Guide to Chemical Research
Part of research and development involves experimenting with chemicals. Equipped with chemical dispensors and the means to construct grenades, science should attempt to experiment with beneficial and sometimes destructive grenades. They can produce more cleaning grenades or healing grenades for medical. This guide serves as a helpful tool for learning how to accomplish this.
Your Lab
The chemical research lab consists of two chem dispensers, two chem masters, and two chemical heaters. This is where you will mix, create, and analyze different chemicals and compounds. The lab is also equipped with a blast test chamber in order to test your grenades. It's very important you know exactly what you're mixing before you mix it because you only get one research lab. Grenade testing happens in the blast chamber, or even the toxins test area (for really big bombs). The lab is equipped with a disposals chute to feed live grenades(or subjects) into the chamber safely. Additionally, there are blast doors you can enable and a monitor that allows you to peer inside without the threat of dying.
The Job of Science Chemistry
Your job is to experiment with grenades and to make helpful grenades for other departments. Technically it's not just making grenades, you are to research chemicals to assist other departments. Take that how you want. Some good grenades include: fire fighting grenades, healing grenades, and incapacitating grenades for security. Get creative, come up with something that you can give to a department to help them with their job somehow.
Getting Started
Get a screwdriver, a stack of cables, and a stack of metal. It's generally a good idea to pre-fabricate lots of grenade casings for later use. This can be accomplished by clicking on the metal in your hand, selecting grenade casing multiple times, then alt-clicking the tile they fell on to add the wire to each one in succession (this only for the most basic, easy to test grenade). After that, grab a gas mask, and depending on if your new to grenade making grab a bomb suit for your own safety and set your Suit sensors to max for when you inevitably blow yourself up.
How to Make a Grenade
All grenades have four components: the type of grenade casing, the trigger, beaker 1, and beaker 2. All grenades take at least one grenade case, trigger, and beaker. The limit of chemicals you can mix is 600, since you can mix two bluespace beakers (300u each). Any beaker can be used for grenades, except for buckets. When a grenade mixes the two beakers, it adds heat. A basic grenade adds 10K, a large adds 25K, and a pyro adds 500K. This barely matters since you can pre heat chemicals to one kelvin under the required amount to allow any type of casing to ignite any chemicals. If you have conflicting temperatures, simply rearrange the chems to allow for superheating of one beaker that, once mixed, will sufficiently heat the other to cause the reactions. All heating is monstrously easier with a cheap lighter/zippo (can spawn with one or get one from a vending machine). Each click of a cheap lighter heats it by 15K.
Triggers
All of these can be printed via Autolathe. To create any grenade assembly (besides wires), screwdriver both the trigger and an igniter so they both say "can be attached." Then, combine the two, screwdriver the new assembly, and combine it with an empty grenade case. At that point you can add your beakers/bottles etc. and screwdriver to the finished assembly to lock it. When I say "use the assembly," that means either clicking on it in your hands or pressing Y. All assemblies can be deconstructed (even while detonated) via wire cutters + wrench. For all other assemblies besides wires, screwdriver the trigger assembly and use it to detach the trigger and igniter.
For more information on triggers and assemblies see Assemblies.
For a guide on all possible chemical and compounds please see the Guide to Chemistry
Assisting the Station
Pull Request: R&D Techwebs #15389
The best way to help the station is to produce helpful grenades for them. For example you can construct: