By this, I mean that people don't want to add elements and features unless they are very unique. For example, as many users say, fusion isn't needed because fission already fufills the role of "nuclear reaction."
With all due respect, I don't understand this point of view. I am new here, and this is my fourth ever post. How could more elements and more chemical reactions hurt? Why not add chlorine gas and allow for the ability for users to create salt via a reaction?
If someone could explain why the austere atmosphere is here, I will back down. Forgive my insolence.
Not difficulties, it's so simple I can do it. The code is changing. The newest one includes an entire folder to support the elements instead of having all reactions in powder.c, but it's broken. Making everything react like it does in real life is like adding 1000 more lines of code to the entire program. And that's why there aren't a lot more reactions.
AFAIK the major reasons are the constraint on number of elements (Either by the maximum element limit- It's removed now, menu space and organization in categories) and that there's more code to maintain and debug.
Long story short, for each additional element in the game, the amount of work debugging them increases exponentially. The more elements there are in the game, the more conditional statements involved in their possible neighbor interactions, and the more checks the game has to do on every frame to continue. Each new element in the game has to fulfill a function and place that no other element holds. Adding a bunch of simple elements that do nothing but take up space and perform a particular reaction or two isn't worth the pain and effort of having it in the game.
...Basically, if you want to see what we mean, try making your own elements in wxSand, then come back and tell us. wxSand is alot more simple, but allows you to code up to 255 elements into it with as many reactions as you like. You'll quickly find that emulating periodic table style reactions isn't nearly as fun, or as rewarding as it sounds.