Introduction: Hello all. For this post I am hoping to argue for small changes to botany for an overall better experience for both veteran and new botanists. As an aside I have roughly 200 hours in botany and 300+ more in my own private server messing with botany. Through out my time playing I’ve mentored new players, watched others, and burnt my self alive in botany more times then I can count. There are things I love about botany and others that have no true counter play that wouldn’t automatically ruin the experience of other players.
Things to Change:
Water Mutation -
Pros: ?
Cons: No counterplay. Wastes 1000’s of units of water with no gain. Forces the player to get rid of the plant with this mutation.
Conclusion: Nerf the drain of water or remove.
Heat Mutation -
Pros: Allows the player to willing adjust the temperature of botany to counterplay.
Cons: Constant blinking light. No information if the room is too cold or two hot for the plant. Counterplay consists of ruining other players plants to support your own with out massive investment in another room to store trays.
Conclusion: Remove (prefered) or have the tray articulate if it is too cold or warm.
Pressure Mutation -
Pros: Space plants
Cons: Require the botanist to space botany. No other counterplay. Ruins other players plants.
Conclusion: Remove. Counter play is too complicated and shitter tier. No individual will play around this with out getting sec/atmos called on you or boinked for spacing parts of the station.
Chemicals Mutation -
Pros: Extremely fun to mutate certain things like potassium eggs (im sorry chef) Allows players to make creative explosives or have fun with weird and wacky chem combos.
Cons: Not enough botany only chems.
Conclusion: Increase the weight of chems in the yml from 20 to 30 or 40. Botanists get to have more fun with random chems while subsidizing the gameplay while there is a lack of genetics/more plants.
Clipping -
Pros: Counterplay to seedless.
Cons: Damages plants. Luck based clipping mechanic.
Conclusion: Change Clipping to only damage a plant if it is NOT fully grown allowing the player to have fun rolling for seeds with out killing the plant and losing the harvest if your rolls are too good.
Swabbing -
Pros: Fun combination of plant stats.
Cons: Seedless. No clue what you are swabbing over.
Conclusion: Change swabbing to not automatically have seedless unless the plant in question has the seedless trait in which case you roll the 50% chance. Allows counterplay against the seedless mutation.
Lasting remarks: These are just a few changes to botany I think would make it a little more fun and a little less hassle.
I think your perspective on mutations is reasonably valid. Though I feel like a potentially better idea would be to have better environment control options for the trays specifically so you wouldn’t need to space the whole room.
But I would like to point out that clipping isn’t meant to be a viable negation to the seedless trait, only a mitigation. Seedless is an (ugly) means of balancing the potential power plants may have and is meant to largely limit their reproduction potential. The luck based limit should probably be removed, but removing damage to the grown plant seems like an odd move, especially since it emphasises the random element more instead of less. And I don’t think clicking repeatedly hoping against odds is that much more of a fun experience than the current state. If anything, I think keeping the damage and removing the random “this plant has already been sampled” limit could make for a more interesting counterplay by requiring actually keeping the plant health in check.
As for swabbing, again, the seedless thing is there to stop people from making something crazy powerful and filling the whole botany with it. I’d like to see the seedless trait overall obsoleted myself, but removing it without somehow tweaking the mechanic to counterbalance it might not go over well with the maintainers.
While I wish there was a way to control the environment of botany (or rather the trays) that would require someone to write a good bit of code for it. While that would be helpful, not realistic since botany is on the back burner for the foreseeable future. Right now, most of the changes here should be “simple to input™”
As for seedless, this had nothing to do with creating ‘overpowered plants.’ The clipping nerf is what slowed it down to the point of non-existence. Even that can be gammed currently with Vitamin spam. Before, regardless of seedless, you would in just mass spam. One of the examples of that would be my famous omni eggs.
Omni egg - Spam clip egg-plant → swab cocoa to egg-plant (now seedless) → Get 6y 1pot → Spam clip the plant → Plant → swab dues to it → wait for egg and see which had omni → Spam clip and plant in mass.
The clipping nerf is what stopped overpowered plants, not the seedles trait.
As for emphasizing luck. Its botany, everything is luck based. Seeds are luck based from clipping already. Swabbing is luck based. Mutations are luck based. We might as well lean into this and reward lucky players. If a plant does not take damage once fully grown and harvestable from clipping, then this would reward lucky players with (theoretically) infinite seeds or just one.
Also thanks. Changed it to feedback. I think I did feature request on accident.
I was, around, when the clipping nerf was made.
From what I remember, part of the specific reasoning for that nerf was that it was a means of circumventing the seedless trait, thus preventing it from doing its job. (side note, in retrospect, clipping was fucking busted before the nerfs)
I think it’s quite clear from how it’s used, that, while we can argue to its effectiveness, the trait is meant to provide a balancing countermeasure to stop busted plants from being too easily mass produced.
As for the general matters of luck, I think we should strive more towards skill and resource cost over making more luck-based mechanics.
Especially since in the case of clipping, you’re extremely likely to be unable to clip after the second time, which isn’t really much better than just using the damage as the limiting factor instead.
Me and you could argue the effectiveness of the seedless trait till medical finally gets finished (Just a week away!). But I suppose that neither here nor there.
While I think both me and you would agree that there should be more skill based mechanics in botany, since everything is luck based as it currently stands. An example of this would be the knowledge skill set where say, I know that Cocoa has 6 yield, combine this with wheat for growth and tower caps for longevity to make a pretty good plant but with how swabbing works the effective combination of these plants will be (almost) impossible.
But all of that would require genetics where knowledgeable players could use this to their advantage and this isn’t something this post is ready for yet. For the most part this is just for a more stream lined botany with small changes to get rid of annoying mutations, influence players to actually use swabbing, and of course make clipping more enjoyable if your insanely lucky.
Now overall how do you feel about the Mutations I effectively want to get rid of? Is it a good idea, do you have any questions further about why I want to rid them from the code. Any other questions about my thought process on clipping and swabbing ECT.