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
  • Almost all chemicals will have some sort of reaction modifier, more later.
  • 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.

image

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.

To help you with sorting and picking which document to use, you’re given a sorting cabinet right smack in the middle of research by smart fridge right here:


And how it looks:
coolthingsorting

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 with mutagen.
*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.

Each of these chemicals give 2 research credits when scanned and must be scanned in order to use/modify any chemical that contains them.

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

With rework, hydro uses properties to a certain extent as a replacment for what it was. this allows for more unique effects on chemicals.

Mutation Controllers for example use the organ harm/heal properties.
-Toxics, or organ harmers will block certain mutations from being rolled. If property is level 1 you lose the roll, 2 or higher you keep rerolling, 4 or higher the effect is permanent until tray cleared.
-Peutics, or organ healers allow only those mutations to be rolled and are cleared when cycle ends

These are all of the properties that have effect on them and what they can do:

  • TOXIC - damages the plant and gives toxin (duh)
  • CORROSIVE - decreases plant weed level
  • BIOCIDIC - decreases plant weed level
  • HEMORRHAGING - decreases plant health and increases mutation likelihood
  • CARCINOGENIC - increases toxins and significantly increases mutation likeliyhood
  • HYPERMETABOLIC - increases plant cycle, it will mutate faster, die faster, mature faster, etc.
  • EXCRETING - Increases toxins, weedlevel, takes nutrients. After a while increases plant potency depending on plant level.
  • NUTRITIOUS - increases weeds, pests, nutrition, health, and amount of product it gives when harvesting.
  • FLUFFING - Increases the product amount significantly, decreases nutrition level considerably. Adds water in return.
  • HYPOMETABOLIC - same as HYPERMETABOLIC but in reverse. everything is slower.
  • ANTITOXIN - decreases toxin level.
  • ANTICORROSIVE - decreases toxin level.
  • HEMOGENIC - allows you to sample a plant again.
  • PHOTOSENSITIVE - increases weed level, decreases nutrition. After a while, makes the plant grow the product repeatedly.
  • CRYSTALLIZATION - same as above, can be stacked.
  • AIDING - decreases mutation likelihood
  • OCULO-TOXIC/PEUTIC: Prevents or Promotes Potency, Bioluminecence, Flowers mutations respectively
  • Neuro-TOXIC/PEUTIC: Prevents or Promotes Potency, Species Mutation (Note will always trigger if promoted)
  • CARDIO-TOXIC/PEUTIC: Prevents or Promotes Potency, New Chemical mutations respectively
  • PNEUMO-TOXIC/PEUTIC: Prevents or Promotes Potency, Endurance, Production, Lifespan, Maturity mutations respectively
  • HEPATO-TOXIC/PEUTIC: Prevents or Promotes Potency, Plant Cancer, Gluttony mutations respectively
  • NEPHRO-TOXIC/PEUTIC: Prevents or Promotes Potency, Light, Weed, and Toxin Tolerance mutations respectively
  • /////////////// NORMAL REAGENTS START HERE
  • ACIDIC BLOOD- removes all chemicals from the plant but one, when theres only one left, acidic blood will appear in chemicals the product will give.
  • DARK ACIDIC BLOOD - If there is Acidic blood in the plant, it will add a random HYDRO chemical listed above up to 10 times.
  • WATER - increases water level (duh)
  • PURPLE PLASMA - Will increases pests and take nutrient. occcasionally will decrease the time it takes for the plant to mature. this effect stays on the seed permanently.
  • AMMONIA - plant health, product yield, and nutrient level all get a considerable boost.
  • DIETHYLAMINE - Same as AMMONIA, but stronger.

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/suppressed 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.

Reaction modifiers

each generated chemical(and a few normal ones) has a chance of having a certain reaction modifier, some are violent. They are as follows:

YOU DO NOT KNOW THE REACTION FROM NEW CONTRACT

Inert: Nothing. This is what it is now

Foaming: If you dont wear bio suit, you have a chance of foam chunks popping off from beaker and getting some chemicals from beaker on you.

Smoking: Beaker starts to fume and after a few seconds, a cloud full of chemicals from beaker spread around for a while. Stop it by either wearing a gas mask or closing the lid before it smokes.

Exothermic reaction: The beaker will start to smoke, and after a few seconds, ignite for a short period. This has no effect on contents of the beaker. counter by having water in the beaker equal exact (or more) of what is getting mixed.

endothermic: The reaction causes a big temperature drop, because of that, chemicals mixed no longer instantly turn into a resulting chemical, and are significantly slowed.

Glowing: Reaction glows.

////////////

The following NORMAL chems that were changed

  • Potassium Chloride gained smoking reaction

  • Potassium Chlorophoride gained foaming reaction

  • Formaldehyde gained smoking reaction

  • flash powder gained fire reaction

  • Hexamine gained bubbling reaction. OTs beware!

Theres a few new chemicals as well.

Those are:

Potassium Phorosulfate - Take potassium cholorophoride and sulphuric acid at 1:4 ratio. It is anendothermic reaction

Cooper sulfate - cooper and sulphuric acid at 2:5 ratio which result in one unit. it has a smoking reaction

Iron sulfate = iron and sulphuric acid at 1:5 ratio. it has no reaction modifiers.

Iron Phoride Sulfate- Iron sulfate + Phoron at 3:1 ratio which result in one unit. It has exothermic reaction.

Phenol-Formaldehyde Resin - Phenol + formaldehyde at 1:2 ratio with methane as a catalyst. it has endothermic reaction

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
removed, CIP hint can only be found groundside.

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
  • Clearance price was reduced accross the board
  • 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.

2 Likes

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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updated the guide

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updated again to include all hydro effects from properties.

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Mutations:

Basics: you need over 100 “Mutation Level” when you start a new plant cycle

Plant cycles happen every 150 game ticks. But its processing chemicals the whole time
Chemicals with the carcinogeic property add Level x 10 per process

When mutation triggered:
15% chance to mutate into a new plant species, if the plant has variants i.e. chili peppers into frost peppers

Rolls on the mutation table 1 or 2 + “mutation level / 50” times. i.e. 100 mutation level will roll 3-4 times
Rolling a 15 sided die gives

1: Plant Cancer, hurts plant bad
2: Gluttony, changes water and nutrient consumption
3: Endurance, changes plant health
4: Light tolerance, optimal light levels? Even I don’t know if this effects anything
5: Toxin tolerance, changes it
6: Weed tolerance, changes it, also can evolve carnivory or parisitism
7: Production, time between harvests changes
8: Lifespan, changes it and also yield
9: Potency, changes it
10 Maturity, time to fully grown changes, also 5-10% chance to enable/disable repeat harvest
11 Bioluminesence, lets plant glow
12 Flowers, grows some flowers
13 v
14 Add new chemical to the harvested fruits
15 ^

Now we have mutation controllers and they are the organ harm/heal properties.
Toxics, or organ harmers will block mutations from being rolled. If property level 1 you lose the roll,
2 or higher you keep rerolling, 4 or higher the effect is permanent until tray cleared
Peutics, or organ healers allow only those mutations to be rolled and are cleared when cycle ends

Eyes, Oculo-toxic/peutic: Potency, Bioluminecence, Flowers
Brain, Neuro-toxic/peutic: Species Mutation (Note will always trigger if promoted)
Heart, Cardio-toxic/peutic: New Chemical
Lungs, Pneumo-toxic/peutic: Endurance, Production, Lifespan, Maturity
Liver, Hepato-toxic/peutic: Plant Cancer, Gluttony
Kidney, Nephro-toxic/peutic: Light, Weed, and Toxin Tolerance

3 Likes

Honestly, what exactly is the point of this redesign in its current state?

Minor changes have been made constantly over the last few weeks and months, changes were made to the garden sprayer when it was realized that it was too powerful as a chemical weapon sprayer, adjustments were made to the Intermedium and, in some cases, Hard recipes…

In the meantime, the original rework has, in my opinion, been hollowed out far too much. In its current state, the research has hardly any ROUND-RELEVANT use.

The typical old researchers you used to see are hardly seen anymore. Newbies are hopelessly overwhelmed, even with the guide (due to the constant adjustments), and it’s now based more on luck than skill.

In its current state, since the powers that be would not roll it back anyway or admit that the rework is perhaps not as clean as it should be, I would completely abolish research as a role. There is almost no point in investing time or resources in it when it is in such a disastrous state.

The screenshot is just ONE example of MANY, MANY rounds of how research currently works – mostly poorly or not at all.

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A lot of those negative changes listed aren’t from the rework, they’re general changes and nerfs/buffs made by maintainers to address things generally outside of research that end up directly affecting research.

I believe passive credits are being talked about and other onboarding issues are almost centered on botany, which has been terrible since the conception of the role, really.

As for removing research because it’s ineffective is very funny considering what it’s still capable of. The rework is almost universally a positive to the role, you do not want old research back, it had that same screenshot happening about several hundred rounds in a row.

If you have a problem with spraybottles and other nerfs, please take it up with the maints who PR them. This role definitely still has problems, but you can’t identify them.

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Oh, of course it is still capable of doing something, but the whole game mechanic has been so inflated by its complexity and integrated into so many secondary systems that, as you rightly say, even secondary changes to other systems directly influence research.

And it is the job of the project administrators to keep an eye on this, which, in my opinion, is not the case. The current research system has thus been increasingly hollowed out, leading to a role that is rarely played or used anymore.

I am absolutely certain that a small CORE group of players can still do a lot with it, but a system is also about accessibility and playability, even in a medium-populated round, for example.

The system currently only has Botany (and practically had it before that) - It is still an alien-inspired game mode for SS13 - I would rather see it oriented towards classic SS13 Research.

Botany isn’t even part of the core system for regular SS13 research systems. There would be plenty of other options, from materials science and explosion chamber tests to gas chamber analyses (e.g., on dead Xeno bodies). More diversity in the role.

It doesn’t always have to end in a super serum, and I agree with you that the old system definitely has flaws, but it also had more opportunities to simply do things you feel like doing. The new system is extremely dependent on luck and waiting times. It’s a game loop that’s just not fun and is designed to punish you even harder than the old game loop. (Lack of passive credits, work of recent researchers, if not done well, leads to massive losses, completely dependent on available papers, xeno plasmas can no longer be used for dirty and simple methods of cheap stims, as far as I know, and there is now too much focus on botany)

In addition, the new rework has made research more time-consuming overall until you can actually deliver something meaningful. What is currently lacking in research are results that are useful in the medium term. We already have ceramic plates that can negate general friendly fire damage, so why not a few upgrades for regular armor or, for example, makeshift patterns for a form of ammunition or similar things?

Nothing that turns a Marine into Captain America, but something that gives, for example, 5% or 10% (maximum) more. The whole biomass printer concept seems to have been neglected since its introduction.

Therefore, I would rather see such a system scrapped and resources for balance adjustments and the like flow into other areas than have someone actively working on it and pouring resources into an area that is currently one of the least attractive roles in the entire CM.

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Hard agree. I really wished the maints agreed, a lot of my side-strategies are basically impossible with the way those systems are changed. This doesn’t mean it’s impossible to improve the current system to that state, though. It just requires PRs to revert those harmful changes :D.

In addition, the new rework has made research more time-consuming overall until you can actually deliver something meaningful. What is currently lacking in research are results that are useful in the medium term. We already have ceramic plates that can negate general friendly fire damage, so why not a few upgrades for regular armor or, for example, makeshift patterns for a form of ammunition or similar things?

Link to the Cybernetics contributor project. Basically, everything you want and more.

Biomass is largely hard to use, but I think that’s mainly because you can’t distribute biomass to staff who have more time to use it (like doctors and the like), and most marines aren’t aware of how they work or what options are available. Same thing goes for something like the ACID vest. If the powergamers knew, they would never go without an ACID vest filled configured with death-mercury. Accessibility is probably the crowning issue here, but research is entirely capable of delivering mid-stage goals. The rework makes sure of that, and I regularly manage to get 2-3 projects out before a “larger” project like godstims or whiteflame.

I am entirely for changing botany to a different mechanic that’s more visually/thematically engaging with the source material and isn’t so heavily reliant on RNG, by the way. But I have a strong feeling no matter what you do, the role won’t ever be all that attractive with the restrictive TDM nature of CM13. It exists for people who are curious about the strongest strategies and how to employ them, and people who enjoy pushing the limits of what’s mechanically allowed in the game (while generally also offering a lot of room for roleplay).

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