Facility items 002 - chemicals [WIP]

[Aenye]

Adding some basic chemicals for the facilities and few assorted recipes. Including the powerful ANFO charge used in mining.

Also adds a stackable_resources.json for storing (potentially) all the stackables that are used for crafting and not for shooting - will trim down the melee.json and ammo.json a bit if allowed to.

Tested everything and stuff works quite nicely. The explosion of the ANFO charge is deadly if you muck about instead of getting out of the (relatively big) blast radius. Pretty happy with the results. As usual, any and all comments / suggestions are well-appreciated !

[Aenye]

Black gunpowder could be used as ammo for antique firearms, but this might not be as simple as I would want it to be.

Update: Added to flintlock ammo recipe.

[Mshock777]

Can you please edit powder to spawn in plastic bags, or in container you feel right.

[Aenye]

Done.

Question: Can a tool/weapon have two types of ammo ? (AFAIK there's no such infrastructure, but does the c# code allow only one, or could I maybe weasel it in ?)

[Barhandar]

Eugh, detailed chemicals. I rather prefer abstracted 'this is oxidizer, this is acid, this is base, this is salt, GO' system.

[EpicOrange]

Yeah, I'd prefer not having 10 types of bleaches and all sorts of acids to sort.

[Rivet-the-Zombie]

I rather prefer abstracted 'this is oxidizer, this is acid, this is base, this is salt, GO' system.

Finding that balance is difficult, but yeah, I tend to agree.

[KA101]

Yeah, those of us without chemistry knowledge kinda need to be able to access the game. Sorry, Aenye.

KA101 has never had a chemistry lab in his life. Biology, sure, but no appreciable chem.

[Robik81]

It would be great stuff for a chemistry mod though.

[KA101]

True.

[Aenye]

Thanks for your input - it's good to know which aspects to develop more and which less, much as Rivet said.

That said, I'd leave the ANFO item (with a recipe of ammonia + concentrated acid + gasoline) and the ANFO charge - so as to have two more explosives, while the more in-depth stuff would be moved to a mod (how to do that properly ?).

[KA101]

Mods generally have the content/recipes/etc in a separate folder. Take a look at the existing mods (Icecoon's weapons have been checked up recently); that's probably the way to go.

[Snaaty]

Personally, I would appreciate advanced chemicals in C:DDA. Those that are proposed are not too advanced, imho. As long as there are a few sentences on the use of the chemical in the description I think it's mainline-worthy. Of course we don't have to go through all of the periodic table, though.

There are other parts of the game that are way more obscure (at least for me), like creating your own bullets, or some of the crafting with plants and natural stuff. (Some of that might be due to me not knowing the names, but still...)

[Aenye]

Will add my ideas as a mod and hopefully it will be deemed worthy of being assimilated into the mainline :3

[KA101]

Here's hoping for a good balance between realism and playability. (It's got to be understandable to folks without a chemistry background.)

I'm not sure if we support quality checking for components but if we do or that can be added, the acid, base, salt, oxidizer system may be the way to go.

[kevingranade]

Trying to clarify, I'm not too worried about the chemicals having technical
names, but I am concerned with ending up with dozens of chemicals. On a
related note thoug, I'd guess that boiling it down to a manageable number
of chemicals would be simpler if the names are kept generic.

[Robik81]

We have generic acid, maybe adding generic hydroxide would help to enrich chemical system?

[Aenye]

Well, I was planning to add what you see in the stackable items (somehow git doesn't allow me to delete the whole file), as well as some most common industrial/household chemicals. The idea was to make a few stages of chemicals:
1 - most basic chemicals = raw materials for more advanced stuff and secondary components (some 10 entries here, to supplement the existing items (lead/gold/silver/bismuth/ammonia/bleach/vinegar/...)).
2 - secondary, advanced stuff = components for making various devices / explosives / etc (next 10 entries here).
3 - end items = items/tools/explosives using the stage 1 and stage 2 chemicals (at most 30 entries here, but a lot of recipes could be remade to reflect the new system if necessary). Renewable heat packs (sodium acetate, anyone ?), flash powders, smokescreens, thermites (for welding) and thermates (for cutting through metal/reinf glass doors/walls without a jackhammer), plant killers, rocket fuel, cold packs, baking powder (for cakes and impromtu noisemakers) and some more stuff.

So, pretty much with 20 new chemicals we get 30 new tools and explosives. While these could have technical names, they all have "normal world" equivalents, as we use them in our everyday lives (well, not rocket fuel, but its components we do have in first aid kits).

[kevingranade]

After giving it more thought, I'm not totally sure what I'm objecting to
with having a lot of chemicals. It basically adds a bigger collection
game, which is something we could use.
It boils down to having a large number of different chemicals for you to
collect, so if you want to go the chemistry route, you just collect all the
chemicals you find, and then as you learn recipes you make what you need
(and if that includes smokebombs and flashbangs, it's definitely worth
doing), and possibly end up going on collecting runs for the specific
chemicals you're using a lot of.
Due to the way the crafting menu works, it's just a matter of stocking your
lab and seeing what you can and can't make with your given
tools/components, the names don't matter much.

... I just thought of a cool feature, if you're in the crafting menu with a
recipe highlighted, hit a button for "add to shopping list", it prompts for
a number and determines how many of the ingredients you need to make that
many (using the batch crafting code), and adds it to a list you can
reference and check off. You should also be able to add/remove any items
you're aware of to the list manually.

[KA101]

My objection to Lots of Chems is the same as the issue with guns and their ammo. We have a fair amount of guns that use Similar But Not Interchangeable ammo, so folks who aren't familiar see a gobbledygook number string. Folks get a handle on it over time, but it makes the game look more intimidating to newcomers.

To that end, household chemicals should stay easily identifiable, and more arcane ones should probably get a solid description of what it is and its general role. Your current descriptions are pretty good for that. I'm not thrilled at chemicals being listed by formula, as that adds complexity for folks and creates two standards. Current chemicals are listed by name.

[Aenye]

No problem - the household ones can have most ordinary names, while the more advanced ones will get longer descriptions. That and having the less ubiquitous stuff be found in places like chem labs, while others would go for houses/basements/schools/etc. That said, one could even add the "pyrotechnics basement" to the existing "druggie" and "gun freak" basements. That or filling the foger's basement (as speculated about on the forums) with some specific chemicals...

Will work on the stuff, then. Also, how can I delete the stackable_resources.json file, I've added in the wrong folder (should be in .../json/items/ rather than in .../json/ ) ?

[kevingranade]

Deleting a file is actually a bit tricky with git, the easiest thing is
probably to make a new branch and copy all your changes except the one that
added it with 'git cherry-pick' or by manually merging in the changes if
they're mingled. Other than that I'd suggest search stack exchange for
"delete a file from git", I know I've used that as a reference before.

[Zireael07]

Deleting a file from git is pretty easy in a git graphical client, such as SourceTree.