Chemistry, more like ChemFactory

[oranges]

So no doubt you've been seeing the changes Time Green has been making around adding plumbing, in various forms.

Well, I think this can slot nicely into one of the jobs in the game and make it a more tactile in depth system, and that's chemistry.

What exists right now
Plumbing ducts
Chem synthsizers

What would need to be added (on Time-Green's roadmap)
filter (chems go in, and they go out in either of the other 3 directions depending on the settings. Can wait till it has a certain amount of reagents before it starts filtering)
splitter (kind of like the filter, but can be set to like for every 10 reagents, send 3 away to another pipe)
disposer (just deletes/destroys/annihilates the reagents)
reaction chamber (pretty much just a holding tank, but it can have special katalyst supplied without it leaving the chamber)
pill press (takes one input and produces a pill when enough reagents are present)

Then we need to move chemistry to somewhere on station with enough space to put together the relevant factories, but imagine if you could build actual chemistry processing pipelines and do all sorts of cool layouts (utilising the multiple layers and colours available in the plumbing ducts) to get very compact or high through put factories for generating chems.

To be clear, long term, this would replace the existing synthesizer and so, people would need to adjust to this new method, but what do people think about this as an idea?

Note: I still kind of need to think about how we deal with the space since it would likely need quite a bit more room than the current chem lab.

[actioninja]

Move it to science, there's a big unused lab on every station that could be expanded.

[Kryson]

Instead of having simple filters we could have distillation columns that separate by boiling point, chromatography columns that separate by polarity and ion exchange resin columns that separate based on charge.

Now that would be awesome.

[zxaber]

I think it's a lot cooler of an idea than the current chem system.

That being said, I don't know if it's really necessary for a whole room-scale pipeworks lab; it doesn't really make sense unless we expect chem to be producing barrels of the same thing, and it's not very realistic. Instead, I think the same idea ought to be implemented into the gui of a single machine (ChemLab?). The user could pop in perhaps one or several beakers, which are tide to a grid for input/output, and connects them together using tubing. Something similar to the pipe hacking minigame of bioshock. Add in the ability to set in multi-tile objects such as distillation columns, mixers, and so forth.

I threw together a concept picture. I know the tubes don't really align to grid perfectly, but I chose an "inline" beaker sprite poorly. Ideally, the tubes would be basic grid objects, rotatable and interchangeable with other shapes.

Spoiler:

Depicted is a process of heating two reagents together, and then siphoning off what the result is. Beakers 1 and 3 (in the red and green slots, respectively) are used as input, and the valves are enabled. Beaker 2 (blue) is an output and has a valve that is still off. Yellow is unused (but available). The arrows on the far right of the controls indicate if the machine pulls from a beaker, or adds to it. The beaker in the grid is "untouchable", in the idea that the user cannot just pull it out. Perhaps a "clear board" button would be necessary, but that would simply dump all reagents in the grid out the window (or down the sewer system). Ideally, in-grid beakers could be added and moved as needed, tubes could run from one in-grid beaker to another, fire elements and mixers and other such devices could be added as needed.

[Time-Green]

I'd like to add that factories can be very simple or very complicated. Purposes could be to just produce healing chems and supply them to special sleepers or chem fridges in medbay. Or drugs factories. Either way it's a pretty open system, they could make plasma generators, infinite smokers, corgi factories or other retarted stuff that people will definitely make up.

For space, it's possible to give it an area on the maint z-level if we ever get to that. If plumbing is done, and I still feel motivated, I might cut that knot.

[Recurracy]

Sounds a lot more engaging than current chem, I just hope it'll still allow dedicated chemists to produce various medicines/drugs/whatnot without having to reconfigure the entire system because a botanist quickly wanted a couple bottles of mutagen while you were working on synthflesh, to name an example.
I always did imagine the chemlab to be like a simplified chemistry lab like you'd see in a movie; large, round beakers all over the place with various tubes going in and out of them, smoke everywhere, a couple burners here and there... Basically, chemistry as imagined by someone with a basic knowledge of chemistry without going too deep into the theory behind it.

Maybe this could tie into the botany stuff you mentioned earlier. Although I'm still a little opposed to turning the hydroponics bay into a laboratory of sorts. I hope the DNA manipulator remains, so botanists can still fuck around with plant genes to their heart's content, but actually processing the plants should be done in this chemistry lab you're thinking of, in my opinion. The botanists should be the suppliers for primarily the chef and bartender.

[Mickyan]

If you can come up with a system for chemistry to distribute chems around the station using pipes you won't have to try and cram all new machinery in the current chemistry department and can future proof for when/if you want to merge chemistry and botany

So essentially you can put the actual chemistry lab anywhere on the map and turn current chemistry into a staging area where medical doctors can dispense and organize chems (with a mineral silo-like system maybe?)

[JJRcop]

Most of the components could be a fourth of a tile big rather than taking up the whole tile, and you place it on a corner. That would reduce the size constraints. The pipe system would have to be updated to be placed on corners.

[oranges]

Most of the components could be a fourth of a tile big rather than taking up the whole tile, and you place it on a corner. That would reduce the size constraints. The pipe system would have to be updated to be placed on corners.

The other approach is to go for some kind of miniaturization scheme where you click on a special table and it gives you a camera view on a whole seperate Z level, where you can build plumbing items and lay them out to your hearts content (esssentially representing the minature version of that table)

allow techwebs to make the tables internal spaces bigger and you've got yourself the beginnings of a neat progression mechanic.

[John_Gobbel]

I really like the idea of having a mini-version but the idea of mass producing hellfoam and pumping it through the distro is also fascinating to me. However, making chemistry more complex and harder to legitimately learn while simultaneously making medical more reliant on chems may not be a good idea. If the system is intuitive and not hard to set up for the basic chems that need to exist on the station, I think it could be a great addition.

[zxaber]

If we went with the idea I posted (having a machine with a grid interface to play pipe dream), we could have the ability to swap out setups. Like the frame just pops out with all the tubing and beakers and other hardware attached, allowing chemists to build the setup for a chem, and then swap it out and store it for later if they need to make more of that chem.

Point I'm getting at is that we could have the "basic chem" setups already existing, perhaps not perfectly optimized, so that if nothing else chem can pump out enough to keep medical functional, if not optimal.

[Mickyan]

Is it even feasible on a technical level, having a separate z-level for every instance of the mixing machine or whatever

[Kryson]

I will add boiling points to all reagents if this is becoming reality so we can have distillation stages.

If all my suggestions were implemented both cyanide and heparin would have the polar and acidic characteristics but could be separated by distillation because cyanide would have a boiling point of 299 K while heparin would have a boiling point of INFINITY (it is a polymer).

[Hierophant]

Similarly to Toxins having an near-ready setup to be able to put out a lot of simple gases like hot plasma or tritium quickly (but isn't as flexible for producing exotic gases as Atmospherics access to the main gas supply is), this ChemFactory stuff should have a similar variety vs quantity tradeoff as a separate department from Chemistry and ideally it'll be in Science.

Whereas the Chemistry dispenser is very flexible and allows you to produce small quantities of a very large range of compounds, the ChemFactory stuff would be be optimised for only a few compounds at a time, and switching requires time invested to repipe.

This means that antags who use the ChemFactory to mass produce hellfoam can be extremely harmful if they get their factory running, but it should be transparent enough that the RD can easily check on what your factory is setup to produce (which is similar dynamic as the CMO or the AI checking up on Virology also).

[Ty the Smonk]

Move it to science, there's a big unused lab on every station that could be expanded.

While moving it to science would make sense, medical would have no reason to exist at that point.

[The Respected Man]

I played on paradise station for a while, they added a chem station for science and the result was that science was the go-to department to be an antag. Bombs, chems to give you your anti-stun needs, guns via research, robotics. There was no reason to not be an antag as a scientist.
I didn't mind though because i could meta-trust medical personnel since they were never antags.

I guarantee that moving chemistry to science is a bad idea when it comes to balancing the strengths of the differing departments.

edit: i personally believe chemistry should be tied to botany in not only location but in making chems.
It would be neat to see that many of the healing chems be changed to require an ingredient that you can only find in herbs or other plants. This'll definitely be controversial but i believe that this is a good change

[Qustinnus]

@oranges if I add sources of chems such as underground reservoirs and new plants, do you think that would work well with this PR?

[halitosisman]

Sounds like you want to turn chemistry into engineering's job.

If you're gonna turn chem into something involving large pipe networks, you may want to consider some QoL improvements to existing pipe construction mechanics, because building anything large and rewarding under your system will take longer than most rounds.

[oranges]

this uses plumbing pipes, which are a hell of a lot easier to place than atmos ones

[Naloac]

With the post on mining being reworked wouldnt it be a good idea to have a job dedicated to finding rarer and harder chemicals for the station to use? Have this job look for lavaland geysers that spit out these chemicals. then someone on station does some pipe work to combine and create needed chemicals to transport them around the station? Probably have them start with basic stuff to make low tier healing chemicals, but if the want the better stuff they need to work for it?
Ive seen people having fun doing something exactly the same as atmos trying to build stuff to farm up BZ, it would probably cater to these types of players. So basically mining but with chemicals then have a chemistry job to actually put it together. meaning if someone wants to mess with the station they could possibly remove the geysars for the healing chemicals or something similar.

[Anonmare]

I'd prefer to see a proof of concept first before adding a bunch of features, otherwise it's a waste if the system isn't well-received.

[oranges]

I think it's a lot cooler of an idea than the current chem system.

That being said, I don't know if it's really necessary for a whole room-scale pipeworks lab; it doesn't really make sense unless we expect chem to be producing barrels of the same thing, and it's not very realistic. Instead, I think the same idea ought to be implemented into the gui of a single machine (ChemLab?). The user could pop in perhaps one or several beakers, which are tide to a grid for input/output, and connects them together using tubing. Something similar to the pipe hacking minigame of bioshock. Add in the ability to set in multi-tile objects such as distillation columns, mixers, and so forth.

I threw together a concept picture. I know the tubes don't really align to grid perfectly, but I chose an "inline" beaker sprite poorly. Ideally, the tubes would be basic grid objects, rotatable and interchangeable with other shapes.

Spoiler:

chem_concept.png

Depicted is a process of heating two reagents together, and then siphoning off what the result is. Beakers 1 and 3 (in the red and green slots, respectively) are used as input, and the valves are enabled. Beaker 2 (blue) is an output and has a valve that is still off. Yellow is unused (but available). The arrows on the far right of the controls indicate if the machine pulls from a beaker, or adds to it. The beaker in the grid is "untouchable", in the idea that the user cannot just pull it out. Perhaps a "clear board" button would be necessary, but that would simply dump all reagents in the grid out the window (or down the sewer system). Ideally, in-grid beakers could be added and moved as needed, tubes could run from one in-grid beaker to another, fire elements and mixers and other such devices could be added as needed.

The difference is time greens stuff exists and your stuff is just an idea

[oranges]

Is it even feasible on a technical level, having a separate z-level for every instance of the mixing machine or whatever

Quite feasible, but you don't need an entire z level, they're not going to need quite that much room.

of course, I'd prefer it to be "on station" but we'll need to see how complex the setups end up being.

[Isy232]

I like the concept of making a meth factory.

I also think this willl be good as no more spamming buttons to make enough synthflesh to revive people.

I do think it would be best as an addition, not a replacement for current chemistry.

Possibly chemfactory could be both in science and medical like genetics?

[KoTioN]

It mostly sounds like mining & smelting system, not like a chemical one. How many pills are needed to overdose a crew? We need a real factory for that?
In the case of mass and complex production, large, cranky and slow-in-build construction, it like something about advanced building/stock parts and money making, not like small-time process for human-doze bunch of pills.
Engineers can do their engineering stuff all round long, but medics need their medical stuff before people died. It's mustn't be life-keeping core thing.

If you want to make things complicated, you must make them better or give them some visible advantage over the usual paths. Cut good working things just because they are “too simple” and you want to more routine for long rounds, is wrong tactic.

[Time-Green]

It mostly sounds like mining & smelting system, not like a chemical one. How many pills are needed to overdose a crew? We need a real factory for that?
In the case of mass and complex production, large, cranky and slow-in-build construction, it like something about advanced building/stock parts and money making, not like small-time process for human-doze bunch of pills.
Engineers can do their engineering stuff all round long, but medics need their medical stuff before people died. It's mustn't be life-keeping core thing.

If you want to make things complicated, you must make them better or give them some visible advantage over the usual paths. Cut good working things just because they are “too simple” and you want to more routine for long rounds, is wrong tactic.

Adding stuff for cargo to sell is part of the plan. I also plan to add a few more machines that need a constant stream of reagents, but those are very up in the air.

The mass pill production can be for some hard-to-get healing chems. It's completely possible to make a synthflesh factory without any outside intervention, altough it'd need to add a patch press or something aswell.

Also there's alot of stupid stuff people can come up with and create. There's alot of creative freedom and flavor to add to a round, mainly crank-zombie epidemics

[KoTioN]

Are we talking about babylonian construction for the end of the round (like artillery or genebank) or about new huge difficulty for the routine procedure for medical chemestry?
A statement about the potential replacement of the basic synthesizer with a construction simulator is very worring. I don't like to see standard chemistry as the atmos or some kinds of advansed power engines. Yes, I like to build large-scale utopias in my free time too, but in start-middle roundtime I work for the survival of the station and I prefer it to be possible for any [skelet] crew with any skill level. I would like the simple and convenient prof's ways to be kept, and will needed only chem dispenser if the antags flood the station, and don't build the SpaceChem+ simulator for pills when aliens swarm around.

Adding stuff for cargo to sell is part of the plan. I also plan to add a few more machines that need a constant stream of reagents, but those are very up in the air.

The mass pill production can be for some hard-to-get healing chems. It's completely possible to make a synthflesh factory without any outside intervention, altough it'd need to add a patch press or something aswell.

Also there's alot of stupid stuff people can come up with and create. There's alot of creative freedom and flavor to add to a round, mainly crank-zombie epidemics

Can botany be automated as part of that factory as a full production cycle without any human presence? Like some expensive difficult built component that resumes the same process for one plant.
Or, by analogy, repeat this for slimes, clones, minerals (or some kind of lava melt from the depths?), bartender's drinks? At the entrance are pipes with water or something and a really huge amount of energy, in middle some kind of professional stuff that does cyclically only one thing, and stream of what we did usualy at the output.

[adamkad1]

So when will we be able to make the game play itself after a few minutes of set-up?

[oranges]

never, because you'll never have enough equipment/space to set up every run you need, so you'll need to be reconfiguring stuff in resposne to station events

[adamkad1]

never, because you'll never have enough equipment/space to set up every run you need, so you'll need to be reconfiguring stuff in resposne to station events

But the factory must grow!

[TrumpetPlaya]

will we be able to order more chem stuff from cargo?

[Chynya]

Any change that improves gameplay of chemist is a good change. Right now, if I become chemist, I either wait around for people to ask for things, or making dope ass grenade, and both of them get boring really quickly. I would love to see more engaging chemistry to be implemented.

[Reeeee]

Fuck yes, Factorio in SS13.
Or however you wanna frame it.

This idea is hella based just from the starting post and keeps getting better.
Proceed to do so.

I mean I would rather chem dispensors remain too if at all possible, or something you can rely on to get the job done simply and reliably and then move on to making this as endgame process for chem-men to sell barrels of Meth to centcomm instead of "I made methbomb and I want valids".

Chemists will literally kill you for leaving the station then, leading to hilarity.
"BUT MY METH! RECALL!"
If they even notice the shuttle.

Maps have to be fudged but maint has room for this on every map, specifically to fit more stuff, right?
Meta has abandoned office and mechbay right next to med storage (unused), Delta is literally two stations, maint and the part normies use (ready made big rooms for it) and even Box has a huge nothing below medbay, (why is it there if not to expand into) so, It'll fit just fine on maps actually being played.

Just add it now, even if it's broke itself but doesn't affect other things, it can just be ignored until it is up to spec and gets playtesting at the same time. It can literally just be as many placeholders you want and shit not working right since it can be a separate thing being tested for feedback and nobody is affected by it unless they really hate any change ever.
MergeWhenMergeWhenMergeWhenMergeWhenMergeWhenMergeWhenMergeWhenMergeWhenMergeWhenMergeWhenMergeWhen

[Critawakets]

Maybe nerf the chem dispenser by making some chemicals only able to be produced in the Chemfactory.

[Sandshark808]

If chem is removed it will disable a whole shitload of departments. If this PR is pushed through can we at least have a Botany Dispenser (like in the plantperson ship) for Botany, and a single dispenser for medical to do meds?

[Time-Green]

I’m planning to just turn chemistry into an apothecary for medical doctors, so MD’s can work on smaller chems they need themselves. Chemists will still have their own office in medbay, but a larger site somewhere else for making big factories for making bulk of powerful chems, or drugs.

[Time-Green]

Plumbing is up!
https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/46759

[Sandshark808]

With the new position of chem, you could pump beepsky smashes straight into the maint bar.

[HiKewne]

Main concerns:
(1)
More often than not, chemistry ends up making more than the crew will ever consume or need, because chemistry doesn't always makes things, and the crew doesn't always checks if they did anything (because most of the time, they don't).
Which means that by adding a way to mass producing even more chems, you only end up with new variations of this problem: If the massproduction is too easy, they'll just skip it for something harder, and if its too hard, they'll simply skip it for something easier they (the chemists) want to make. Because people are incredibly lazy or dickheads and the CMO can't be overseeing them every 10 seconds.
This is mostly a problem with the community and not with the system per se, but I think its still something that we need to keep in mind.

(2)
If plumbing gets implemented in this way, I think that Chemistry should have more responsabilities that go in accord with their new capabilities. Things that only chemistry can do, things that only they must do , in such a way that chemistry getting something really basic done, like actually needed materials (ie: plastic), should be as natural as the engineers setting up the SM. Otherwise you'll be having the current state of chem but on steroids, and that always ends bad for everyone.

Adding stuff for cargo to sell is part of the plan. I also plan to add a few more machines that need a constant stream of reagents, but those are very up in the air.

Yes, this is the kind of thing I'm referring to. I'd love to see that.

3

@oranges if I add sources of chems such as underground reservoirs and new plants, do you think that would work well with this PR?

Well, I mean, you need to have one of those, or both, but its important that those are clear. My main concern on this when it comes to plants is the maturation time and production time, since, without being able to get mutagen from the chem dispensers anymore, mutating plants in botany will take way longer than it usually would, and if mutation becomes a must for basic reagent production (i.e having to mutate pumpkins into blumkins with left-4-zed just to get chlorine so you can make phenol) it'll hamper the ability to freely produce/change the "chemfactory" output.

I don't think I have anything that really bothers me other than those.

Details:
Chem container:
These and reaction chambers aren't the same. I really don't know how in-depth this system might want to go, but IRL reaction chambers emit heat, have byproducts, need catalizers, etc, so it would kinda limit design in that sense.
Also, having the same container, both for storage and for reaction is both annoying, confusing and might even lead to some big fuck ups if, say, by mistake, you accidentally redirect the water to the potassium container.

THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS

Instead of having simple filters we could have distillation columns that separate by boiling point, chromatography columns that separate by polarity and ion exchange resin columns that separate based on charge.

Imagine doing actual chemistry. Fuck, I'd love this so much.

So in general I love this idea, and it leaves so much room for improvements over the current state of chem, so much coworking with other departments (like botany, who, from my point of view, suffers from not having a real job), and the base mechanic seems a lot of fun. It'll need to be added along with more and harder chems that justify a bigger setup, and more different setups according to needs/demand/desire of the station/heads/chemist.
Also, when it comes to space I insist that maybe, you're on the right track by thinking about fusing chem and hydro. In most maps hydro has a lot of extra space that you can create by moving trays around, and is usually connected to maintenances which have even more redundant space, so I can really see a more cramped hydro with less tables nobody uses and with vending machines outside in exchange for a chem factory in the front.




Lastly, please make reagents read in both mols and units to ease the proportion of reagents that turn into gasses when sprayed, thrown, etc.

I will add boiling points to all reagents if this is becoming reality so we can have distillation stages.

If all my suggestions were implemented both cyanide and heparin would have the polar and acidic characteristics but could be separated by distillation because cyanide would have a boiling point of 299 K while heparin would have a boiling point of INFINITY (it is a polymer).

[/quote]
Ffffuck yeah

[Sandshark808]

What we really need is the ability for chems to actually "begome gaz xDDDD" and be filterable by atmos. Imagine being able to collect healing chem vapors to release stationwide, or make trapped oxygen tanks filled with chloral hydrate.

[HiKewne]

What we really need is the ability for chems to actually "begome gaz xDDDD" and be filterable by atmos. Imagine being able to collect healing chem vapors to release stationwide, or make trapped oxygen tanks filled with chloral hydrate.

Probably atmos wouldn't be able to do that unless only one chem becomes gaseous because they simply aren't equipped with that kind of thing

Chemical reactors, on the other hand...

[oranges]

/me dusts off gloves

[Reeeee]

durr, one neat addition would be a "buffer" thingeramajigger.

Either i'm tragically misunderstanding the system or it would be actually required. Stuff goes in, only one kind of stuff is allowed out. I seem to be bleeding stuff out of all kinds of holes since none of it sticks around long enough to synthesize into that other stuff i actually want.
Wat.

it's neat and cool but still kinda in it's baby shoes and am terrible with it. Still, Buffer.

[Anonmare]

That's what the reaction chamber is for. You program it to only accept specific amounts of reagent and dispense it along the output when it has the specified amounts. You can use a filter to filter what'd you want from the output and send the unwanted residue into the machine that destroys chem. You can even use a splitter to isolate a specific amount of the desired amount if reagent and loop it back around to come back when it's the right amount