Research Rework: The Contract System Guide

Introduction

This is a guide created for Research Rework Part Two: The Contract System. This guide assumes that you already know at least the basics of how research work.

The Big Changes

  • CREATE is gone. Replaced with ADD
  • Naturally occurring research chems are gone from groundside
  • Can no longer directly exchange biomass into research credits, now requires buying rerolls
  • You must do botany.

Contracts

At the start of the round, when you enter research you’ll see that your data terminal will show 3 randomly generated chemicals, their difficulty, one component, and one random property that they have. The properties that they can generate scale with level, so an Easy contract cannot give you strong properties such as Muscle Stimulating.

Taking a contract will cause the synthesis paper to be printed out on the photocopier alongside starting a 7 minute timer before the contracts get rerolled and you get to take another contract.

Upon scanning the chemical, you will get points based on the difficulty of the chemical, 3/5/8 for easy/intermediate/hard respectively.

Here, i’ve scanned my Easy chemical, Kolydyne, and got 3 credits for it.

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Papers that come directly from your XRF scanner will have the names of all their properties in shortform on them, for easy usage.

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Intermediate/Hard chemicals require level 2/3 clearance, respectively, to see their properties.

Generally you should always take intermediate over Easy, unless the Easy chemical has a property that you need for a legendary (see below) or a property that you really want (Bonemending, Hemostatic).

Contract Rerolls are now purchasable from the biomass printer at level 4 clearance, starting at 1k biomass (and going up 200 to 2000), they immediately cause a reroll to occur, giving you 3 new options to pick from.

Notes:

  • You still get points from scanning a contract chem even if you don’t have clearance req to view its properties
  • The paper that researchers/CMO spawn with don’t give any points when scanned, and already have their properties revealed (and can immediately be used without needing to be made).
  • Won’t always be easy/intermediate/hard, you can get triple hards, or 2 intermediates and an easy.

Chemicals

Due to you getting a whole lot less chemicals (due to no IO vial chems and contracts having a 7 minute cooldown) each chem paper is significantly stronger, having higher OD limits (lowest OD limit is 30, average is 35-40) and having more properties per paper. Chemicals will have 4-6 properties each.

With create mode is gone, as you will need to use existing papers to create all of your research chems.

Example of a hard chem paper:

Notes:

  • Due to the minimum OD increase, unstable chems are significantly less likely to explode in your face from errors as long as you have water.

Botany

Botany is now effectively essential for you to make stims, it provides Hydro Chems, which are required for hard chemicals. They can only* be obtained from specific plant/plant variations being splashed mutagened.
*Cyanide pills can be gotten from the CL
These chems are:

Atropine from Poppies
Psoralen from Cabbages
Coniine from Carrots
Phenol from Carrots
Digoxin from Messa’s Tears
Zygacine from Reshi
Amatoxin from Reshi
Thymol from death/poison berries
Urusiol from Deathnettles
Cyanide from Poison Apples

It is critical that you gather up as many of these chemicals as possible, so that you can do as many hard chems for both the properties that they have as well as the point gain.

To aid in getting these chemicals, certain properties effect plants, most notably, using diethylamine and ammonia will GREATLY boost the yield and potency of the plants they are applied to.

ADD Mode

With CREATE gone, ADD mode now occupies the synthesis machine.
ADDing allows you to take a property from one chem paper (the reference) and ADD it to the target paper, at No OD cost to the target paper.
However, the ENTIRETY of the reference paper will become unusable, and cannot be ADDED/related/amped/supressed again, becoming effectively useless to the synthesis machine. This applies to the entire chem, so you cannot make multiple copies of the same chemical to get around it.

While adding is great, there is a downside for the target paper having too many properties, if there are more than 6 properties on a paper, ADDing a chemical costs 3x as many credits.
You should be careful on whether to RELATE and lose a bit of OD, and swap a property, or to ADD and destroy the reference while adding the property you want.

Intel Changes

Groundside vials are GREATLY decreased, the remaining vial boxes are filled with xeno bloods, with a rare chance for a Xenogenetic Catalyst, which will be the only way to obtain Dna Disintegrating. The ability for random chemicals (such as souto) to spawn in random vials was removed, so any vials found will have at least some use to researchers.

But vials aren’t the only thing that IOs can find, there are now legendary hints, which are special papers that research can use to make properties such as boosting, regulating, and Ciphering. The papers do not need to be delivered in person, and can actually be shouted out over comms for the researchers to hear and use.

Legendaries

Legendary chems are special properties that require you to combine 3 different properties to get, These legendary properties are:

Regulating
Boosting
Hypergenetic (Heal brute damage and all organ damage)
Ciphering (greenos)

Ciphering is no longer part of royal blood, being replaced with the encrypted property. The encrypted property will always be one of the 3 reqs for Ciphering
Research will spawn with a Ciphering Hint, which will tell you another property needed, along with the third property’s type, positive/neutral/negative

Naturally found legendary hints will always show all 3 properties needed. Legendary properties cannot be a requirement in other legendary properties.

Property Changes

  • Intravenous now boosts property level at the cost of metabbing faster (like Hypermetab). Less efficient overall.
  • REG/BST nerfs reverted, meaning infinite ODs and Boosting giving full levels.
  • MST/NST don’t conflict They conflict again
  • The Flame properties are roughly doubled(?) per level, so you don’t need to reach level 12 for superflame.
  • Repairing now HEALS CADES when sprayed

Other Changes

  • There’s a Queue system on the biomass printer, neat.
  • IMS price reduced from 3k to 2k
  • Autoharvest is purchasable from the biomass printer, when applied to a tray it’ll automatically harvest when ready. Clearance 3 and 500 biomass each.
  • Upto 4 researcher slots

Good luck.

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You can also get Cyanide from the CL btw, if they are feeling nice

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Made it a wikipost (anyone can edit it)

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That… was already in the post… asterisk’d…

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I am an idiot and accidentally deleted my post. Please mock me for it. This is a fantastic guide. Thank you so very much for taking the time to make it.

I wish I had this when I briefly delved into Researcher. If memory serves I was “trained” by Bob Huey or Mauricio Strofield. It is by the grace of god that I did not blow up research and/or the ship.

All and all fantastic guide.

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Changes since:
Clearance is cheaper.
6 >> 3
9 >> 6
12 >> 9
15 >> 12
5X price is unchanged

research gets 1k biomass roundstart(tentative, might not stay)

autoharvest is now 250 each and level one clearance.

grinder upgrade disk, more than doubles grind capacity and halfs grind duration*. also minor qol for it. 500 points each at level one clearance and no inflation

photosensitive fix
fertilizers nerf, still very useful but not as much.

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Holy balls, this is literally liquid gold for anyone trying to get into research after the 282629 reworks (and a million more to come). About damn time someone made an updated in-depth guide for the most opaque role in CM13. Nice work!

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Tried making xenoes with the new DDI chem, and its different. So now I gotta experiement with it again. 10/10.

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