Guide to Chemistry

=Foreword= Please note that this list does not cover every single chem; there are some compounds that can only be found through trial and error. These are secret chems with recipes not held in the source code.

=Chemistry Equipment=

Chemical Dispenser
The Chemical Dispenser is your go-to device for making everything. It's a reagent dispenser, and works the same way as all other dispensers - You put a container into it, in this case a Beaker of some sort, by holding the container in your hand and clicking the dispenser. Then once a container is in, click the dispenser with an empty hand to bring up the menu

The Chemical dispenser can dispense all kinds of elements and chemicals into the beaker. And when you put in the right ingredients for a recipe, they'll automatically react in the beaker and create the result. Some of the things in the dispenser even have effects on their own, without being made into compounds. For a full list of all the things that the dispenser can output, check the Dispenser section

ChemMaster 3000
The ChemMaster 3000 is your tool for turning your beakerfuls of medicine, into a useable state, without having to give away your lab equipment. It's also used for analysing the contents of beakers, and for carefully removing parts you want to get rid of, to keep your mixtures pure.

To start, insert a beaker containing some chemical, and then click it with an empty hand to bring up a menu. In addition to holding a beaker, the ChemMaster can also hold a Pill Bottle (both simultaneously), more on these soon.

The Add to Buffer section is where all the juicy info is. It will show you a list of all the reagents inside the beaker, and their quantities. Beside each one are several options. Analyze will just bring up the description of that chemical, to tell you what it is and does. The rest of the buttons (1,5,10,all,custom) just control how much of that chemical you're going to move to the buffer.

The Buffer is the section between the horizontal lines. Imagine this as chemicals inside the ChemMaster. Once they're here, you can do several things with them.
 * The Transfer To section shows where chemicals will go when you transfer them out of the buffer, click it to change the destination. They can either go back into the beaker, or they can go into the disposal
 * This doesn't actually put them in the disposal, it just destroys them. Any reagents destroyed this way are gone forever, and cannot be recovered.
 * Chemicals in the buffer will have the same number control options as those in the beaker. This just transfers them to either of the destinations mentioned above.
 * The Create Bottle option will magically create a glass bottle, and put the contents of the buffer into it. The bottle is created outside of the ChemMaster and will appear on top of it. Bottles have a maximum capacity of 60u, so anything over that will still remain in the buffer.
 * By clicking the Icon to the right of this option, you can choose a visual style for the resulting bottle. Note that the bottle is transparent, and will take on the colour of the liquid inside it. You only choose the shape.
 * The Create Pill option will create a single edible pill out of the buffer contents. Again, up to 60u total dosage. If an empty pill bottle is inserted into the ChemMaster, the pill will be created inside that bottle. Otherwise it will appear on top of the machine.
 * The Create Multiple Pills option will create a number of pills that you get to specify. The contents of the buffer will be evenly divided amongst all the pills you make. And if a pill bottle is in the machine, the pills will be created inside it until it's full. Otherwise they appear on top in a big messy pile
 * By clicking the Icon to the right of this option, you can choose a visual style for the resulting pill(s). This will help people to tell your pills apart at a glance, which can be useful when you're making a bottle filled with a mixture of different pills.

Once you're done making pills and bottles, you'll probably want to make sure your beaker is empty again so you can make something new, if so be sure to transfer everything to the buffer. Once you eject the beaker, everything left in the buffer is destroyed.

If you've made a bottle of pills, don't forget to eject the pill bottle too, and then label it using the Hand Labeller.

All-In-One Grinder
The Grinder is your tool of choice for breaking down objects into reagents. You can put pills in it, to get back the chemicals they're made of. You can breakdown Phoron Crystals into liquid phoron. You can put fruits, vegetables, meals, meat etc into it as well. The results will be outputted into its beaker, which you can extract and stick in the ChemMaster to work with.

It's good for undoing your mistakes if you make pills wrong, or for getting rare compounds (like carpotoxin) out of things that contain them. But making liquid phoron is the most common and important thing you'll use it for.

Note that it will not break compounds back down into elements, nothing can do that.

Refridgerated Medicine Storage
A fancy Smart Fridge which exists as a wall block between the chem lab and medicine storage. This fridge is where you should put all the medicines and pills that you make, so that doctors can pick them up for usage. Things can be put in and taken out from all sides of it.

It will only accept pills, pill bottles, and glass containers. And it has a nice little interface for dispensing things in quantity. It's also ID locked, and will only allow authorized medical staff to take things out, so anything you place there is safe from the grubby hands of drug-seeking assistants.

Tools
Smaller, hand-held things that you'll often use in chemistry.

Beakers
Beakers are the most important tool you have. They come in two sizes, normal and large. normal beakers hold 60u, large beakers hold 120u. Normal beakers can be found easily all over medical, and you have a box of six in your lab. Large beakers are much less common, you only have three - Two on the tables, and one inside the grinder. They are precious, treasure them.

Beakers are used for putting into the dispenser to mix things, and then into the ChemMaster to make bottles and pills. Sometimes you'll need to use more than one to mix certain tricky things correctly.

If you end up losing them, more beakers can be made at the Autolathe in cargo.

Dropper
Droppers are a simple and occasionally used little tool. Their purpose is being one of very few reagent containers in the game which can transfer less than 5u per click.

Rightclick it in your hand and choose Set Transfer Amount. You can pick 1/2/3/4/5 units Using it on a beaker when it's empty will draw the set quantity of reagents out of that beaker. Using it on a beaker when it's not empty, will squeeze its contents out into the beaker.

The precision this affords is useful for a few complicated recipes, and especially for measuring out tiny amounts of phoron or similar valueable ingredients.

Science Goggles
Science goggles are a completely unnecessary fashion accessory that are supplied on your table in the chemistry lab. They have three functions:
 * They protect against acid splashes, halving damage you take from acid to the face.
 * They provide 10% protection against anomalies, which is not relevant to a chemist at all.
 * They can be turned on and off to toggle an obnoxious purple overlay. This does literally nothing except make you see purple. The other two effects work regardless of whether the overlay is on.

Advanced Mass Spectrometer
The Advanced Mass Spectrometer is your occasionally used tool for blood toxin testing. Rumour has it there was once a non-advanced Mass Spectrometer, but such a thing is definitely obsolete now.

To use it, take a blood sample from your patient with a syringe, and then use the syringe on the spectrometer. Then switch to it and click it in your hand to read the results. It should tell you the chemicals and quantities that are found in their blood. This is the only way to test blood samples, if you inject a blood sample into a beaker and check it in the ChemMaster, it will only show as blood.

Note that this tool can only be used for blood, if you have a beaker/bottle/syringe of something mysterious that isn't blood and you want to see what's in it, use the ChemMaster instead.

Cryostasis Beaker
The Cryostasis Beaker is an advanced tool that you don't have to begin with. It can only be made in the R&D Lab in science, if you want some you have to ask them for it.

The cryostasis beaker holds 60u, and it has the special property of preventing chemical reactions inside it. Any elements or compounds placed into it will not react with each other. If there are any reactions waiting to happen, they'll occur as soon as the contents are transferred into another beaker, or transferred into the buffer of the ChemMaster

Bluespace Beaker
The Chemist's favourite, a Bluespace Beaker will really make your day. It is another advanced tool that you don't start with, and must request from science. However it's somewhat hard to make, so they may not be able to reliably make them for you.

This high-tech beaker uses reality-distorting bluespace technology to create a tiny pocket dimension for storing chemicals, which in practical terms means it can store a tremendous 300u of reagents inside it, making it 250% of the capacity of a Large Beaker. This allows you to easily make much larger batches of medicine - five bottles at a time.

=Information=

Metabolism and Overdose
Most medicines and chemicals designed for use in people have an overdose limit. If a person metabolizes more than this much of the chemical in a short time, they will suffer the overdose effect for that chemical, which is usually a bad thing. Overdose limits vary widely, but the most common value is 30 units.

The most common overdose effect is 'Toxins', the patient will suffer 0.2 points of toxins damage per second, as long as the medicine continues metabolizing in their system. This is only dependent on time, not on the quantity of the dose, so overdosing on medicines that metabolize slowly is far more dangerous, they'll keep poisoning the patient for longer.

It is important to note that metabolism is not the same as just putting the chemicals into a patient. All chemicals that are injected into, or fed to the patient, are stored harmlessly within their body until they can be properly absorbed, or 'metabolized'. This process happens at a variable rate for each chemical, but the most common metabolic rate is 0.2 units per proc, which works out to 0.1u per second

Overdose effects do not trigger until the patient has metabolized enough to reach the overdose limit, which may take several minutes.

Whenever this document mentions the word 'dose', it refers to how much has been metabolized into the patient, not how much has been injected into their blood.

Whenever a patient has fully metabolized all the volume of a drug that is present in their stomach or blood, the dose is instantly cleared, and the drug's effects are stopped. Even if they had overdosed before, once the dose is cleared its safe to administer more of the same thing.

Catalysts
Several of the more advanced chemistry recipes take an ingredient (usually phoron) which is marked as (Catalyst)

A Catalyst is a chemical which is required to help a chemical reaction, but does not become part of the finished result. Whenever a recipe involves a catalyst, the catalyst will be left over in the beaker, alongside the finished product. You can use the ChemMaster to extract the catalyst, put it in a bottle, and reuse it later.

Status Effects
Many chemicals that don't simply heal something, work by giving the patient a status effect, with a given strength. This allows multiple chemicals to cause a similar effect and work in the same way.

For the most part, the 'strength' of an effect is really just a duration. the strength of most effects decreases by 1 point every 2 seconds, and usually the effect will stop working once its strength falls to zero, or sometimes when it falls below some low number that's above zero.

It's also very important to note, that most chemicals which cause a status effect, will constantly re-set and refresh that effect every time they process (every 2 seconds) for as long as the chemical is metabolising into the patient. Therefore, the strength of an effect usually only affects how long it takes to wear off AFTER the chemical is out of their system, it will generally never wear off while the chemical is inside them.

Drowsiness
Drowsiness, is a feeling of being sleepy. The body slows down, and sometimes just plain falls asleep for brief periods. It doesn't cause any longterm sleep, just makes you pass out for a couple of seconds.

Effects:
 * Increases move delay by 6 (0.6 seconds).
 * This is the minimum time between steps while running, so it will significantly slow the subject down and make it difficult for them to run away.
 * Refreshes blurred vision to strength 2 every proc, so being drowsy gives unremovable blurring
 * Every proc, has a 5% chance to cause the subject to fall asleep
 * Increases Sleep strength by 1
 * Increases paralysis by 5

Sleeping
The subject is asleep. They're snoozing away, incapacitated, mostly oblivious to the world, and won't feel pain.
 * Subject is blinded. See Blind
 * Subject does not feel pain
 * Subject falls over
 * Subject cannot move
 * Subject cannot speak or emote
 * Subject cannot use items or interact with anything
 * Heals halloss (Holographic damage) at a rate of 3 points per proc
 * Normally heals at 1 ppc
 * Subject has dreams about radomly generated concepts.
 * These aren't based on anything ingame
 * When nearby people talk
 * 85% chance to not hear them, and instead get "...You almost hear someone talking..."
 * 15% chance for "You hear something about... ", and is a randomly selected word from amongst the things they said
 * People can attempt to shake subject awake, this reduces Sleeping strength by 5 every time its done,
 * Causes the subject to wake up 10 seconds earlier than they would have otherwise
 * Causes subject's status to read as Unconscious on a hand analyser, and non-responsive on a surgery vitals monitor

Weaken
The subject's muscles lose tensity, causing them to collapse to the floor and be mostly helpless. Weaken is one of the most common status effects, almost every chemical, weapon and explosive that disables someone, uses it. Often in combination with other effects.
 * Subject falls over and drops held items.
 * Subject cannot move, use items, or interact.
 * Can still toggle internals.
 * Subject can use 'resist'.

Stun
The subject is stunned and unable to move properly. Very similar to Weaken, but doesn't knock the subject down, and DOES prevent them from toggling their internals.
 * Subject cannot move, use items, or interact:
 * Subject can use 'resist'.
 * Subject cannot toggle internals.

Paralysis
The subject is paralyzed, all of their muscles lock up and they are unable to see, speak, or do anything. Their eyelids lock shut, and their vocal chords seize up. This is almost identical to being asleep, the only differences being that the subject can't be shaken awake, and doesn't heal holo damage faster. This is by far the most disabling single status effect in the game, but it is rarely used.
 * Paralysis is almost identical to sleeping.
 * Subject is blinded, see blindness.
 * Subject falls over.
 * Subject cannot speak or emote.
 * Subject cannot move.
 * Subject cannot use items or interact with anything.
 * When nearby people talk or audibly emote.
 * 85% chance to not hear them, and instead get "...You almost hear someone talking..."
 * 15% chance for "You hear something about... ", and is a randomly selected word from among the things they said.

Confusion
The subject has impaired motor coordination, and will stumble around randomly when they try to move. This is often caused by alcohol and sedatives, but it's pretty rare for it to happen for any long period of time.
 * Subject moves in a random direction whenever it tries to take a step.
 * Its always random, doesn't matter what direction they tried to move in, triggers on every step
 * Also applies to subjects in a wheelchair or driving vehicles

Hallucination
One of the most interesting effects, hallucinations are a result of something impairing the brain, and can be quite scary.
 * Unlike most status effects, hallucination strength affects the intensity in addition to the duration. Hallucinations stop completely when the strength drops below 20.
 * While hallucinating, the subject will experience strange sounds and visions periodically.
 * Exactly how often is calculated with the formula: rand(200,500)/(hallucination/25)
 * This generates a random number of seconds between 20-50 (average 35), and then divides that time by 4% of your hallucination strength.
 * A hallucination strength of 100 will therefore cause hallucinations an average of every 8.75 seconds
 * Note that the time between hallucinations will gradually increase because the strength fades over time.
 * The effects that hallucinating can generate include:
 * Screwing up the subject's HUD
 * Make it appear that they're holding a strange/illegal/impossible items
 * See extremely dangerous things (fire, hull breaches, explosives)
 * Hear strange sounds
 * Be attacked by illusory monsters
 * Mysteriously become injured or collapse
 * Have the world and their controls turned around

Blurriness
The subject's vision is blurred, and it becomes harder for them to see. This is a really weak effect, and it exists mostly just to let you know something's wrong. It's usually a precursor to more serious things. On its own, it has minimal effect on gameplay.
 * Places a semi-transparent white overlay on the screen, making it a little harder to see things
 * Wearing a blindfold rests your eyes, and causes blurriness to heal 4x as fast

Blindness
The subject has completely lost their vision, and is unable to see anything, thus forcing them to stumble around defenseless and navigate by touch. Blinding is fairly common alone, but it's also applied inherently as a part of sleeping and paralysis. When a subject is asleep or paralysed, all of these effects apply in addition.
 * Places a black overlay on the screen, blocking everything except a small circle
 * This allows you to only see things in a 3x3 area, centred on your character
 * Note that this short range vision represents you feeling your way around, not actual vision. RP wise, you can see nothing at all
 * Prevents you from examining objects and people at all. Any attempt displays a message 'Something is there, but you can't see it'
 * Subject cannot see visible emotes from nearby people
 * Subject can still hear audible emotes

Speedboost
The subject is energetic and juiced up, allowing them to power through impediments and always move as fat as they can. Negates any increased movement delay and allows you to always move at the fastest possible speed, with a movement delay of 0.5 seconds (which is the lowest possible value) Allows you to ignore the following speed impediments completely:
 * Having <=40% health
 * Being in pain
 * Being starving
 * Wearing EVA suits
 * Being in a wheelchair
 * Having feet/legs that are broken, splinted, or missing.
 * Any slowdown caused by heavy shoes (galoshes)
 * Being in shock
 * Being fat
 * Being cold
 * Being drowsy
 * Any inherent slowdown caused by your species

Jittering
=Chemicals=

Dispenser
Many of the basic elements and chemicals in the dispenser have their own effects. Those are noted here. Those without any effects aren't documented

Other
=Compounds=

Pharmaceutical Compounds
Things that are designed for use in a patient's body, for good or ill.

Basic Treatments
These treatments are weak but widely available in medkits or medibots. They are not commonly used by doctors, who have access to more powerful specialized medicines.

Standard Treatments
These medicines are the mainstays, standard treatments for most common conditions. A good chemist should make sure that all of these are available in sufficient quantities.

Advanced Treatments
Very powerful and useful medicines, which are uncommon or difficult to make. Creating these is important to being a good chemist.

Specialist Treatments
Rarely used medicines with very specific, niche utility. These are typically made on demand if required, and not often prepared in advance.

Anti Microbials
Medicines used to fight Viral Pathogens and Bacterial Infections. A detailed guide to Bacterial Infections can be found here.

Painkillers/Stabilizers
Usually administered to people who've just been wounded, to help stabilize them.

Sedatives
Sedatives put people to sleep. Useful for surgery when anaesthetic gas won't work, for dealing with troublesome patients who won't sit still, and in dire situations, for self defense.

Psychiatric Medication
Compounds to alter the patient's mental state and to treat certain traumas. A quick reference can be found here, otherwise each compound below will explain what traumas are treated and what certain withdrawal symptoms may arise.

Performance Enhancers
Things to make people work harder, better, faster and stronger. These can be helpful to dose up on before combat, and are sometimes requisitioned by a well prepared security team.

Narcotics
Drugs to get high, these are illegal to distribute, or administer without good reason. Making up and dosing yourself on space drugs is the hallmark of a bad Chemist. Don't do it.

Poisons
These compounds are harmful to organic life. Do not administer them unless you intend to murder the patient. They are mostly used by antagonists, and sometimes for research.

Food Related
Things that are safe to eat. Most of these are ingredients though, and not generally designed to be eaten as-is.

Industrial Compounds
Things that are not designed to go inside people. Most of these chemicals have no effect when injected or ingested in people, unless otherwise noted.

The intended method of application is listed:
 * Contact: The substance works upon touching people, surfaces or objects. It can be applied by splashing it on with a beaker, spraying it from a spray bottle, or even using it as an additional reagent in grenades
 * Reactive: The substance is a main ingredient of a violent reaction upon mixing. Such things are useful in grenades, chemical shells, or even for feeding to mobs in two separate pills
 * Reaction: This is not a substance. Mixing this will remove all substances and cause a violent chemical reaction. Such things are useful in grenades, chemical shells, or even for feeding to mobs in two separate pills

Cleaning Agents
Things that are useful for cleaning, and often requested by janitors.

Horticultural
Things designed to aid in Botany and Xenobotany.

Weapons
Everything in this category is dangerous, and should not be used without approval from security or command, unless you're an antagonist. Unapproved use is likely to make security, and possibly the admins, quite upset with you. Most of the things in this category are best used in making grenades and bombs.