Some info on the weapons concept lab...
I'm still tweaking the numbers, but I've got something that's roughly working the way I want it. This workshop will be unlocked with an item produced in documentation, making it a "tier two" building. Though the item required is a chance product of documentation, it is significantly more common than most of the other unlocks, meaning that beginning documentation reactions will unlock this building pretty quickly.
These are the exact reaction raws:
[REACTION:DOCUMENTATION_ALCH]
[NAME:document alchemical research]
[BUILDING:ALCHEMY_LAB_LFR:NONE]
[REAGENT:A:10:TOY:ITEM_TOY_DIPLOMA_LFR:NONE:NONE]
[PRODUCT:100:1:TOY:ITEM_TOY_DIPLOMA_LFR:NONE:NONE]
[PRODUCT:3:1:TOOL:ITEM_TOOL_TREATISE_LFR:NONE:NONE]
[PRODUCT:2:1:TOOL:ITEM_TOOL_THEORY_LFR:NONE:NONE]
[PRODUCT:1:1:TOOL:ITEM_TOOL_HADRINE_UNLOCK_LFR:NONE:NONE]
[PRODUCT:2:1:TOOL:ITEM_TOOL_LUSTRUM_UNLOCK_LFR:NONE:NONE]
[PRODUCT:4:1:TOOL:ITEM_TOOL_BLUEPRINTS_UNLOCK_LFR:NONE:NONE]
[PRODUCT:5:1:TOOL:ITEM_TOOL_CONCEPT_LFR:NONE:NONE]
[SKILL:ORGANIZATION]
Obviously, there is a duplicate reaction for the magma alchemy lab. The "treatise" and "theory" are currently unused, but are planned for future developments or easter egg reactions. The "concept" tool unlocks the weapons concept laboratory. The other unlocks are fairly obvious by their names.
The first number, in case you're not familiar, is the percent chance per reaction. This may seem very low, but you have to remember - if you have even a single training workshop from tier 1 operating, you will be pumping out enough slabs of accreditation to put this reaction on repeat (set n' forget). In testing, unlock times have been variable, but generally very reasonable. It usually takes only a few seasons to unlock the more common tier 2 advances, but it can take several workshops and several years to get them all unlocked. There is technically a possibility that you will unlock them sooner, or never at all, but these chances are so remote that I won't expect them to affect gameplay in a negative way. If they do, for some reason, I have alternative methods of unlocking them in mind for future versions.
In testing, it took me about a year of game time after training reactions started to unlock the experimental materials workshop (the rare one) on average, which I think is very reasonable.
---
But back to the new stuff - the weapons concept lab. How this is currently working is...
1) It takes three bars of a specified metal and fuel (if non-magma).
2) It produces a random "mood" weapon of that material about 50% of the time. Roughly 40% of reactions will yield no product (failed concept). Roughly 10% will produce more than one weapon. Many weapons available from this reaction are significantly more powerful than their plain counterparts to balance out the risk.
3) Individual metals use different reactions, to prevent you from getting useless products. For example, the iovium reaction will never produce an edge weapon, and the adamantine reaction will never produce a blunt weapon. Though probabilities differ slightly, they roughly follow the 50-40-10 ratio.
4) It uses the weaponsmithing skill to determine quality.
There are two versions of this workshop - one with magma, one without.