Something needs to be done about Kudzu

[Gouty]

You can go from planting seeds to this in 5 mins.



A completely covered station.

Weeds that ignore walls, spread through space, spawn harmful mobs, explode in your face if you try and cut them back. About as destructive as a nuke.

[D&B]

We tried nerfing the department but maybe we should instead nerf the process of getting kudzu

[Lazengann]

Make planting the vines take time where you have to stand still to do it
Lower the mutation rate. Deadly kudzu should require hacking it repeatedly in a back closet until you can mutate your special deadly variety. Ideally, kudzu would have a mutation rate inversely proportional to its size to facilitate this.
Beneficial kudzu is a joke. I've gotten kudzu with all the positive traits, transparency, and zero mutation chance and it was terrible because it made it impossible to click on anything under the kudzu.

[Bombadil]

I made an army of xenobio creatures to fight the kudzu they all died. I only survived because I was a ling and fought threw the kudzu going into unconciousness many times getting on the shuttle and fighting off kudzu until i was the only survivor

[Tokiko2]

Buff kudzu a lot but make it only appear from the random event and trays that contain a kudzu plant. The real danger is people being able to plant down 500+ packs everywhere.

[FantasticFwoosh]

Botany with mutagen (which is very common) has all the tools to speedrush kudzu as demonstrated through previous botany powergamers like daisy holmes.

• Kudzu can be mutated from tray weeds, which often also jumps into other dangerous weeds - removing this function stops botanists getting it out of event

• The actual kudzu pod is only really a placeholder for its chemicals and contains a common chem (but uncommon plant chem) of charcoal, which erupts into lots and lots of seeds which are a problem when spacepeople start stealing 1 seed out of the pile. Why you are growing kudzu in the first place is a good question.

Some proposed counterbalances would be to remove kudzu's harvestable (so that the seed extractor doesn't spit out seeds) and instead adopt a similar system employed by replica pods & starthistle to where it only returns seeds based on harvest with a max of 2 before requiring it to regrow with perennial (or 3 with somaray)

A alternative is to add the kudzu creation to the plant's harvestable and keep it activatable via a plant-gene which can be removed from the plant to make it safe if you wanted to legitimately consume kudzu's harvestables rather than greif.

---

Whether its appropriate or not to mention this, i got a note and someone i think someone else got a ban while you were still a trialmin gouty over your alarm about spreading kudzu which you instantaneously removed pro-actively, even though i was far away on lavaland to which you argued that taking intervention action was justifiable because "Anybody on lavaland could have been hurt" after all the miners had already evacuated, so your bias against kudzu is very much evident by that event & this thread.

Just fairly citing this anecdote, Its very easy for podpeople to get their hands on kudzu because of the prerequisites, of infinite mutagen and using plants to grief lavaland in concept if admins don't care about kudzu. A side issue is that kudzu also travels over lava covering it effectively without nullifying it since its a floor or catching fire.

[Lazengann]

Gouty is probably cautious of it because of the time I tried to use it to break rocks and it mutated and blew me up and ate half of lavaland

[Cobby]

KUDZU IS AN EASTER EGG GONE WRONG R E M O V E UNTIL REWORKED

[ColonicAcid]

Make planting the vines take time where you have to stand still to do it
Lower the mutation rate. Deadly kudzu should require hacking it repeatedly in a back closet until you can mutate your special deadly variety. Ideally, kudzu would have a mutation rate inversely proportional to its size to facilitate this.
Beneficial kudzu is a joke. I've gotten kudzu with all the positive traits, transparency, and zero mutation chance and it was terrible because it made it impossible to click on anything under the kudzu.

A L T C L I C K

[FantasticFwoosh]

Yeah probably easiest without actually hindering ability for shitters to do it, but only code divers & powergamers will know that alt click even does thing so expect

> Admin PM: Halp How Doez I Kudzu seed?! It no Work!.

[bandit]

Little Shop of Horrors that shit. Make it require blood to spread, in amounts that increase to way more than you can get from a syringe

[Gouty]

i got a note and someone i think someone else got a ban while you were still a trialmin gouty over your alarm about spreading kudzu which you instantaneously removed pro-actively

I honestly don't remember this. You sure it was me? (Edit: Just checked your notes, yeah it wasn't me)

Little Shop of Horrors that shit. Make it require blood to spread, in amounts that increase to way more than you can get from a syringe

FEED ME SEYMOUR

[FantasticFwoosh]

Sorry about that then, i must have mis-remembered but yeah, super easy and some admins have different tolerance levels of kudzu entirely so a appropriate response on whether A. kudzu should be stopped from happening nonantag by admins or B. Nerf kudzu from happening so that admins dont have to respond to it.

[TalkingMime]

So, i grow kudzu... i grow a lot of kudzu. And i belive that screen from gouty is from one of the kudzus i grew.

So, currently counters to kudzu are:

Pete/Goats
Scythes
weedkiller grenades
Harm yelling
Not giving the botanist mutagen
Murdering the person growing kudzu

And what i think about them:

- Pete/Goats: He just fucking dies to any kudzu that deals damage. Reduce the damage he takes from kudzu or some shit.
- Scythes + weedkiller grenades: Great at kudzu control, for some reason nobody ever orders them... Maybe a little buff? More scythes/grenades per weed control crate. Put a few of them already at the station to control kudzu while cargo orders more? Also, box does not start with a weedkiller grenade at hydroponics.
- Harm yelling: Most effective, but people have a lot of trouble telling if the guy growing kudzu is valid or not.
- Not giving the botanist mutagen: Don't be a shitter.
- Murdering the person growing kudzu: Please don't do that when i'm growing beneficial kudzu.

---

Now, About beneficial kudzu. Usually when i'm growing beneficial kudzu it looks like this:


The production speed at 1 will make it easier to control it while you mutate it (potency 100). After getting the beneficial mutations i want i would change the potency to zero so it cannot mutate and will have only beneficial mutations. So, when trying to create beneficial kudzu you will use zero potency at the end, but you will have to pass a stage where kudzu is potentialy very dangerous.

While at the stage of mutating the kudzu you will plant it and let it grow to mutate, if something goes really bad you might die and kudzu will spread and kill a bunch of people. Usually those are: kudzu mutating to explosive, space lag, disconnect, and valid hunters. Kudzu mutating to explosive... i usually solve this with a weedkiller grenade or plant-b gone, box does not have a weedkiller grenade at roundstart. Space lag and disconnect, i just cry. And valid hunters i try to ask them to examine the kudzu, but most people can't tell the difference between good or bad kudzu. Just today once engineer decided to bolt open hydroponics while i was growing kudzu so that the crew could lynch me, one assistant went inside stole the kudzu and spread it. Other times i am murdered, they are not able to control it and the kudzu spreads.

Also on beneficial kudzu being stupid/not worth it. Guess we could also use a buff in those beneficial mutations? Altho a beneficial kudzu is not always without negative mutations. I really like to plant auto-exploding kudzu near to blob cores, hardened kudzu to deny acess to one area, etc.

---

RNG

Everything on the process of creating kudzu is under the gaze of the RNG godess. To get kudzu from a tray with weed level 6+, RNG. Getting the mutations you want, a lot of RNG. The other tweaks usually require chemicals that you won't have acess or simply praying to the RNG godess usually reaps better results, except for increasing the production speed with blood.

---

Sugestions:

Making kudzu traitor only? Please don't.

Traitor botanist having an item that increases his chance of getting kudzu while the chances to normal botanists are nerfed? Maybe. But i really don't like RNG solutions.

On other RNG solutions: Maybe once it gets a beneficial mutation the chance for other beneficial mutations are increased, while the chance for negative mutations decreased. Same for negative ones.

Making easier to tell beneficial kudzu apart from harmful kudzu? Yes, please. Maybe with he suggestion about if would be easier to tell with what purpose a botanist is mutating kudzu.

Buffing pete/scythes/weed control crate. Buffing positive mutations.

---

Now my favorite suggestion:

Remove RNG from this shitter.

Change the speed that kudzu spreads to be related to potency and make the mutations related to plant trains, this way you will have to use the plant DNA manipulator and other plants to get mutations on kudzu. Bluespace activity -> bluespace kudzu. Hypodermic prickles -> toxic kudzu. Bioluminescence -> light kudzu. Densified chemicals -> hardened kudzu... and so on. Or whatever you see fit.

This way it will be easier to tell if a botanist is growing harmful kudzu, and it will remove the RNG nature of most of the process.

[FantasticFwoosh]

Rephrase beneficial kudzu to situationally weaponised kudzu and you might have a more apt description.

[Gouty]

So for the kudzu in my screenshot I spawned about a dozen goats, all died almost instantly. I also spawned a red alert ERT team equipped with scythes and they could just about stop the advance of kudzu in just arrivals, this was with someone full time healing them with a medbeam gun.

[kevinz000]

wish i finished my kudzu rework lol

[Reece]

Make Kudzu actually useful beyond swallowing the station.

[TalkingMime]

Also,

- Right now kudzu starts a killing machine and you have to work hard for it to be harmless, it could be the other way around. Make it start harmless.

- Either it's too easy to stop kudzu from spreading because the guy planted only one seed or completely impossible because he planted 100 seeds. On the little shop of horrors idea, make it deal some stamina damage/stun or whatever every time you plant it. That way spamming the seeds is harder.

- Or make the increase on kudzu growth more linear, right now it starts slowish but it jumps to scary fast quickly.

- Once the kudzu production speed was bugged and it had no cap, i've got it to 3000 by accident (remember that well cause ban hammer). Right now production speed increases max size and spread speed. How about reducing those attributes at the cap of 10 and having to do some shit to increase it... 100 unitos of plasmas, blood, brains, hearts, lizard tails, whole heads... whatever.

- Zero potency transparent+vine eating vine on weed control crates. Just plant that shit next to the bad kudzu.

[WJohnston]

get rid of the dumber strains of kudzu that make it impossible to stop.

notable bluespace and space proof variants, as it allows it to spread through walls and into space, where it can return to the station and assault it indefinitely.

[ohnopigeons]

Kudzu being overpowered and needing a nerf has been brought up before but the botanist illuminati that have infiltrated the administration and the project won't allow it, sorry.

[TalkingMime]

get rid of the dumber strains of kudzu that make it impossible to stop.

notable bluespace and space proof variants, as it allows it to spread through walls and into space, where it can return to the station and assault it indefinitely.

All kudzus are space proof.

[Lazengann]

Kudzu being overpowered and needing a nerf has been brought up before but the botanist illuminati that have infiltrated the administration and the project won't allow it, sorry.

What really happened is Kevinz showed up and said he would handle it so everyone else just left it alone

[ohnopigeons]

That's what I said

[Lazengann]

He's the R&D guy

[Gratian]

If you guys nerf kudzu will you revert the botany nerfs since that was one of the driving points iirc

[Cobby]

If you guys nerf kudzu will you revert the botany nerfs since that was one of the driving points iirc

If you mean the gene machine, no.

[CPTANT]

Kudzu itself should be something that is dangerous.


However I do think it is stupid that you can plant kudzu instantly, having to stand still for 3 seconds to plant it sound very reasonable.

[Lazengann]

Cobby made it take time to plant and removed bluespace and spacewalk mutations

Good job Cobby

[Cobby]

I need to add something to botany I'm 2 nerfs to 0 buffs

Although I did add those disk fridges I wish people would add to the maps, maybe then someone can give them a good sprite lol

[Screemonster]

I still stand by the idea that Pete should be able to eat all varieties of kudzu without harm but if he eats the exploding kind he becomes Cuban Pete and maxcaps if he's killed for any reason

[Cobby]

I still stand by the idea that Pete should be able to eat all varieties of kudzu without harm but if he eats the exploding kind he becomes Cuban Pete and maxcaps if he's killed for any reason

I'll add this if you give me a Sprite that has Pete on his hind legs, holding maracas in his front legs, in a yellow suit, and the front of his face is green

[Iatots]

green face is too on the nose

output_Myi6vP.gif (3.01 KiB) Viewed 15830 times

[Remie Richards]

emagged outbomb cuban pete should spawn an angry cuban pete instead of just exploding you outright.

also cuban pete's directions are just:
WEST: that gif
EAST: that gif flipped
NORTH/SOUTH: that gif but it flips every step he takes so he looks like he's dancing

Code: Select all

/mob/living/simple_animal/hostile/retaliate/goat/cuban/Moved(oldloc, dir)
    . = ..()
    if((dir-1) & 2) //horizontal dir
        transform = matrix() //remove matrix
    else
        transform = transform.Scale(-1,0) //flip 

    //do a little hop up/down like a dance  
    var/opixel_y = pixel_y
    animate(src, pixel_y = opixel_y+4, time = 2)
    animate(pixel_y = opixel_y, time = 2)

[Remie Richards]

also if kudzu needs more nerfs after this, why not just make it weak to fire?
have it catch fire and that spread about 5 or so turfs each time.

could even be used as a buff by the kudzu planter, grow lots of it then use it as an accelerant for flames, !FUN!

plants burn yo.

[FantasticFwoosh]

also if kudzu needs more nerfs after this, why not just make it weak to fire?
have it catch fire and that spread about 5 or so turfs each time.

could even be used as a buff by the kudzu planter, grow lots of it then use it as an accelerant for flames, !FUN!

plants burn yo.

Oh great excellent, give flamethrower nerds something to shoot at which will probably friendly fire a lot of the crew.

The same logic applies to engineers who have a habit of putting kudzu inside the SM containment so that it constantly pulses the SM while it grows.

[Remie Richards]

I'm not sure if you're in support of the idea or against it.
you're speaking fwooshtongue again.

Let me try fwooshtongue, I'm rusty, *AHEM*

'does to like the idea you?'

[FantasticFwoosh]

I thought the idea of flammable vines was a bad one, i was trying to express sarcasm because people won't withold using welders and probably just mass purge it with plasmafire, that and the fire resistant mutation would render that tactic useless.

[Remie Richards]

Yes, I got that, however accidentally burning your fellow crewmember alive isn't necessarily a bad thing, hence why I wasn't sure if you were for or against.

[InsaneHyena]

>Is a counter to kudzu
>Gets killed by kudzu immediately
I agree that Pete needs a gigantic buff. You want to kill the station with your memeplant? Have the foresight to kill the goat.

[Qbmax32]

>Is a counter to kudzu
>Gets killed by kudzu immediately
I agree that Pete needs a gigantic buff. You want to kill the station with your memeplant? Have the foresight to kill the goat.

half the chefs already murder pete round start for goat meat

[FantasticFwoosh]

You can order more goats from cargo, also called pete but unless you're thinking of having a goat farm somewhere filled with the hyper aggressive little shits its not a good idea to butcher them.

[Cobby]

My campus wifi is being an arse and refuses to clone my fork so I can make changes without having to use *gulp* the WEB EDITOR but Pete will have BUFFS

[oranges]

bob dobbington was raging about these nerfs so we know they are good

[Cobby]

Code: Select all

/mob/living/simple_animal/hostile/retaliate/goat/cuban/Moved(oldloc, dir)
    . = ..()
    if((dir-1) & 2) //horizontal dir
        transform = matrix() //remove matrix
    else
        transform = transform.Scale(-1,0) //flip 

    //do a little hop up/down like a dance  
    var/opixel_y = pixel_y
    animate(src, pixel_y = opixel_y+4, time = 2)
    animate(pixel_y = opixel_y, time = 2)

transform = transform.Scale(-1,0) doesn't compile so I did

Code: Select all

var/matrix/M = transform
M.Scale(-1,0)
transform = M

and it doesn't flip AND he disappears when he moves up or down.

[naltronix]

is the cuban pete thing still happening
i would love to see it

[Remie Richards]

-snip-

Haha, my bad, Scale(-1, 0) obviously gives it a size of 0 on the Y axis, I meant Scale(-1, 1)

Code: Select all

/mob/living/simple_animal/hostile/retaliate/goat/cuban/Moved(oldloc, dir)
	. = ..()
	if((dir-1) & 2) //horizontal dir
		transform = matrix() //remove matrix
	else
		var/matrix/M = transform
		transform = M.Scale(-1,1) //flip 

	//do a little hop up/down like a dance  
	var/opixel_y = pixel_y
	animate(src, pixel_y = opixel_y+4, time = 2)
	animate(pixel_y = opixel_y, time = 2)

[Takeguru]

Nerf too strong, please revert

[D&B]

I wish ash storms affected kudzu in some manner.

I keep getting memed by powergaming podpeople and not being able to fight for 20 secs at a time lets the infestation grow exponentially when it has quick growth.

[Bombadil]

How the heck do you even make quick growth kudzu?