[MERGED PR] Rework of the creeper plant and introduction of the tumbling creeper m...

[github_bot]

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[hydroponics][rework]




About the PR
This PR introduces a new mutation to the creeper plant and reworks how creeper replants themselves.

The creeper plant now replants exact copies of itself, retaining stats, plantgenes and splices. Beyond that, instead of a flat reduction of plant life, the creeper now deals reduceable damage to sorrounding plants. If a creeper mutation plants a seed on an adjecent tray, it will plant a non-mutated variant of itself (this means the new mutation will replant creeper instead of tumbling creeper). Also, it won't replant itself if it has the "seedless" gene.

The creeper gains two possible genes: stabilizer and invasive growth. The invasive growth gene strain makes the creeper more aggressive towards plants. However, if it is spliced into other plants, these plants begin to show the creepers aggressive spreading behaviour as well.

The tumbling creeper plant is a new mutation that adds an interesting dynamic into the plant:

If harvested, it will yield no seeds but tumbling creeper bushes:

These devilish cousin of tumbleweeds are special: While on the ground and unrooted, they try to fling themselves 3-7 tiles with a cooldown of 15 seconds. When they hit a suitable hydroponic tray, they have a 50% chance to root themselves into the ground.
While rooted into the ground, they begin to attack nearby hydroponic plants and replant new creeper in the respectable trays.

Their use is more devious, however. They can be rooted into the ground manually with a 2 second action bar when a garden trowel is used on them.

Once rooted down, any person who moves into the creeper and is above walking speed suffers 12 damage and a 2 seconds stun while being forced onto the ground.
If a human slips or is thrown into a tile with the creeper in place, their flight is stopped, the creeper is destroyed and the person in question suffers 20 damage and a 3 second stun. All damage from the creeper is reduced by "chest"-melee-resistance of the victim.

These stats scale with plant stats. The damage scales with endurance up to 150 endurance. The damage value of stepping into is 8-18 and when thrown into is 16-30.

The creeper can be uprooted by using a snipping tool on it with a 2 second action bar.

Because of the newfound dangerous abilities of the mutation and the normal behaviour of the creeper itself as already very aggressive, the seeds for this plant were removed from the seed dispenser. Instead, you can find this plant in the pool for strange seeds now.

Why's this needed?

This PR gives the Creeper a vaible use while staying in tune with its self-spreading behaviour. The tumblercreepers can be very obnoxious if left unattended in a botany department. Beyond that, they are a perfect fit if a bartender wants to create a western-styled bar.

Since #12407 was not theme-appropriate but the mechanics were considered interesting within the community, this PR tries to add the mechanics of the PR while completely changing the theme. Also, the mass-production is much harder.

Since the plant yields no seeds, is a somewhat robust grass and replants non-mutated creeper, the use of mutagenic chemicals, either in tray or infusion, is the most efficient way to grow this mutation.

The scaling with stats and inherition of splices is meant to be a challenge for veteran-botanists, akin to potato batteries. Infusion spam is impossible without splicing a high-stated plant onto creeper and the possibility for the plant to generate the stabilizer gene increases the difficulty additionally.

The move of this plant to strange seeds was made due to feedback pointing at the plant being very antagonistic in nature. Since NT probably would not like them on station, they were moved to the loot you can aquire for botany in the form of strange seeds. Many of the plants in the pool are either very valuable (rock) or quite antagonistic (peeker), so this place fits the creeper quite well.

Changelog

Code:

changelog
(u)Lord_Earthfire
(*)Added the tumbling creeper mutation to the creeper. These devious cousins of tumbleweeds can be used as devious traps and fling themselves across the room onto new hydroponic trays when not taken care of!
(+)The creeper plant was removed from the seed dispenser and can now be found in strange seeds
(+)The creeper plant will pass splices, genes and stats onto planted creeper
(+)The creeper plant now has 2 new possible plantgenes: stabilizer and invasive growth.

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[Decarcassor]

My quick feedback after a couple rounds messing with tumbling creeper.

I think its fine. Splicing them is a pain in the ass, due to the lack of seeds, and probably not worth the trouble. The best use case I've found for them is to pair it with a cheap but effective poison like ricin and just fill the creepers by hands.

Everything has been made to prevent the tumblers from being spammed with annoying chem mix. As a result they are best used with restraint in place unexpected, and its perfectly fine.

[Emimiyu]

I tried to cheat it a bit to get as much of high stats with the normal infuse every seed with chems and unstable mutagen then pray for a good rng mutation. So far, it is frustrating and I feel like it would be very rare of someone to be very eager to do that. Though, I saw that tumbling creeper could spread quick on the trays and share the same stats with their parent plant, which makes it easy to mass produce it. Then again, the higher the potency stat, the tumbling creeper looks very big. I dunno if it makes it easier for people to just spot it and ignore the trap.

At the same time, I don't think it needs a very high potency to work efficiently. With enough potency and a lot of tumbling creeper spreading into other trays, you can harvest a lot of tumbling creeper and just spam it at one specific place. While it is blacklisted for the satchel, you can still move a bunch of it with a crate. Though, I feel like the process might be tedious unless people want to rely on RNG for the bush to root on the floor without the help of a trowel.

Next, I do think how very obvious looking the creeper bush is makes it very not powerful and only really good if you know how to set up an effective trap. I think it's not as different as raflessia, except raflessia have some beneficial use while still looking obvious.

My conclusion is that it's fine. It has some things that makes it far less powerful and it's challenging for people who is trying to get into botany, which is fun. It will probably become a very niche plant but that's how most plants in this game are. I do like it and the more I write about it, it seems fine to me. Not too powerful and pretty fun to play with. Though, I haven't explore much of it yet.

[Lord_earthfire]

Thanks for the feedback, i highly appreciate it!

Regarding the size, i kinda agree that it makes them extremly visible to a degree that high stats are actually something you don't want to them. When i made the tumbling creeper PR that wasn't the case. Then i PR'ed some other internal botany changes that got merged that generalized produce handling across the board and well... now they get HUGE.

I think that is something that i will change.

I used crates with them. Turns out there is a bug involving crates. Turns out you can stack them with the use of crates, which shouldnt be a thing:



This shows also the size of high-statted tumling creeper we are talking about currently (some in the picture hit the max on scaling on endurance and potency).

Edit: I pushes the "keep tumblers small" on the Pr's branch and the crate fix is a general issue with storage items which got its own PR.

[Lord_earthfire]

Due to concerns (and the removal of scalpel dipping, which was the balance reference point for these), i removed the ability to applicate chems to them via filling.

Now, the only way to get chems into these is splices. Which will be harder, because this rework will make creeper alien seeds-only.