DNA Manipulator Changes(not in changelog)

[LifeReign]

Bottom post of the previous page:

1. The "It only hurts muh medicine" argument means nothing. Being "Too" powerful can be on either spectrum, whether it's healing or damaging. It's why the healing wand and medical gun are locked behind antagonist gates with very little ways to obtain them ingame otherwise.

Healing chems that can overdose you are not too powerful, and killing people is inherently easier than saving them. Not a problem though, just pointing out that medicine isn't very strong.

With that said, I'm baffled by how you think that it has a benefit in plant production [because what I touched is the same throughout each plant]... but only for "good" plants. Just help me understand that.

It doesn't only help "good" plants, I don't think I've ever brought that up. But "good" plants are usually needed in greater quantities and variety than "bad" plants, which you usually only need one type and one bag's worth if even that, so "good" plants are hit harder.

If you know a bypass around this, good. That's the point, to make you use the bypass that takes a bit more of time and RNG. That's all I wanted from this nerf and glad to see that it's working as I intended.

I actually brought up that this makes strong kudzu faster with less time and less RNG. Still no response to this. It's not working as intended, the bypasses don't actualy take more time and RNG, they take less. There's no such bypass for medicine.


Mushrooms are because qhopper brought them up.

3. [proves the powergaming levels of botany] lol. I've made just about everything botany has to offer aside from kudzu, which is where weed rate and weed chance are the most important.

Those don't actually matter too much for kudzu production, but the high values you gave them actually makes it easier to get kudzu, now that I think about it.

Even then, it doesn't matter what I do, you should stick to speaking in terms of the nerf instead of trying to discredit the author based on whether they have "played" the role.

I'm pretty sure this is the first time you've actually addressed my points, so I was getting irate, especially since it seemed like you've ignored everything except my point about how you got weed growth wrong. I apologize, a lot of the people who clamor for nerfs don't even know how botany works, and your changes seemed quite nonsensical so I assumed more of the same from you, my bad.



Now that you're here, I can discard the peanut gallery for some actual discussion. Can you explain why all the numbers you put in are worse than almost every starting plant? It seems a little strange to have a machine that worsens your stats if you try to use it on most plants. I still feel the half-way point is a better start so that you can use the base machine to make bad plants tolerable while the upgrades make the machine good. The half-way point would also mean that station-destroying kudzu can't be made as fast.

[Cobby]

"Now that you're here, I can discard the peanut gallery for some actual discussion. Can you explain why all the numbers you put in are worse than almost every starting plant? It seems a little strange to have a machine that worsens your stats if you try to use it on most plants. I still feel the half-way point is a better start so that you can use the base machine to make bad plants tolerable while the upgrades make the machine good. The half-way point would also mean that station-destroying kudzu can't be made as fast."

The point of the gene machine on T1 is to be a "my plant sucks how can I just get it to the point where it does not suck anymore" [meaning you have like 0 potency, 1 yield, 10 produc, etc.]. It is not meant to make default plants better, it is to salvage mutagen plants.

With that said, some plants having better stats in one area over others in not an argument in why the gene machine should be able to give these good stats to every other plant roundstart.

___________________________________________

1. You're not understanding. I should not be able to churn out chems faster and better than the dedicated medical staff on the station without doing a lot of work.

2. was in reference to "I just pointed out that these nerfs only touch my ability to make medicine". I am not being appealed to this motion that the society of herbalists are now shattered because they can't churn out Salbu Bicard Omni Kelo Earthblood apples with little effort.

3. Kudzu has always been a pain so making it "moreso" is just *shrug*. If people start spamming that and get that nerfed too It doesn't bother me, I dislike those kinds of items and I never use them.

4. These were fixed in an undocumented hotfix after you brought them up, so a non-issue.

5. When the conversation is initiated with "Do you even play botany" It's clear that these people are unwavering and have already got it in their minds that I somehow don't play enough botany to understand the "intricate system" of the gene machine and how nerfing it does so many bad things upon the game. There's no point in actually holding a discussion with them until they calm down because their undergoing feature withdrawal.

[Lazengann]

With that said, I'm baffled by how you think that it has a benefit in plant production [because what I touched is the same throughout each plant]... but only for "good" plants. Just help me understand that.

Healing plants need to be produced in number so everybody can have one. If I'm throwing mutagen smoke tomatos at you it doesn't really matter if I only have 5 instead of 15.

[PKPenguin321]

Apparently you spent the time ERPing instead of experimenting because as the OP shows you're retarded and don't know shit I hate you so much Cobblestone

composure: lost

[LifeReign]

The halfway point is where the default plants are. I also didn't make the "good stat" argument that you're arguing against for some reason. Also, 9 production is basically at the "totally sucks" level.

1. You're not understanding. I should not be able to churn out chems faster and better than the dedicated medical staff on the station without doing a lot of work.

The chems are faster, but not better, since you can't make the patch-based chems nor can you apply them. Also, it's still trivial to mass produce bicaridine and kelotane, it's just that nobody uses those chems. Chemistry rarely bothers making them, so faster and better doesn't apply.

I am not being appealed to this motion that the society of herbalists are now shattered because they can't churn out Salbu Bicard Omni Kelo Earthblood apples with little effort.

Those usually took entire rounds to make, so it's hardly little effort.

Can you just detail your usual botany round to me? I've never seen you play, so I don't really know your point of view. That might make this easier.

[ShadowDimentio]

Apparently you spent the time ERPing instead of experimenting because as the OP shows you're retarded and don't know shit I hate you so much Cobblestone

composure: lost

[oranges]

can we cut the shitposting down please.

[Dr_bee]

I am ok with this change, I would prefer the DNA machine involve a biomass cost instead as that would be a nice time gate but this works as a nice temp fix.

However production speed 9 is absolutely horrible, my god, make it 4 or 5 or something, 9 is literally the second worst possibility.

[Cobby]

I am ok with this change, I would prefer the DNA machine involve a biomass cost instead as that would be a nice time gate but this works as a nice temp fix.

However production speed 9 is absolutely horrible, my god, make it 4 or 5 or something, 9 is literally the second worst possibility.

most plants start out with better than 9 so this shouldn't ever be a problem.

There's no point of even have production 5-10 if people can just "lol nope" it.

With that said, I'm baffled by how you think that it has a benefit in plant production [because what I touched is the same throughout each plant]... but only for "good" plants. Just help me understand that.

Healing plants need to be produced in number so everybody can have one. If I'm throwing mutagen smoke tomatos at you it doesn't really matter if I only have 5 instead of 15.

So I should nerf the traits below too? I don't understand what i'm suppose to be seeing here.

The halfway point is where the default plants are. I also didn't make the "good stat" argument that you're arguing against for some reason. Also, 9 production is basically at the "totally sucks" level.

1. You're not understanding. I should not be able to churn out chems faster and better than the dedicated medical staff on the station without doing a lot of work.

The chems are faster, but not better, since you can't make the patch-based chems nor can you apply them. Also, it's still trivial to mass produce bicaridine and kelotane, it's just that nobody uses those chems. Chemistry rarely bothers making them, so faster and better doesn't apply.

I am not being appealed to this motion that the society of herbalists are now shattered because they can't churn out Salbu Bicard Omni Kelo Earthblood apples with little effort.

Those usually took entire rounds to make, so it's hardly little effort.

Can you just detail your usual botany round to me? I've never seen you play, so I don't really know your point of view. That might make this easier.

No, it's not relevant to the discussion. I do not care to have how I play a game scrutinized because I nerfed something.

There's no point of me discussing anymore because I think everyone's unwavering on their conclusion.

[LifeReign]

There's no point of me discussing anymore because I think everyone's unwavering on their conclusion.

Kudzu has always been a pain so making it "moreso" is just *shrug*. If people start spamming that and get that nerfed too It doesn't bother me, I dislike those kinds of items and I never use them.

This is why I asked, because it seems like your attitude here been "It doesn't bother me, so whatever, I don't care. Play like I play, deal with it."

So I should nerf the traits below too? I don't understand what i'm suppose to be seeing here.

I do believe the point is that since "good" plants are inherently needed in greater quantities than "bad" plants, nerfs of this variety will always hit "good" plants far more than it does "bad".


But fine, let's talk about the changes and only the changes.
What were the changes supposed to do? Make botany take longer across the board? If so, botany already took longer than every department to get things done, and the fairly short round times means that botany doesn't get to do much, and the payout was already low for non-antags. Was it to nerf botany griefing power? If so, it didn't affect it at all, and in some cases buffed it.

Admittedly, I'd be less adamant about opposing these changes if rounds were longer or if non-antag botanists could do more cool things faster, so most of my complaints can be viewed in the context of "Rounds end before my job even begins". I'd actually be all for these changes if we had medium RP and a good amount of rounds that last long enough to actually try for cool things, but we don't, sadly. Botany might also need refactoring for Kor's pet planetstation that could improve things, but that's a different topic.

TL;DR I hate short rounds, and these changes are only bad in the present state of the game.

[A3STH3T1CS]

"I HAVE TO HURRY AND DEBUFF SERVICE DEPARTMENTS" - the nerf

At least lower potency or buff production speed default for balance.
If the former occurs it'll just stay a trait swapping machine. More than likely it will almost be like before the machine came in.

Also tagging something like this as [embarrassing] shows how embarrassing the rest of the crew are to antags these days. [prioritize yourself]

[Kel]

this belongs in the salt reserves
we already have a legitimate thread on botany anyway

[Yoshmaster]

Salt reserves GO
okay GO

[A3STH3T1CS]

this belongs in the salt reserves
we already have a legitimate thread on botany anyway

What do you mean, what kind of thread?

[Kel]

this belongs in the salt reserves
we already have a legitimate thread on botany anyway

What do you mean, what kind of thread?

https://tgstation13.org/phpBB/viewtopic ... 10&t=10023

[Bombadil]

You know you idiots act like its the end of the world when more often than not science will upgrade the station. I always do when i'm RD. BRPEDS ARE GREAT

[Cobby]

If the former occurs it'll just stay a trait swapping machine. More than likely it will almost be like before the machine came in.

He caught me!

[Lazengann]

If the former occurs it'll just stay a trait swapping machine. More than likely it will almost be like before the machine came in.

He caught me!

The trait swapping doesn't even work right. The default contents of things grown works correctly, like Omega Weed has all the nasty shit and Deathnettles have 50% sulphuric and 50% fluoro acid.
But if you extract content traits and add them to something else, the end result just adds the contents one at a time until it counts to 50% and stops.

For example, if you add the 50% Sulphuric acid and the 50% Fluoro acid to a watermelon, the melon will end up with 50 Sulphuric acid and 0 Fluoro acid when it should have 25 of each.

[Armhulen]

That sounds like a bug and not intended.

[iamgoofball]

its tim 4 goofbotany

[Armhulen]

its tim 4 goofbotany

animal farm?

[iamgoofball]

ya

[Armhulen]

heck yeah, i've been waiting forever for this

[iamgoofball]

psych

u got da wong numba

[Cobby]

If the former occurs it'll just stay a trait swapping machine. More than likely it will almost be like before the machine came in.

He caught me!

The trait swapping doesn't even work right. The default contents of things grown works correctly, like Omega Weed has all the nasty shit and Deathnettles have 50% sulphuric and 50% fluoro acid.
But if you extract content traits and add them to something else, the end result just adds the contents one at a time until it counts to 50% and stops.

For example, if you add the 50% Sulphuric acid and the 50% Fluoro acid to a watermelon, the melon will end up with 50 Sulphuric acid and 0 Fluoro acid when it should have 25 of each.

This has nothing to do with recent changes

[Lazengann]

This has nothing to do with recent changes

I didn't want to make another thread about Botany

[A3STH3T1CS]

its tim 4 goofbotany

something soothes my soul when I hear goofbotany

[Swagbringer]

Not opposed to nerfing botany, but I feel this was the completely wrong way to do it honestly. Producing mass amounts was the real selling point of botany when compared to chemistry. Now its faster to produce nearly anything in the chemistry lab.

If the players feel certain chemicals were causing problems then the chemicals themselves should have been targeted. The production speed nerf kills mutations by left 4 zed, I went a round with shuttle arrived (20 minutes plus red alert) with my blumpkin plants just having their first harvest. If these changes are here to stay I would recommend removing the randomness from plant mutations. It was tolerable with mutagen spamming and production 1 but now its just a pain.

Just delete potassium/amatoxin/flurosulphuric acid/ whateveryouthinktheproblemis, but right now this is the equivalent of dropping a bomb to get rid of a fly. Its like making atmos techs take 30 seconds to lay a single pipe because freon is too strong.

[Cobby]

Not opposed to nerfing botany, but I feel this was the completely wrong way to do it honestly. Producing mass amounts was the real selling point of botany when compared to chemistry. Now its faster to produce nearly anything in the chemistry lab.

This is the point, farmer bill should not be a better outlet at getting chemicals than the job designed around messing with chemicals [without work].

f the players feel certain chemicals were causing problems then the chemicals themselves should have been targeted. The production speed nerf kills mutations by left 4 zed, I went a round with shuttle arrived (20 minutes plus red alert) with my blumpkin plants just having their first harvest. If these changes are here to stay I would recommend removing the randomness from plant mutations. It was tolerable with mutagen spamming and production 1 but now its just a pain.

do you know what you're talking about? This did not touch left 4 zed mutations?

Just delete potassium/amatoxin/flurosulphuric acid/ whateveryouthinktheproblemis, but right now this is the equivalent of dropping a bomb to get rid of a fly. Its like making atmos techs take 30 seconds to lay a single pipe because freon is too strong.

I fail to see how giving each plant the max stats available using plants you've obtained from roundstart constitutes "dropping a bomb to get rid of a fly". This would be like if RND had items on the table in RND lab that gave them level 10 of each.

[Swagbringer]

This is the point, farmer bill should not be a better outlet at getting chemicals than the job designed around messing with chemicals [without work].

do you know what you're talking about? This did not touch left 4 zed mutations?

I fail to see how giving each plant the max stats available using plants you've obtained from roundstart constitutes "dropping a bomb to get rid of a fly". This would be like if RND had items on the table in RND lab that gave them level 10 of each.

Botanists are not farmers, they are biologists who work with chemicals to make amazing new lifeforms, while at the same time growing food to feed the station. Botanists SHOULD be able to mass produce certain chemicals, and in fact should do so more often. If sugar is needed in the case of a borer infection people should be coming to botany to grow whitebeet instead of lining up at the chemists desk for example. In real life the majority of simple chemicals are grown, not manufactured in labs. Chemists have a far deeper selection of chemicals they can manufacture and have no real limits or gates to their dangerous items.

Left 4 zed mutations are done per harvest. One harvest -> one mutation, this is simple botany knowledge. Having a production speed of 5 instead of 1 will increase the time it takes to make mutations by a factor of x5.

The dna manipulator changes were a flatline reduction on botanys ability to produce every single plant. From wheat for the cooks bread, to deathnettle bombs. I have tried to make holy melons to help with cult rounds and I quite simply do not have enough time to do that, rounds are over before I or other botanists have an impact, good or bad.

If someone was spamming hellfoam grenades, would you reduce the recharge rate of chem dispenseners to 1/3? This is a bad fix.

If people are spamming amatoxin tomatoes, get rid of them. Heck even just get rid of the cap on production speed and leave the harvest/lifespan gate. The changes were far too broad and never should have been introduced all at once.

[XDTM]

Since the DNA manipulator used to flatline all values to the best plant's it pretty much broke plant balancing. If plants are too slow to grow increase their aging speed instead, so we still have fast and slow plants.

As for the 50 reagents thing, it's due to plants only holding up to 50 chems and preventing further additions once filled. This was a thing since the beginning of plant dna manipulation.

[Lazengann]

Since the DNA manipulator used to flatline all values to the best plant's it pretty much broke plant balancing. If plants are too slow to grow increase their aging speed instead, so we still have fast and slow plants.

As for the 50 reagents thing, it's due to plants only holding up to 50 chems and preventing further additions once filled. This was a thing since the beginning of plant dna manipulation.

If you add a 25% <anything> trait, it fills 50% of the plant. I'm not an expert but the math seems kind of off??

[XDTM]

It multiplies potency, not plant capacity.

[Cobby]

I have made the unfortunate mistake of entertaining people who use the device as a crutch.

Botanists are not farmers, they are biologists who work with chemicals to make amazing new lifeforms, while at the same time growing food to feed the station. Botanists SHOULD be able to mass produce certain chemicals, and in fact should do so more often. If sugar is needed in the case of a borer infection people should be coming to botany to grow whitebeet instead of lining up at the chemists desk for example. In real life the majority of simple chemicals are grown, not manufactured in labs. Chemists have a far deeper selection of chemicals they can manufacture and have no real limits or gates to their dangerous items.

Sorry I have no interest in purporting this "botanists are mary sue's that are just quite frankly better than science and chemistry combined" meme.

Left 4 zed mutations are done per harvest. One harvest -> one mutation, this is simple botany knowledge. Having a production speed of 5 instead of 1 will increase the time it takes to make mutations by a factor of x5.

The dna manipulator changes were a flatline reduction on botanys ability to produce every single plant. From wheat for the cooks bread, to deathnettle bombs. I have tried to make holy melons to help with cult rounds and I quite simply do not have enough time to do that, rounds are over before I or other botanists have an impact, good or bad.

Ah I see now. Get mutagen instead.

That's unfortunate. Maybe it was my intention to make them not viable.

If someone was spamming hellfoam grenades, would you reduce the recharge rate of chem dispenseners to 1/3? This is a bad fix.

I fail to see the correlation here, and it seems to be a pretty good fix considering in your last sentence you literally discuss losing your strong "impact" of the round.

If people are spamming amatoxin tomatoes, get rid of them. Heck even just get rid of the cap on production speed and leave the harvest/lifespan gate. The changes were far too broad and never should have been introduced all at once.

Get rid of what exactly? Amatoxin tomatoes would just become amatoxin cabbage or acid smoke wheat... The problem was not the produce, it was the ability to 1) transfer the genes to other plants and 2) transfer stats across plants. I targeted what was the problem, as you have so kindly pointed out. I have no interest of snowflaking every possible setup that can be bad if that's what you're suggesting, i'm just making you [the botanist] work for those levels.

Alright I am actually done with this thread, there is no point in arguing "It was a bad change" when people in the same post constantly complain about how their powerlevels have went down because of it. I apologize for coming off as rude or abrasive, but this is just silly.

[Wyzack]

Just remove the damn thing and make these fucking whinging infants go back to the old way of botany if they can't stop tantruming

[Dr_bee]

Just remove the damn thing and make these fucking whinging infants go back to the old way of botany if they can't stop tantruming

and go back to botany almost never being manned?

[cedarbridge]

Just remove the damn thing and make these fucking whinging infants go back to the old way of botany if they can't stop tantruming

and go back to botany almost never being manned?

>why play the role if I can't mass produce super weapons

[PKPenguin321]

Just remove the damn thing and make these fucking whinging infants go back to the old way of botany if they can't stop tantruming

and go back to botany almost never being manned?

>why play the role if I can't mass produce super weapons

imagine his shock when he realizes botany still made 1000000 deathnettles, peels, deathberries, and ambrosia before the gene machine

[cedarbridge]

Just remove the damn thing and make these fucking whinging infants go back to the old way of botany if they can't stop tantruming

and go back to botany almost never being manned?

>why play the role if I can't mass produce super weapons

imagine his shock when he realizes botany still made 1000000 deathnettles, peels, deathberries, and ambrosia before the gene machine

Yeah, but they aren't turning out those 10k hull breach tomatoes within the first 6 minutes of the round so its not good enough.

[XDTM]

How about we give botany some more useful plants, aside from worse versions of chemistry pills.

[Lazengann]

Yeah, but they aren't turning out those 10k hull breach tomatoes within the first 6 minutes of the round so its not good enough.

meanwhile in toxins

[cedarbridge]

Yeah, but they aren't turning out those 10k hull breach tomatoes within the first 6 minutes of the round so its not good enough.

meanwhile in toxins

Meanwhile toxins produces 5 bombs of maxcap size and does so as a department designed to create bombs. Was this going somewhere or just a lazy strawman? I've never claimed to be a fan of toxins in its current state. You should check that thread out too.

[calzilla1]

Yeah, but they aren't turning out those 10k hull breach tomatoes within the first 6 minutes of the round so its not good enough.

meanwhile in toxins

Meanwhile toxins produces 5 bombs of maxcap size and does so as a department designed to create bombs. Was this going somewhere or just a lazy strawman? I've never claimed to be a fan of toxins in its current state. You should check that thread out too.

Though, toxins is really bull shit

[Armhulen]

Yeah, but they aren't turning out those 10k hull breach tomatoes within the first 6 minutes of the round so its not good enough.

meanwhile in toxins

Meanwhile toxins produces 5 bombs of maxcap size and does so as a department designed to create bombs. Was this going somewhere or just a lazy strawman? I've never claimed to be a fan of toxins in its current state. You should check that thread out too.

Though, toxins is really bull shit

toxins and botany exists but we want to remove syndicate bombs

??

anyways, that's that thread and this is this.