Because it has the fastest maturation speed, the only stat which you cannot really change.
keep the botanical chem dispenser. It’s good for when you’re chef/bartender and need to max stats fast for cookery bullshit.
Just kneecap strange seeds/funny reagents.
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Yeah I’m with yyzsong on this, strange seeds are fine as a concept, but the reagent blacklist needs a few more revisions.
And the dumb 50% chance for getting a blank strange seed might just as well be removed, it serves no purpose other than to make it more difficult to attain all the funny reagents, if we remove the funny reagents it would be much more rewarding to play that lottery.
Maybe we create some system where medical can request a healing chem from botany and if botany does it they get something like a bounty? I think the key here to fixing botany is by connecting them to med, and giving them a benefit for healing people/contributing to medical.
I think we need to be thinking about how can we make creating medicines and food fun, and not how can we get rid of everything dangerous. As you said, the reason botanist focus on weapons is they have no incentive to make other things and food and healing chemicals can be, honestly, boring. If you nerf the weapons without fixing everything else, you will just destroy botany. A lot of the weapons in botany aren’t made cause people just want OP shit, they are made by botanist with nothing else to do.
Also, an unmentioned issue: A lot of bad botany shit is done by being who just waltz/break into botany or use the community garden area on certain maps. That area should be removed, and maybe botanist get a round start device that can’t be acquired anywhere else, that botany is way slower without? Maybe replacing the DNA analyzer with a handheld version? Limiting botany to botanist will reduce grief.
Maybe strange seeds have to be acquired through med or cargo? I know that’s not normally meds role but it opens up botany to be a med subsidiary. Maybe we also set up a reward system for fulfilling chef requests?
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Yeah but they have such low yield that it is more effective to use tobacco no? if not how do they up the yield quickly?
Okay so, as someone who has sunk probably hundreds of hours in botany in total(and also have ate bans for stretching the limits of the role) I’m gonna add my two cents here. Botanists make dangerous things because no one works with the botany lab and gives them any other direction. Botany has changed a lot over time and, in many ways for the better. Having a botany chem dispenser in the lab is a godsend. I remember I used to have to break into tech storage, take a chem disp board, break down a tray and then jerry my own dispenser up. That was AWFUL.
Especially when the other option was asking the chemist for mutagen and getting 50u after waiting 5 minutes. That is, if the chemist bothered doing it in that time. Botany is a time intensive job that requires you to always be there to take care of the plants. When you’re leaving to ask for reageants or to get upgrades or to order bees… Your plants just die. It also takes a possible HUNDREDS of units of any botany chem to get any sort of dividends. The botany dispenser only dispenses saltpetre, unstable mutagen, and (I think water?). This is much better than stealing and/or making a full chem dispenser that can do chemistrys job.
What I’m trying to say is punishing the botanist is why botany is dead on TG. It’s alive here because it’s been maintained for the most part as a job. You need to make healing FUN so botanists want to do it. There needs to be benefit to you making healing chems. Like for instance, scientists can make big mechs or xenobiologists can become one man armies with crossbreeds. But scientists also support the whole ship with research and xenobio can revive near dead people instantly or make materials out of virtually nothing.
Botany languishes because no one interacts with the botanists. I’ve had TONS of shifts where I put the whole shift into making super heals. No one comes by. Chef barely even interacts with the botany lab on most days, opting to just raid the morgue for meat only. What do you think happens when no one interacts with you? You get bored and try out something new. Eventually that something new turns into more and more dangerous plants. When you’ve had 100 shifts you can only get so creative. If there was some benefit to making healing food, botanists would do it. It’s nice to help people out. However, you rarely get visitors to your out of the way lab in the first place. Without any incentive, you end up making a hypodermic slip banana with something flashy so you get your jollies.
So, in my opinion, the biggest problem is that botany has a couple “good” things they can do and no one bothering to interact with them. That coupled with no oversight from HOP makes a disaster waiting to happen. However, the other problem is botany getting blamed for shit they didn’t do, when it’s really someone using the second lab.
I come into the shift with a general plan. Make something interesting. Now, where that ends up going is up to what I get early on. I don’t think most botanists are there to just make superweapons, but there’s so little otherwise that botany brings to the table. This DOESNT MEAN nerf botany. This means give more incentives to not make superweapons. The problem is people are too willing to bring the stick, without giving a carrot.
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Yield is easy to manage, but RNG. You take an EZ nutrient bottle, dump it, and set it to 2u. Then you fill it with mutagen and micromutate until you have a high enough yield. You can fix potency and production speed with 300-500u saltpetre
one thing, what do you mean by reset it “to 2 u”?
You cycle how many units the bottle uses with Z. It can use 1u at the lowest, and 2u second lowest.
oh you mean set the bottle to 2u.
Yes, I edited it for you.
also would you happen to know what this means? “Advanced Botanists are the ones that have the power to wreck shuttles. These are the guys that closely guard 3 chemical trait plant secrets”
When you get REALLY good at botany, destroying the shuttle is definitely not a far off goal. Despite this, it requires a TON of setup and also RNG. I’m guessing that means the traits you can get from strange seeds(such as Gaseous decomposition, which explodes into a gas bomb after thrown or activated in your hand.) There are other strange seeds traits that, when mixed together, can kill pretty much anything reliably besides mechs.
I do know their destructive cap is truly incredible. and I do know what strange seeds are. There is definitely some beyond normal stuff in botany.
The only problem is, strange seeds are absolutely unreliable. Completely RNG- So if you’re looking for 2-3 traits from them, you can be sitting at the gene machine for up to an hour or longer searching through seeds. There is no reliable way to get the super strong death mixes you can make.
Basically, you have to be well versed in both chem and botany to find the truly dangerous mixes, but even if you know them by heart it can take the whole shift searching for them.
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Grass seeds are also a main component in making earthsblood heals that don’t give you brain damage using the hydrogen in it.
A fellow advanced botanist, good to see. I have almost 140 hours logged on beestation as a botanist. This isn’t even including my time on other TG stations before botany was nerfed to death there. Though at this point I don’t bother with gaia or making the trays golden. I guess I’ve become more minimalist in how I plant nowadays. I’ll generally mutate 4 plants at the start, get their produce, and make a random base for the shift. I’ve used almost every plant as a base and don’t care about maturation speed; The goal is doing something new in the shift. When you play enough botany you can make insta-death plants without a problem. Though the real fun is making something interesting you haven’t made before.
Nerds make instant death grenades.
Chads make corgium grenades to cheat death.
That’s why he said for advanced botanists 
I know how to get literally any plant to 100 potency, 10 yield, 1 production speed, with only roundstart items and tech, hence why grass is the obvious choice.
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exactly, It’s easy once you have enough hours under your belt. I don’t even bother with gaia anymore and let the new botanists make it. If I’m alone I might do a tray or two but that’s about it. However, I use tons of different plants as bases since it’s easy to get all of them to 100 pot, 10 yield, and prod 1. Maturation speed can matter, but not really. Just depends on how fast you want to complete your goal.