Make nuclear isotopes decay inherit the decay state of their ingredients.

[XayadSC]

Goal

Uranium, Plutonium and other nuclear isotopes could become more interesting if the player had better control over decay.

Currently, avoiding decay on those items with 100s of hours of decay time is trivial, and trying to use decay is just storing the isotopes and waiting for a very long while.

What I am proposing will make the player have to be slightly smarter in order to avoid decay of nuclear isotopes, but mainly will make an intentional use of decay for recipe chains realistically doable.

Why?

This change would make nuclear processing much more flavorful and unique, alongside with it being more tastefully integrated in the spoilage mechanic.

Here is a lengthy example :

Fuel rod MK03 are currently very difficult to use as a main " fuel rod " energy source because U235 is a byproduct from uranium oxide made in very low amounts.

If you wanted to use the decay of Pu239 to make U235, you would have to wait 401h40m for a buffer of Pu239 to decay no matter what happens : this is completely unreasonable to use in a real game.

If decay could be inherited between recipes however, you could build a system to intentionally produce Pu239 from 99% spoilt U238 using the recipe below :

It would take less than an hour to obtain 99% spoilt U238, then the decay inheritance would put the produced Pu239 at ~4h remaining on their timer before becoming U235.
In total, 5 hours only would be needed, making this production chain viable and MK03 fuel rods a real option.

This is one example, but I have many more ideas in how this could be utilized in smart ways to find usefulness even in the 10k+ hours decay isotope.

On top of allowing more liberty and viable recipe chains, it would also be extremeley interesting and unique to pY nuclear processing.

Steps to achieve? (if known)

• Currently all pY decay related recipes have " result is always fresh " --> "true" .

I am pretty sure that changing this to " false " on the nuclear processing recipes would allow for decay inheritance.

[XayadSC]

The one thing I am unsure about is how to handle the Neutron Capture recipes.

I don't know how inherited decay would behave on recipes with 2 decaying ingredients being at different levels in their decay.

The best case scenario is that the output isotopes inherit the decay level of the average or of most decayed of the ingredients.
If that's not possible, it will be quite strange to have these recipes being a way to " refresh " the isotope decay state.

[protocol-1903]

The best case scenario is that the output isotopes inherit the decay level of the average or of most decayed of the ingredients.

I dont know how the game calculates decay in this case, but however its done we cant change that. If the result is undesirable, we'd have to just refresh the decay state as mentioned.