Botany: mutagen, mutadone and QoL changes

[Scaltra]

Moving away from spontaneous mutation to relying on mutagen is no small endeavor. This affect the entirety of how botany works right now.

Toughts:

If mutagen is to successfully mutate plants 100% of the time, I really don't see the point of having 3 variants (stable, unstable and slurry). Especially if all the variants bring is higher stat randomization and the possibility of annoying genes.

The unstable gene is currently in a weird place where its a pain in the butt for plants that have many mutations while doing absolutly nothing for thoses who have only one or can only mutate on specific infusions.

Mutadone being able to undo gene strains is something that should already be in the game and its weird that its not. About it giving the stabilizer gene I'm less convinced, since the whole point of mutadone is to remove such things.

There is also the whole question of tray vs. infusion. So lets say mutagen in the tray enable mutations, what would the infusion do ? The same things ? Then why would you ever use it in tray if the infusion always work ?

I don't want all of this to sound too negative. I like the idea. But there is a lot of ramifications to think about here.

Yeah, I totally agree that there is a lot to think about here. It is a big change and I really want to make sure we get it right. I planned on play testing and working through stuff till I feel like it is in a comfortable spot. 

Yeahhhh If it is a 100% that only leaves stat randomization, it was something I considered, My thought was it would be fun to bounce back and forth between raising and lowering the stats and have mutadone be used to sort of keep the good value you get while throwing out the bad. Whether that be mutations brought on by the mutagen or just the stats. That part isn't super thought out yet.

My main goal and what I know I mainly want to do is, to make mutagen and mutadone better, Make seed plant spam not a thing. That is the only thing I am sure of thus far. 

As for tray stuff, I do plan to compensate and try to figure out how those will work as well. I want tray chems for these to be cooler than how they currently work but I wanted to focus on the infusion side first because that is a bit easier with my current knowledge and it is a lot easier to grasp the impact of non-chance-based effects. That being said I think mutadone being in a tray preventing mutations could be cool for stopping unstable or after a tray of mutagen mutates something it keeps it from going further, or something akin to that. Not sure just yet as I have been focusing more on infusions but I have a few ideas of things that could be fun to mess with. 

I probably should have mentioned unstable would probably be changed. If I did do that? Really I was just thinking of cool hindrances to add along the way so it isn't just seamless for botanists. Stabilizer on mutadone was more so something that fit and was a big maybe, that one was thrown out there because thematically it fits but I don't think it would work without a lot of changes to a lot of things to make sense mechanically.

No, I totally get it! I don't think this would change the balance of botany drastically but it will affect it and it will certainly affect the pace and flow of botany. This is all still a W.I.P! I plan to work with people and hash this all out as well as playtest it till it feels good and it is honed in on a particular decision that hasn't been honed in on yet. The only thing I am certain of as I said is making mutagen better, mutadone better, and probably doing away with the spam planting meta. 

ohh and if you have any ideas you do want to share please do! even if it is small or unrelated to my idea.