I think removing the spider-producing and kudzu-making part of botany is a good start. It’s only useful for antags (not even that useful actually), but no one other than self antags use it anyways. If you see it as a penalty for new players to ignore their plants then add something that only impacts botany instead of the station.
Hello, I’m Belthesar and this is my ted talk.
Before I delve into this botany manifesto, I want to establish my brief credentials.
The hours are not much, but I exclusively play as a Botany main, with Shaft Miner as a recent secondary. I joined December 19th, 2020. If I’m extremely lucky with unstable mutagen, I can get full gold trays in 12 minutes at top speed as the only botanist, 18 minutes usual.
I am posting this to give you an idea of where I sit experience wise for Botany, as some of the posts in this thread are either straight up inaccurate from folks that played Botany minimally - or folks that played aeons ago with code that is no longer relevant. I’d also like to help guide the discussion by including my experiences with teaching new botanists, and where their failings often lie - in a means to provide additional aspects to consider.
- OP Relevant Info
- Experience learning and teaching botany
- Thread shit
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OP Relevant Info
Botany’s purpose is a mix of the OP’s purposes. Fulfilling food requests for the chef and cargo bounties are the primary purpose early in IMO, I would argue cargo being more important since very rarely do chefs ask for more than tomatoes. Maybe one in every 4 or 5 rounds do I get chefs asking for anything else - save monkeycubes / flour. I would also minorly lump in producing tower caps / wood planks for the bartender and other enterprising crew members, alongside bananas for the clown. On a good round, crew members that recognize your efficacy will request all sorts of stuff.
Outside of this aforementioned purpose, folks will usually delve into one of these three mid-late round purposes:
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You can somewhat work with producing medications, for instance say mannitol, but often Chemistry has you beat since that is their department. Most chemicals that Medbay might want like Cryoxodone are locked behind strange seeds though, which you only really start to tackle at about 40 minutes in if Sci is lagging on upgrades. It is rare to get upgrades by 25 minutes. You really are only useful in this way late in the round when producing barrels of: strange reagent, godsblood, and bastion bourbon/quintuple sec. Otherwise it comes down making your own little zany healing plant that most new botanists will fuck up attempting.
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Recreational drugs, I’d fit into the gimmick category. Baby’s first late round is growing and smoking weed. Most times about 50 minutes in, I’ve got some of the strange seeds I want if I want something in particular - if not working purely off of life/death/omega weed. Usually this entails selling/giving away condiment bottles of flight potion, skeleton mutation, space cleaner barrels/grenades, carpet grenades, etc… This category also fits the folks that like to sell durathread and other drip - essentially having Botany function as a player driven mechanic to bolster RP, which Sage can always use more of to escape the Golden+ moniker.
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Dangerous Research. Yeah. Botany can produce all sorts of wildin shit, however it usually pales in comparison to other departments such as chem/viro/toxins, etc. Generally it takes a long time to farm the strange seeds you want, and you have to be minimally competent enough to get biomass going. There are ways to expand on the dangerous research aspect that I will touch on later, but I do think it is a purpose that can be kept in a meaningful way.
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Experience Learning and Teaching Botany
Botany was the first department I picked after I decided I knew enough of the controls and Jani slot was taken. The guides are quite outdated (however to my understanding, Yorii is working on a fancy schmancy new one), so most knowledge has to be taught by other Botanists.
Majority of extremely new or newer Botanists I teach have little to no idea about the existence of golden trays, or if they do, the idea of mutation is wholly foreign to them. Some often know that theres the lightbulb system on the trays to a degree. The amount of weed over-taken Gaia I have seen is traumatic. Without Golden Trays, running through botany is a slog since you are babysitting plants like a mofo, even if you dump a zillion 2u of unstable mutagen in em to prevent excess weed growth. This is where people try to dig up plants with a hatchet because they saw a botanist bonking Kudzu vines with one once.
Midline Botanists, after having learned to get Gaia and golden trays, usually have trouble with the DNA manipulator as well - preferring to plant a ton of Gaia seeds and farm whatever potency they have to get gold trays. This where most people hit a plateau and top out.
Its not until you get to experienced Botanists that you get guys branching out into learning the DNA manipulator’s powers, and even then they are cramming every chemical they can into a plant hoping it will be some wild insta-murder explosive machine. These guys usually learn to start farming biomass at least. These are rarer, and usually some are tiders that used to play botany that just get into Hydroponics with Ez Pz “HoP gives everyone botany access even though theres a public farm.” These are the guys that spam lemons on the shuttle, or throw Gaseous Decomp. mixes of acid. This is where the majority of folks that got past midline leave for another job, or antag enough to get banned, because they got bored and could not perceive the depth of the job. Basically the problem makers. They’ll also cryo or self-antag as soon as the chem dispenser is out of juice and Sci/Engi don’t want to give em an inducer.
Advanced Botanists are the ones that have the power to wreck shuttles. These are the guys that closely guard 3 chemical trait plant secrets, actually use the grinder & brewmaster, etc. They grow biomass with grass seeds, that kind of thing. In all my hours, I have seen very few Advanced Botanists. These are the ones that start the round by grabbing the tools to hack our vendors, alongside a power cell charger to swap cells in the botany chem dispenser.
Advanced+ I would say are the guys that straight up just do chemistry in Botany and can destroy whoever they please quickly into the round. I’ve seen like two. They’re terrifying if they antag.
When I teach new botanists, which are very akin to baby deer honestly, it takes em about two or three shifts to learn how to gold tray, and another two to be mildly ok with the DNA manipulator. Most leave after that and fresh blood comes in. Many folks just don’t find the job that all interesting compared to the flashy guys like Robotics and Genetics, and move on quickly.
- Thread Shit - “Finally, the meat of the subject!,” you think to yourself.
I keep bees IRL, gibe apiary area - the whole reason I picked this server was because of the name damn it. Also fix Apids so we don’t get stung by bees like the wiki page says smh my head
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Let me start by saying I agree with Yorii on reducing the amount of reagents some traits give. I think most currently under 5% are totally A-ok and should be untouched. I also sorta agree with reducing the reagent capacity of all plants, though worry this will hinder the ability for gimmick and medicinal botanists to mass produce items like Flight potion for the Public or Strange Reagant / Godsblood, etc. for Medbay. Yes, I can understand the meds should be “a little mildly difficult to acquire,” however they end up bolstering inter-department interaction. Keeping omega weed at 420u would be fun however, as very few botanists know about the plant unit capacity system.
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Don’t listen to any pinheads about removing the Botany minor chemical dispenser. Instead consider adding a cell charger to botany as well. It is common to have rounds where you drop 300 units worth of unstable mutagen in 5u increments on plants to finally mutate them. Its very maddening. I had two of those rounds yesterday. Chemistry won’t stick around their desk or answer their PDAs half the time anyway if they havn’t died in a methsplosion.
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Kudzu in uplink is fine, but remember to remove it from cargo bounties. I’ve only seen it as a bounty once. The only people that grab kudzu are evil, so it might as well be an uplink thing.
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Regular trays even upgraded are a huge headache to manage without being golden. I wouldn’t be able to spend 5 minutes at the bar chatting with the tender over a drink or getting food without coming back to either dead plants or spiderlings. Most botanists don’t know to 2u U.M. to change stats to fix 0 yield, or add something like weed adaption to their seeds. Same deal for using 100u saltpetre pours vs 50u, many don’t even know to pour as much as they can.
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In terms of my expanding on the Dangerous Research aspect, I would consider trying to find a way to marry toxins and botany together. Maybe there is a room between the two that Botanists can’t take plant data disks with certain traits out of or something, or having plant explosions generate research on a different scale. The thinking being that we still take all sorts of designs from nature IRL in that regard.
I like the biohazard research addition idea as well. Maybe that could be tied into lavaland flora so as to get miners more reason to visit the station other than cargo trips, the bar, or killing scientists for not researching adv mining tech after 40 minutes (justified).
Dangerous Research, tying into the proposed growth of animals earlier in the thread, might be a worthwhile way of incorporating some of the work done on the ancient jungle mobs. Botany already sorta exists as the red headed child of Service and Science with godparent Medical, blurring the lines more shouldn’t be an issue. As others have said, being able to do some form of research would be cool.
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If Strange Seeds are kept, putting them behind a cargo order would be too goofy honestly. I wholly believe that would neuter Botany to an excessive degree - unless the changes to reagents inside each plant was absolutely combed through and each one hand crafted. It would be an insane amount of work however, not to mention likely hard to justify most chems being in the plants we have.
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Add Coconuts because I want to be able to wear one on my head and see out the two little holes. Simple as. Plus having coconuts could be used to add to bartender content.
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Plant BoH would be cool.
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Biogen capacity I’m meh on, it would depend on the future of strange seeds. If they are removed, then the biogen would only be good for monkey cubes for the chef and other minor food item bits.
7 Likes
leave botany as it is, make rules about creating excessive amounts of harmful or explosive plants
easy fix no need to make botany trash
I think food is badly implemented. The need to eat is infrequent, and when you do need to eat it’s just a small snack lest you get fat. There’s higher penalties for overeating than for not eating at all. Eating any chef produced meal is a big gamble, as a single bite can make you fat and you have no way of knowing how much nutriment is in the food.
Result is full tables of food in kitchen yet crew are still severely malnourished. It’s just not worth the risk of being fat for many, and not worth the effort as there’s hardly any sideeffects to starving.
This translates to botany never needing to make anything edible. A single max potency watermelon (21 nutriment) will feed 1 crewmember for a 2 hour shift. It’s not a problem with the amounts of nutriment present in food and plants, but rather the amount that players need to consume and the effect this has.
It should require concentrated effort to become fat to the point of being slowed down and people need more incentives to eat, instead of such severe fat penalties these should be moved to hunger penalties.
2 Likes
Two races die when they don’t “eat”
Only one of them actually needs food though
Only humans matter though.
3 Likes
Literally no one cares about all this bullshit.
Chef exists to make sure the morgue isnt full and to fry everything that doesnt move and make sure that if it is moving, it will end up in the fryer eventually.
1 Like
That’s defeatism. Because a system is badly designed, nobody cares about the system → nobody cares about the system so it shouldn’t be redesigned.
It’s not a rational approach to a problem.
1 Like
I never said it was good.
I just said your argument was bullshit.
No one should starve after a two hour shift. That makes no sense.
It doesnt need a rework. If anything. We should just remove getting fat.
You haven’t offered any argument, merely expletives. I recommend you learn some manners.
I wasnt planning on offering an argument.
I was saying your’s was bullshit because it makes no sense.
Days pass in-game over that two hour shift - SS13 is a sim, but not a real-time sim.
Usually about one day passes. You arent going to starve in a day.
Removing fat would fix everyone’s issues.
Incorrect, there are 3 station jobs dedicated to food. Botany, bartender and chef. Bartender is reduced to providing powergaming healing for people with alcohol tolerance, chef creates table decorations that he defends with martial arts and botanists make weaponized plants.
Despite there being an entire department for food, the food itself is completely irrelevant to a round or the department itself.
I dont see why the department centered around food being mostly irrelevant till someone needs it on a research station is bad.
ftfy
20202002020202020202
1 Like
I never said they couldnt have fun. Im saying that they arent entirely integral.
I have plenty of fun as Botanist and Chef. I do my job because its required. And then i make a clothing store and make myself rich.
Also as a further part of my opposition to Ruko’s point. Spessmen dont need sleep for about two days apparently. Which either means their brains work better or the timescale for their days is way fucking off.
Trying to preserve the status quo without providing any reason for it besides “it’s always been like this” is not a constructive contribution to a thread about how botany needs to be changed.
I never said it was like that. Im just saying food doesnt need to change.
Cooking could use an expansion too. Aside from breakfast at the start if the shift, there isn’t any special mechanic and most of the more unique recipes use exotic meats. Add some more plant foods with more unique effects. Add peanut plants to grind into peanut butter, make peanut butter and banana sandwich that triggers the Elvis mutation while it’s in you.
Quirky foods like the stuff bartender can make would do wonders for interaction between chef and botany besides asking for meatwheat, tomatoes, and restocks from the biogen.
1 Like