05-24-2014, 02:36 PM
Hydroponics is a surprisingly deep field that, unfortunately, is not usually exploited; a few people know unique splices and the good mutations, but aside from that, I never seen botany make any real headway or have any huge impact on the station (traitor or otherwise). Heck, one of the job specific traitor items for Botanist is just a blunt-force weapon, more or less that precisely discourages them from doing their job (growing stuff...and yes, I realize there's maneaters).
In any event, I had a couple of suggestion for Botany:
-Allow multiple secondary reagents to be spliced-
Currently, when you splice two plants together, the hybrid will have the primary reagents of both plants; the problem, though is when a plant has multiple reagents (for example splicing fuzzy nureous together with Dawning Venne); only the primary reagent of the parent plant will splice in. Eliminating this restriction and allowing secondary and tertiary reagents to be spliced would allow for more creative and useful combinations when hybridizing plants.
-Seething Tomato-
These only explode when thrown; when eaten they don't really do anything; would be pretty awesome if these contained black powder as their unique reagent (I realize that botany already has tons of salt petre, but again, this would allow for creative combinations and give seething tomatoes a more sinister edible purpose).
-Building Endurance-
Currently, you can alter every single plant's individual stats quite reliable with potash, saltpetre, and ammonia. The problem is, however, is there's no way to reliable alter endurance; you have to just plain get lucky with mutagen or random pure luck (in combination with selective breeding) for this number to go up. You can boost the endurance of slurry pods, but the problem is, these don't play nice, at all, with splicing and other plants. Why is impacting endurance so important? A number of mutations are dependent on endurance, particularly lifeweed; lifeweed is almost never seen, ever, because it's incredibly hard to get the endurance stat to heighten to the appropriate level. Perhaps compost could raise endurance as well as plant health?
-Useful Unique Reagents-
Botany has a couple of truly unique reagents; aminitin, glowing slurry, and toxic slurry (and if you insist, THC and catonium...), but not enough, in my opinion. Most of the reagents botany can create are just as easily obtainable elsewhere; adding in a few more unique reagents could potentially draw more people to play the job and encourage experimentation. For example, perhaps there could be an incredibly difficult way to grow hemlock, which contains coniine, or other plants that contain reagents that cannot be synthesized normally, such as insulin or morphine.
In any event, I had a couple of suggestion for Botany:
-Allow multiple secondary reagents to be spliced-
Currently, when you splice two plants together, the hybrid will have the primary reagents of both plants; the problem, though is when a plant has multiple reagents (for example splicing fuzzy nureous together with Dawning Venne); only the primary reagent of the parent plant will splice in. Eliminating this restriction and allowing secondary and tertiary reagents to be spliced would allow for more creative and useful combinations when hybridizing plants.
-Seething Tomato-
These only explode when thrown; when eaten they don't really do anything; would be pretty awesome if these contained black powder as their unique reagent (I realize that botany already has tons of salt petre, but again, this would allow for creative combinations and give seething tomatoes a more sinister edible purpose).
-Building Endurance-
Currently, you can alter every single plant's individual stats quite reliable with potash, saltpetre, and ammonia. The problem is, however, is there's no way to reliable alter endurance; you have to just plain get lucky with mutagen or random pure luck (in combination with selective breeding) for this number to go up. You can boost the endurance of slurry pods, but the problem is, these don't play nice, at all, with splicing and other plants. Why is impacting endurance so important? A number of mutations are dependent on endurance, particularly lifeweed; lifeweed is almost never seen, ever, because it's incredibly hard to get the endurance stat to heighten to the appropriate level. Perhaps compost could raise endurance as well as plant health?
-Useful Unique Reagents-
Botany has a couple of truly unique reagents; aminitin, glowing slurry, and toxic slurry (and if you insist, THC and catonium...), but not enough, in my opinion. Most of the reagents botany can create are just as easily obtainable elsewhere; adding in a few more unique reagents could potentially draw more people to play the job and encourage experimentation. For example, perhaps there could be an incredibly difficult way to grow hemlock, which contains coniine, or other plants that contain reagents that cannot be synthesized normally, such as insulin or morphine.