So one day in, alchemy is absolutely AMAZING and I'm blown away by its flexibility/functionality right out the gate. We've been submitting some bugnotes, but I've also had a lot of thoughts about improvements. I'm sure a lot of this may already be planned, but my thoughts thus far!
MESSAGING:
More messaging, please! Show us messages visible to the whole room for:
- When someone initiates a process on the table;
- When someone analyses a compound;
- When a process completes so we're not manually checking;
- When someone loads the hopper with something;
- When someone takes stuff OUT of the hopper.
EASE OF USE:
- I would love an added command to the tables that's like 'consider ' so you can see everything you could do with a current ingredient. I.e. marrowleaf is used in a zillion things.
- When you look at the list of processes/any given process, it'd be nice if it showed you EVERYTHING you were missing. Right now it only shows you the first thing you're missing.
- Don't ask a player how many batches they want to make of something if they only are holding the ingredients for 1 batch - that step could be skipped.
- Also, when you initiate a process and it asks you how many batches, you can't check your inventory to see how much of each ingredient you have. It'd be nice to either see this when you first initiate the process, or for the batch question to tell you the max you can make with your current inv.
- For naming/labeling a compound, propagate the look/smell with a base desc based on the components so we know how to rewrite it. I.e., if a drug takes marrowwort and pewterwort, just pipe in their sensory components to give the custom desc a place to start.
INCORPORATING CHARACTER SKILL
Characters should know how to do things with alchemy without their players having to be chemists, so there's a few places I think we could really use the system providing more guidance:
- I'd like to see a chance to figure out if we're unlikely to get a batch to work out BEFORE we commit the ingredients. I do think it'd be reasonable a PC could guess what they're trying to do is beyond their current skill.
- Give people some way of guessing the ideal heat/PH/etc. settings for a compound before they first try it.
- Some guidance on formulation method would be ideal as well - the ups/downs of each type, etc.
- Compounding is a wide open world, and there's no guidance afaik about how much you should include of what types of ingredients. I.e. if you want to combine a base effect with an intensifier, should the ratio of each be 1:1, 2:1, 1:2, etc? Now there should be room for experimentation/IC learning here where playing around can help you make something that's SUPERLATIVE vs. something that SUFFISES, but a skilled alchemist should have some basic intuition around the rules of compounding, and/or some compounds should be built-in recipes so you simply know how to make a basic painkiller.
- Failure messaging could be clearer, esp around compounding - knowing if you failed due to lack of skill or bad choice of ingredients.
ALCHEMY MENU IMPROVEMENT
- Add loading as an option to the alchemy/apothecary table menus so we don't have to jump in and out of the alchemy menus to prep things;
- Add analyzing as an option to the alchemy/apothecary table menus, and/or make it identical to the 'test an unknown preparation' option; it seems ICly they are the same actions, most likely.
- I would love to just be able to enter outside commands while in a menu like this across the board. Maybe a standard option like 'x' to input regular commands for emoting, checking inv, etc?
RP HELP FOR ALCHEMISTS
- The content of the messages above should tell people what the alchemist is ICly doing, to help out RP. I.e., HOW do we prepare extracts? We could really use slightly more detailed messaging specifically for processes, compounding, and analyzing. I realize this is a big ask, would be happy to provide some myself if need be.
- I'd love a more in-depth description of the tables, though I know this isn't going to be an immediate priority. The equipment they're described as having doesn't make much sense for the processes we can do with them, and this would help a lot with figuring out how to RP alchemy as something distinct from chemistry. Primarily what I'd like to see is some confirmation we're using some kind of devices that obfuscate the actual chemical reactions, instead of implying we're doing everything with real-world equipment like Bunsen burners/distillation chambers, etc.
Thanks!!
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