Alchemy tweaks

[Potjeh]

I've been messing a little bit with alchemical equipment lately, just to see what all the hate is about, and I think some small changes can make a big difference here.

First, the low gains make it not really worth the bother. It seems to me that the rate of transfer between elements is proportionate to how big the difference between them is. This means that alchemy starts useless at low purity levels and becomes really strong at high purity levels. IMO this is backwards, getting higher purity should be progressively harder rather than easier, especially since the purity multiplier gain per element percentage gets progressively better as you approach 100%. So, I think the thing to do here would be to make the rate transfer proportionate to the size of the element that's being drained.

Second, the need to babysit the equipment. The consensus seems to be that the pressure cooker is the only piece of alchemical equipment worth the bother. The problem here is that you have to remember to take stuff out of the other equipment on time, and you can just put an appropriate number of branches in a stove and forget about the pressure cooker. So I reckon all alchemical equipment should have a way to set a timer for how long it will actually work when left unattended. We could do this with Bunsen burners, which would have to be lit under the various equipment to keep it working. By filling the burners with the appropriate amount of fuel (vegetable oil perhaps?) you could decide how long they'll burn. Another method could be catalysts, which would go in the alchemy equipment with the materials that are being processed, and expended as the reaction goes on until they run out and the reaction stops. There could be many different catalysts, and the expensive ones could be made more efficient, ie they could transfer more of an element per tick and raise instability slower.

Third, there's no real way to raise the main element. Test tubes don't really count because they're way too unpredictable. Raising the main element should still be hard even if it's predictable, though. So I think we could use a new piece of alchemical equipment that transfers from lowest to highest. If the rate of transfer is proportionate to the size of the lowest elements, we'd have nice diminishing returns here. It would also make raising the lowest element actually desirable, so we might also have a use for a piece of alchemy equipment that transfers from 2nd and 3rd element to the lowest. Of course, pushing the highest element with the 1st and 2nd with these two alchemy pieces would still be quite limited, thanks to instability.

[Droj]

I agree, before purity would go from 0% > 2% > 5% maybe but at higher levels such as 50% it could go > 58% > 69%.

It was even worse when I tried to increase pumpkin purity. It took more than a month for an initial raise in quality but even then it was marginal and could revert to 0% on the next harvest.

[iotuegli]

I've been messing a little bit with alchemical equipment lately, just to see what all the hate is about, and I think some small changes can make a big difference here.

First, the low gains make it not really worth the bother. It seems to me that the rate of transfer between elements is proportionate to how big the difference between them is. This means that alchemy starts useless at low purity levels and becomes really strong at high purity levels. IMO this is backwards, getting higher purity should be progressively harder rather than easier, especially since the purity multiplier gain per element percentage gets progressively better as you approach 100%. So, I think the thing to do here would be to make the rate transfer proportionate to the size of the element that's being drained.

that is due the fact in 4 elements there are (in total) 10.000 points to being moved from a side to another, as i saw in previus broken mechanic the server take some random points from each element and add to these (allways randomly, or a bit drived in a specific element)

now i assume the feature is the same, if at start we have 0% purity we will not have a decent (even with the old mechanic) 2500 points per element, some alcemical equipement can move points from a place to another but still the gain isn't big becouse all the other 3 elements are still high, enough to waste the effort


that is and i think it's good... a bit strange but not totally broken

[Snowpig]

apart from the numbers the main issue with alchemy is, that its behaviour is completely different to the behaviour of other game elements. Take tanning, board, oiling, cooking/baking, smelting ...in each of these your procedure is:

- put item A into container B
- perform actions a_1 to a_n (like: put branches and light them, pour fluid &c...)
- after a fixed amount of time, item A is transformed to A*

especially for the last point: no matter if you visit container B after the required time for transformation or two days later, item A* will be there


Alchemy on the other hand has following procedure

- put item A into container B
- (perform actions a_1 to a_n (like: put branches and light them, pour fluid &c...) ) << optional
- after a fixed amount of time, item A is either transformed to A* or destroyed with P(destroy item) raising after each iteration << repeated

here you have to babysit the alchemy equipment and check after each iteration if your item is still there ( -> annoying, if not) and if it has a chance to "survive" the next iteration ( -> annoying, because not predictable)


solution for this "problem 1" is to change the procedure of the alchemy to something, which is more conform to the other game elements. There are several nice examples on how it could work:

- planing boards: here you have a "fixed" probability on a fail (2x choppings) ...but it does not hurt that much, because you have plenty of items you are working with (up to 40 per board pile)

- smelting: here your lowest probability to "fail" per ore block is around 86%, which means that you get 2 iron from approx 14 ore blocks in the "best" configuration. It does not annoy, because you have plenty of ore and can tweak your probability by adding lime

---

purity:

Main problem here is: the devs made once a shiny formula which ended up in a multiplier of 10 for 100% purity. After a while the "titan" characters emerged and had severe influence on the other game mechanics (sieges, combat, polics ...). Now the devs cut back the throttle by making it virtually impossible to reach 100% instead of going the "stony road" and cutting back the multiplier of 10 to something like 3 and leaving the "old" purity gain method.

For me: i don't like games where i cannot predict the amount of time i need to reach "endgame" - there are plenty of other games around and my spare time is limited. Therefore i play those games which give me most enjoyment per time spent.

[mdm20]

I think they only really need to make 2 changes to make alchemy a lot better.

1. The containers should never get destroyed due to item instability.. only the unstable item itself should get destroyed.
2. The Coagulative Alembic should only reduce instability but leave purity unchanged.

With those changes, people would be able to adjust stuff slowly, without having to endlessly remake pressure cookers, etc.

It would also be nice if things inside alchemy containers showed some sort of progress indicator.

[rustles]

I think they only really need to make 2 changes to make alchemy a lot better.

1. The containers should never get destroyed due to item instability.. only the unstable item itself should get destroyed.
2. The Coagulative Alembic should only reduce instability but leave purity unchanged.

With those changes, people would be able to adjust stuff slowly, without having to endlessly remake pressure cookers, etc.

It would also be nice if things inside alchemy containers showed some sort of progress indicator.

Yeah I haven't touched alchemy since my stove blew up along with 9 pressure cookers which I had spent a week grinding purity in(by putting each ingredient into pressure cookers to make better ones and repeating the process)