Mixing Hyper-Noblium is no longer required for T4 Lasers, and is now a way to get them for free instead.

[Iamgoofball]

new info as of 4/4/2022

According to a stat dump from oranges, the Quantum Electromagnetic Technology tech node which requires the 16 moles of hypernob to research has been researched only 84 times since 3/3/2022.

In the previous month, it had been unlocked 973 times.

About The Pull Request

The Hyper-Noblium Gas Shell experiment is now no longer required for Quad Ultra Micro Lasers, and now provides a 100% discount on the node if you do it.

Why It's Good For The Game

So, I've been telling players complaining about this for weeks to just learn how to mix gases, because toxins hasn't had anything for 20 years other than "make bomb".

I figured I'd put my money where my mouth is and try, as a brand new to atmos player, mix hypernob as a Research Director on a private server.

I failed all three attempts I made.

Attempt #1: "instructions scribbled on back of napkin"

I was told you mix 3 cans of oxygen and 1 can of plasma and light it on fire to get tritium.
This gave me 2 to 3 moles of it, which isn't enough to mix Hyper-nob; you need 5 moles minimum for 1 mole of hyper-nob.
I forgot to take pictures.

Attempt #2: Guided by Blase

I was walked through using the ordnance computer, and shown the recipe for hyper-nob that way, walking through the many UI issues with the computer.
I was instructed to make a bunch of alterations to set up a gas mixer and such, and properly pump in a 97:3 ratio of oxygen:plasma for tritium. This made enugh tritium.
When I attempted to put it in the can, the can began making acid noises and then exploded, fucking up my workplace irreparably without an atmos tech coming by and fixing it.

Failure. Did as told by an expert, forgot to upgrade the can which isn't communicated to players in any sane way, can exploded from only a few moles of tritium.

Attempt #3: Guided by Lak

I was walked through the same setup as before, but with additional scrubbers and loading exactly 3 cans in of oxygen and cycling through them, along with how to upgrade my canister through an unintuitive deconstruct/reconstruct method.
After running through the previous setup, after some fiddling with the freezers, we finally produced hyper-nob!

An entire 2.6 moles of it.
You need 16 moles for the research.
We burned through 3 of our 6 cans of oxygen in storage.

In order to get all 16 moles, according to my math we'd need about 18-19 cans of oxygen. This would require stealing from atmos/stealing directly from the distro.
I'm deeming it a failure because it would require theft to accomplish, and some advanced thinking which is beyond what we expect from both new players approaching a job and "someone walking in to do station infrastructure support", which Toxins now classifies as since it's required for important parts now.

The verdict:

This isn't doable by a newbie, and certainly isn't doable for actual brand new players, let alone people who are just expected to do the bare minimum.

The default Supermatter setup on the station will run the engine with no fiddling without blowing up, because people need power to do their job as it sucks to work without power.

The default setup for a map should be the bare minimum needed to do the job for everyone else to benefit. Now that mixing Hyper-Noblium is expected as the bare minimum for scientists/RDs because the better parts are locked behind it, the default setup is no longer enough. Toxins is no longer a job you can fuck around with, it's directly required for station progression now.

This is not good game design. I understand why they wanted there to be interdepartmental interaction on this one, but this just sticks everyone else's enjoyment behind a very specific few science players with the right mentality to actually get this done, and nobody is doing this experiment because it's such a pain in the ass.

Is there a way around this? Maybe. But this isn't great right now, and this absolutely can't be something the station needs for progression, because frankly it's not getting done despite the protests of the atmos players in our community who insist they personally do it so therefore everyone else does it in their mind because they lack the ability to place themselves in someone else's shoes who doesn't understand atmos as well as they do.

I've been telling players for weeks to just learn how to mix hypernob.

I gave it the honest college try three times in a row, from starting off from scratch to multiple attempts with atmos professionals giving me a step-by-step on how to do it successfully, and had absolutely no luck reaching that goal of 16 moles of Hyper-Nob for the research to complete.

This should be done by atmos techs, not scientists. They have the time, the knowhow, and the inclination to do it. Not Science players.

Because everyone wants stock parts upgrades, when this doesn't get done, people get hostile and angry at Scientists and RDs who haven't done it. This makes it really unfun to be a Scientist or RD who can't wrap their head around toxins, that job part you could previously ignore because it was only used for making griefing tools as a non-antag and game winning tools as an antag.

Problem points I discovered

problem point 1:
toxins players should not have to learn the air alarm interface to do their job
problem point 2:
the pipes going in/out should be red/blue to match our color coding elsewhere, ie. plumbing
problem point 3:
cant do shit w/o t3 lasers
problem point 5: (i forgot 4)
metastation's toxins is broken, the freezers don't work because there's nothing in waste roundstart, cryogenics has the same problem and so does other maps
problem 7:
no visual way to tell what layer a pipe is on on machinery pipe inputs
problem point 8:
make the toxins computer window bigger by default
problem point 9:
different maps might change the toxins todo list
problem point 10:
the ordnance menu has a search bar instead of buttons or a dropdown to select reactions; it should have both if no reactions are selected
problem point 11:
typing in hypernob doesn't give me the hypernob reaction, add tags to this
problem point 12:
the recipe for making tritium is not listed when you type tritium; it's hidden under "plasma combustion"
problem point 14:
tritium should be 3 oxygen to 1 plasma ratio, 97% is such a weird arbitrary number
problem point 15:
"It's relationship with oxygen also determines reaction speed" on the ordnance computer UI doesn't actually explain what this means, had to ask someone for this
problem point 16:
the default pipe layout on the map has to be adjusted for the required job of making tritium, which is expected of all toxins players now due to the experisci changes
the default map layouts should allow the bare minimum of the job to be done; it can be improved by players looking to improve the setup but the bare minimum should work, ala the default Supermatter piping
problem point 17:
RPD starts at the wrong color, should start at red/blue/black/brown
problem point 19:
label what direction node 1/2 are relative to the current facing of the mixer, this is a problem with plumbing machinery too
problem 20:
have to modify the internals of the reaction chamber to do my job to bare minimum as toxins worker
problem 21:
airlock control buttons keep reopening when i walk by them
problem 22:
airlock cycling should be instant if the air between the two are identical
problem 23:
there's pipe colors that are too similar, i just got punked between brown/pale orange, please make the colors more vibrant
problem 24:
scrubber needs set to expanded range instead of normal range despite being in a 2x3 room
problem point 26:
can only throw pipes 1 tile???
problem 27:
one can of oxygen and 1 can of plasma at a 97:3 ratio only made 4.73 moles of trit; need 5 moles for hypernob
problem point 28:
the concept of upgrading canisters is not explained anywhere; above suggestion about unfinished can w/ plasteel next to it would teach players how to do it naturally, good environmental teaching
problem point 29:
nowhere in the atmos guides in game does it tell players that moles increase size the hotter they are/decrease size the colder they are, a player brand new to thermodynamics would be confused by this like I was originally years ago
problem point 30:
cant upgrade a canister, have to build new one/decon old canister frame to rebuild it, suggest adding a rmb tooltip ala plants w/ welder to show decon for that
problem point 31:
need to be spaceworthy to do initial job setup; this stuff should be setup roundstart
problem point 32:
analyzer should pop up auto-updating tgui inputs for pipes so i dont have to spam click

Changelog

🆑
balance: Mixing Hyper-Noblium is no longer required for T4 Lasers, and is now a way to get them for free instead.
/:cl:

[github-actions]

You currently have a negative Fix/Feature pull request delta of -1. Maintainers may close this PR at will. Fixing issues or improving the codebase will improve this score.

[MacBlaze1]

This is purely a skill issue on goofballs part. He has taken his time to illustrate his lack of understanding and his tendency to kneejerk pr for the github once again. Any half competent player could make hypernobilium easily. Unfortunately goofball has never touched atmos. @LemonInTheDark I recommend you dumpster it or force more constructive changes.

[Iamgoofball]

Please take comments like that to the forums. Players who've never touched atmos before should be able to do the hypernob experiment if you want it to be required for station infrastructure upgrades.

[CMDR-Gungnir]

This is purely a skill issue on goofballs part. He has taken his time to illustrate his lack of understanding and his tendency to kneejerk pr for the github once again. Any half competent player could make hypernobilium easily. Unfortunately goofball has never touched atmos. @LemonInTheDark I recommend you dumpster it or force more constructive changes.

That's entirely the point, though. Any half-competent Atmos Player could absolutely make it.

But this isn't for Atmos. This is for Science. Why should a Scientist (or RD) be required to master an Engineering job, to be able to do their job? No other department requires you to be competent in an entirely different department to do the bare minimum for yours.

[Ghilker]

This isn't doable by a newbie, and certainly isn't doable for actual brand new players, let alone people who are just expected to do the bare minimum.

Toxins should not be an entry-level department, you need knowledge in science and atmos to do it.

The default Supermatter setup on the station will run the engine with no fiddling without blowing up, because people need power to do their job as it sucks to work without power.

So people are able to learn?

The default setup for a map should be the bare minimum needed to do the job for everyone else to benefit. Now that mixing Hyper-Noblium is expected as the bare minimum for scientists/RDs because the better parts are locked behind it, the default setup is no longer enough. Toxins is no longer a job you can fuck around with, it's directly required for station progression now.

You are expected to do a little work to adapt, that's why most of the station is sub-optimal at best, non functioning at worst, you just want hand holding with this.

This is not good game design. I understand why they wanted there to be interdepartmental interaction on this one, but this just sticks everyone else's enjoyment behind a very specific few science players with the right mentality to actually get this done, and nobody is doing this experiment because it's such a pain in the ass.

You don't need t3 to play the game, you are not entitled to better parts

Is there a way around this? Maybe. But this isn't great right now, and this absolutely can't be something the station needs for progression, because frankly it's not getting done despite the protests of the atmos players in our community who insist they personally do it so therefore everyone else does it in their mind because they lack the ability to place themselves in someone else's shoes who doesn't understand atmos as well as they do.

To reiterate, toxins requires the knowledge of atmos and sci, is not an entry level department. Most toxin players already know how to make tritium, is not hard to move on to make hypernob

I've been telling players for weeks to just learn how to mix hypernob.

literally take the trit and the nitrogen and cool them down, add the xeno bz to make it faster

I gave it the honest college try three times in a row, from starting off from scratch to multiple attempts with atmos professionals giving me a step-by-step on how to do it successfully, and had absolutely no luck reaching that goal of 16 moles of Hyper-Nob for the research to complete.

is not something that without any prior knowledge of how to handle pipes, canisters and gases can be done, you knew nothing about atmos

This should be done by atmos techs, not scientists. They have the time, the knowhow, and the inclination to do it. Not Science players.

no toxins is its own department with its own goals.

Now after this i'll talk about the problems.

problem point 1: toxins players should not have to learn the air alarm interface to do their job

everything is clear on there, what's hard about this????

problem point 2: the pipes going in/out should be red/blue to match our color coding elsewhere, ie. plumbing

non issue, these are not strict color codes

problem point 3:cant do shit w/o t3 lasers

that's why you do t3 first

problem point 5: (i forgot 4) metastation's toxins is broken, the freezers don't work because there's nothing in waste roundstart, cryogenics has the same problem and so does other maps

non issue, either wait for them to fill up naturally or ask atmos to dump some gases in there

problem 7: no visual way to tell what layer a pipe is on on machinery pipe inputs

is literally in the examine

problem point 8: make the toxins computer window bigger by default

lol sure

problem point 9: different maps might change the toxins todo list

oh no good maps

problem point 10: the ordnance menu has a search bar instead of buttons or a dropdown to select reactions; it should have both if no reactions are selected

i mean maybe? i'm fine how it is but don't care about this

problem point 11: typing in hypernob doesn't give me the hypernob reaction, add tags to this

can be done

problem point 12: the recipe for making tritium is not listed when you type tritium; it's hidden under "plasma combustion"

is plasma combustion because is plasma fire that produces it when in a ratio with o2

problem point 14: tritium should be 3 oxygen to 1 plasma ratio, 97% is such a weird arbitrary number

this is more complex than what you see, if you have 97 oxy and 3 plasma you gain trit, simple as that if you have 9700 oxy and 300 plasma you'd still get it, but in higher amounts also if we'd lower the ratio you'd see normal fires becoming very very dangerous

problem point 15:"It's relationship with oxygen also determines reaction speed" on the ordnance computer UI doesn't actually explain what this means, had to ask someone for this

sure can be done

problem point 16: the default pipe layout on the map has to be adjusted for the required job of making tritium, which is expected of all toxins players now due to the experisci changes the default map layouts should allow the bare minimum of the job to be done; it can be improved by players looking to improve the setup but the bare minimum should work, ala the default Supermatter piping

No the setup is sub optimal because you need to tinker with it to come to an optimal setup, the base setup won't allow you to reach the full extend of toxins, same with the SM

problem point 17: RPD starts at the wrong color, should start at red/blue/black/brown

no, green is the default, any other color would cause issues.

problem point 19:label what direction node 1/2 are relative to the current facing of the mixer, this is a problem with plumbing machinery too

i agree

problem 20: have to modify the internals of the reaction chamber to do my job to bare minimum as toxins worker

that's the point, you need to make a better setup if you want better results

problem 21: airlock control buttons keep reopening when i walk by them

no idea what's this about, maybe a bug?

problem 22: airlock cycling should be instant if the air between the two are identical

maybe, not a clear answer on that

problem 23: there's pipe colors that are too similar, i just got punked between brown/pale orange, please make the colors more vibrant

colors display the name of what's currently selected on the RPD, plus you can examine a pipe to check what color it is

problem 24: scrubber needs set to expanded range instead of normal range despite being in a 2x3 room

i don't understand the issue, set it to expanded?

problem point 26: can only throw pipes 1 tile???

dunno about this

problem 27: one can of oxygen and 1 can of plasma at a 97:3 ratio only made 4.73 moles of trit; need 5 moles for hypernob

you need more scrubbers to get more trit out of the chamber or it will burn out fast

problem point 28: the concept of upgrading canisters is not explained anywhere; above suggestion about unfinished can w/ plasteel next to it would teach players how to do it naturally, good environmental teaching

that can be implemented

problem point 29: nowhere in the atmos guides in game does it tell players that moles increase size the hotter they are/decrease size the colder they are, a player brand new to thermodynamics would be confused by this like I was originally years ago

dude what? it has to be explained that hot gas expand?

problem point 30: cant upgrade a canister, have to build new one/decon old canister frame to rebuild it, suggest adding a rmb tooltip ala plants w/ welder to show decon for that

can be done

problem point 31: need to be spaceworthy to do initial job setup; this stuff should be setup roundstart

it doesn't need to be setup round start, but a suit of some kind might be enough

problem point 32: analyzer should pop up auto-updating tgui inputs for pipes so i dont have to spam click

uh maybe? i don't have an issue, but dunno

now as a finisher i'll say that yes, toxins is NOT easy and it should NOT be easy, it should be accessible to everyone BUT not dumb. There are issues? yes, and they have to be fixed, but i'll never agree to have any of this dumbed down or handholded so much that it removes the challenge out of the game. You're not entitled to T4s, you don't need T4s to play the game. Learn atmos and sci to do toxins should be the requirement to do it. T4 parts should be challenging to obtain because of how powerful they are.

[thgvr]

Goofball finally learns the only way to play atmos is by codediving or begging someone who codedived to help.

[CMDR-Gungnir]

Ghilker this is needed to get t4 lasers which everyone is going to bitch for.

This means an RD player needs to be able to do Toxins.

This means you're telling the RD that he has to know the entirety of Science, and the harder half of Engineering, in order to be an RD.

Surely you can see why that's not very smart, right? A Chief Engineer doesn't need to know Medical. The CMO doesn't have to be a master at playing Security. The HoP doesn't even need to be able to do his own department at all, let alone someone else's. This would make Research Director the ONLY Head of Staff that requires the knowledge of two entire departments to be entry-level in.

[SuperNovaa41]

Ghilker this is needed to get t4 lasers which everyone is going to bitch for.

This means an RD player needs to be able to do Toxins.

This means you're telling the RD that he has to know the entirety of Science, and the harder half of Engineering, in order to be an RD.

Surely you can see why that's not very smart, right?

Sometimes you don't get everything handed to you, encouraging people to learn new aspects of the game to help better themselves (and the station) in the round is a good thing

[CMDR-Gungnir]

Ghilker this is needed to get t4 lasers which everyone is going to bitch for.
This means an RD player needs to be able to do Toxins.
This means you're telling the RD that he has to know the entirety of Science, and the harder half of Engineering, in order to be an RD.
Surely you can see why that's not very smart, right?

Sometimes you don't get everything handed to you, encouraging people to learn new aspects of the game to help better themselves (and the station) in the round is a good thing

Sure. They should do that. By playing Atmos. Not for the bare minimum of a job in AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT DEPARTMENT.

[thgvr]

Update the wiki then, there's already enough secret atmos stuff that isn't available to normal players.

[SuperNovaa41]

Ghilker this is needed to get t4 lasers which everyone is going to bitch for.
This means an RD player needs to be able to do Toxins.
This means you're telling the RD that he has to know the entirety of Science, and the harder half of Engineering, in order to be an RD.
Surely you can see why that's not very smart, right?

Sometimes you don't get everything handed to you, encouraging people to learn new aspects of the game to help better themselves (and the station) in the round is a good thing

Sure. They should do that. By playing Atmos. Not for the bare minimum of a job in AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT DEPARTMENT.

? the entire focus that we've been moving towards is inter departmental interaction. this is a bad take

[thgvr]

@SuperNovaa41 #63033

[CMDR-Gungnir]

Ghilker this is needed to get t4 lasers which everyone is going to bitch for.
This means an RD player needs to be able to do Toxins.
This means you're telling the RD that he has to know the entirety of Science, and the harder half of Engineering, in order to be an RD.
Surely you can see why that's not very smart, right?

Sometimes you don't get everything handed to you, encouraging people to learn new aspects of the game to help better themselves (and the station) in the round is a good thing

Sure. They should do that. By playing Atmos. Not for the bare minimum of a job in AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT DEPARTMENT.

? the entire focus that we've been moving towards is inter departmental interaction. this is a bad take

Sure, but that should be in the forms that make sense. Medical should do Dissections because that research benefits them. T4 Lasers benefits the entire god damn station, except the Atmos Wizards who aren't really going to care about it either way...IE the people who you're asking to inter-department with.

And again. If you want that to be the case, then move Toxins to Atmos. Don't make it a requirement for an RD to know, because again, now you have a single Head of Staff who requires the knowledge of his entire department and someone else's, and nobody else needs that.

[GuillaumePrata]

People have been blowing/burning themselves, and half of science, for years without anyone complaining about toxins Ordnance being an Engineering job inside of Science and thus it shouldn't be challenging. That is an odd point.

On another note, Atmos is such a bitch against new players that it is hard to get feedback from people that are starting into it, either because they assume it is a skill issue that they will overcome or they give up and don't care.
This PR is at least a gold mine with some good feedback so thanks for that Goof.

[CMDR-Gungnir]

That would be because previously it was only used for Advanced But Unnecessary things, like weapons (or free research points/Sci Budget), whereas now it's used for something that people demand (T4 Lasers).

[Ghilker]

Ghilker this is needed to get t4 lasers which everyone is going to bitch for.

This means an RD player needs to be able to do Toxins.

This means you're telling the RD that he has to know the entirety of Science, and the harder half of Engineering, in order to be an RD.

Surely you can see why that's not very smart, right? A Chief Engineer doesn't need to know Medical. The CMO doesn't have to be a master at playing Security. The HoP doesn't even need to be able to do his own department at all, let alone someone else's. This would make Research Director the ONLY Head of Staff that requires the knowledge of two entire departments to be entry-level in.

My point here is that toxins player already have the knowledge to do this, they already know how to make tritium in high amounts. They just need to add a few more knowledge on their curriculum.

[Iamgoofball]

i contend that that knowledge is so far out of scope for most of these players that they will just hit their head against the obtuse brick wall that is the ordnance computer while insane people break down their department doors to kill them for not doing their job fast enough, especially if that godawful tools PR gets merged

[Dorsisdwarf]

All advanced atmos job content is annoyingly indecipherable and doesnt really get done unless one of the minority of players who is adept in it happens to be playing a relevant job (Or is begged by the people playing a relevant job to set everything up for them). Making top level advanced gameplay mandatory for the basic job progression of a completely different department is extremely frustrating, like if to be allowed to graft plants botany had to find all genes at their own genetics console

[Ghilker]

Saying that toxins is just baby atmos is the worst thing you could do to toxins, if it was it wouldn't make sense for it to exist at all. Toxins should be it's own department that does gas sperimentation and observation but you are treating it as if its just a passage point towards atmos and it shows in how much nobody cares about toxins.
All this does is make toxins easier by dumbing it down and it doesn't touch the issue you are all complaining about.
Just remove it already

[GuillaumePrata]

Ordnance being baby Atmos was good because the main Atmos room is a scary thing to work with, I'm pretty sure we all had our share of rounds where an Atmos tech link waste to distro and the shuttle is called 15 minutes in.

It would be better for the game if it was the other way around, Atmos tech is a round maintenance job, they are important to go around fixing station damage or the shuttle gets called on the first bombing but most of the Atmospherics content is about sitting in a room by yourself.

Flowing the hard side of Atmospherics into science (A department that is about doing "hard stuff" to improve the station) and leave Atmos techs to be focused on repairs could be an interesting change.

[Ghilker]

Then what, exactly, is atmos for? If you asked "which department should do gas experiments and observations" I would assume more people would say atmos. Toxins was for making bombs using a niche aspect of atmos, which was important for the other point.

Atmos is for managing the station atmospheric, fighting fires and fixing air issues, while also having the ability to mass produce gases when needed.

No, that's backwards. It makes more sense for something to exist this way. I have gone through each and every role on the station over the past two years, and Atmos is by far the most difficult department on the station. You don't start by teaching someone calculus, you start with arithmetic. There's an order to learning things, and having something be a simpler, niche example where you can do more experimentation and learn the basics is how you step towards more advanced processes.

Toxins worked as a sort of introduction to atmos this way by focusing exclusively on two interactions (Tritium producing plasma fires and explosive combustion), allowing much more freedom and opportunity to experiment with systems you know, since you weren't expected to try and make 20 different gasses. You weren't tasked with much more than "make tritium" and that's literally the first gas interaction for atmos. Everything else is more complicated than that one, even electrolysis to make H2.

You start with atmos to learn atmos, not with a totally different department. You have all the tools, immense amount of gases and plenty of room to play with and make big setups without worrying about optimal space. Toxins is hard on space and resources and demands you to learn how to manage those two while creating setup that produces enough to sustain bombs worth doing. How's toxins easy again? Oh yeah copy pasted metà setups done in five minutes without understanding, gotcha.

[Camahoo]

Oh yeah copy pasted metà setups done in five minutes without understanding, gotcha.

...Is that not how a lot of stuff in game is done? Maybe I've missed something, but I think there's more than a few things where someone figured out the best way to do it, put it on the wiki or spread through word of mouth, and then that was the way people did it, without putting too much effort into learning why.

Also, are t4 lasers worth this much trouble? Again, I've hardly memorized the wiki (and the wiki is hardly perfect), maybe I missed it, but there honestly didn't seem to be a plethora of machines that benefitted from them and were actually used often. On top of that, pretty sure t4 lasers are the only t4 part locked behind an experiment right now, which only seems strange given that I honestly found all of two machines that might be a priority to upgrade with them.

Granted, I'm downstream right now, so maybe a whole bunch of experiments have been added that I just hadn't seen yet.

[GuillaumePrata]

...Is that not how a lot of stuff in game is done?

One issue is that Ordnance has been the same meta rush for so long and now that people need to learn new and different things it became a mess again.
Everyone got used with Ordnance being something that is being speedrun every shift with no challenge, now that content is being added into it and that people are failing to unlock things it sparked all this conversation around what is fair to be behind the wall.

[CRITAWAKETS]

people are making meta setups right now with ordnance and so far it seems to be the only way that content is even done

[LemonInTheDark]

Before I get too far into this, I wanted to go over my general thoughts/approach to toxins and atmos as it currently is.

Atmos as it is

I think atmos as a section of the game has a serious issue with penetrability. Many things are harder then they ought to be, and many semi simple mechanics are quite poorly explained.
I want to fix this, because I think it presents a real issue for having atmos tech the job actually do anything productive or engage with the round by default (See rant about broom closets and lack of human contact)

Vin especially has been trying to fix the part of this. Even having the reactions in the game is a large step forward.
The problem is atmos tech doesn't have a lot of reason to like, do anything. Most of its content is optional, and it selects for people like our atmos coders, so if there's an issue with learning it, we don't really find out.

I'd like to use toxins and gas experiments as a testing ground for atmos as it stands, and to test if it's workable to learn.
I don't have any particular quibble about what is locked off, but I do want it to be something you notice being gone.
I think? T4 parts accomplish this reasonably well, I don't think they're exactly mandatory for anything outside of some atmos memes, but you still notice if they're not there.

I realize this is slightly unfair to current toxin players, but I can't think of a better way to institutionally unfuck things.
I do think the scaling of difficulty on toxin experiments is a bit wack, I've talked to vin a bit about that and I'm hopeful it'll get a bit better. I to some extent trust him to make intelligent decisions on the topic, since he's spent a lot of time working on it, and appears to care about making his content more accessible.
The test thing wasn't his idea mind, that's me being evil not anyone else. Insert disney monologue here,

Anyway, I wanted to go over some of the painpoints you ran into, if that's chill.

Stuff that stood out to me

When I attempted to put it in the can, the can began making acid noises and then exploded, fucking up my workplace irreparably without an atmos tech coming by and fixing it.

If memory serves, can tiers was added to lessen 50K rushing, and to some extent to handle can fusion memes,
I'm considering removing it, since those problems are behind us, and it's an amount of extra brain weight that I don't think? needs to exist.

In order to get all 16 moles, according to my math we'd need about 18-19 cans of oxygen. This would require stealing from atmos/stealing directly from the distro.

That seems quite a bit off. Now I don't actually play the game mind, but hypernob takes 5 moles of trit for one mole, something's really off if a canister of o2 (1800 moles) gets you less then 5 mols of trit. At least I think, I assume you'd need more then that to make a 50k bomb.

Because everyone wants stock parts upgrades, when this doesn't get done, people get hostile and angry at Scientists and RDs who haven't done it. This makes it really unfun to be a Scientist or RD who can't wrap their head around toxins, that job part you could previously ignore because it was only used for making griefing tools as a non-antag and game winning tools as an antag.

This sucks yeah. To some extent it's gonna happen so long as we make any aspect of atmos required, but people getting bullied for it is pain.

Wew lord

1: toxins players should not have to learn the air alarm interface to do their job

I'm not so sure about this. I think they already did need to learn it to make bombs, and not knowing it is a major blocker to doing anything with atmos, which I do want them to be doing.

2: the pipes going in/out should be red/blue to match our color coding elsewhere, ie. plumbing

This causes problems because pipe colors are used for connecting pipes. It's very important that toxins doesn't accidentally connect the air network to its tritium fire. For obvious reasons.

3: cant do shit w/o t3 lasers

Hmmf that's not the best. It's the result of trying to gate hypernob as a higher tier atmos gas, but it does limit people somewhat. Maybe it would help if you had a reason to make a freezer before producing HN so it could just be upgraded?

5: (i forgot 4) (lmao) metastation's toxins is broken, the freezers don't work because there's nothing in waste roundstart, cryogenics has the same problem and so does other maps problem

It's not broken persay.
That's the result of something ghil was trying to do with heat management that I shut him down on because of the added seemingly (to me) pointless complexity. I've been avoiding handling it because I don't like arguing with my coders and it wasn't actively breaking anything, maybe I need to spend some social capital

7: no visual way to tell what layer a pipe is on on machinery pipe inputs

You sure? that seems a bit weird. You mean like freezers right?

8: make the toxins computer window bigger by default

This'd be fine

9: different maps might change the toxins todo list

In relation to collecting o2? I'm ok with this in general, but it depends on how disruptive it is. Variety is useful, but atmos is hard to learn so there do need to be some consistent parts.

10: the ordnance menu has a search bar instead of buttons or a dropdown to select reactions; it should have both if no reactions are selected

It should have a button that lets you view all reactions and gasses in a big list you can hop through. Best case scenario with pictures.

11: typing in hypernob doesn't give me the hypernob reaction, add tags to this

Yeah. Rather then tags, we should maybe support searching more fields then the id.

12: the recipe for making tritium is not listed when you type tritium; it's hidden under "plasma combustion"

See above

14: tritium should be 3 oxygen to 1 plasma ratio, 97% is such a weird arbitrary number

I don't know about this. 75% will work, it's just not the optimal mix, which I think is ok. Maybe the trouble is more making that information clear.

15: "It's relationship with oxygen also determines reaction speed" on the ordnance computer UI doesn't actually explain what this means, had to ask someone for this

Should be more clear yes

16: the default pipe layout on the map has to be adjusted for the required job of making tritium, which is expected of all toxins players now due to the experisci changes the default map layouts should allow the bare minimum of the job to be done; it can be improved by players looking to improve the setup but the bare minimum should work, ala the default Supermatter piping

I don't think I agree with this. I know vin is working on some remaps of toxins to make it easier to use #65807
Nobel goals. I guess I think of this reaction should be more then the first one you do, and an important skill/part of the fun of atmos is designing pipes. The way vin has his current remaps setup is built for bz production, which I'm happy with as a starting reaction. I think this somewhat fits what you're talking about.

17: RPD starts at the wrong color, should start at red/blue/black/brown

Ehhhhhhhhhh it varies based off the map and rpd placement and and.
I'm ok with green as a default, you're going to need to switch colors at some point regardless

19: label what direction node 1/2 are relative to the current facing of the mixer, this is a problem with plumbing machinery too

It might be better to just say their position relative to the output. Agree

20: have to modify the internals of the reaction chamber to do my job to bare minimum as toxins worker

See problem 16, though it does depend on the severity of the internal change.

Aside:
keep your syntax the same so I can easily regex the problem entries hhhhhhh

21: airlock control buttons keep reopening when i walk by them

That sounds strange, what do you mean?

22: airlock cycling should be instant if the air between the two are identical

I don't see any reason this can't be the case, yeah.

23: there's pipe colors that are too similar, i just got punked between brown/pale orange, please make the colors more vibrant

You have any pictures, so it's a bit hard to agree or disagree with you.
< doesn't play the game

24: scrubber needs set to expanded range instead of normal range despite being in a 2x3 room

This is so you can directly harvest the gas reactions on the two tiles the scrubber can get to, rather then just its own.

Haha forgot 25 point and laugh

26: can only throw pipes 1 tile???

The fuck

27: one can of oxygen and 1 can of plasma at a 97:3 ratio only made 4.73 moles of trit; need 5 moles for hypernob

This seems really off, maybe I'm dumb? See above

28: the concept of upgrading canisters is not explained anywhere; above suggestion about unfinished can w/ plasteel next to it would teach players how to do it naturally, good environmental teaching

See also above, I'm not sure it needs to exist anymore. If it does yes this is a good point.

29: nowhere in the atmos guides in game does it tell players that moles increase size the hotter they are/decrease size the colder they are, a player brand new to thermodynamics would be confused by this like I was originally years ago

We need an intro page yeah.

30: cant upgrade a canister, have to build new one/decon old canister frame to rebuild it, suggest adding a rmb tooltip ala plants w/ welder to show decon for that

See above above above.

31: need to be spaceworthy to do initial job setup; this stuff should be setup roundstart

Is this about getting cooling setup?

32: analyzer should pop up auto-updating tgui inputs for pipes so i dont have to spam click

I'm not sure about this. I don't want to make it only work by ui open.

Lemon you motherfucker give me a TL;DR

I'm evil, and want to use toxins as a way to make atmos not fucking hell to interact with. Part of that is locking something meaningful with it. It makes me sad that this is driving people out of sci, if that is happening.
HN shouldn't be as o2 consuming as you described, that's weird.
Atmos has a lot of things that are more tedious or complex then they need to be. This will be fixed.
Atmos has a few concepts that are quite poorly explained in game. This should be resolved.
Goof forgot problem number 25 point and laugh.
I want HN production to be a harder step in a gradient of difficulty in toxins.
I am evil

In light of the above, I don't think I'm gonna merge this.
I don't like people being driven out of sci, but if we don't force atmos it'll remain as it is now, which is not great.

I am however very interested in the painpoints people have with atmos content. If you have some to share, please do post it here (Why'd you not put it in feedback vin you bastard)
https://tgstation13.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=83&t=31431

[CMDR-Gungnir]

Lemon, in order to be even remotely accepted as a Head of Staff player (and on the more RP-based servers, it's pretty much mandatory) you have to be able to do every part of your department.

Toxins being made into Total Atmos instead of just "Hey I know how to make da big boomies" forces the Research Director to also be an Atmos Main, as well as his own department. This is the only Head of Staff that would be like that. Please explain why you think this is a good idea.

[Shadowflame909]

Can someone make a guide please preferably in video form. I always somehow mess up the wiki guides (they're kinda out of date too because Atmos changes every two months)

Monkey see monkey do is the proper way to do complex wizardry like Atmos

[RikuTheKiller]

Lemon you motherfucker give me a TL;DR

I'm evil, and want to use toxins as a way to make atmos not fucking hell to interact with. Part of that is locking something meaningful with it. It makes me sad that this is driving people out of sci, if that is happening. HN shouldn't be as o2 consuming as you described, that's weird. Atmos has a lot of things that are more tedious or complex then they need to be. This will be fixed. Atmos has a few concepts that are quite poorly explained in game. This should be resolved. Goof forgot problem number 25 point and laugh. I want HN production to be a harder step in a gradient of difficulty in toxins. I am evil

In light of the above, I don't think I'm gonna merge this. I don't like people being driven out of sci, but if we don't force atmos it'll remain as it is now, which is not great.

Oh, about driving people out of sci, YES, that is happening.

(We've had far more rounds with no scientists, as far as I can tell, but this could just be my bias and also I've personally quit science as well due to the gas shell experiments, though I've finally bashed my head enough at a brick wall to be able to make hyper-nob. And I sometimes still play science, but it feels frustrating to just see the damn gas shell experiments.)

Just to reference how bad this is, I've seen t4 lasers done ONCE EVER SINCE the update. For scale, that's like around 4 rounds per day, let's say each over an entire hour and still no more than once have I seen the lasers. Even that time the person wearing an atmos suit literally said "that took way too long", so yeah...

Gas shells, in general, aren't a great way to go about doing this. Toxins has just become a discount atmos that could literally just be moved to atmos now as a seperate department from sci. That's stupid, genuinely. Scientists shouldn't have to learn an entire fucking department for a single research. Like, please. And the fact there are lots of gas shells makes this FAR worse. If it was just one gas shell, sure. Two? Okay, yeah, gives the compressor more than one job... and maybe doable in a single round. Three? Very obnoxious now... Four? Yeah no, all of these are never going to get done in a single round. Ever. That's simply a fact.

EDIT: Basically, by the time that the round has passed the 2 and a half hour mark, the entirety of RnD should basically be done and RnD should be left playing with their newfound toys. If an antagonist leaves science to do it's thing for THAT long, then at that point it's their fault for being powergamed. Midround antags are, on the other hand, very powerful. Xenos can literally kill in a few hits, ventcrawl and a single facehugger is enough to literally turn you into one. At that point you kind of NEED science stuff to kill them.

EDIT 2: Oh also, one of my main issues is the pure, sincere repetitiveness. If toxins is forced, every single fucking round, to do this, then why. WHY make it so difficult. It's almost like chemists with synthflesh factories, it was fine to make for multiple rounds at first, but, then I just stopped doing it because the usefulness balanced out with the sheer boredom of doing it every time. I don't want to sit doing toxins every fucking round. Especially when I know that it's going to take at least 30 minutes each time, maybe far more. Even as an atmos tech it takes a long ass time that I could be using on autism projects and doing my actual job.

[moocowswag]

Oh, about driving people out of sci, YES, that is happening.

Same except I just do circuits in maint now instead of quitting sci entirely.

The vast majority of the tech tree was not designed to be locked behind brick walls and could probably use a rework at this rate.

Can someone make a guide please preferably in video form.

The first and last time I made a video guide on how to do something toxins related became outdated within like a month which is why I think if someone is gonna make changes like this they need to be the one that is prepared to hold a player`s hand and guide them through their intended way to do a task to unlock a tech.

We wouldnt be in this mess right now if the individual that made t4 lasers require hypernoblium also made a walkthrough stating how many steps scientists had to go through to get their tech and move on with their life.

Stating the process youre expected to go through to fulfill a requirement that your pr is adding should already be the norm. Just pr-ing "Makes hypernoblium a requirement for t4 lasers" is not transparent enough for even the maintainers to make a concious decision on merging or not because most maintainers most likely havent touched toxins in months therefore they cannot easily predict how far someone has to go out of their way to do that.

TLDR if you add hoops for players to jump through you need to communicate to everyone how many hoops are being added and how high they are off of the ground. This not only helps maintainers know what they are merging but also helps the playerbase adapt to the change.

[Whoneedspacee]

shouldve just left atmos point gen as it was but now all anyone does is build 50k bombs because its hard capped and then that got nerfed too

i don't think any atmos player really cares if this specific change is made but peeps gotta stop neutering the department at the same time as admitting that it's very difficult

clearly copy pasting designs isn't as easy as you thought so i just hope you consider that in the future

[Pandarsenic]

My favorite part of Toxins is that the slightest fuckup, even if it doesn't burn down the entire lab, generally renders the department unusable for the remainder of the round because of shit in the pipes, messed up burn chamber, lack of the gas you need to complete what you're trying to do, etc.

One person gets one try at Toxins each round and if something goes wrong nobody gets anything from the whole department :)

[optimumtact]

every argument here seems to rest on the fact that it's peoples god given right to unlock t4 parts every round.

i'm perfectly fine with the t4 parts being hard to unlock to be honest.

[CMDR-Gungnir]

every argument here seems to rest on the fact that it's peoples god given right to unlock t4 parts every round.

i'm perfectly fine with the t4 parts being hard to unlock to be honest.

What you have to consider is that it feels bad to have something you USED to have, get locked behind something new and obnoxious that makes you pretty much never get it. I don't think people would mind as much if T5 parts were added and these experiments were for them. It just sucks to have something taken away.

[LemonInTheDark]

It sucks right now, but that's how it be. Sometimes it just be that way.
If there's a problem it's with people being bullied over it, but that's a player and admin issue, not an us thing.

[Whoneedspacee]

to be frank its not hard to make hypernoblium once you’ve done it once

it might take you 20 rounds maybe more but how many rounds did you spend to down your first solo megafauna

once you’ve got it down you’ve got it down simple as that

[MetalClone]

Add tier five abductor parts. Also holy shit atmos players literally going insane over 3 fucking lines of code LOL

[ArdentSpark]

Hey, my opinion is irrelevant because I'm a downstream player, so I thought I'd preface my comment with that, but I don't believe there's any adjustments regarding this that would affect my experience and it's validity

I had a similar experience with making hyper-nob as I have not played atmos tech previously. I however have been shown how to make tritium, and make trit maxcaps so I had a relatively okay foundation. While I did have someone show me how to make tritium, the process I use, is in fact, listed in detail here https://tgstation13.org/wiki/Guide_to_toxins#Acquiring_Tritium

When it came to producing Hyper-nob, I followed the instructions here https://tgstation13.org/wiki/Guide_to_Atmospherics#Hyper-Noblium

I had two failed attempts producing it, No.1 was because I attempted to use space loop cooling, only to be told that HE pipes have heat efficiencies. No.2 was because I for some reason tried open-turf reactions because I saw atmos techs doing it and thought it looked cool (It didn't work, because the TCU with T3 lasers cooling the pipes wasn't enough to also cool the open turf, I couldn't say why, could be a skill issue.)

Attempt No.3 succeeded because I just hooked it up in pipes. I did it in an isolated setup, using a canister of N2, and the leftovers of my cooled Tritium in a gas pump, after doing a max cap. The actual production of it was trivial, it just took a while, and I only needed around 3/5 mols of Hyper-nob to get a successful experiment result

It takes me about an hour to get T4 lasers, and I don't really rush by any account, I'm pretty obsessive with making things neat, chatting and taking things slow. Again I have zero atmos tech play time, and I did all this just from my experience as an ordnance. I feel like Hyper-noblium is definitely achievable and not an unreasonable goal at all. In regards to Goof's attempts No.1 and No.2 to emulate a new player experience, I'm kind of surprised you didn't use the guide on the wiki, which would have showed you how to harness more than enough tritium to produce hyper-nob

For T4 lasers though, if it was a discount, it will always be ignored so it basically a soft-removal of the experiment, so it will either need to remain a requirement as it stands, or be allocated to a different tech-node to not be

(Feel free to hit me with "that's a lotta words - shame i'm not gonna be readin' em" because there's a lot of big posts in here I didn't read too)

[optimumtact]

that's a lotta words - shame i'm not gonna be readin' em

@LemonInTheDark please do something with this PR already.

[Draggeru]

I never thought I'd simp for a goof PR but here we are.

[OzzyMcPseudonym]

Honestly atmos being optional as a department is perfectly fine with me. It's more obtuse than chemistry and botany by a mile, doesn't produce anything unique or cool like xenobiology, doesn't give valuable combat experience to new players like mining does. Honestly the only real use of atmos is either griefing via plasmaflood or, if you are one of the atmosian elder gods, getting spaceproof armor and a metallic hydrogen fireaxe that is worse than the one you start with in your department anyway. There's no real incentive to do anything with the atmos system as it currently stands because of several factors

1. Once you know how to do the one meta setup, you don't have to really think about it anymore, it's just rote memory at that point like a chemistry factory.

2. Some of the gasses are so obtuse to make that new people won't be able to get them at all and experienced players will still take a decent chunk of time to get the more exotic gasses in the game. Everyone jokes about atmos players being elder gods because the department as a whole is so obtuse that codediving is practically mandatory if you want to figure something out.

3. Atmos has many quirks that you have to specifically know or it won't work. Stuff like pipenets and how they are formed, stuff like how thermodynamics work in general (as mentioned by Goof in the PR body.)

A subsystem of the game with all of these problems should not be made mandatory in it's current state. If atmos is going to be mandatory, at least make it more accessible to newer players as a whole first. If the system becomes as accessible as something like chemistry or botany on a baseline level then perhaps making atmos mandatory for progression will be more tenable an idea in general. The pain associated with this change is caused by the difficulty wall of learning atmos in the first place.

[LemonInTheDark]

that's a lotta words - shame i'm not gonna be readin' em

@LemonInTheDark please do something with this PR already.

Yes boss

I'm gonna close this. I don't want to remove this pressure from solving atmos's issues, because if I do they will never be resolved.
I'd in theory be ok with making the requirements less stringent, but that's not a sure thing, and there needs to be something that serves this purpose.

I realize this causes player interaction problems, but those will hopefully be temporary, and I can't think of another way to handle this properly. Worst case, stop being such assholes to each other.

Godspeed lads.