Chemistry the next Research Subject

[Heolo]

Having full access to all chemicals at shift start gives chemists too much power and makes it difficult for other players to compete in a fight. Chemists can quickly create powerful weapons and drugs that can be used to easily overpower other players, making it unfair. Especially since the introduction of ModSuits, or rather the removal of Hard Suits which was the best option to resist chemist darts. Limiting the amount of chemicals available to chemists at shift start would balance out the playing field and make the game more enjoyable for everyone. Just like every other department, this should be partially gated behind science research thus encouraging cross station cooperation. It could be easily linked to existing medical research or go wild with it and add a couple research nodes. As for which chems should be gated behind research nodes, certainly not a full half but 4-6 should be reasonable, thus adding a sense of progression.

[FantasticFwoosh]

This comes from a good place, but science shouldn't be gating anything but what is essentially better things anyway, the existing experimentation focus for basic tech nodes like botany (requiring rng to trigger a mutation, requiring a buttload of effort spent elsewhere) is what is really dragging the game down.

[The Wrench]

-1 from me boss. Hamstringing job content for the sake of “progression” isn’t the way to make things more fun. Ideally we should be moving away from depending on science for anything because it fundamentally sucks as a system.

total science department removal when?

[Vekter]

Absolutely not. I moved Genetics over to Science with the expectation that Medical would still have Chemistry. Moving that over leaves it with only Virology and gives Science way too much bloat.

If Chemistry has balance issues, we should be addressing them, not forcing the job into progression so we can ignore them.

[Pandarsenic]

Science already has too much arguably

[Armhulen]

Definitely no, but research requiring some chemicals from chemistry would be dope imo. I always liked the acid nonsense of really old RnD

[vect0r]

I don’t want to remove roundstart chems, but I would love *new* chems behind research.

[Vekter]

Yeah, I like the idea of maybe putting some late-game chems behind research, but a very small number.

[Nabski]

Late game chems are already supposed to be gated by requiring miners to actually do their job for silver and gold and plasma, and having to grind those bars which is a pain.

[oranges]

anything relying on material balance is not gated by anything

[vect0r]

anything relying on material balance is not gated by anything

Mechas?

[Cobby]

i think you hit the nail on the problem but im not sure i like the proposed solution.

Pharmacy has everything handed to them roundstart, and the only limiting factor is the presence of the chem machines (dispenser being the worst offender) and the willingness to put up with making the chems (especially if theyre purity bound).

I would be ok with moving some chems out of the dispenser into materials that require outside assistance (Silver for instance), but those reagents would have to be valuable in some way.

"Ideally" Id like to see chemistry get goop from somewhere, and they have different tools to purify it to the reagents they desire then combine them as normal. A big problem with chem is that it is way too clean, you can get a precise 5u (1 with a master) from the jump. Theres certainly some love for that type of gameplay because everyone seems to share the passion when talking about ghetto chemistry.