Unstable Mutagen in Biogenerators

[Denton]

While Botany can eventually grow their own mutagen, they still need a few bottles every roundstart to start growing and mutating plants at humane speeds.

However, sometimes Chemistry isn't manned, gets bombed or the resident Chemist is simply a dick.
Other jobs don't have that issue - the science jobs for example start with plenty of plasma/metal/plasteel and even sacid.

Instead of just giving Botanists free roundstart mutagen, I'd propose adding it to the Biogenerator products.

That way botanists can produce their own mutagen, but will have to grow and shove plants into the biogen first.
This is meant for "oh shit, chemistry is a big hole now" moments, as it'll always be faster to just walk over and ask the chemist for a few mutagen bottles.

[Dr_bee]

While Botany can eventually grow their own mutagen, they still need a few bottles every roundstart to start growing and mutating plants at humane speeds.

However, sometimes Chemistry isn't manned, gets bombed or the resident Chemist is simply a dick.
Other jobs don't have that issue - the science jobs for example start with plenty of plasma/metal/plasteel and even sacid.

Instead of just giving Botanists free roundstart mutagen, I'd propose adding it to the Biogenerator products.

That way botanists can produce their own mutagen, but will have to grow and shove plants into the biogen first.
This is meant for "oh shit, chemistry is a big hole now" moments, as it'll always be faster to just walk over and ask the chemist for a few mutagen bottles.

You can already make growable mutagen by splicing Blumpkins and Glowshrooms. However adding more products to the bio-generator when it is upgraded would be a neat addition.

I would restrict it from being roundstart and require co-operation with science instead of chem, leading to three possible paths to easy mutagen.

Any other way of adding it to the biogen would be power creep of the highest order, Unless it was prohibitively expensive in biomass cost.

[Denton]

Having it at roundstart is the intention - you need mutagen to even start your production by mutating pumpkins into blumpkins.

If you don't get any at all, your only chance is using Left 4 Zed fertilizer and praying that you hit the 10% species mutation chance (it never happens, and especially not during 30 minute /tg/ rounds).

I agree on the biomass cost though; it should be more expensive to generate than by growing your own mutagen plants.

[Saegrimr]

Every day we stray further from inter-departmental interaction.

[Denton]

Every day we stray further from inter-departmental interaction.

Did you read the last sentence of my opening post? It's more "emergency mutagen supplies when chemistry gets bombed" and less "I don't wanna talk to the smelly chemist".

[MMMiracles]

Every day we stray further from inter-departmental interaction.

Did you read the last sentence of my opening post? It's more "emergency mutagen supplies when chemistry gets bombed" and less "I don't wanna talk to the smelly chemist".

Unless you're making it extremely expensive and gives extremely small amounts, his point still stands.

You're in a department dedicated to growing things and the biogenerator eats those things. It isn't exactly difficult to fill up the biogenerator.

[DemonFiren]

biogenerator means infinite and renewable, doubly so once upgraded
roundstart means power creep and discourages interaction

just, like
ask science if chem got bombed

[Arianya]

The other purpose of intra-departmental interaction, beyond the fact that it pushes people out of their safezones, is that you can destroy/disrupt something like Chemistry or cargo and affect more then just that department. Nuking chemistry, even if its just chemistry and not the greater medbay, will restrict other departments (such as Botany), hurt medbay and keep killgrenade toting chemists in check.

[Denton]

The other purpose of intra-departmental interaction, beyond the fact that it pushes people out of their safezones, is that you can destroy/disrupt something like Chemistry or cargo and affect more then just that department. Nuking chemistry, even if its just chemistry and not the greater medbay, will restrict other departments (such as Botany), hurt medbay and keep killgrenade toting chemists in check.

Yeah, you're making a good point. I just find it odd that for example, Xenobio gets plasma, monkey cubes and a gimped chem dispenser, Robotics gets metal, glass and plasteel, and so on. Is all that just the result of powercreep?

[Deitus]

Don't bother asking for QOL changes, they'll be buried under "muh departmental interaction reeeeee!" slippery slopes and cherry picking while current qol's like those you mentioned are ignored or waved off

[DemonFiren]

The other purpose of intra-departmental interaction, beyond the fact that it pushes people out of their safezones, is that you can destroy/disrupt something like Chemistry or cargo and affect more then just that department. Nuking chemistry, even if its just chemistry and not the greater medbay, will restrict other departments (such as Botany), hurt medbay and keep killgrenade toting chemists in check.

Yeah, you're making a good point. I just find it odd that for example, Xenobio gets plasma, monkey cubes and a gimped chem dispenser, Robotics gets metal, glass and plasteel, and so on. Is all that just the result of powercreep?

xenobio needs plasma and monkey cubes to breed slimes and use their cores and is utterly useless without
robotics needs metal for cyborgs, glass and plasteel to build the most basic mech for mining (assuming they get boards) and is utterly useless without
botany does not need mutagen for anything but mutating plants and can still grow a vast variety to supply the chef without ever acquiring a drop of mutagen the entire shift

the idea is that departments are supposed to be pre-equipped with shit that allows them to cover the most basic tasks they are meant to fulfill

[Cobby]

Can we use the opposite argument and say everything else is qol'd to hell and that we should take the mutagen approach to other departments where there's a chance you can get X but a sure-fire way for X is to ask Y department.

[Gigapuddi420]

If you don't mind living and dying by RNG, you don't need chemistry at all for botany. Plant your three+ pumpkin seeds and use left 4 zed. It might take a couple minutes or like quarter of a hour but you'll eventually get the blumpkins you need for infinate mutagen.

That said, if mutagen was priced at something like 2000 biomass for 50u it wouldn't really speed them up any. It would still be easier to just ask chemisty for mutagen and it might even be easier to just make blumpkins anyway. 2000 biomass isn't hard to get, but would require a small amount of work to get just for a beaker of mutagen you'll immediately use (likely for blumpkins).

I didn't really think Botany would really need this kind of thing though. They can function without chemistry if they really need to and science can make chemistry equipment mid-round without any issue. Giving them roundstart mutagen would just speed up the powergame a bit.

[Takeguru]

>Quarter of an hour

More like 15 hours
That mutation chance never fires off

[Gigapuddi420]

I've never been that unlucky when being lazy botanist. Three trays chugging away at those two mutation chances they get a cycle will get it sooner or later. Then RNG will laugh at you by making it so you get blumpkins, but 0 yield. I get why mutagen is used to bruteforce past RNG bullshit, but I felt it was useful to point out the alternative.

[Lazengann]

Just steal the dispenser

[kevinz000]

No.

[Cobby]

The downside of open-source: the thread

[Denton]

No.

What if RnD and Robotics get roundstart sacid beakers to make up for it?

[cedarbridge]

No.

What if RnD and Robotics get roundstart sacid beakers to make up for it?

No

[Cobby]

No.

What if RnD and Robotics get roundstart sacid beakers to make up for it?

DELETE

[John_Oxford]

Don't bother asking for QOL changes, they'll be buried under "muh departmental interaction reeeeee!" slippery slopes and cherry picking while current qol's like those you mentioned are ignored or waved off

[AnActualDog]

Hey lads. Yeah, I'm THAT goddamn guy that almost exclusively plays Botanist and even wrote a damn guide for it because I want to see more people competent at it, so I like to at least think that I am competent enough to make my opinion valuable here. Hope everyone is cool with that.

Right now, if a Botanist cannot get the dispenser (or access to it) he is basically fucked. In order to get your own mutagen production running you need to first mutate blumpkins. Without access to mutagen this can take ages, as you only get one 10% chance (according to the wiki, but I'm not sure about that) per harvest. Left 4 Zed fertilizer gives you two of those chances, but the risk of yield becoming 0 and thus erasing all your work is just too high. Not only that, but when a plant mutates it has to grow all over again, so if you mutate with fertilizer you double your growth time. Basically, using fertilizer to mutate plants is INSANE and you will not get ANYTHING done that way. However, this is not that big of a deal, as usually the chemist, even if he defends his dispenser with all he got (which is a lot, that man got flamethrowers, can put you to sleep etc.), will still agree to give you SOME mutagen.

However, even with mutagen, mutating plants is RNG. I've used three bottles of mutagen on one pumpkin before and it still refused to mutate, several times. So then you gotta bother the chemist AGAIN. But ok, low chance, not the core problem. The real issue is that even when you mutate a blumpkin quickly you still need to let it grow, which takes a lot of time. Then, once they are finally done with that (and the yield didn't become 0 again) you have to put the chlorine of the blumpkin into glowshrooms. Glowshrooms also take AGES to grow though. In total I estimate that on average it will take around 20 minutes just to get your first batch of mutagen shrooms. You can cut down a bit of that time by putting all the chems into a faster growing plant instead, but that also takes a bit of time itself, of course.

That is why the competent botanist always starts his round with attempting to get a dispenser. If there are two chemists just asking the HoP for access is enough, too, you don't have to steal it. If there is no chemist the AI can let you in. If there is no AI, again, just ask the HoP for access. If there is no HoP either ask someone else for access. If there is noone who can be bothered to help you you can still break in, just tell people WHY you are doing it and that all you want to do is do your job, not be a traitor (unless you are the traitor but pssssh). In theory you could also bother R&D for an extra chem dispenser but those portable versions have far worse capacity and stuff. So when there is a chemist that does everything in his power to keep you away from the dispenser you are fucked. The amounts of mutagen you need to do your job are just too crazy. Usually waiting for the chemist every single time to do your request would suck but whatever, you could deal with it. Except that you can't because while you wait for the chemist your plants die since noone takes care of them. Especially the important plants like Gaia can not be left alone even for a minute, weeds WILL kill it.

As you can see, a relatively minor gameplay element like this is causing a federal fucking issue for anyone playing botanist. I strongly agree that departmental interaction is important, so adding a chem dispenser to botany or mutagen to the biogenerator is not a fix I would recommend. The fix I'd have in mind is far more simple: Make unstable mutagen much more potent. Right now you use 5u for a 10% chance for the species mutation and 2u for mutating just the stats. Instead simply make it 2u for species mutation and 1u for stat mutation. That way relying on the chemist is actually viable and after ~20mins you will be self-sustaining. You could do a similar thing with saltpetre, 1u increasing the potency by 1, problem solved. This doesn't make botany overpowered either, as even with access to unlimited chems it takes you a long time to produce the really good shit, it's not like every round where botany gets a dispenser they become gods. All it does is make sure the chemist doesn't have to bother with botanies requests all fucking day just because he decided "Yeah I don't want to give my liquid weapon factory to a stranger.".

The thing with balancing botany is that its one of the most complex jobs and hard to master PLUS it is a huge time investment for a single, often situational product you produce. Because its biggest enemy is time itself and shifts usually don't last that long it is not rare to see even a master botanist be completely useless for a shift. With enough time, however, he can cook up a solution for almost every problem the station can have. He earns his power because of its tough learning curve and time investment and except for the mutagen problem and most fertilizers being useless I am pretty happy with its current state. It just sucks that the person you are supposed to work with by game-design is more like your greatest barrier than your greatest ally. This does not aid departmental interaction. Not every chemist listens to reason or has the patience to do so. I am not complaining about there being "enemy players", of course. But people are confusing rivalry with departmental interaction. I think the game design tried to make the relationship between chemist and botanist a little bit like robotics and R&D, seeing as the botanist can also produce tons of chemicals chemistry doesn't have default access to. My suggested fix would help with this relationship. Plus it's relatively easy to implement compared to other fixes as it is just a number tweak.

I hope I am able to convince a coder with this. I'm open towards discussing this further though, maybe there is a point I am forgetting about, I just want to find a solution that helps every party involved and doesn't hurt anyone.

TL;DR (since I tend to talk way too much, obviously)
Instead of fixing the "mutagen shortage" of the botanists by giving them default unlimited access, simply make the mutagen they can get - with the chemists help - more potent. This makes relying on the chemist (instead of stealing his dispenser) viable for competent botanists.

[kevinz000]

what so botany can make more wmds 20 minutes in that make science look like children playing with firecrackers?

[kevinz000]

No.

What if RnD and Robotics get roundstart sacid beakers to make up for it?

No

rnd is getting replaced but if you can't finish rnd without the 50u you get you shouldn't play science ever again heretics reeeee

[AnActualDog]

what so botany can make more wmds 20 minutes in that make science look like children playing with firecrackers?

No idea what WMDS is but since botany can actually help science by giving them glowshrooms, glowcaps and gaia, I think science is certainly not a department that should be afraid of being replaced by botany.

If anything, medbay can be partly replaced because of how powerful an upgraded gaia with all the healing reagents is. Plus botany can clone people with pods but noone ever makes use of that.
But you can always see this from two perspectives: Sometimes you help people by doing some of their work. Sometimes you "took their jobs!". If there is noone getting hurt you shouldn't focus on healing plants tho.

However the point is not to replace anyone, but to strenghten the relationship between botany and chemistry while preventing botany from being completely fucked every 8th shift or so.

[DemonFiren]

WMDs.
Weapons of Mass Destruction.
AKA what botany makes.

[Cobby]

Don't bother asking for QOL changes, they'll be buried under "muh departmental interaction reeeeee!" slippery slopes and cherry picking while current qol's like those you mentioned are ignored or waved off

Making mistakes should not be justification to purposefully make more mistakes FOOL.

[AnActualDog]

WMDs.
Weapons of Mass Destruction.
AKA what botany makes.

AKA what almost every department in this game can make. This is /tg/ Station, remember?
And how often does it even happen that botany fucks up the entire station? Compared to the rest of the department?

Not saying botany is the least dangerous department, of course. Killertomatoes are absolutely ridiculously overpowered. Glowshrooms with the new radioation system are almost as dangerous. And good old amanitin-gas speaks for itself.
Think about it. All those tools of "mass destruction" and yet how often is it the botanist, out of all people, that screws the station? In all the time I have played so far I have only seen one botanist (that wasn't me) screw the station, and that was on accident with glowshrooms. Meanwhile all the other depertments with doomsday potential are having some sort of contest going on who can cause the most shuttle calls. (And personally I turned off antag for my botanist because I just don't enjoy using botany that way.)

On the other hand the botanist has a tool for many problems the station can have. Cult? Holy melon gas grenades (or other weapons to hand out). Blob? Exploding bananas, death nettles, acid gas. Lotsa death and destruction in general? Healing plants and even strange reagent to revive people, though pods would work too.

Point is, if you criticize botany for its destructive potential you also have to acknowledge its positive potential.
To say "a department can do bad things and thus it should be having a hard time to function properly", in Space Station, is just kind of narrow-minded.
Not to mention that, in order to do those bad things, you have to be competent at botany, while for most of the other "dangerous" departments it is incompetence that usually causes the problems.