Slimes rework concept

[Slotbot]

Introduction:
I’ve been playing around with xenobiology for a while and share some of the opinions regarding its current state. These are namely that it is a very self-contained job, takes a long time to get rolling, during which time not much is done except growing slimes, and some of the late-game rewards are very powerful thus warranting against streamlining the whole process in its current form.

I aim to give more opportunities for slime xenobiologists to interact with the station and influence the round, while keeping late-game slime items to remain accessible mostly later in the round and not speeding up the process of bunkering up in xenobiology and rushing to them without having to go out and be more active.

With that being said, my idea is to make slimes mobs that grow stronger and unlock new skills as they feed on toxic chemicals or other creatures, rather than grow and split into a lot of slimes over and over. This also builds upon the current concept of befriending the slimes as you will be able to have them as more long-term companion and would turn the anomaly slime into a more threatening and fun antagonist.

Traits:
Below is a list of traits the slimes would have:
1. Slimes have 10 electric charge levels - this builds up on the current system where upon consuming and digesting a certain amount of material the slime levels up. When being fed living beings, the slime will grow normally and when fed toxins, it will also gain mutation points

> Digestion plays a role in interactivity as you will be able to take the slime around with you and carry out other objectives while it is growing instead of having to actively feed and babysit it in the Xenobiology room.

2. Splitting and mutations - at a point the slime can produce a level 1 baby slime of the same or higher tier based on its diet.

3. Skills - as slimes grow their durability and/or other stats will rise and they will have access to stronger effects or items to produce.

4. Slimes react to chemicals the same way as slimepeople and can hold a certain amount of them - mainly for the purposes of toxin/healing chem interactions and turning a slime into a slimeperson. Only difference is that they still heal from heat instead of taking half burn.

Skills and crossbreeding:
The most important product of dealing with slimes currently are crossbreeding items.I thought about turning crossbreeding into slimes gaining a new skill by ingesting an extract from a different type of slime, but ultimately this requires for a ton of combinations to be maintained for the sake of quantity over quality with a lot of the resulting combinations not being utilized.

In place of this, each slime would have abilities unlockable at a certain electricity level. I am thinking for these to be based on the existing crossbreeding items and ideas on the wiki. They can also be gated by cooldown, plasma/other chemicals needed to be injected into the item to activate or requiring the slime to consume a certain item to produce something. These abilities could be in the form of an item the slime creates or an effect that occurs from the slime when activated.

Balancing:
Now that the overall idea is overall clear, next is how it will be balanced. The current slimes have 4 tiers and I think this is ok to stay like this. To create a mutated slime, a slime would need to reach a certain level, for example 4, at which point it becomes an adult slime and is eligible to split. This is where part of the interactivity comes from as with procuring more toxic substances from departments, like botany, or other sources the slime will grow faster and thus get the better skills sooner. However it would still be possible to grow it by simply feeding it more accessible chems like plasma.

From here the level-up requirement can either be incremental or additive, each with their negatives and positives. Having it as a constant would make reaching a higher tier take longer, but leveling up a single slime would be faster. On the other hand, if the amount increases with each level, reaching the desirable slime type would be faster and leveling it slower.

Conclusion:
Hopefully this sounds like a fun way to play the game in a different fashion from the other available jobs and offer more defined choices when deciding what to go for. I also think that it builds upon the interesting features of current xenobiology, unless you are fond of the current way of managing slimes, and re-uses a lot of interactions that are already there.

Let me know whether this seems like a good idea or there are any fundamental flaws in it.