Go-juice

Go-juice is a potent hard combat drug that almost completely blocks pain and significantly improves a pawn's capabilities, at the risk of addiction and overdose.

Acquisition

Go-juice can be synthesized at a Drug lab once the Go-juice production research project has been completed. Each dose require 2 Neutroamine, 1 Yayo and 600 ticks (10 secs) of work. Its synthesis speed is dependent on the [[Skills#|]] skill.

It can also be found on raiders and purchased.

Summary

Go-juice is a potent combat stimulant that has a variety of effects. These can be broken into effects that occur:

Instantaneously and one time upon using the drug.
While high on the drug.
While addicted to the drug.
While withdrawing from the drug.

Upon injection

A pawn taking go-juice will do so right where it stands without looking for a place to sit first. Go-juice is taken by injection, taking 80 ticks (1.33 secs). It has the following one time effects:

+40% Chemical recreation
+40% Rest
+15% Psyfocus
0.5% Chance for a major overdose
+18% to +35% Overdose severity
+50% Go-juice high severity (see "Go-juice high" below)
2.6% Addiction chance
If the pawn has an addiction already:
- +90% Go-juice need (see "Addiction" below)
- −20% Addiction progress (see "Withdrawal" below)

Go-juice high

"Go-juice in the bloodstream. It supercharges combat-related abilities, and instantly increases psyfocus when first injected."

While each go-juice injection increases the severity of the go-juice high by 50% (see "Upon injection" above), it decreases by 75% per day again, meaning that the high of a single dose lasts 16 hours. The maximum severity of a go-juice high is 100% which is reached with 2 go-juice. Regardless of the go-juice high severity, the effects are always the same. Only their duration changes accordingly:

+5 Mood ("I feel pumped but steady. I am the bullet in flight, ready to cut through you.")
×10% Pain (meaning all pain will be divided by ten)
+20% Consciousness
+35% Sight
+50% Moving

Tolerance

As of version 1.2.3005, go-juice no longer gives a pawn any tolerance at all when taken, despite the effects of tolerance still existing in-game. This has been confirmed as intended behaviour.^[1]

Addiction

"A chemical addiction to go-juice. Long-term presence of go-juice has caused neurological adaptations at the cellular level, so the brain can no longer function properly without the drug. Without regular doses of go-juice, withdrawal symptoms will begin. However, extended abstinence will force the brain to adapt back to its normal state, resolving the addiction."
— Addiction description

Each dose of go-juice carries a 2.6% chance of addiction. There is therefore no safe dose interval.

The addiction progresses by 4.5% per day from the initial 50%. Once it reaches 100% the addiction is healed, meaning it takes about 11.1 days to overcome the addiction. Consuming go-juice during an addiction will reduce the addiction progress by 20% again (see "Upon injection" above).

Developing an addiction means a pawn has a go-juice need. The need for go-juice falls by 33.3% per day, consuming go-juice satisfies the need by 90% (see "Upon injection" above), meaning the pawn will need to consume go-juice at least every 2.7 days to prevent withdrawal symptoms.

Withdrawal

"Because of a go-juice addiction, this person needs to regularly consume the drug to avoid withdrawal symptoms."
— Need description

As soon as the go-juice need reaches 0%, the pawn suffers from the following symptoms:

−22 Mood ("I'm all fuzzy and can't think straight. My limbs feel heavy, I'm tired and hungry, everything hurts. And why won't my eyes focus properly?")
×300% Pain (meaning all pain will be tripled)
−20% Consciousness
−50% Moving
−20% Sight
−20% Blood pumping
−10% Manipulation
+30% Sleep Fall Rate (meaning the pawn needs to sleep about a 30% sooner)
+50% Hunger rate factor (meaning the pawn needs to eat about 50% sooner)
Mental break chances:
- Hard drug binge: on average every 40 days. This averages to 0.3 hard drug binges during each withdrawal.
- Psychotic wandering: on average every 10 days. This averages to 1.1 wanderings during each withdrawal.

Analysis

Go-juice is a stimulant and pain-killer, with a significant impact on combat performance. Barring wake-up and luciferium, no other drug helps much with combat - reducing pain and with a slight movement increase at most. There is no real comparison to wake-up; go-juice is made for combat and movement, and wake-up is made for work speed. Luciferium comes with a permanent addiction, and in any case, works with go-juice.

Combat

Increases to Sight and Consciousness boosts accuracy, both ranged and melee. Increased Moving helps with all forms of kiting tactics and makes it easier to retreat. Increased medical tend speed can save a pawn that's bleeding out quickly. Like the painstopper, the large reduction in pain allows a pawn to stand up far longer and win more fights. But they will continue fighting until very close to death - or when physically made unable.

Finally, go-juice provides slight boosts to mood, recreation, and rest. While weaker in this regard than most other drugs, they can still help prevent mental breaks.

The risk of addiction and overdose is always present, but addiction is better than death. For example, a miner digging out far away from your base will appreciate carrying go-juice, for when a raid or manhunter pack spawns near them. Withdrawal symptoms are harsh, but its 11.1 day withdrawal (assuming no future doses are taken) can be managed by arresting the addict in question. Go-juice has the second shortest withdrawal, behind ambrosia.

Misc work

Besides combat, the increase in Moving can make pawns much faster at hauling and somewhat quicker at other tasks. Usually this is not worth the risk of addiction unless you need to repair your defenses. But if you have a pawn you don't care about, like an unwanted wanderer or some desperate refugees, then you can use go-juice to expedite your work.

Go-juice's consciousness boost also improves the odds of successful surgery. Useful for surgeries with a reduced chance to succeed, such as carcinoma removal. Otherwise, surgery success chance can usually be capped at 98%, with a sterile room, hospital bed, and a good doctor.

Tip: Unless you need an immediate and significant boost in chemical recreation, rest or psyfocus it is recommended to wait at least 4.8 hours between the first and the second dose of go-juice. Otherwise the overdose severity might build up resulting in a minor overdose (this is unrelated to the 0.5% chance for a major overdose that comes with each injection). Be particularly careful when using go-juice in combination with other drugs! The third dose and any dose after that shouldn't be taken earlier than 16 hours after the second to last dose. Otherwise some hours of the go-juice high will be wasted.

Stats

Assuming a healthy, but otherwise unaugmented pawn, the bonuses from consuming go-juice translates to:

A +50% increase to Move Speed, equivalent to an increase of 2.3 c/s on a healthy, unencumbered pawn.
A +20% increase in General Labor Speed.
A +30% increase in Medical Tend Quality at Medical skill 10. At Medical 20, this is a 27% increase, at Medical 5, a 32% increase
A 1.2× multiplier to Medical Surgery Success Chance.
An increase in Shooting Accuracy equivalent to +4.2 extra levels of Shooting.
An increase in Melee Hit Chance equivalent to +6.6 extra levels of Melee.
An increase in Melee Dodge Chance equivalent to +11.8 extra levels of Melee.

Drug dependency

The Go-juice dependency gene, found in hussars, completely removes the chance of normal addiction and overdose. But at 5 days without the drug, the pawn will incur severe penalties. At the least, dependency is less severe than actual addiction or withdrawal.

Each dose of go-juice requires 2 Neutroamine, 1 Yayo to create. A stack of 50 neutroamine, worth 300 before Trade Price Improvement and difficulty, can last a single pawn for 125 days, or just over 2 years. With 0 Social skill in Losing is Fun, this price increases to 504. In practice, this supply will end up being somewhat shorter if you want to use go-juice for combat or work purposes. Meanwhile, psychoid/yayo can be grown inside your colony. A drug-dependent pawn will survive for up to 60 days without the drug, usually more than enough time to form a caravan or find an orbital trader.

Overall, go-juice dependency is very affordable; you'll just need Go-juice production and Psychite refining researched, and some form of trade. In exchange, a dependent pawn can get all the benefit of go-juice at any time, with 0% chance of any health problems whatsoever.

Gallery

One Go-juice
Stack of go-juice

Version history

0.15.1279 - Added.
1.1.2647 - Rebalanced. Addiction risk and effects reduced, safe dose interval removed. Now instantly gives psyfocus when taken by psycasters.

References

↑ Rejected bug report: "[1.2.2753] Wake-up and go-juice do not cause tolerance". Unused tolerance effects: "A built-up tolerance to go-juice. The more severe this tolerance is, the more go-juice it takes to get the same effect." Starting at 45% tolerance the pawn could get moderate chemical damage in the brain reducing part efficiency by 50%, impairing the pawn in all jobs from combat to daily work. The chemical damage would be applied in a curve with the following points: a) At 45% tolerance on average every 99999 days. b) At 50% tolerance on average every 120 days. c) At 100% tolerance on average every 90 days. All values in between are calculated with linear interpolation. The go-juice tolerance would decrease by 1.5% per day.

Drugs

Social drugs: Ambrosia • Beer • Psychite tea • Smokeleaf joint

Hard drugs: Flake • Go-juice • Wake-up • Yayo

Medical drugs: Luciferium • Penoxycyline

Serums: Ghoul resurrection serum • Juggernaut serum • Metalblood serum • Mind-numb serum • Voidsight serum

[1] Rejected bug report: "[1.2.2753] Wake-up and go-juice do not cause tolerance". Unused tolerance effects: "A built-up tolerance to go-juice. The more severe this tolerance is, the more go-juice it takes to get the same effect." Starting at 45% tolerance the pawn could get moderate chemical damage in the brain reducing part efficiency by 50%, impairing the pawn in all jobs from combat to daily work. The chemical damage would be applied in a curve with the following points: a) At 45% tolerance on average every 99999 days. b) At 50% tolerance on average every 120 days. c) At 100% tolerance on average every 90 days. All values in between are calculated with linear interpolation. The go-juice tolerance would decrease by 1.5% per day.

[1]