Let spliced botany plants retain the reagents of mutated strains

[Gerhazo]

Spliced plants contain reagents of both of their parents.
A spliced synthmeat-contusine plant will contain both synthflesh and salicylic acid, for instance.

However, mutated strains of plants exist, and for example shivering contusine contains not only salicylic acid but also salbutamol.

That being said, if you try to splice synthflesh-shivering contusine, the resulting hybird plant will still only have synthflesh and salicylic acid from the default plants, ignoring any properties of the mutated variant.

This severely limits what botanists can do and renders some creative possibilities impossible.

Having the splicing system take into consideration mutated strains' reagents would be a great way of increasing the department's potential in making very cool all-purposes plants.

[UrsulaMejor]

cursory look at 2016 makes me think this is where the magic happens:

https://github.com/goonstation/goonstati...ed.dm#L435

[Gerhazo]

slight update from urs' findings:

one of the plants can remain mutated, so in my example it could have worked if I ended up with a hybrid shivering contusine plant instead of hybrid synthflesh plant.
That said, having this change to retain both plants' reagents would make the process easier and I believe it would be fair and not overpowering, considering how much other departments can get done in the same amount of time.

[moistgrandmas42]

Agreed wholeheartedly. Allowing for simpler plant breeding would go a long way in reviving interest in botany. There's some really neat things you can make in botany as is, but you're always limited by the final form either being inedible/not smokable.

One thing to keep in mind is each additional reagent spliced into a plant increases the potency divisor, and could always be tweaked if needed.

[UrsulaMejor]

If this breaks something, it was Gerhazo's fault:
https://forum.ss13.co/showthread.php?tid=12969

[Anticheese]

This absolutely needs to go in.