Hydroponics tray takes additional parts

[FantasticFwoosh]

To navigate around this meme of gaia so we actually have a system behind to buffer some of the arguements that-

"If i leave my upgraded RnD trays, weeds & bugs will kill all my plants!"

So a good solution is to just add more logical parts into the construction with the functions.

> Scanners - these suppress passive weed growth as to incur less weed invasions.

> Lasers - the lore reason is that they zap bugs, obviously the more powerful the laser, the more effective it is at stopping insects

Both of these help maintain the status of the tray for longer without cheap methods like gaia, and summarily keep a soil tray looking like complete garbage compared to its much more optimal machine tray.

[D&B]

Only if it also zaps flypeople

[Toroic]

Neither of these changes are needed, and I'm pretty much against your seed vendor changes as well.

We just need to remove gaia trays. Botanists already can use fungal vitality to make light and water levels not matter, and can use genetic manipulation to make them immune to weeds as well.

Currently gaia is easy and valuable for both healing chems and zero maintenance trays and dirt piles, making weed/fungal mutations pointless and bees just a trolling tool.

The department without gaia trays and with a kudzu nerf is not overpowered at all.

[FantasticFwoosh]

The reason the gaia trays were introduced were to make them not require maintenance at all, this sort of slides on the idea that the arguement will be that the protections versus weeds & pests that gaia gave removed will be a big problem post gaia removal. Even if you update all the trays with the highest tech parts, you're going to be crawling with bugs and still can't sort of leave plants on their own to run errands.

> You can't make them bug-proof, and the parts would summarily mean you would need to deweed & spray less often, bugs for instance are drawn to sugary plants.

> Its still pretty op with teslium nettlesting slip bananas that will lapse you into critical with a high enough dose & death.

[Toroic]

The reason the gaia trays were introduced were to make them not require maintenance at all, this sort of slides on the idea that the arguement will be that the protections versus weeds & pests that gaia gave removed will be a big problem post gaia removal. Even if you update all the trays with the highest tech parts, you're going to be crawling with bugs and still can't sort of leave plants on their own to run errands.

> You can't make them bug-proof, and the parts would summarily mean you would need to deweed & spray less often, bugs for instance are drawn to sugary plants.

> Its still pretty op with teslium nettlesting slip bananas that will lapse you into critical with a high enough dose & death.

So?

Botany hardly has time in the typically 30 minute rounds to get any advanced plants produced without medchem help, they have no need to "run errands" outside their department and have more than enough pest spray.

It is absolutely not an issue to have potent tools and massive production require constant maintenance.

Your refactor adds an extra step but the fastest path will always be to rush gaia for the trays if it is an option. Being on top of plant maintenance is what botany is about and in exchange they're nearly as strong as medchem or science. Emphasis on nearly because they aren't close to science in power or versatility.

[FantasticFwoosh]

The gaia revert happened ( Disables Gaia mutation #27144 ) so we better stack up our options and personally i think my way can now fill the hole on what to do about it.

RIP Gaia mutation.

[Dr_bee]

Gaia should be brought back just for the earths-blood and Bio 7 research. Fuck the auto care, that should come from other departments.

Add more parts to trays, and possibly a robot build-able by robotics that auto-waters or weeds plants.

A robot will make it possible to plant stuff like flowers around the station without Gaia as well. You cant spread sunflowers, poppies, and harbells around the station now that gaia is gone because it just takes too much work to keep them alive for simple beautification.

[FantasticFwoosh]

The other solution to planting stuff like that Dr_bee is to make seeds convert into plant structures, which is something i already had in mind.

Like the ash plants on lavaland, non-maintenance but irregular yield, directly porting lavaland plants into hydroponics and then being able to plant them on fake ash tiles around the station for a biodome like effect is one of my long term coding goals of what i want to drive my pr's toward.

[Cobby]

most of this can already be done via manipulation of the genes, which is already gated by RND.

[Dr_bee]

most of this can already be done via manipulation of the genes, which is already gated by RND.

weed growth and resistance yes, but water and fertilizer use not so much, you can only have weed adaptation or fungal vitality, never both.

plus having more than one solution to a problem is a good thing, it means if RnD is being cocknuggets I can at least talk to robotics or possibly cargo into helping fix the problem.

[bandit]

I actually like the idea of customizing trays like this

[FantasticFwoosh]

most of this can already be done via manipulation of the genes, which is already gated by RND.

Nothing can be done about bugs besides actively removing the sugar from plants (but then again, wherever a sugary plant was, bugs will still be in the tray growing)

I actually like the idea of customizing trays like this

Thanks, it just sort of made sense without gaia here to protect your from ever having to de-weed, water, feed or bugspray your plants. It doesn't completely make those functions irrelevant (once in a blue moon) but we could safely revert the 'weed growth' gene system and just use this instead and nerf/remove the remaining gene traits that tie into blocking weeds.

> Soil trays will need a lot of looking after hence, being the much more non-superior improvisational growing area with basic level 1 workings instead of just gaia'ing it and treating it like a hydroponics tray.

- That was one of the problems with gaia, it made soil trays just a way to maximise space without actually committing to the maintenance of it, why have upgraded hydroponics trays when you can just have gaia soil trays you can walk over? In which case you could just plant 20 carbon copy seeds of killer tomatoes without maintenance, wait for them to be grown, harvest & go kill a boss with it

[Super Aggro Crag]

If 5 years ago people told me botany would be the most op department with constant round ending disruptive bullshit and constantcode balance wars, I would not have believed.

[Reece]

If 5 years ago people told me botany would be the most op department with constant round ending disruptive bullshit and constantcode balance wars, I would not have believed.

And today if someone told you that, you still would not have believed because it's still not true. It's just that people are, by and large, shit.

[FantasticFwoosh]

If 5 years ago people told me botany would be the most op department with constant round ending disruptive bullshit and constantcode balance wars, I would not have believed.

And today if someone told you that, you still would not have believed because it's still not true. It's just that people are, by and large, shit.

Most of those people are coders too.

[Dr_bee]

If 5 years ago people told me botany would be the most op department with constant round ending disruptive bullshit and constantcode balance wars, I would not have believed.

And today if someone told you that, you still would not have believed because it's still not true. It's just that people are, by and large, shit.

Most of those people are coders too.

As long as the science department can basically end a round with toxin bombs at the 5 minute mark people bitching about departmental balance make no sense to me.

Botany automation should still be a thing but it should not come from botany itself, similar to how cargo can double plant yield with bees, and RnD can only be maxed with the help of miners one of the best ways to limit the power of a department is to move the way to get the overpowered crap out of the department, forcing actual player interaction.

[FantasticFwoosh]

Really as it stands, botany just mugs chemistry as interdepartmental co-operation for mutagen or just cultivate mutagen bearing plants.

Before now i've accessed plant mutations just by using left 4 zed, which is still pretty potent.

[Dr_bee]

Really as it stands, botany just mugs chemistry as interdepartmental co-operation for mutagen or just cultivate mutagen bearing plants.

Before now i've accessed plant mutations just by using left 4 zed, which is still pretty potent.

Mugging another department is technically "cooperation" in a sense, forceful cooperation.

Even if the players typically moonlight or break into a department hen they should otherwise cooperate that seems to be a player problem, and theft and IC crime is still content that wouldnt exist without locking stuff behind another department.