Tweak the Hydroponics Overhaul

[Acetrea]

So overall, I quite like the hydroponics overhaul that was merged way back in August, on paper at least. I love adding more mechanics to roles that don't have much, and more often than not, I found myself ordering those super complicated random gen seeds from cargo as a Xenobotanist, just to have a bit of a challenge. A few times in the past few weeks, I've tried to grow plants in the public garden, and ended up with dead plants, a wasted hour, and no produce, despite my sitting in the garden and giving the plants a steady supply of water and nutriment.

I don't want this PR totally reverted (it looks like a lot of work went into it), but I know that there have been some discussions about how non-gardener players are upset, and it all stems from not being able to grow a plant in the garden. The roles that this PR affected the worst are the chef and the bartender, but it definitely messes with all the other roles, too. If someone wants to do some cooking in the cafe, many of the ingredients they need are now hardlocked behind having a gardener or xenobotanist. 

There are 79 plants available in the public garden's seed storage. Of the ones there, only 29 are stable at 293 K. That's only 36%! Of those, 24 require a luminosity of 5, and the others require a luminosity of 7. Unfortunately, I have no idea what light level the garden is at, especially now that the lighting code has been changed, but I do believe that this new lighting code has been affecting the ability for plants to grow in the public garden. Even when attempting to grow items like apples and berries (all of which require 293 K at light level 5), they take an extremely long time and will also say that they are dying, even though the temperature is where it is supposed to be. 

Here is an example of my super confusing apple tree that took 30 minutes to grow and then died after 1 harvest:

No one wants to spend 1/4th of the round in the garden trying to dump nutriment and water into their plant so it'll survive.

I think a viable change would be to have plants grow faster the closer they are to their ideal light level/temperature, rather than having the plant cease growing altogether. Then, the hydroponicist is still able to tweak their hydroponics trays for their plants to grow and produce at peak speed, and during the rounds when there is no hydroponist, players can still grow the produce they need for the kitchen, the bar, bounties, the pharmacy, the cafe, and wherever else produce is needed, simply at a slower rate than a gardener/xenobotanist is able to. And they won't have to babysit the plant as much. 

[FabianK3]

FYI - @TheGreyWolf recently came up with a fix that likely addresses the issue described here.

https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/21679

[hazelmouse]

On 08/12/2025 at 01:52, Acetrea said:

So overall, I quite like the hydroponics overhaul that was merged way back in August, on paper at least. I love adding more mechanics to roles that don't have much, and more often than not, I found myself ordering those super complicated random gen seeds from cargo as a Xenobotanist, just to have a bit of a challenge. A few times in the past few weeks, I've tried to grow plants in the public garden, and ended up with dead plants, a wasted hour, and no produce, despite my sitting in the garden and giving the plants a steady supply of water and nutriment.

This is because turf lighting is wildly unpredictable and impossible to perfectly account for, even when it's not broken. This is resolved with actual hydroponics trays by their in-tray lights, and it should be easy to diagnose with trays since they tell you exactly what's wrong - neither of these factors apply to the soil mounds in the garden. If I had my way they'd have been replaced with trays months ago.

I don't really have the energy or interest to touch this now, but for a few thoughts:

• Growth stops entirely at very inappropriate light and heat, but also speeds up if very close to a plant's ideal light or heat values. Removing tolerances entirely is absolutely an option, I may have been too harsh in stopping growth entirely outside of them. If someone does tackle this, it'd also be a good opportunity to link plant growth to a timer rather than to RNG age++ - they grow so unpredictably right now because it's totally random chance if they advance in age per each process(), which sucks.
• It'd be trivial to give the more advanced inspect readouts to the soil plots, which I do think would also be a productive change. It'd help clear up confusion on what's causing a plant to fall afoul of its preferences or tolerances, particularly since people using the garden are unlikely to really understand these mechanics very intimately.
• Ultimately, the rework hinged and still hinges on hydroponics necessarily being less accessible than it was. Formerly, growing plants had literally no fail condition - there was *no* way to unsuccessfully grow any plant in the game. Even if you grew an Adhomian plant at tropical temperatures, all that'd do is harm the plant slightly over a long time without stopping its growth; most of the time the plant would mature before it even died. The shallowness of these mechanics is why hydroponics was a hollow, empty role. Either the public garden can be totally accessible to everyone and able to grow every plant in the game with no fail condition, or hydroponicist can have mechanics which are more substantial than something anyone else in the crew can do. You can't really have both here without compromising the other, IMHO.

Edited December 23, 2025 by hazelmouse