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Lock all Tree mutations behind infusions
#1
Exactly as the title says. Make all mutations of the Tree plant occur if and only if you infuse the seed with the appropriate reagent, and prevent them from being available through regular random mutations as they are now. (This would be analogous to how the many synthorgan mutations work for the synthmeat plant.) Most of the tree's mutations already have optional reagents you can infuse with to encourage the plant to mutate how you want it to, excluding the Sassafras tree. I'd propose that the infusion chem for the Sassafras tree would be Cola, which is both thematically fitting and reasonably easy to procure (just buy soda from a vending machine and extract the cola from the drink).

To recap, the following reagents would be necessary to get the current randomly-attainable tree mutations:
Paper Tree - Infuse with paper reagent 
Dogwood Tree - Infuse with Aconitine
Rubber Tree - Infuse with Space Glue
Sassafras Tree - Infused with Cola reagent

Why is this needed? The tree has the most random, non-stat-locked mutations, which can mean that it can actually be difficult to get the kind of mutation you want via infusing; the optional infusions don't actually guarantee that you get the type of mutant you want, which is not the case for many other infusion-based mutations in other plants, or even the infusion-only Glowstick tree mutation. There have been many times I have infused a tree seed with paper, only to plant the seed and either get a rubber tree (annoying) or a dogwood tree (*scream). This is not helped by the fact that you will rarely ever want to grow a dogwood or rubber tree, since they are unfortunately not very helpful, but will very frequently want a paper tree. Put simply: if I infuse a seed with paper, I want a paper tree, and if I infuse with space glue, I absolutely want a rubber tree, and you'd better not give me anything else.

This would also make it easier to grow regular, non-mutant tree strains from later generations, since wood on its own can be handy (especially now that there are more crafting recipes for wood), and most of the tree's random mutations either don't provide wood on harvest or are smelly, awful noise pollutants that attack you when you try to get rid of them to get back some peace and quiet generally undesirable despite providing wood.
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#2
this post complaints a bout a bunch of things in a lot of places but i think i've sussed the problem. there's no fancy behaviour specifically affecting trees, it's just tree mutations are quite plentiful so they stack the HYPnewmutationcheck proc (which is called when a plant would normally be able to mutate)

tbh i think HYPnewmutationcheck is the issue. should probably be the same % for all plants to mutate, like 5%, whereby it then rolls from all available mutations (with weighting based on how common the new strain should be)
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#3
(03-25-2023, 08:49 PM)TDHooligan Wrote: this post complaints a bout a bunch of things in a lot of places but i think i've sussed the problem. there's no fancy behaviour specifically affecting trees, it's just tree mutations are quite plentiful so they stack the HYPnewmutationcheck proc (which is called when a plant would normally be able to mutate)

tbh i think HYPnewmutationcheck is the issue. should probably be the same % for all plants to mutate, like 5%, whereby it then rolls from all available mutations (with weighting based on how common the new strain should be)

Makes sense as to why I see trees mutating so often, then. Doing that would probably fix trees mutating excessively, and probably make infusions the go-to method for getting a specific kind of mutant tree - since, with 4 possible mutation choices, getting a mutation via brute-force replanting shenanigans or unstable mutagen would be an exercise in frustration. In light of that, a specific infusion for sassafras trees would be ideal, though it doesn't have to be Cola if people don't think that's a good choice of reagent.

(I will continue to harp on Dogwood trees, though. No offense to the creator, but they are quite irritating to have around.)
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#4
I'm not a fan of locking too many mutations behind infusions. I also don't find trees too difficult to grow the way I want them. Sure they'll mutate once in a while but they usualy bear a lot of seeds and are quite easy to make immortal due to high genome anyway. Also maybe the stabilizer gene might help ?

There is just a lot of mutant trees. Probably a bit too many for a single seed type.
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#5
(03-26-2023, 05:02 AM)Decarcassor Wrote: There is just a lot of mutant trees. Probably a bit too many for a single seed type.

Yeah, I kinda agree with this. The thing is, I think there could be a couple of other interesting Tree mutations to be added (like maple trees for making your own maple syrup), but I feel like adding any more random mutations would be a bad idea. Adding more infusion-exclusive mutations, like the glowstick tree, would probably be fine (insofar as getting the other mutants goes), although it'd continue centralizing mutations around the tree seed.

Not a topic for this discussion thread, but there are a whole load of fruit cultivars that I see grown next to never; giving those seeds their own unique mutations might encourage them to be grown, rather than giving trees yet another type of mutant variety.
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#6
In my opinion.. it's annoying when seeds mutate without intent or mutagen...

But locking behind infusions is a no.
Random mutations should be possible but only with MUTAGENS and UNSTABILITIES/Mutant genes.
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#7
We had it locked behind mutations and i found it better that way. It's more odd that it was rolled back, though.
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#8
It wasn't rolled back, the PR that added the infusions just lowered their random chance to the default of 8%: https://github.com/goonstation/goonstation/pull/11229
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#9
Ahhhh, that makes sense. I just seem to misremembered it then. Thanks for the clarification!
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#10
(03-26-2023, 10:17 PM)LeahTheTech Wrote: It wasn't rolled back, the PR that added the infusions just lowered their random chance to the default of 8%: https://github.com/goonstation/goonstation/pull/11229

the complaint could still have some weight - with 5 mutations (excluding the money tree), the HYPNewMutation check (called by planting a seed, possibly elsewhere) actually checks the odds of each mutation @ 8%, rather than an 8% chance to get one of them. it makes it a 34% chance whenever a seed is planted to mutate, which might be a bit high.
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