am leaning towards giving easier access to purity - I wanted to see how things would be with the value hidden, but I think it would be better to show people so they're inclined to attempt to make purer chemicals. I'm working on a HPLC which should help this issue, and I was originally going to make it research only, but instead I'll have the purity analysis available at round start. Though thanks for your feedback! I tend to prefer hhiding things to see if they have value rather than taking them away at a later date.

[Thalpy]

From my brief testing, the pH range and purity being obfuscated results in Chemistry being a pain in the ass, especially for new and casual/cross department Chem players. The purity tester only fizzling and not telling you the exact amount of impurity is especially bad in this regard.
I can't see much value to this system in its current state (yet), other than it being a learning cliff for new players and a big source of tedium for the rest.

Hmm, I am leaning towards giving easier access to purity - I wanted to see how things would be with the value hidden, but I think it would be better to show people so they're inclined to attempt to make purer chemicals. I'm working on a HPLC which should help this issue, and I was originally going to make it research only, but instead I'll have the purity analysis available at round start. Though thanks for your feedback! I tend to prefer hhiding things to see if they have value rather than taking them away at a later date.

For the pH obfuscation - the heater will tell you by default if you're out of range by the pH dial flashing, and the reaction lookup will tell you the ranges. Though I suppose I could make a graphical profile of that too.

[PwntQ]

Spoiler:

This is feedback on the changes to plumbing and the reaction chambers, specifically and only the inputs removal. Above is the setup required to make meth (chem acclimator and reaction chamber got blown by someone setting the temp high) with the new plumbing changes made on the March 3rd changelog. Not entirely sure if this is the right place or not for it but here it goes.

Taking away the ability to set the specific inputs to reaction chambers feels like needless complication to the already big setup that is plumbing. It doesn't make it any harder, just more tedious as you now have to add extra steps. It also forces you to use much more room to do a setup.

With how it was before, it was like a computer network and the reaction chambers were the switches. It allowed for nice, controlled, and precise chemical inputs and combinations.

With the new way it is, you have to make sure to separate duct systems or use the new chem filter. Then to ensure you're getting the correct amount out of a reaction chamber and down the line into another in the right ratio (important in any chem that has a precursor that is not 1:1 during creation) you need to use a splitter and a disposer. If you're unable to set up ratios right then you have to use the new automatic buffer. What was once one step has turned into 2-3 extra ones, each of which require more space and uses up Plumbing constructor ammo (granted all you have to do is scrounge up metal to refill it.) While I haven't played with the chem filter yet, to do a oxi/saly healing pill mix already took about half of the plumbing area before and I'd imagine it would take even more now. There is no functionality added that was not there or needed before with this change.

TLDR: This has, in my opinion, not introduced anything of value and only serves to add extra steps. I can find no pros to this change, only cons.

[Thalpy]

Spoiler:

This is feedback on the changes to plumbing and the reaction chambers, specifically and only the inputs removal. Above is the setup required to make meth (chem acclimator and reaction chamber got blown by someone setting the temp high) with the new plumbing changes made on the March 3rd changelog. Not entirely sure if this is the right place or not for it but here it goes.

Taking away the ability to set the specific inputs to reaction chambers feels like needless complication to the already big setup that is plumbing. It doesn't make it any harder, just more tedious as you now have to add extra steps. It also forces you to use much more room to do a setup.

With how it was before, it was like a computer network and the reaction chambers were the switches. It allowed for nice, controlled, and precise chemical inputs and combinations.

With the new way it is, you have to make sure to separate duct systems or use the new chem filter. Then to ensure you're getting the correct amount out of a reaction chamber and down the line into another in the right ratio (important in any chem that has a precursor that is not 1:1 during creation) you need to use a splitter and a disposer. If you're unable to set up ratios right then you have to use the new automatic buffer. What was once one step has turned into 2-3 extra ones, each of which require more space and uses up Plumbing constructor ammo (granted all you have to do is scrounge up metal to refill it.) While I haven't played with the chem filter yet, to do a oxi/saly healing pill mix already took about half of the plumbing area before and I'd imagine it would take even more now. There is no functionality added that was not there or needed before with this change.

TLDR: This has, in my opinion, not introduced anything of value and only serves to add extra steps. I can find no pros to this change, only cons.

Ah, I'm sorry that it's been bothersome for you! Unfortunately I haven't really touched plumbing other than a few things to make sure it would all work and adding the temperature gauge. You might want to send this to TimeGreen though, who is the coder on the plumbing side of things. From what I remember, I think it was in preparation for minichem, though I'm not completely sure on what minichem is.

[Farquaar]

I've played my share of chemist rounds recently, and after getting used to the system, I've found that I actually enjoy managing the pH of my solutions. It makes previously braindead easy medicines take a bit more thought, increasing the value of factory output of rare medicines.

I do think that plumbing needs some work. Making space for buffer hookups in reaction chambers has a multiplicative effect on the size of chem-factories for pH-dependent reaction. For instance, a synthflesh factory needs ~40 (8x7) tiles without pH. With buffer hookups, it can require ~90 (~9x10) tiles. As you can imagine, this places a huge limitation on the accomplishments a chemist can achieve in a single round. Either we need some substantial map editing to expand the chemfactory area, or the system used to deliver buffers to reaction chambers needs adjustment. Even a simple change like allowing one to swap the direction from which a reaction chamber receives acid/basic buffers would greatly reduce factory size-bloat.

Lastly, the reaction chamber seems to struggle with temperature-dependent reactions. It seems to treat the target temperature as optional. Many pH-sensitive reactions are also temperature-dependent (formaldehyde, cyanide come to mind), and reaction chambers as they currently function will ignore the necessary temperature and just eject the reagents so long as the target volume and pH have been met. Reaction chambers really should handle temperature in a similar way to acclimators.

[Thalpy]

I've played my share of chemist rounds recently, and after getting used to the system, I've found that I actually enjoy managing the pH of my solutions. It makes previously braindead easy medicines take a bit more thought, increasing the value of factory output of rare medicines.

I do think that plumbing needs some work. Making space for buffer hookups in reaction chambers has a multiplicative effect on the size of chem-factories for pH-dependent reaction. For instance, a synthflesh factory needs ~40 (8x7) tiles without pH. With buffer hookups, it can require ~90 (~9x10) tiles. As you can imagine, this places a huge limitation on the accomplishments a chemist can achieve in a single round. Either we need some substantial map editing to expand the chemfactory area, or the system used to deliver buffers to reaction chambers needs adjustment. Even a simple change like allowing one to swap the direction from which a reaction chamber receives acid/basic buffers would greatly reduce factory size-bloat.

Lastly, the reaction chamber seems to struggle with temperature-dependent reactions. It seems to treat the target temperature as optional. Many pH-sensitive reactions are also temperature-dependent (formaldehyde, cyanide come to mind), and reaction chambers as they currently function will ignore the necessary temperature and just eject the reagents so long as the target volume and pH have been met. Reaction chambers really should handle temperature in a similar way to acclimators.

I'm glad you enjoyed it! I haven't really touched plumbing aside from reaction chambers a little bit, but the temperature thing was me. I'll take a look at it. I am in the midding of adding a few more things to the system that will require me to comb over plumbing with more care so I'll make sure to check over the issues you've mentioned here while I'm there.