Enhancing the Chemical Engineer

[Crumpaloo]

Enhancing the Chemical Engineer

 

 

                       Sup guys, as you may of known i love playing the chemical engineer and getting a bar going, its fun to build the bars themselves and its fun to just chill out and interact with some people in a way that isn't just: (warn 1/2/3)

But playing the job long enough you start to realize some of the problems that come with the class and that what id like to address first before talking about how to fix them.

 

 

Problem 1 (Potions):

1. Most Potions are either a weaker or equal version of other means of obtaining the same effects. 

 

Example:  Health potions cost 300$ to make and only gives 20 health while the PD Panel grants full health for 400$, and the argument that they are better because you can carry them around only works partially as there are much better alternatives to Health potions that can be carried around(Health Injectors, Bacta Grenades) i guess if your poor and needed to carry around a worst version of healing they could be useful but its very rare people treat them that way to start with, and i know this from experience.

 

2. Most potions that are active overtime then immediate only last about 15-30 seconds or so

 

Example: Beastial, invisible, growth and minify potions all have status effects overtime, and yet they last so short that some barely seem worth it. Aside from Bestial which makes you go faster, being invisible, big or small for about 10 seconds doesn't really have any uses actually in-game as there is not enough time to do anything with their current effects.

 

3. Some potions feel more like gimmicks then actual useful items.

 

Example: Growth and Minify have no real use in-game, and if the point to have them in was to be as a joke item like a baby throwing SWEP then they really haven't accomplished that either because the effects barely last long enough for people to register whats happening. Instead someone will ask to have one out of curiosity only to be disappointed when they revert back to their original size within the next couple of seconds or so.

 

4. Potions dont feel creative or useful with their effects.

 

Example: Some of the more basic potions like the health and defense are usually the ones with the most use in them, yet as we have already discussed because they are so basic and overall underwhelming people are more likely to just buy better alternatives and scrap the whole idea of buying them to start with. Meanwhile ones with more creativity put into them like the Invisibility, growth, minify, and character potions have very little if any use put in them, and while some of these potions dont have alternative methods of reaching the same effects would make you think they would be more sought after, the way these effects were implemented makes them just as useless and gimmicky as the ones that dont do anything at all. 

 

5. Potions phase through props

 

Example: Say you wanna build a bar to go along with your potions, or you just have built alot of props around where you are selling your potions, a person asks for x potion and you make it, but as soon as you grav gun it to him the potion phases through the counter, floor, wall, etc. now it starts rolling into the walls and you gotta nocollide and fading door the entire place because a single potion wouldn't just collide with the dang floor, even worse if you are in a skybase and it phases through the floor and someone below picks it up.

 

Problem 2 (Alchemy Table):

 

1. The Alchemy Table has Always Been Finicky

 

Example: As of right now looking at the items on the table will make amount they cost dissapear so you have no idea how much you are spending to make any given potion, which can be bad if you are just starting out and cant afford to go in the red to make a profit. Ontop of that sometimes if you are looking at a buy option on the alchemy table and try to interact with it it wont do anything, instead the actual button to interact with it could be off to the right somewhere and so you'll have to move your mouse around spamming e to try to buy a simple ingredient. Lastly theres the fact that you cant phy gun freeze the table itself, this means minges can literally just pick it up and run off with it, or flip it around to the point where you cant make potions, or if you have props around it cause it to go flying i know this use to be a feature and i dont understand why it was removed.

 

 

Now i think thats most of the problems with the job out of the way, now id like to go about adressing each one and how we can not only fix them, but add improvments that make the class more fun and viable.

 

Solution 1 (Potions)

 

1. Make Potions either stronger or more unique with how they have the similar effects as alternative methods so people are more likely to want them

 

Example: The up to 120 hp effect for the health potions was a good start, but im thinking more of the potions should have properties like that and here are some suggestions:

 

Defense Potion: Gives 50+ armor, getting shot has the first (x amount) of bullets damage reduced by (x%)

 

Bestial Potion: Increases Jump, Sprint Speed, The more empty your inventory, the faster you run, status lasts for 45 seconds.

 

Invisible Potion: Makes you nearly invisible for 45 seconds, while invisible your equipped weapon/bludgeon is also invisible

 

2. Just increase the status time of certain potions so people can take full advantage of their uses

 

Example: Being invisible for 45 seconds is a whole lot better then being invisible for a measly 15 seconds

 

3. By altering potion uses and effects we can give them more meaning

 

Example: Growth and Minify dont really help you with much but if being big gave you a larger health pool or being smaller allowed your hit box to be smaller then more people would use them.

 

4. By creating potions that have more creative and unique effects then just "give hp" or "give armor" people will be more willing to buy them because they cant find alternative methods elsewhere.

 

Example: Here are some potions that i would really like to see implemented that i think could have a great impact on the job as a whole:

 

KO potion: This potion will instantly knock out the person who drinks it, after being created it will disguise its name into another potion, good for kidnappers

 

Haste Potion: This potion will give whoever drinks it a small global boost in how fast they do things (mining, chopping, fishing, barrel farming, lockpicking, hacking, etc.)

 

Sight Potion: This potion will give the person that drank it a very limited version of 1 way fence vision for a short time

 

Alertness Potion: This potion will save the person from being KO in any way for 5 minutes

 

Charity Potion: This potion willforce the drinker to give 5k to a random hobo, Like the KO Potion it will be disguised so players cant tell when they drink it

 

Re-gen Potion: Regenerates hp and armor slowly overtime for about 20 seconds (stop if the player is damaged)

 

XP Potion: This potion gives a small xp bonus to the drinker for the next(x amount)of minutes

 

Fishing Potion: This potion will give a increased chance to the drinker to find rare items while fishing for the next(x)minutes

 

5. I dont know how but via coding or something else potions gotta stop phasing through props, as well as other items 

 

Solution 2 (alchemy table)

 

1. These problems are mainly just down to coding so i can tell specifically how they should be fixed, just that the problems are there and those that do know how to fix them will. But a suggestion i think would just help clear it all up is to let the Engineer make potions the way the Restaurant cook makes his foods, in their own separate menu like areas and have the buttons be on a ui instead of being based off the actual prop itself to help clear up all the frustration that comes with. And i dont know how but make it so people can phys gun freeze their alchemy tables so minges cant screw with them anymore.

 

Oh and some other features that would be cool to see are being able to put potions on entity shelves or be able to put a price on them as soon as you make them so when someone presses e on it they give you money or something idk.

 

 

But that yeah that pretty much wraps it all up id love to see this job become more useful and wanted so things like bars and potion shops could have more validity to them and i hope these suggestions will help with that, laters!

[zZzO G]

theres actually something u can do with the table to see the price and make more potions at once, hover over the buy option and scroll up with ur mouse button