Transmutation Revamp

[Deleted User]

Today marks the release of a project we've been working on behind the scenes for some time: the synthesis/transmutation revamp!

We've been unhappy with the state of Synthesis for a while now. It was not very interactive, and mostly involved a lot of people running scripts and sitting still repeating commands over and over. At the same time, we like the RP involved and wanted to keep it special and distinct from harvesting (and to make sure each had their own advantages and disadvantages). Hopefully this strikes a balance, offering more gameplay, some uniqueness, and less tedium.

I wanted to offer a chance for people to ask questions about the changes - questions about how things work, why we made the change, and anything else transmutation-related that's on the mind!

Keorin

Is the current reagent pricing/mineral distribution still in flux, or largely final? From what I've heard of how things are now, it seems like mineral prices are likely to see more then a small increase just from the limited availability of the most needed minerals combined with the high cost of transmutating.

And are there any plans to make serverside curing able to use a mix of minerals and herbs? The new system seems like it's going to lead to much more varied pricing/availability, which would makes the ability to not be stuck with one system or another a pretty big bonus. Being stuck entirely with the whims of one set of pricing or another seems like it's now a much bigger penalty for people without the ping to go clientside and use both.

[Deleted User]

Mineral distribution could change, but it's too early to tell if it will need to be adjusted. My suspicion is that it will not need to be adjusted, at least not much. The intent here was not to make minerals more expensive or more rare. Bear in mind that people haven't necessarily managed to find all the areas where each mineral can be extracted yet. Each mineral is available from a pretty large number of accessible rooms, but some of them are going to take longer for players to discover. I may also end up tweaking some of the numbers rather than changing distribution, since the distribution by area isn't necessarily arbitrary...but I've said too much.

It is also very possible that transmutation reactants cost may change. The reactants cost acts as a lever we can adjust as needed, which is one of the reasons there are barriers in the way of stockpiling reactants for future use. I don't know if we'll need to adjust it yet, but we wanted to start with a relatively conservative value, especially while offering tradein on prime and metal stockpiles.

I can't speak to mixing minerals and herbs. It's possible that we might revisit this at some point, but it's not on the list right now as far as I know. In general, one of the purposes of transmutation is price stabilisation - no mineral can ever be more expensive than the cheapest mineral and the transmutation cost. In fact, it's potentially cheaper since the first 200 minerals a month are free! If shopkeepers are needing a lot of transmutation done, it might be time to start setting up networks of smaller transmutationists rather than relying on one or two to fill massive orders!

Lenn

Is the first 200 free transmutations dependent on being a member of a city? The news post implies that it does.

[Deleted User]

Lenn said:

Is the first 200 free transmutations dependent on being a member of a city? The news post implies that it does.

Yes. The stipends are for citizens of cities with labs. This means that rogues do not receive a stipend and that you may not visit other cities' labs to find an additional stipend (your stipend only exists in your home city).

Rogues may still purchase reactants from the alchemists in any of the city labs (and non-rogues can purchase reactants in foreign cities too).

Synthesis/transmutation has always been tied more strongly to the cities, and the labs have always been city-affiliated. Life is hard for a rogue!

Note that there is no additional cost for rogues on extracting though, and every mineral can be extracted once you know where to look - unlike the old system, transmutation is never actually necessary.

Ismay

Problem: MINERALS is saying "sparse" when there is 1-7 minerals available to extract. This turns into a problem considering the fact that once we try to extract in a room, we cannot do it again that month. Which means that we effectively ban ourselves from extracting in an area if we try multiple rooms, if they have already been extracted from previously.

That is, if I am understanding this correctly.

Ismay

Wait, it says once per room each day. Is that an ooc or ic day? Maybe I did misunderstand!

[Deleted User]

If you extract from a room, you cannot extract from it again that day.

I'll look at this again once things have calmed down a little. Extraction activity is very high right now as people try it out, almost certainly much higher than the steady state will be, and people are also trying to extract from many of the same common places just to try out the skills, while eventually people will be spreading out to different areas in search of particular minerals, and people will also begin to discover alternate areas that are a little off the beaten path.

It is worth noting that extraction does not extract more from rooms with higher abundance. That's a benefit unique to plants, and one of the advantages/disadvantages of Harvesting (Extract pulls more minerals than a Sparse harvest, fewer than an Abundant harvest). So long as there are enough for a full extract, a Sparse room will yield just as many minerals as an Abundant room.

Edit: The ab file is right, it's per day (IC day). Apparently I don't remember my own code! It works exactly the same as the cooldown on harvesting plants.

Mindshell

What's the justification for tying a trade skill back to a class?

- City alchemists will be provided with a monthly stipend of 200 transmutation reactants. These are stocked within the lab workspaces each month and you need not request them - simply begin transmutation and you will make use of your stipend.

We previously moved to unshackle classes from trade skills and this seems like a distinct step back in the other direction.

Siduri

Mindshell said:

What's the justification for tying a trade skill back to a class?

- City alchemists will be provided with a monthly stipend of 200 transmutation reactants. These are stocked within the lab workspaces each month and you need not request them - simply begin transmutation and you will make use of your stipend.

We previously moved to unshackle classes from trade skills and this seems like a distinct step back in the other direction.

They most likely mean alchemists in the skill use sense, not the class one.

Ismay

Are the primes and metals going to be used for anything in the future? I've already traded all I can in for reactants, and am still left with around 500+ of each. May end up trashing them!

Keorin

Alchemists still need them for several of their skills.

Sena

Keorin said:

Alchemists still need them for several of their skills.

Not in large quantities though, except maybe salt if you revive people a lot.
Rezzing takes 5 salt.
Homunculus takes one prime (not sure what people normally use), per login/death if they keep it up at all times.
Etherchannel takes 2 of the appropriate metal, none of them lead to especially useful or frequently-traveled places for most people, so it's not something that will be used constantly.

In all the years I played an alchemist, I don't think I went through 500 of any prime/metal if you don't count synthesis/transmutation.

Klendathu

First up, thank you @Ronwe and the other coderlani for the efforts. Whether or not they're well received by the genpop, it is recognised that changes are made for the good of the game.

Question: Do the benefits of the Master Metallurgist and Gloves of Extraction still apply to extracting minerals?

[Deleted User]

Siduri said:

Mindshell said:

What's the justification for tying a trade skill back to a class?

- City alchemists will be provided with a monthly stipend of 200 transmutation reactants. These are stocked within the lab workspaces each month and you need not request them - simply begin transmutation and you will make use of your stipend.

We previously moved to unshackle classes from trade skills and this seems like a distinct step back in the other direction.

They most likely mean alchemists in the skill use sense, not the class one.

Correct. I've mostly trained myself out of the habit of saying "alchemist" when I mean "transmutationist" (really rolls of the tongue, that), but slipped up. The stipend is for anyone with the transmutation skill.

Ismay said:

Are the primes and metals going to be used for anything in the future? I've already traded all I can in for reactants, and am still left with around 500+ of each. May end up trashing them!

Possible, but likely only for future alchemist class abilities/changes. Primes and metals are now the purview of alchemists, with their deeper knowledge of the alchemical mysteries. That's why we offered the tradein!

I imagine they could also end up used for more general alchemy RP as well, when player orgs are trying to do alchemy/transmutation-related stuff.

Klendathu said:

Question: Do the benefits of the Master Metallurgist and Gloves of Extraction still apply to extracting minerals?

Yup! HELP TRADESKILL ARTEFACTS is already updated. Master Metallurgist is being updated to Master Extractor, granting a 1/3 chance at an additional mineral when extracting (just like Master Harvester). The functionality has already been changed, the actual display info for the trait should be fixed later today.

Xaden

What are the chances of getting extractable minerals added to gmcp?

Kayeil

I had to attend something IRL today and missed the event, so really all I'm curious about is did the event leave a new place to explore that the alchemists or transmutationists went to? And if so, is it still open? Can anyone go to it now?

Rekhyr

any chance to get a CONFIG PLANTS-like option? I get that you can't see extractable minerals in room like you can see plants, but maybe you could smell them or something? :P

Kyrra

Rekhyr said:

any chance to get a CONFIG PLANTS-like option? I get that you can't see extractable minerals in room like you can see plants, but maybe you could smell them or something? :P

Have you tried MINERALS?

Antonius

Minerals requires you to use the command in every room. CONFIG PLANTS (or PLANTS ON) shows you plants in the room description without having to do PLANTS.

Zulah

Thanks to @Ronwe and any others involved in this. Looks good so far. Change and evolution in Achaea is always great to see!

Ailea

I'm definitely with those who have stated above to get a similar function for Minerals as there is for PLANTS on to go ahead and show what minerals are available in the rooms. 

This would be enormously helpful. 

Ismay

Unfortunately, I don’t do well with change. Especially change that makes things worse or more frustrating. It’s why I dread announcement posts.

This change, however, I can fully get behind. As a matter of fact, I've been up since 4am Saturday and am currently pulling a 12 hour work day today with no sleep, because I was so excited about it last night that I went on a full blown exploring bender. Which isn’t really something I’ve ever been interested in before.

Reminds me of some of the insane all-nighters I used to pull when Achaea was new and fresh back years ago! 

Well done, guys.

Yen

I think it's great that the admins also took the time to do an event with the Cauda Pavonis.  It was nice to see them again!

[Deleted User]

I'm open to reconsidering, but I'm not sure I'm convinced that GMCP or CONFIG MINERALS is actually necessary or particularly helpful. For plants, different rooms can have different plants, and more than one type in each room. Unless you memorize the environments and have some way of displaying each environment, you really would have to do PLANTS in every room. For minerals, each area has only one mineral and it's the same across the whole area. You do have to see the environment, but you already had to do that when extracting primes, and it's usually very obvious when you're underground or in mountains - often more obvious than the difference between different kind of plant-y rooms.

You should only really need to do MINERALS once per area, and once you're familiar with some areas where you commonly extract, you won't have much reason to check it at all.

It's also somewhat purposeful: the idea is that minerals involve having to sort of "take a sample" rather than just learning to passively spot plants - another small difference between extracting and harvesting. (I wanted to make the command SAMPLE originally to make it feel more IC, but that's already a command and MINERALS is easier to remember since it parallels PLANTS.)

Antonius

Ronwe said:

I'm open to reconsidering, but I'm not sure I'm convinced that GMCP or CONFIG MINERALS is actually necessary or particularly helpful. For plants, different rooms can have different plants, and more than one type in each room. Unless you memorize the environments and have some way of displaying each environment, you really would have to do PLANTS in every room. For minerals, each area has only one mineral and it's the same across the whole area. You do have to see the environment, but you already had to do that when extracting primes, and it's usually very obvious when you're underground or in mountains - often more obvious than the difference between different kind of plant-y rooms.

You should only really need to do MINERALS once per area, and once you're familiar with some areas where you commonly extract, you won't have much reason to check it at all.

It's also somewhat purposeful: the idea is that minerals involve having to sort of "take a sample" rather than just learning to passively spot plants - another small difference between extracting and harvesting. (I wanted to make the command SAMPLE originally to make it feel more IC, but that's already a command and MINERALS is easier to remember since it parallels PLANTS.)

It's (only) helpful for automating, but extracting/harvesting is the kind of thing that people automate parts of because it's not actually a particularly fun activity to do entirely manually.

Environment is already in GMCP, which makes automating harvesting relatively simple. All you need to build is a map of environments to plants; there aren't that many environment types, and the AB files for Harvesting generally give you a hint at which one(s) a given plant will be found in. An environment type can have multiple plants, but that's a tiny bit of added complexity to your script, not a massive roadblock. Having plants in GMCP would only really be useful for specific rooms/areas where you can't actually harvest anything (Mhaldor Isle being a notable example).

Minerals requires a map of individual areas to a single mineral; the coding isn't the difficult part there (not that harvesting is difficult), it's actually populating that table for every area. Having minerals in GMCP would eliminate the need to populate that table yourself, but you'd still need to go out and actually look for areas that have the minerals you want.

Dochitha

Could spam extract every mineral and gag failures. 

Antonius

Dochitha said:

Could spam extract every mineral and gag failures. 

Yeah, you can. You can also update every curing priority, even when they haven't changed, while fighting and lag out the entire game, forcing the admins to change how that's handled.

I generally prefer not to send commands to the game unnecessarily, because while it takes a little bit more effort from me when writing the script it's better for the game overall.

Dupre

Ronwe said:

You should only really need to do MINERALS once per area, and once you're familiar with some areas where you commonly extract, you won't have much reason to check it at all.

Antonius

Dupre said:

Ronwe said:

You should only really need to do MINERALS once per area, and once you're familiar with some areas where you commonly extract, you won't have much reason to check it at all.

Yes? Not sure what point you're trying to make by just quoting that again.

Skye

@Ronwe Home owners are able to upgrade room environments to constructed and natural underground. I don't own any extractable locations in my subdivision home , but I'm wondering how the changes have affected such rooms. Is there a fixed mineral to be found in homes/cities?