Radiation
Radiation is a mechanic in Mechanism. It affects the player with a lingering damaging effect until the player either dies or survives long enough for the radiation level to decay to safe levels. Radiation amounts are viewable by a Dosimeter.
A radiation level of 10 μsv will cause a green tint to be applied to the player's screen, a damaging effect occurs at approximately 50 μsv. While it's possible to get radiation values over 100 Sv, it is capped at 100 Sv for the purpose of adverse effects to players.
Decay
All radiation sources in the environment and radiation dosages in entities are naturally multiplied by 0.9995 approximately every second. There is no way to artificially hasten this process, except editing the related config values.
The Dosimeter and the Geiger Counter also display the estimated time till total decay.
/mek radiation removeAll can be run to clear all environmental radiation sources immediately.
/mek radiation cure <entity> can be run to cure an entity of all its radiation dosage. Alternatively, dying and respawning also clears all dosage of a player.
Adverse Effects
The only gameplay disadvantages irradiation offer are constant damage and hunger loss, which increases the more irradiated the entity is. Radiation damage bypasses all armor (including the MekaSuit), but is reduced by the Protection enchantment. Radiation damage does not bypass a Totem of Undying, but its trigger does not clear radiation, making it rather ineffective.
Detailed Effects
Each tick, a chance is rolled with the formula 0.1 + randomPercentage * 0.9, where randomPercentage is any number between 0 and 1. Then, a scaled radiation is calculated by the formula (log(trueRadiation)+5)/7, capped between 0 and 1. If the scaled radiation is biger than the chance, the player takes damage. The exact damage taken is in the form of max(1, ln(1+trueRadiation)). The same number of hunger is also lost.
Resistance
By wearing the Hazmat suit or the MekaSuit with Radiation Shielding Unit installed, the player can reduce how much environmental radiation affects them, up to 100% environmental exposure immunity. However, existing radiation dosage will not be mitigated, and if already irradiated, radiation resistance will not reduce the damage taken.
Radiation is not magic damage, and therefore the Inhalation Purification Unit will not block radiation damage.
Note that milk will not reduce the existing radiation dosage, as it is not a status effect. The only way to reduce existing radiation dosage is by its natural decay, the command mentiond above, or death.
The Resistance status effect or Protection enchantment on armor can protect against radiation damage.
Radiation Sources
- A Fission Reactor meltdown
- A reactor waste vent is not properly setup
- Breaking any machine with waste or radioactive gas such as Polonium still in it
- Breaking Radioactive Waste Barrels. For reference, a full barrel of nuclear waste (spent or not) will add 5.12 kSv/h of radiation into the world.