Some chemistry recipe tweaks and additions

Game Talk The Drawing Board
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I noticed that some chemistry ingredients didn’t seem to be getting much use. Here are a few additions and changes that I thought might be useful.

Hexamine is currently in the game but only used to make explosives. In real life, hexamine is used in hexamine stoves (commonly known as Esbit stoves) and is a fairly common fuel used for hiking and camping. In game, I believe I’ve only ever found it in labs. I suggest including it, as well as the Esbit stove (with hexamine used as a fuel equivalent to charcoal or batteries), to sporting goods or similar stores. Hexamine is also fairly easy to synthesize, as you can see in this video, using ammonia and formaldehyde.

Formaldehyde is not currently in-game but could easily be added to spawns in doctors offices, schools, labs, museums, etc. It is popularly used to preserve organic tissue, which could potentially be a use in game if anyone could figure out how that would be useful (storing organic matter for use in mutagen?) It could also be added to the recipe for disinfectant. Mixing formaldehyde with sufuric acid produces Marquis reagent, which is used for testing to see if alkaloids are present in a substance (testing for hallucinogenic mushrooms is the only in-game use I can think of for this). Formaldehyde is synthesized by the catalytic oxidation of methanol in the presence of a catalyst like silver.

Pure methanol is not currently in-game but can be easily produced by the destructive distillation of wood as shown in this video. Methanol could be used in many of the same recipes as denatured alcohol, or simply be mixed with ethanol to make denatured alcohol. Charcoal is a byproduct. I’d really like to see more of the byproduct system being used in crafting recipes.

One of hexamine’s current uses in-game is making RDX. RDX is the primary component of C-4. C-4 is basically just RDX that is held together with a plasticizer. I don’t see why we wouldn’t be able to craft it. C-4 is typically created using Dioctyl sebacate as a plasticizer. We could either sort of fudge the synthesis of that using ethanol and acid, or we could just use something like clay or superglue as a plasticizer, but I have no idea how realistic that would be. If some kind of generic putty would be useful in any other recipes or constructions, we could add detergents made from borax to various item spawns and make putty from that, but I don’t think it’s worth it to add it just for making C-4. Ammonium nitrate is a byproduct of producing RDX. Also, the recipe for RDX inexplicably uses sulfuric acid.

Saltpeter is used in-game for making black gunpowder but can currently only be obtained by looting. Saltpeter is a term used for several nitrogen-based compounds, but typically potassium nitrate is used in black powder. Sodium nitrate can also be used, but is usually inferior. Both can be synthesized, but sodium nitrate would be simpler to implement. Potassium nitrate would require adding a few other chemicals to the game, all of which could be obtained by mixing currently existing items.

Ammonium nitrate is currently only used to make ANFO. Making saltpeter craftable would add another use for it. In real life, ammonium nitrate is used as a fertilizer. Making it an ingredient for some kind of fertilizer just makes sense.

Aluminum sulfate currently has absolutely no use. Its description states that it could be used to lower the pH of soil if mixed with a strong acid (which would be true of just pouring acid on the soil as well), but I think this is a misinterpretation. As far as I can tell, aluminum sulfate actually creates sulfuric acid when mixed with water, and that property is sometimes used to lower the pH of soil. That could be one use in game. In real life, it’s used as an ingredient in baking powder and firefighting foam. Adding either would require adding baking soda to the game.

Sodium bicarbonate, or baking soda, is a common leavening agent in baking. It has lots of real life uses, from cleaning your teeth to making fake volcanoes erupt. It’s pretty common, so adding it to grocery store and house spawns would make sense. Could be used in cooking in game in place of yeast. Mixing with aluminum sulfate and water creates a firefighting foam that might be used to make throwable fire extinguishers.

Nitric acid is currently only available from breaking down saltpeter with sulfuric acid. In real life, nitric acid is mainly produced via the Otswald process, which oxidizes ammonia in the presence of a catalyst like platinum.

Acetic acid has only one use. Its description mentions that it is used in antifungal agents and that could be reflected by adding it to the antifungal recipe.

So that’s pretty much what I’ve been thinking about. Let me know what you guys think. If it’s well-recieved, I could get started on actually doing this stuff and making a PR on github.
I guess it’s worth mentioning that I don’t really know much about chemistry and got all this info from wikipedia.

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Very informative read. Although I vaguely remember my chemistry classes from Highschool, it seems to check out.

Great ideas too, I’ve been wondering on how I could make gunpowder to basically make paper cartridges for flintlocks.

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A few more thoughts:

Thermite is only used in one recipe right now. We could give it more uses by allowing thermite and a lighter to be used in place of a welder in certain recipes and in disassembling metal frames, chunks, etc. Could possibly also be used for removing parts from vehicles, although I’m not sure how realistic that would be. Another idea is adding a thermite charge that might be used to melt through metal doors and walls.

There are several kinds of acids, and we have specific ones and generic “concentrated acid”. For the sake of consistency, I’ve come up with a few ideas:

  1. Remove concentrated acid. Add more types of acid. Decide the uses for each (i.e. sulfuric acid is used in car batteries in real life, acetic acid is a solvent in paints, etc.)
  2. Make concentrated acid the only kind of acid. Remove the specific ones. This definitely simplifies things.
  3. Keep specific acids for niche recipes, allow them all to be crafted into concentrated acid. Good middle ground and probably what I’d go with.

While I’m talking about acids, I’m not sure if the universal batteries used in most electronics should be craftable. That seems like some future tech that should involve a little more than pouring lemon juice into a tin can. A survivor building a car battery makes sense, but I’m not so sure about smaller household batteries. What do you guys think?

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Aluminum sulfate currently has absolutely no use. Its description states that it could be used to lower the pH of soil if mixed with a strong acid (which would be true of just pouring acid on the soil as well), but I think this is a misinterpretation. As far as I can tell, aluminum sulfate actually creates sulfuric acid when mixed with water, and that property is sometimes used to lower the pH of soil. That could be one use in game. In real life, it's used as an ingredient in baking powder and firefighting foam. Adding either would require adding baking soda to the game.

Aluminium Sulfate undergoes hydrolysis by cation as shown below:
Al2(SO4)3 + 6HOH → 2Al(OH)3 [participate out] + 6H+ + 3SO4[-2]
So basically more H+ are in solution which means lower pH.

But really the problem is that chemistry is not used much in game in general. Explosives are barely useful for anything and you can pretty much use dynamite for everything. Hexamine stoves and whatnot would be terribly outranked by common hotplates. What other uses does chemistry have? Mutagens? They require commonly available bleach and ammonia and there is no need to craft those two… and then it’s hard to imagine something remotely useful. Using thermite for welding is just stupidly uneconomical and honestly I would use thermite explosives [heat explosives] more. Spreading liquid iron is no joke.

But honestly the game suffers (in my opinion) here from the very same issue as clothing and food: new content is not balanced with the rest. Basically they added a lot of new chemical stuff, but it’s either of no use or is very niche or just plainly unbalanced.

Acids might have a SHIT FUCKING TON of uses, but I was honestly surprised when I found out nitric acid to be so… empty. You could add a recipe for crafting Caro’s acid to dissolve organic matter (that is, to dissolve bodies) (H2O2 + H2SO4 ↔ H2SO5 + HOH), you could add a recipe for chemical weapons (even if they are dead, I don’t think you can stand in neurotoxin vapor for a long time), there is so many possibilities, but no. Cataclysm DDA is basically a lot of content slapped together by many people that somehow works but is really, what do you call it, not smooth.

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Chemistry stuff got OK’d at the time the standards for new content were really lenient.

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Using thermite for welding is just stupidly uneconomical

But that is what thermite is used for in real life. Or did you mean that it would be uneconomical in-game? That might be true, especially since welders aren’t exactly rare or difficult to power.

Basically they added a lot of new chemical stuff, but it's either of no use or is very niche or just plainly unbalanced... Cataclysm DDA is basically a lot of content slapped together by many people that somehow works but is really, what do you call it, not smooth.

Agreed. That’s why I’m not suggesting adding anything more than what might be useful to make current stuff more viable. Do you think my suggestions would help move things in that direction or would chemistry need a bigger overhaul before it started being more useful?

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To me it seems no actual chemist(ry student) has worked on the stuff that’s currently in the game. Especially telling is that the chemistry basements contain fuck-all in terms of common reagents, solvents, acids/bases and of course any type of glassware including a plain absence of tin foil (if it doesn’t work put tin foil around it) etcetera etcetera. It’s also funny that each chemistry character is somehow a very good chef which may be beside the point.