User:Racc-Off/botany

Hydroponics & Botany

Botany, the scientific study of plants. In the glorious sub-department of hydroponics, plants work for you, the all powerful botanist.

Plants

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Plant :D

Anatomy

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Plants are the organisms you will be working with as a botanist. Their composition is comprised of 3 core elements the body, fruit, and roots. These elements are known as plant features. There are many plant features, and they each have their own unique characteristics. No more than 1 of each feature can exist in a given plant, but there is no requirement to have a particular type of feature, meaning you can create plants without fruit, roots, or bodies. However, it is not guaranteed a plant can survive without roots or a body.

material Type	Info
Body	The body of a plant will determine its overall size, time to mature, and harvest size, among other things. The body of a plant is also responsible for a plant's health, a sick body is a sick plant.
Fruit	The fruit of a plant will determine what it grows, what is produced from harvests. Obviously each fruit feature also has its own stats that determine growth time, reagents, and reagent volume.
Roots	The roots of a plant allows it to absorb any reagents it may need to survive from its surroundings. In addition to this, roots also determine what kind of substrate a plant can grow in, whether that be dirt, sand, clay, or debris.

Some feature's have special stats that control how they can be combined, this will be discussed later.

Items, Tools, and Machines

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They exist :)

Plant Analysis

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The plant analyser is a powerful tool that can be used to archive specific plant features & traits for later use in the seed editor to make your own custom plants.

Using a spade, a mature plant can be dug up from its tray and inserted into the plant analyser. Then, using the hydroponics machine terminal, you can view the plant's genetics- its features and their traits. If you have a plant disk inserted into the plant analyser, you can save specific features, their traits, or both! When saving a feature to a plant disk, you will be given the option of which traits to save along with the feature, if it has traits to begin with. This can be used to remove unwanted traits from a feature before you insert it into the seed editor, helpful! However, not every feature & trait is archivable. Some features, and traits, are special and cannot be saved for later use. You will discover these, rarely, as you interact with plants. A notable instance of this is the Dionae pod, which cannot have its body or fruit copied, only its roots.

Seed Editing

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The seed editor, much like the plant analyser, is a powerful & necessary tool for any botanist, being the machine responsible for creating custom plants.

By inserting a seed packet into the seed editor, and using the hydroponics machine terminal, you will have complete control over its genetics. You can choose any feature, or trait, to remove from the seeds. However, not every feature & trait can be removed. Some features, and traits, cannot be removed from the plant they are associated with. As before, a notable instance of this is the Dionae pod, which cannot have its body or fruit removed, only its roots. You will discover these, rarely, as you interact with plants. This machine also allows you to add features or traits to the seed, from inserted plant disks. However, not every feature & trait is compatible with the rest. Some features, and traits, aren't compatible with one another. A notable instance of this is the mushroom family of features, being only compatible with other mushroom features. You will discover these, rarely, as you interact with plants. Although most traits will exclude themselves, you may discover some allow multiple copies of themselves on a single feature. Additionally, when adding traits to a feature, it's important to note the genetic budget of the feature, and the genetic cost of the feature. Each plant feature has a unique genetic budget, which determines how many traits it can afford. Each feature trait has a genetic cost, which determines how much it will cost for the feature to have, some traits have negative cost which increases the feature's genetic budget. Overdrafting a feature's genetic budget is possible, allowing you to have as many traits as you want, but doing so will add more needs to the plant. An extra need will be added to the plant for every trait that overdrafts a feature's genetic budget.

Plant Mutation

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The irradiator kiln- [ don't get in the kiln]!

Not every plant, feature, and trait can be found from seeds in the seed vendor. Some features have special variants with unique stats, traits, etc.. These variants can be access by using the irradiator kiln. Using a spade, a plant can be dug up from its tray and inserted into kiln. Then, using the hydroponics machine terminal, you can view the plant's genetics, its features and their traits, and choose which feature to mutate. When mutating a feature, you will also have the option to preserve its traits, which will be destroyed upon mutation otherwise. If a mutation has incompatible traits, the trait causing the incompatibility will *not* be preserved. Similarly, if a mutated feature is not compatible with existing features, it will not be mutated.

Although the kiln is good, and you should step inside it, nothing is free. Mutating features uses charge from the kiln's irradiator coils. These coils can be recharged by inserting radioactive material into the kiln. The kiln starts with a small piece of radioactive rubble, but this will inevitably need replacing throughout the round.

QuickStart

This quickstart guide will serve as a summary on the basics of botany, and how to grow your first plant.

To start, find the seed vendor. This vendor is usually located somewhere in hydroponics. If you can't see it at first, some layouts will have it in a backroom attached to hydroponics. Next, vend a packet of apple seeds from the vendor, this should be the second option after ambrosia seeds.

After you have acquired a packet of apple seeds, you will need to locate a tray to grow them in. Plant trays can usually be found scattered around hydroponics. In the scenario you can't find an empty tray, a "Hydroponic Plumbing Constructor" aka tray maker can also be found in hydroponics. This tool can be used to create an empty tray.

You may have already noticed, but you can't just plant the apple seeds in this empty tray. The roots of an apple tree need dirt substrate to grow. To fill the tray with dirt, you will need a dirt substrate bag. Substrate bags are typically kept in the backroom of most hydroponics rooms. Otherwise, substrate bags can be made with the THING THAT MAKES THEM HERE.

Once you have filled the empty tray with the dirt substrate, and planted an apple seed, a yellow light on the tray will eventually come on. This light is an alert that the plant has an unfulfilled need, and is slowly dying. In this case, it means the apple tree needs water. However, you can also use a plant scanner on the tray to find out exactly what this alert means, which is helpful for plants that have needs other than water. You can also use a plant scanner, with the advanced scan enabled, on the plant itself to see all its needs for each feature. You can get water from water tanks using buckets, both found either in the main hydroponics room, or the backroom.

When the apple tree's needs are met, it will begin to grow eventually reaching maturity, when it will start producing fruit.

If a yellow light comes on during this time, and the plant has been watered, chances are it has pests. Pests develop on some fruits, and will start to drain a plant's health when they build up sufficiently. Toxins and other harmful reagents will kill pests. A bottle of pest-spray can be found in the botany equipment vendor, found either in the main hydroponics room, or the backroom. As you learn more about botany & hydroponics, you'll be able to engineer plants and ecosystems that kill pests themselves, or don't attract them to begin with.

If a red light comes on during this time, the plant has lost a significant amount of health, and needs to be healed. A plant can lose health for several reasons, but the most common are pests, weeds, and unmet needs. Weeds and unmet needs will only drain a percentage of a plant's health, but pests will remove a small flat amount. The easiest way to heal a plant is to use nutriment. There are several forms and tiers of nutriments, but the most basic and readily available to you is E-Z-Nutrient. This reagent can be found in the botany equipment vendor, found either in the main hydroponics room, or the backroom. Using a plant scanner with the advanced scan enabled will reveal what nutriments heal the plant, and what tier of healing they provide.

Once the plant has matured, it will begin producing fruit. This fruit will take some time to grow, but a green alert light on the tray will let you know when it's ready for harvest.

Harvested fruit can be inserted into the industrial seeder and turned into seed packets, to grow more plants. Seed packets can be stored in the industrial seeder for later use.

Advanced Botany

Talk about ecosystems here

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