with the recent changes, lets talk about botany chem dispensers again.

[Deitus]

so lets get the old tired arguments out of the way before they can be tottered out again:

"just make your own mutagen!"
this argument is the easiest way to identify people who dont actually play botany. the amount of mutagen you get per harvest (which takes ages in of itself) is puny even at high potencies, and isnt enough to be practical even if you have godly RNG.

"m-muh departmental interactions!"
setting aside the troubles you have to get most people to give you mutagen in the first place, whether due to incompetence or them focusing on their own projects, with the recent changes to chem dispensers (losing charge way faster and recharging way slower) many times i ask for mutagens now im told to fuck off because im using too much of the charge.

"just get science to make one for you!"
same problem as before, especially with all the new changes going on with departmental lathes, making it a pain to get a board even in the first place, which many scientists either dont know how to do or wont put up with.

"botany is already op!"
creating things that are useful in botany takes time, effort, and know-how to get the correct genes/chems and then maintain them until they are harvestable. chemistry, on the other hand, can make lethal deathchem cocktails within the first five minutes that botany couldnt create in an entire round, especially with goof's recipe addition (even if it was nerfed).

"be robust and just steal a dispenser!"
seriously? even times when i DO get permission from a chemist/cmo/captain, etc to take a dispenser, it usually ends with people angrily busting down the windows to botany and trying to lynch me. to say nothing of the problems and situations it causes that admins need to take care of, it generates needless player conflict that does nothing for either side's round other than piss them off.

even just getting a nerfed chem machine would be fine, maybe one like in the podperson lavaland area where it can only make certain chemicals but the battery is even shittier than the normal roundstart ones so it would need recharging often. the term "quality of life" is enough to make most coders recoil and hiss in fits of anger, but its a change that has been needed for a long time now.

[ShadowDimentio]

If you need mutagen go to chem. If there's only one chemist (or better yet, zero) steal a dispenser. If anyone gives you shit in botany, beat them up. If they continue giving you shit, dunk them.

[Deitus]

If you need mutagen go to chem. If there's only one chemist (or better yet, zero) steal a dispenser. If anyone gives you shit in botany, beat them up. If they continue giving you shit, dunk them.

t. didnt read op
or is shitposting

[Saegrimr]

You can wave it off with a "m-muh!" but the answer is still departmental interactions, which includes getting science to make you one (or a somatory).

[Armhulen]

You can wave it off with a "m-muh!" but the answer is still departmental interactions, which includes getting science to make you one (or a somatory).

yep, don't be lazy. botany take a long time to get it's extremely strong plants because of it's mutagen requirement

[Deitus]

You can wave it off with a "m-muh!" but the answer is still departmental interactions, which includes getting science to make you one (or a somatory).

which is locked behind multiple layers of tedium for needing to have the right board TO MAKE the right board, which most people are either too lazy or incompetent to do, and you'll earn yourself a lynching and/or a bwoink if you try and come in to do it yourself.

yep, don't be lazy. botany take a long time to get it's extremely strong plants because of it's mutagen requirement

something that requires rng like mutagen dosing doesnt count as being "lazy," it counts as being lucky. and as has been stated, the amount you need most rounds versus the energy cost nowadays with the dispenser changes means chemists get real pissed off real fast and cut you off.

both of these arguments were covered in the OP. i'd encourage people to read it before replying.

[Luke Cox]

Acquire proficiency

[oranges]

things botany will never ever have until I am buried in a coffin

A chem dispenser

[Saegrimr]

which is locked behind multiple layers of tedium for needing to have the right board TO MAKE the right board, which most people are either too lazy or incompetent to do, and you'll earn yourself a lynching and/or a bwoink if you try and come in to do it yourself.

Whoa

Are you saying

The jobs in this game are tedious timewasters until you're interrupted or finish what you're doing

[Deitus]

i dont follow, are you saying that jobs are easy until people interrupt you or that we should leave others alone until everything is set up?
im legit not even trying to be sarcastic here im just trying to figure out what you're saying, the wording is weird or im just stupider than i thought

[Karp]

left 4 zed a pumpkin you dolt, it can be faster than mutagen and allows you to be autistic.

[Dr_bee]

If you cant grow enough mutagen to do what you need as a botanist you are a bad botanist.

Grow blumpkins, take 2 glowshroom seeds, grow red beets, max potency and yield. you have more mutagen then you will know what to do with.

Seriously you are bad at botany if you cant fucking do the most basic shit like using the condensed chemicals trait on your mutagen blumpkins.

[cedarbridge]

Have you tried growing food?

[LifeReign]

Densified chems double the reagent capacity of growns, not the amount of reagent. At 100 potency, which requires an absurd amount of luck/mutagen to get with good yield/production without upgraded DNA machine, a plant will cap at around 30 unstable mutagen per grown. The default capacity of a grown is 50u, and densified chems doubles it to 100u. Also, blumpkins, due to their nature as a mutated grown, often have absolutely terrible stats, why would you ever use them as your mutagen plant?

TL;DR: Densified chems does absofuckinglutely nothing for mutagenic blumpkins, git gud


On topic: you only ever need enough mutagen to get the first blumpkin if you know what you're doing, and since mutagen mutation is 1/10, I find that 90u is enough to get a good chance of blumpkins. And yeah, Left 4 Zed has a 1/8 chance to mutate a plant each time the plant gets ready for harvest, which feels worse than using mutagen, since mutagen lets you jump into botany development.

Also, giving botany chem dispensers also gives them easy access to saltpetre, which isn't going to happen due to coders who hate innocent botanists like myself. Personally, I'd rather get additional plants with new chems so that I can do new decorations/herbal medicine. I can usually plant something that gives me 100 mutagen every 30 seconds about ~10 minutes after I grab some mutagen, so if you really want to speed up the process, just try to PR a bottle or two of mutagen into the botany vending machines. It'll likely still get blocked, but it's far more reasonable than chem dispensers.

[SaveVatznick]

so lets get the old tired arguments out of the way before they can be tottered out again:

"just make your own mutagen!"
this argument is the easiest way to identify people who dont actually play botany. the amount of mutagen you get per harvest (which takes ages in of itself) is puny even at high potencies, and isnt enough to be practical even if you have godly RNG.

Yes it is a good way to find people who don't play botany because they don't understand why it's a stupid argument and apparently neither do you.

I dunno what the fuck you're on about with "takes forever to harvest mutagen plants and puny amounts" because that just isn't true. Stuff your radphoschlorine in Perennial 50 potency onions and plant like, two of those you'll have more mutagen then you'll ever need for the rest of the shift, harvestable by 20 ish minutes if you actually execute quickly.

Yes, though, there is a practicality issue in that it messes up your timing if you only get enough mutagen to get the blumpkins, and no, you don't need godly RNG to do it. It is practical to make mutagen, especially if you're doing something mutagen intense, like mutating a ton of stuff at once for your timing, or rolling for kudzu. Growing your own mutagen is a choice you make as a botanist depending on how good natured chemistry is and how much time you predict the round is going to last for, and if you go back to chemistry to ask, it's a blantant tell that you're going for a short term botany strategy. If you invest however much mutagen into making blumpkins, you need to understand that it's also going to affect the timing of whatever plant you're ultimately aiming for in the round. Those are your two resources in botany, time and mutagen. I think the balance of growing your own vs asking Chem for more is near perfect nine times out of ten and, when you think about it, is a really cool balancing mechanic that emerges from all the interactions that happen in this game.

"m-muh departmental interactions!"
setting aside the troubles you have to get most people to give you mutagen in the first place, whether due to incompetence or them focusing on their own projects, with the recent changes to chem dispensers (losing charge way faster and recharging way slower) many times i ask for mutagens now im told to fuck off because im using too much of the charge.

Chemists usually will happily give you a first batch of mutagen, and seeing how most of them use the same muh energy excuse not to make any healing meds, they most always have the time (what do chemists even fucking do?) if you just cry at them and go "I just need the ONE beaker topped off ONE MORE TIME PLEEEEASSEE". So make do with less.

"just get science to make one for you!"
same problem as before, especially with all the new changes going on with departmental lathes, making it a pain to get a board even in the first place, which many scientists either dont know how to do or wont put up with.

I agree that this is a retarded argument because the likelihood that a nonzero number of machines are built outside of the R&D lab is already under fucken 25%, or at least is feels like it. Even with old r&d we never even got somatorays/dispensers, and WHEN we got them, it was at the point where no one needs them because we'e already finished our builds and have all the mutations we need / yield. Combine that with the fact that everyone on this fucking server is a mute, illiterate automaton that only knows how to autism in a room or click people until they're horizontal, you're never getting a dispenser. But, again, part of the balancing factor of botany is that it's limited by time and mutagen, and getting the dispenser effectively allows you to bypass one of the two major limits.You don't need it.

So yes this is a dumb argument because no one interacts, and it's also a dumb argument because by the time you get it you don't need it.

"botany is already op!"
creating things that are useful in botany takes time, effort, and know-how to get the correct genes/chems and then maintain them until they are harvestable. chemistry, on the other hand, can make lethal deathchem cocktails within the first five minutes that botany couldnt create in an entire round, especially with goof's recipe addition (even if it was nerfed).

He's right here, botany is in essence chemistry but slow and severely limited, which is counterbalanced by the huge volume that it's able to generate. Botany's not fucking OP you retarded fucks, they're easily stopped before, I dunno, the twenty five minute mark, before which point their only offensive tools are a hatchet and a bucket of water. If you let botanists alone with no supervision for 40 fucking minutes, don't whine about how "ABLOOBLOOBLOO THAT DEATH PLANT KILLED ME AND I COULDN'T EVEN FIX IT WAHHH". Any other department will be able to have similar power levels after 40 minutes. In comparison to chemistry, I'd bet some skilled chemist rushing the syringe gun could dispense a deathmix and kill someone in under two minutes of round start, and then still have the resources to do it over and over and over again. Botany's not OP, it's just a department with a normal power balance that literally everyone ignores for some reason despite every botany department being in clear view and low security. If you think botany's OP, check their disks and their plants. Even if you don't find anything, the act of being stealthy and hiding all their naughty stuff will slow the botanists down so much that they'll barely be able to use what they made, considering our rounds are 45 mins each.

Toxins can reduce the station to a shuttle-worthy state in a couple minutes with some knowledge. Plasma flooding is basically hitting, like, three buttons, and can be done roundstart. I don't see why botanists can't bust their ass for a long time and come out with something that MIGHT kill you. So Deitus is right here.

"be robust and just steal a dispenser!"
seriously? even times when i DO get permission from a chemist/cmo/captain, etc to take a dispenser, it usually ends with people angrily busting down the windows to botany and trying to lynch me. to say nothing of the problems and situations it causes that admins need to take care of, it generates needless player conflict that does nothing for either side's round other than piss them off.

Don't steal dispensers. Ask to be let in to use them. Just don't steal them you stupid cunt, you're asking for conflict. Whoever is telling you to steal a dispenser needs to be buried in cold hard clay.

even just getting a nerfed chem machine would be fine, maybe one like in the podperson lavaland area where it can only make certain chemicals but the battery is even shittier than the normal roundstart ones so it would need recharging often. the term "quality of life" is enough to make most coders recoil and hiss in fits of anger, but its a change that has been needed for a long time now.

My verdict is that you're stupid and your shitty proposal for a mini dispenser in botany is the wailing of a bad player.
You need to learn either A. how to be less autistic and more charming so that chemists will let you have your mutagen or
B. git gud and learn how to manage your mutagen/ make judicious use of it to get useful plants with a low amount of starting mutagen. You don't need your fucking gaia to do botany, it sucks mutagen and all it does is ease the load of micromanaging your plants, which honestly isn't that hard if you're not lazy and use irrigation lines.

As a side note, a theme here is that botany doesn't get out of control unless other players let it, and the whole having to ask the chemist routine is a way that external players throttle botany's progress to a reasonable pace and power level, just as tightening security on botany and having officers check their data disks and plants every so often would put additional checks on their power.

TL;DR No because botany is balanced by not having a dispenser.

[SaveVatznick]

If you cant grow enough mutagen to do what you need as a botanist you are a bad botanist.

Grow blumpkins, take 2 glowshroom seeds, grow red beets, max potency and yield. you have more mutagen then you will know what to do with.

Seriously you are bad at botany if you cant fucking do the most basic shit like using the condensed chemicals trait on your mutagen blumpkins.

'

You don't need densifieds and yes he is bad at botany.

[Dr_bee]

did no one mention asking engineering to build you a damn dispenser? They have access to the boards when they are researched and pretty much have nothing else to do but build shit unlike the science department. I often do nothing but build machines for people during my engineering rounds.

RnD doesnt even get access to the boards anymore if i remember correctly, you get them from the medical techfab or the engineering circuit printer.

[Lazengann]

waiting for blumpkins or for someone to build you a dispenser is a very good idea if you're playing on a server that has an average 1 hour+ round time

[Dr_bee]

waiting for blumpkins or for someone to build you a dispenser is a very good idea if you're playing on a server that has an average 1 hour+ round time

Oh no, I will have to spend 5 minutes problem solving for a bit instead of instantly powergaming my death veggies. It is almost like it is a minor time gate so you dont flood the station with explosives until AT LEAST the 20 minute mark.

I love overpowered botany but even I think giving them a dispenser roundstart is too far. Remember the DNA manipulator before the nerfs? Some ramp-up time and resource collection is to be expected for ANY department.

[Lazengann]

I'd trade the separated chemicals trait for the dispenser

Actually just removing the trait from glowberries and making you pray to the RNG for it would be fine

[Saegrimr]

Wait can't you print your own somatory now with the backroom printer?

[Anonmare]

Wait can't you print your own somatory now with the backroom printer?

You can

[somerandomguy]

Wait can't you print your own somatory now with the backroom printer?

You can

You need the research though

[Umber_Neno]

I understand the need for a chem dispenser in botany, but instead of a regular chem dispenser, you could use the botanical chem dispenser that the life bringers use on lavaland to mass produce needed chems for botany.

[SpaceInaba]

You can wave it off with a "m-muh!" but the answer is still departmental interactions, which includes getting science to make you one (or a somatory).

science can't make them anymore because #departmental lathes

[somerandomguy]

You can wave it off with a "m-muh!" but the answer is still departmental interactions, which includes getting science to make you one (or a somatory).

science can't make them anymore because #departmental lathes

They can if they're smart enough to print a better printer

[SpaceInaba]

You can wave it off with a "m-muh!" but the answer is still departmental interactions, which includes getting science to make you one (or a somatory).

science can't make them anymore because #departmental lathes

They can if they're smart enough to print a better printer

oh I didnt know we could print a better printer because departmental lathes are cancer and I just get the omni boards from space

[Qbopper]

"m-muh departmental interactions!"

you just answered your own question

believe it or not this is a game based around interacting with other people, there are enough ways for people to do shit without ever having to speak to another player and it's not what the game should be focusing on

if your job can't do something or needs something that another job can provide, and you have serious trouble getting people to help you, try being more polite or offering something in return instead of trying to get coders to make it so you can play a singleplayer game of "grow a thousand bluespace bananas and throw them in the hallway"

[SpaceInaba]

we should unironically go an entire week with zero materials or tools on station and it's all localized in a koisk in the middle of the station where anybody trying to steal from it is instabanned and just watch the chaos of the zero neural activity greyshirts realizing they cant do anything unless they actually use the chat command

[Denton]

They can if they're smart enough to print a better printer

What did he mean by this

[somerandomguy]

They can if they're smart enough to print a better printer

What did he mean by this

The sci imprinter can print omni-imprinters. This sadly does not count for the lathe as well.

[cedarbridge]

Wait can't you print your own somatory now with the backroom printer?

Its not surprising that botany players wouldn't realize that when the number of times I've had them ask for somatories (or even know what they do) pre-tech webs can be counted on one hand without the need for thumbs. I don't expect techwebs changed that knowledge barrier when stealing a dispenser and getting firebombed for it is obviously more productive.

[SaveVatznick]

Wait can't you print your own somatory now with the backroom printer?

Its not surprising that botany players wouldn't realize that when the number of times I've had them ask for somatories (or even know what they do) pre-tech webs can be counted on one hand without the need for thumbs. I don't expect techwebs changed that knowledge barrier when stealing a dispenser and getting firebombed for it is obviously more productive.

Somatorays are largely redundant by the time they're available and iirc you need materials from the orm to make them (which is a techwebs issue).

[onleavedontatme]

If you added mutagen to botany it would lead to frequent near roundstart death plants, followed by people getting mad and nerfing all the plants, leaving botany in a state where they have free flowing mutagen and easy access to any plant but none of those plants are worth growing any more.

Better things are slightly difficult to obtain and worth strivng for than have them free and worthless.

[Lazengann]

There's really only one death plant

[Bombadil]

I've printed my own Somatoray before. Main issue is chemists are like why the fuck do you need radium?

Also a lot of the time scientists don't research botanical engineering focusing on mining and better parts even if it's only 2500 pts like 5k pts for the whole chain

[iamgoofball]

just use omega weed

[Bombadil]

Winners just make their own mutagen with glowshrooms and blumpkins

[Deitus]

though the majority of replies are either shitposts or people who didnt read the OP, there are some legitimately good points buried underneath the sarcasm and bad rhetoric that i'll try out, so i suppose the thread can be done now.