Given this success, we wanted to test DE-based potentials beyond water models. Traditionally, the journey from hypothesis to a general, transferable force field that accurately covers extensive chemical space, such as the OPLS or GAFF small molecule force fields, requires decades of development. This may help to explain why the LJ potential has persisted in mainline force fields for so long, despite its known shortcomings; exploring alternatives would have been too expensive and costly for most practitioners.