Botany rework Sneak peek

Suggestions
1

This is going to happen in a few months, since I am still designing it and need to code later, but I’d like to show how my design is going to public. (but also I can have some suggestions)

Goal

Other stations removed the gene modifier while beestation still has it. I thought it would be the key feature for the future of botany, I changed things as more focused on the machine.
While I a bit lifted the chemical usage. Pouring 200u of saltpetre, trying a lot of Unstable Mutagen to mutate a plant, doesn’t sound nice to me. Well, but, chemical usage designing is still not done. I am not sure if I would touch that part.

Gene modifier and chemicals

Now you can change the amount of a reagent directly like a gene modifying scientist.
Let’s say you’re having a watermelon seed.

  • Watermelon
    Nutriment 10% (of 20%)
    Vitamin 5% (of 10%)
    Water 10% (of 20%)

Oh, no, watermelon is nerfed. Watermelon has 10% nutriment now???
That’s not true. You can change the value directly. You can adjust Nutriment 1%~20% at your wish. (of 20%) stuff means that chemical’s maximum is the number. So, you can boost 10% nutriment watermelon to 20% nutriment.

Or, You can make this poor-nutriental watermelon like below

  • Watermelon
    Nutriment 1% (of 20%)
    Vitamin 1% (of 10%)
    Water 1% (of 20%)

Well, It’s true that most plants will have lowered chemicals from now, but you can take back to the amount of before-nerf.

From now, each plant has a key feature that you might want to extract. For example:

  • Ambrosia Deus: Omnizine 3% (of 5%)
  • Life Weed: Omnizine 25% (of 40%)

If you need a small dose of Omnizine, Deus is enough, but if you need a big dose of Omnizine, you need Life Weed. You might want to get Omnizine 40% then make it 29%, because Omnizine 5% is kinda less for your needs.
So, this is ‘key feature’ for each plant.

gene modifier and plant stats

We have new stats but also changed stats…

  • Maximum yield: This locks your yield. If it is 2, your yield can’t go above 2.
    You can change it freely at gene modifier. If higher, maturation Speed is increased.
  • Bites: Determines how much you can eat this plant.
    You can chenge it at gene modifier too. If lower, Maturation Speed is increased.
  • Production speed: Now it is half of the maturation speed.

Example)

  • Apple is
    M-yield: 5
    Bites: 1
    Maturation speed: 15 (because bites 1 and yield is 5)
    Production speed: 8 (round up)

(I kinda hated everyone is using apple)

  • Grass is
    M-yield: 2
    Bites: 4
    Maturation speed: 2 (because bites 4 and yield is 1)
    Production speed: 1

stat stuff is still in adjustment.

New plants and new feature

  • Waterballoon
    looks like a transparent ball, but can see contents inside.
    can squeeze to a beaker to transfer.
    can’t contain back into itself once a chamical is transfered to out.

  • Dimensional Orange
    Its bites is determined by the list of the contained chemicals inside. If it has 20 chemicals, dimensional orange will have 20 bites and each bite will taste each chemical.

Gene modifier access

Since it becomes more powerful, gene modifier now needs botany access to touch, because you only need normal crops if you’re not a botanist. gene modified crops shouldn’t be that easily made.

Trays and earthsblood

Earthsblood has been a feature not to missing, but I kinda hated it. It will have a new feature, so that normal trays are a thing too.

  • Earthsblooded trays will lock your plant stats, won’t let it mutate anymore. If your plant has awful stat, It will be problematic. Only use them once you decided to lock their stats.
  • Once a plant is spaded or harvested without Perenial Growth, a golden tray will become a normal tray.

“We want strange seed back!”

No. Strange seed will be still rare. but I believe you can enjoy my rework since modifying can open a lot of possibilities like you used to have such fun from strange seeds.

3 Likes
2

Remove earthsblood golden trays entirely. Make it so water/pests/weeds/fertilizer do not change based on time, but only when a plant is harvested. Babysitting tray blinky lights every 10 seconds is the single worst part of botany and why everyone rushes golden trays.

ID locking machines without a method of hacking through it is a cancerous game mechanic that should be eradicated from the game, instead of adding more such instances.

You didn’t address the elephant in the room with your sneak peek, which is weaponized plants.

5 Likes
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Remove earthsblood golden trays entirely. Make it so water/pests/weeds/fertilizer do not change based on time, but only when a plant is harvested. Babysitting tray blinky lights every 10 seconds is the single worst part of botany and why everyone rushes golden trays.

I don’t want to remove earthsblood, but want to give a reason why it is bad than normal trays so that you don’t have to rush earthsblood.

ID locking machines without a method of hacking through it is a cancerous game mechanic that should be eradicated from the game, instead of adding more such instances.

How is it cancerous? Why do you want them when you are not a botanist? Although I had an idea that emagging unlocks ID check.

You didn’t address the elephant in the room with your sneak peek, which is weaponized plants

Because this sneak peek isn’t aimed to balance it. The primary aim is to make a new fun since we had strange seed nerf.

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You’re not addressing why people rush earthsblood, you’re just making it worse at what it does. Players rush earthsblood because tray maintenance was balanced around 30 minute TG rounds, where everything is a constant rush. Nobody enjoys having to tend their plants every few seconds or lose all progress.

Which is why I said you should make it only need tending after harvest, not based on time.

Emagging is limited to only a single antag type: one with uplink access.

ID system is an obsolete leftover that was never thought through. You’re locking entire gameplay features behind a “class” system that only few players on the station can change (command staff). Airlocks are an example of good ID integration, as it can be bypassed (and even changed to different access by anyone) but still offers protection. Same with R&D console and other console that allow hacking of the circuit board to grant access. This is good for gameplay as it allows players themselves to overcome obstacles and doesn’t introduce any class-like restrictions.

You claim you don’t intend to balance it, yet you introduce new restrictions on both golden trays and ID access requirements. Combined with “This is going to happen” quote in your topic, I question your experience or that you even know what you’re doing.

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All right, I am glad to hear your answers. Then i’d like to hear more directly. How do you think about weaponized plants? Why did you say it as a big elephant? How is it bad?

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Will plant do grow?

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If you are greed for yield and bites, they will take forever to grow. But stats are still in adjustment.

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A few minutes from start of round, a botanist can make 2-hit kill plants and carry hundreds of them in plant bags. Such ridiculous trait interaction is actually fun for players, however it’s not balanced in the slightest. Solution would be to make plant item size scale with potency, making plant bags not fit into any item slot and having them carry only few max potency plants at a time.

Different plant bag tiers could exist as research and materials allow.

Again, balance changes without knowledge of how botany functions. Any sort of time delay will have no effect as trays can be made from dirt.

I suggest scaling back your ambitions to a simpler project, one that does not involve rewriting and rebalancing most of an entire department and related mechanics. One such project could be tackling the badly designed golden tray, addressing issues like leftover balancing from an entirely different codebase (TG short rounds). There’s many ways you could solve this, and I even wrote one in this very thread.

But really you should start even simpler than that, try to make seed packets be renamed without a pen.

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I will partially maintain that a good way to fix botany would be to take away their infinate botany chemical machine and make them talk to another department.

10

boy if you are searching for info on weapon plants i’ll be downright shocked and ask what rock where you hiding under when the station gets ravaged by…

  • instacrit bombs that detonate imidietly on impact and shread half your items
  • instacrit bombs with radius to kill 2 people at once leaving the 3rd barely alive
  • a carrot bomb that causes a 1tile radius explosion that somehow is still lethal lietrally a 1 click kill while standing right next to you
  • deathnettles that induce braindeath rendering a corpse UNRVEVIVABLE in SECONDS (thank god the botanist who made that tested it on himself)
  • the more generic inject so much acid in the victum that not even a medical team can save them deathnettle
  • a plant that injects you with wharever the person wants the second you touch it. and yes it can be hidden under other objects
  • do i even need to start with the bluespace plants
  • what about a tomato that dissoves your hardsuit IN SPACE
  • what about a tomato that makes a cloud that injects a large radius with any chemical mentioned above of the botanist’s choosing

I have personally experienced all of the above. you cant make this shit up
botany has access to the most powerfull weapons this game can offer that rival admin abuse

1 Like
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But didn’t they add the chem machine for botany because botanists would just steal chem machines/break into board storage?

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i say we reignite the old botany & chemistry feud

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I mean. If that was happening those botanists should have eaten bwoinks or bans.
Then again that was ages ago

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I think removing their own chem machine isn’t a solution. It will just make them to unnable to work even, if there is no one providing the chem they want. Imagine a low puplated station like pubby.
Cooperation is fun, but it shouldn’t interrupt the essential play. Botany needs a lot of chem and removing will make them hardly playable. So I am thinking to lift the chem usage, as I don’t like pouring 200u of saltpetre to a single plant or unstable mutagen all day.

15

Now you can change the amount of a reagent directly like a gene modifying scientist.
Let’s say you’re having a watermelon seed.

Good. Just straight up good. Nice.

From now, each plant has a key feature that you might want to extract.

Good. Just don’t lock too much behind select plants, lest things get too slow. Having some important stuff locked is nice and reasonable though.

  • Maximum yield: This locks your yield. If it is 2, your yield can’t go above 2.
    You can change it freely at gene modifier. If higher, maturation Speed is increased.

This makes yield a worthless stat. If every plant has the same actual production value no matter how you change its stats, adding this customization to it has no value. The correct move is max yield with higher time because the plant would die later than usual. Since there’s a correct move and no upgrades, the customization is moot.

  • Bites: Determines how much you can eat this plant.
    You can chenge it at gene modifier too. If lower, Maturation Speed is increased.

How exactly this will work confuses me and might need more clarification. But due to changing reagent percentages, no matter what, it should be good. That said I see absolutely no reason for it to be tied to maturation speed, and the fact that it is makes me think you want to make one bite capable of adding all of the plant’s chems. Theoretically a plant with more chems per bite has more value. Functionally, even if you’re in the middle of combat, reagents process at a set rate and a single bite will probably be all you’ll ever need, not to mention that taking a bite is instant to begin with. TLDR, there is once again a “correct move” which is max speed, and that once again makes the customization pointless. The fact that you can customize dosage means that you can adjust for how many bites you have either way, too, and hitting overdose isn’t hard.

  • Production speed: Now it is half of the maturation speed.

Ew. Please do not do this unless you hate botany.

Waterballoon
looks like a transparent ball, but can see contents inside.
can squeeze to a beaker to transfer.
can’t contain back into itself once a chamical is transfered to out.

Good. Saves up on a lot of time for making finished chems. Try to make it the end of a multi-stage mutation since the payoff is extremely cool!

Gene modifier access

No. We have enough of this as-is, please do use this mechanic unless it is extremely important.

  • Earthsblooded trays will lock your plant stats, won’t let it mutate anymore. If your plant has awful stat, It will be problematic. Only use them once you decided to lock their stats.

Robust Harvest already does this. Another person gave a lovely explanation of why this is a bad idea earlier as well. Trays themselves are very annoying to take care of until golden. There’s a good reason botanists rush this, and taking care of water/weed on trays is honestly the worst part of botany. What I have to add to this is that I see no reason for change other than just shaking up gameplay, and if you asked me what was wrong with botany, golden trays wouldn’t be even close to the issues I’d bring up. In other words, don’t bother. More on this in the bottom of the post.

Once a plant is spaded or harvested without Perenial Growth, a golden tray will become a normal tray.

Good-spirited change, but pointless since you can just reassemble a tray right now for this, since it is a machine. I guess it’s more convenient?

No. Strange seed will be still rare. but I believe you can enjoy my rework since modifying can open a lot of possibilities like you used to have such fun from strange seeds.

No one asked. I feel this part of the post was made in bad spirit. Under my oath I will not discuss it further.

Additional stuff:

  • If you want to rework botany, start from the basics. Make the dna machine and disk machine able to be moved by unwrenching instead of having to be fully dissassembled. Make trays able to be walked through like dirt patches.
  • The first part of your post which concernes plant genes and the like is very nice. A massive QoL feature that could be used even for current botany, but especially for what you had in mind, is an actual indicator of the units a plant will have for reagents, in the DNA manipulator.
  • Again, back to basics, the disk storage UI is shit and would benefit massively from category view and dropdown menus, maybe a list of all genes so you know what you’re missing. You could take this to the logical conclusion and have it show what has the genes too. That’s massively player-friendly and cool. (Before you ask, just have one of the menus concern anything from strange seeds, since it is random)
  • A big part of your post seems to be intent on nerfing botany, and I can’t agree with that. If we were talking about strange seed botany, I would understand you. As it stands, I see little reason for it. The way these nerfs would work is also particularly poorly executed, with plants being slower to grow while having to be babysitted due to golden tray changes. So you want to confine botanists to their room for the whole shift, and their work to pay off less than it does now? Interesting…
  • On topic of golden tray changes, consider this! Have the golden tray be a toggle like on some other servers, but have it prevent all mutation, including mutation from your chems, be it stats or species, in addition to doing what it does now. In effect, you’d make your perfect plant and then set it to golden, but you’d have to take care of it while making it. I think this strikes a good balance between your idea and something functional. (edit: though this would make dirt patches worse, that isn’t necessarily bad. maybe trays just need to be easier to make, as right now they are quite annoying to produce.)
  • Nerf what actually needs nerfs instead. Acid. Prickles. Overwhelming Toxins. Yadda Yadda. This department is hated for deadliness and griefing, and it always has been. It has always been an obstacle towards a better design and is even part of why SS are gone. If botany had disabling chems instead of insane combat potential it’d be cool. Consider replacing deadly reagents with ones that dizzy, do light stuns, disarm, etc. You can also add more unique traits that make a plant helpful for combat without outright killing or teleporting.
  • Cut down on plant spam instead of cutting down on botany’s overall speed. Straight up nerfing all yield to be capped at 5 would be a better move than making plants take ages to grow, for example. (I’m not saying to do that. Feel free to come up with anything.)

Finally, if you’re interested in honestly improving the department, feel free to message me or whatever. I’ve been playing it ever since I’ve arrived and would love to help in making it both less notorious and more interesting. I can offer detailed explanations of what we have right now as well as balancing insights.

1 Like
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