ChemMaster: limit buffer, upgradable buffer size & maximum pill dosage #2551
Conversation
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bluespace pill when |
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I do wonder how this adds fun to medical gameplay? Seems to me like it just adds needless inventory management and busy work, but I could be wrong. |
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Once again, this is to fix a game design issue, not to "make medical more fun". This time though it DOES come with a little treat in the form of making larger pills with an upgraded tool. |
Game design should be about maximizing fun for players. This seems to me like you are fixing a problem that doesn't really exist. |
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It's back, that's crazy. Still not impressed. |
So you're saying that it's not a problem that you can just dump the entirety of a chem dispenser (the storage device) into the chemmaster (the tool) and then never use the chem dispenser again? |
Some people prefer to do it that way. Why is it an issue? Different playstyles that hurt no-one. |
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Bigger pills is probably super bad for balance |
Correct. If people want to play like that, it doesn't bother me directly. Sure, I think it is slightly lame, but as a player, I am actually quite unbothered by other people playing in a way that is fun for them. But if you want to make a pretty dumb change that actively makes an area of the game less fun for a large of group of players because it just doesn't sit right with you that other players are having fun in a way you don't understand, that is fine. Anyway, to ask my question again: |
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Too small of a starting buffer in my opinion. Round start, you have room for 5 additional jugs in the dispenser, if you keep all the elements in there. Now medical will have to wait for science to do their job before medical can do theirs, and spend money that medical doesn't make on upgrades that have been made necessary to properly do their job. Gatekeeping the ability for chemists to store their reagents without dealing with jug spam just seems to create more problems than it solves. What if science doesn't research bluespace storage? What if they take 3 hours to do it? Chemistry is reduced to 40 jugs in a locker, nothing changes, in fact it gets worse. Additionally, nobody will actually be able to make pills because they're still going to need to use their chemmaster for storage, because the dispenser is not a comparable storage alternative and you need a clean master to make pills. This is not good game design |
I could see 40u pills becoming something chemists could charge a fortune for... and it still takes longer to take effect than injecting two syringes into yourself. The linked PR is an XY problem that hilariously identifies the actual problem without actually addressing it; limiting the size of the pills didn't change the ease of quickly force-feeding people a batch of reagents. Force-feeding should have been made to take longer the larger the bite size of the item; it should take a significant amount of time to force someone to take a 40u pill compared to a 5u pill. |
Me other issue is a 1x1 40u storage that im not a fan of also, I think 30u max can still be ok to match chem bottles~ |
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this change still lacks the appropriate method of storage for me to support this, id rather have my "space magic" chemmaster than deal with a bunch of jugs and assuming that they even dip into the science type needed, assuming they even sell it to me after i beg on radio for it, lets assume those PREREQUISITES occur, i will still then (medical the notoriously low profit/no profit job) likely be told "10k per jug" or some such. it just feels like a net negative rather than a positive, i guess the pills are neat? |
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I urge anyone supporting this PR or any other chemaster nerfs to test it on a stasis and make a full batch of all the required chems with a base level chemaster. Of note, usually at least 100u of each chem is made, if not 200u. It seems everyone (who doesn't play medical) wants to go after the chemaster now. I think the move is swapping the roles of the two machines. Let the chemaster be storage and mixing. Let the dispenser be a DISPENSER. Let us put our finished chems in the dispenser to be dispensed. This even lines up perfectly because I think most chemists typically make about a jug or less of each chem, and it gives you a nice uncluttered storage to easily find all your finished chems. Let people put bottles in the dispenser to fill up their personal med stash. And then the dispenser autolabel PR becomes the best thing ever. |
Hi, I've done my share of Medical stationside. Do you know how easy it is to make nearly a full jug of most basic chems? You click three times in the chem dispenser, then you eject your large beaker and dump it into the jug. You put it back in and repeat. Bam, you have 180u of a basic chem in seconds. Use the chem dispenser to dispense and mix chems into a beaker. Use the chem master as a tool to create pills or remove impurities. |
Ok now do sigy or diphen |
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This is an extreme change to a fundamental system that calls for intense communication and cooperation between different departments to make practical. That feels contradictory to the way that systems are introduced to Frontier and it the type of thesis that generally is responded to with "submit this upstream". I think that if this is something that is seen as needed for Frontier that departs so completely from the norm that would be the appropriate thing to do. We don't even like to change chemical formulas from upstream for fear of confusing and alienating people. Submitting this change upstream may also provide additional feedback and ideas from other communities who have found ways to address the crippling issue of chemmaster buffer space. 40u pills seem very odd. Outside of spiking them into water to create large quantities of instant liquid reagent I'm not sure if I see the need and the issues associated with this could be considerable. Is this meant to be another way to juggle entities? Like some kind of intended strategy is printing out a bunch of pills so you don't have to just have jugs all over the floor? Is that the idea? The system of gatekeeping basic functionality behind science strikes me as exceptionally odd. These aren't fun upgrades. You're removing a machine's functionality and then doling out fractions of that functionality in exchange for increasingly inaccessible upgrades. Is science expected to focus on producing this stuff? Is this another one of those "trade for it we will take no further questions" player interaction sticks? The chem dispenser is a legacy device from a time when it provided unlimited chemicals. It was made into a soda machine in order to give it a modicum of functionality following the removal of its core identify. Pushing people to use a legacy machine over creating a novel solution seems very regressive. RMC created a reagent tank as I understand it. I think that we can do better. Frankly I'm not really sure what else needs to be said. The only benefit I've seen come from these attempts have been that it has finally brought together a number of people to review the git and to comment on PRs. In this case it has been to pretty overwhelmingly please no, and thank you. This PR adds a lot of clicks, a lot of juggling and a lot of management tasks to a job that is already a chore. In terms of player interaction and benefit to the server reagent management is somewhere between benign and beneficial. The bulk of this PR is built on the idea that there will be some kind of interest in clawing back a fraction of functionality that was removed for reasons that I'm not yet convinced are mechanically sound. I do not think that interest in that exercise has been expressed. |
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This feels like a change that was in no way needed. If it's 'throwing a bone' to chemists the cost of brutally curtailing their ability to manage large quantity of components for the more advanced chems that cryo requires in some cases, as having 100-200 units, 10-20% of your total storage base now, after making the many steps some require to get there to treat single serious cases, or some of the recovery bodies. This feels malicious and punitive without addition of any positive utility whatsoever, and attempting to pass off pills as a the reason feels disingenuous at best. |
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Fun change, changing 1000 units to 2000, still doesn't answer my question of "How does this improve gameplay" |
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i really think the biggest issue here is a lack of, "this is our thought process" and "here are our solutions or planned solutions to the issues you have brought up"
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The thought process is dead simple: "You should not be able to store an infinite amount of reagent inside of a tool. You especially should not have players intentionally removing all of the reagents from the designated storage for reagents and moving them all into the tool to store them." |
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Okay, but what is the thought process on improving the awful machine that is the "designated storage unit", locking usability behind science? And what's the thought process on introducing a change that would require the improvement without improving it first? These issues people have brought up with the change to, at least many peoples' perception, no reply.
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Several of us suggested capping it per chem, which solves the "unlimited" problem as well as the Omni farm problem. (but not really, I promise you will never stop the omni farmer) I think what dustylens said is accurate and something that is a "game design issue" requires a "game design solution" with further discussion and welcomed community feedback. Pushing PRs that the community seems to very much not want until one sticks isn't the answer here. |
The dreaded omni farm isn't impacted by these changes btw. They would just need to print pills. They wouldn't miss a beat! The difference is that they would be turning X plants into Y pills instead of storing reagent in the buffer. I don't know if that's desirable. I suspect it's not. This PR is about adding additional clicks to chemist gameplay. At the end of the day it basically boils down to "A process that takes 4 clicks should take 16". I'm going to edit out that last piece as I didn't find it that helpful to the PR at hand. |
Or, in a game built on one unrealistic thing after another for fun and entertainment, why not have a dedicated station that can manage things? We have bluespace things of other stripes, we have people walking around with heaps of rocks and ore on their hip and endless other examples of tossing high volume into dedicated tools for their job. The CM is exactly the tool for its job to manage and work chemicals, limited by the container you put into which already gave a utility upgrade path for getting a bluespace beaker. Re: Increased minimum to 2000, lowered the max possible. All the time that seems to be required with this to accomplish some of the more mundane things before is going to expand, and its going to lead to the increased amount of time a player is going to have to spend in their lab slapping jugs around to get anywhere. Not RP'ing, not buying things from people if that was ever the intent, it'll be more time doing the basic set up to get semi full jugs of the thing they were able to do with already a non trivial time investment. Removing what has been a basic function for no well articulated reason will come at the cost of people spending more time looking at the CM's screen to get back to where they were. |
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i would rather buff the chemical dispenser make it use charges to print chems and slowly recharge over time (infinity but over time slowly generating,upgrading increase recharge and max charges) , pills arent even used since the jug meta which you should know if you play the game actually so just giving them higher capacity wont do shit ( and i think 50u is stomache limit while drinking or eating so 30u pills actually you arent even able to take 2 at once, i rather would add the ability to select the stuff so you can make pills without having to empty the whole chemmaster but yea better invest your time into....whatever this is) honestly this is just a continue of the allready failed first attempt to fix something that isnt broken, boring trying to argumenting over and over just because a few people think they know whats the best and dictating how the game should be played |
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A lot of intensely hyperbolic and disengenous reasoning here. From a design perspective, the infinite storage is going away period. Whether we try to maintain the intended complexity simulated of 'mixing different chemicals' using multiple machines, or we just get rid of one of the two machines, or the sizes of buffers change to accomodate in one machine or the other, in the end the infinite storage is going away. I'd personally prefer the route where we involve science in a way that encourages cooperation between crews, meaning a machine that gets far better to use and beneficial after upgrading. Or we could just leave the chem master as it is for pills, add the reagant cap and then just nix the dispensor entirely and just do jug storage. |
Could I ask why? What is special about the Chem Masters buffer compared to say, being able to load an unlimited number of material sheets into a fabricator? I think the community doesn't understand why this change is seen as necessary hence the pushback. |
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Alright, what are the pros and cons of adding a cap on the chemmaster?
This is genuinely all arguments you can scrape off the feedback that are going for adding a cap, lets look at the cons:
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The only real benefit that I've seen mentioned thus far despite a lot of poking and prodding from the community is more involvement with science, though this is really just a forced interaction with science that is going to leave a bad taste in every medic's mouth. Gatekeeping technology that is necessary to do your job properly is not good game design. What if science just doesn't research civilian tech? What if they're charging too much for a bluespace jug because they know they're the only one with them and they know the three stasis' online all need several? What if it takes them several hours? Chemists just suffer in the meantime with no real alternative? This is going to lead to a lot more entities and even more clicks for chemists, again, with no benefit to them. There are so many medical crates with topicals that can heal almost any injury stashed around the map because 'what if there is no medical online.' Why is science different? Targeting a specific machine for it's infinite storage while leaving several others untouched that also have infinite storage is disingenuous at best, a straight up lie at worst. On top of this, the dispenser is simply NOT a viable storage alternative, even with the proposed changes. This PR causes way more problems for chemists than it solves for science, or anyone.
I believe if one were to try this PR out on a stasis they will quickly realize just how little storage 1000, even 2000u is for the chemmaster, especially once you start getting into cryo chems and advanced brutes/burns. You will also realize why the dispenser is not a comparable alternative: Chemistry needs a place you can store small amounts of precursors -- like the of 1u of sulfuric acid you need for robust harvest, 1u plasma for dex, or for recipes that aren't nicely ratio'd [do you really want us to be forced to discard stuff like that to save on room, just to have to make it again later?]. The dispenser is not a proper place for this, because it is meant for bulk storage, and only holds 25 jugs (that leaves room for 5 of your own jugs, if you leave all elements in) until scientists finish that tech tree, so we're potentially waiting on two tech trees to be finished before we can fully engage with chemistry. This sounds like really, really bad game design and a terrible waiting game for all of medical. Not to mention medical does not get paid enough (or often, at all) to buy any upgrades, and this would cause them to need several. The dispenser needs a lot more love to be in a spot where it actually can completely replace the chemmaster in terms of storage. 25 jugs by default is not enough (which amounts to only 5 of the most plentiful chems I can put into the dispenser), there's like 40+ reagents and precursors that will be in your chemmaster after you're done preparing the medical chems. |
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The flatpacker can hold unlimited stacks of every material, even ones that it never needs to use. Why is the chem master being targeted so much when it will severely affect QOL of chemists, when the flatpacker is the haul-literally-everything-to-the-cargo-pad-in-one-trip-box and no one cares? |
Flat packer/ lathe/ ore will also have the changes done to need you to empty them in some later update. |
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It is very disheartening to see STRONG community feedback on PRs with a lot of constructive criticism and valid more desirable alternatives given, just to be consistently given cop-out arguments like "that is LRP" or "skill issue" or "when you code it" or "you're being negative" or "this is hyperbolic and disingenuous feedback" |
| public ProtoId<MachinePartPrototype> PillDosageMachinePart = "Manipulator"; | ||
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| public uint MaxVolume; |
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Question (non-blocker): by storing the max volume here and on the solution, is there any risk of them divering? I.e., are there any places where we might forget to update one of them? Might it be possible to rely entirely on the solution max volume? Maybe that's not available everywhere we need it.
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"I think it's good gameplay to have an infinite capacity storage" isn't feedback, though. |
It's incredibly frustrating to see this even pop back up, it was clear people disliked it the first time it was here. |
This just proves the feedback isn't being read though, because we have suggested several alternatives that do not involve infinite storage that would be more far more desireable to medical gameplay. We are asking for a little more thought and open discourse be put into this and being told "your feedback sucks" which is really lame. Why not per-chem caps? This resolves the unlimited issue while still allowing chemists to use the machine in the way they are used to with reasonable quantities. The community seems to be fine with this option. They could still be upgradeable, if that's really important to you, as long as they start at reasonably usable values. |
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This is a difficult PR to comment on. It's certainly stirred up a lot of emotions, hasn't it? In general, infinite storage of any kind is not great game design. More specifically, we want to make a game where people are encouraged to get together and help each other improve. Cooperation and interaction are key to everything. That necessarily means not giving you every available tool from the get-go, and it means designing for tradeoffs. Infinite chem storage is unbeatable. You can't get better than infinite. Chems don't even react inside the chemmaster's buffer, so you've effectively got perfectly safe storage for anything you want, with easy buttons for dispensing said chems. Dump every jug into the chemmaster and the dispenser is effectively obsolete. Is this good design? I don't think so. I think it indicates the chemmaster is a bit too powerful. If it were up to me, I would probably have separate machines for dispensing + mixing, filtering and pill-making. But we're not there yet. C'est la vie. Limiting the chemmaster's buffer is not the be-all, end-all solution that will fix everything. Of course not. But it might encourage (or force, if you prefer that word) a slightly different playstyle. It may or may not improve things. We don't know yet. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, as the full saying goes! Your concerns are heard, but sometimes it's necessary to Just Do It and gather feedback after a while. I remember there was a similar storm of complaints when chem dispensers were made finite. How many still consider that to be a huge issue? I don't, for one. |
I can think of two reasons:
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I think a much healthier solution to this would be limiting how many unique reagents the chem master can store to something like 20-40 (there's around 25-40 relevant medical chems and precursors, not including elements, depending on how prepared you are). Alongside this introducing a per-reagent cap rather than a global cap. This would stop people from dumping the elements in the master while still allowing it to store small amounts of unique chemicals (mostly precursors and leftovers from bad ratios), something the chemical dispenser is very not good at. It still allows the dispenser to be used for bulk storage, and the master to be used for mixing, while not making chemists storage max with jugs on the floor to fit all their precursors and such into the buffer. |
How is the dispenser better? It is a chem master but missing most of the features. It is all but obsolete. There is even a ship that has a chem master but no dispenser. To make sigynate in the dispenser would require at least five beakers and a lot of small batch beaker juggling. |
The pudding smells like a septic tank, I'm having a hard time imagining it tasting any better. Cap capacities somewhere to prevent exploity stuff, sure, whatever. But adding round-start toil to an already round-start toil filled role, that is critical to everyone else in the round, doesn't improve the game. I believe you're all reading the feedback. I don't believe it's being meaningfully considered with regards to changes like this that prioritize nebulous ideals of good game design over what's actually fun for the people playing the game. |
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For the record I still consider the lack of a power-recharging infinite chem dispenser to be a problem, and the entire reason that the chem dispenser is currently unused. I'll go farther and say that the chem dispenser nerf is the only reason for this nerf, because its either do this to give it purpose or replace it entirely with a crate of chem jugs. |
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In the before times when chem dispensers were infinite and chemmasters had infinite storage, the purpose of the chem dispenser was to dispense chems and the purpose of the chemmaster was to prepare batches of medicine for pills. This design was clear and it functioned as designed. Later, chem dispenser was nerfed to be limited and the chemmaster was not. People stopped using the chem dispenser to dispense chems. People stopped using the chemmaster to prepare batches of medicine for pills. People used dispensers as a round start jug dispenser and the chemmaster as a infinichem coping mechanism. The design of both machines broke down. Adding a limit to the capacity of the chemmaster is just balancing the scales and fixing a design that was broken by a simple oversight of upstream devs. |
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@whatston3 I recommend avoiding weird volumes like in tier 2. Probably keep it in multiples of 3 for the capacity and multiples of 5 for pills. I think that it will be easier to remember pill volumes that way and the capacity will be more easy to optimize for batching. |
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Ok even after I requested the hyperbole and extreme language and toxicity to stop, it continues, so I have to lock this thread to contributors only. |
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Adding tags as we still need to finish some changes and work on this. |
About the PR
Supersedes #2523. Should only be merged given considerations to #2542, #2544, and #2549.
Adds a buffer limit to ChemMasters, and adds upgrade handling to the maximum volume and pill dosage limits of the machine. ChemMaster construction now uses manipulators and matter bins instead of capacitors - the tier of manipulators used affects the max pill dosage, and the tier of matter bins affects the overall storage capacity of the ChemMaster.
Tiers are as follows:
Tier 1: 2000u, 20u pills
Tier 2: 2250u, 22u pills
Tier 3: 2500u, 25u pills
Tier 4: 3000u, 30u pills
The maximum buffer volume is available at a glance in the buffer UI if it contains anything. The maximum pill dosage is not immediately visible, though both quantities are shown in the upgrade examine window (shift+click, check the up arrow).
Why / Balance
Separation of purposes versus the chem dispenser. The chem dispenser is intended for bulk chemical storage, and assuming all of the above PRs are merged as they are at time of writing, this gives you an upper bound of 40,000 units of chemicals in one machine, dispensable at the touch of your fingertips.
The ChemMaster's job should be the separation of chemicals and creation of pills. This PR throws a bone to chemists by allowing larger possible doses of chemicals through pills. It throws a bone to scientists wanting to interact with the rest of the server by incentivizing the purchase of upgrades.
How to test
Media
Delicious, dense soda pills.
A fully upgraded buffer - note the immediate "/3000" visible under the Buffer section of the window.
Requirements
Breaking changes
Changelog
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