Make Xenobotany less of a grind and make it more fun.

[alexslayer30]

Xenobotany is extremely long and boring as it is right now. You end up putting 40 minutes to an hour of a two hour round for very unsatisfactory results, oh boy, you made green tomatoes, you want a fucking medal? The problem with Xenobotany right now is the way it works, it has so much potential, I mean SO MUCH POTENTIAL being absolutely wasted on this GARBAGE system. The way it works is you get two seed packets and a disc. Insert the floppy disc into the lysis isolation centrifuge, a seed packet, now you have a choice to copy between 12ish genes, each does something, like makes the plant glow if the plant you're copying glows, makes the plant have the same size or colour, etc. You can only have one per disk. When the round starts, the genes are randomized, the same 12 genes will always be there, one will always switch the colours, one will always make it glow or not, etc, but the name and position of the gene is randomized. So, to find out what EVERY single one of them is every single round is a pain in the ass. Now, you stick that disk into the bioballistic delivery system, throw the seed packet you want modified, hit that modify button and wait. After a bit you have a new mutated seed packet which you can plant. However this means if you want to make a cool specific plant, something really cool that you've had in mind, like a tomato that has corn oil so it can slip people when it splatters and explodes, you would need to find the reagent gene. So how do I find this reagent. Well, you do the process, this is where the problems really start. You have to take twelve seed packets, plant them all, make sure you kept track of what gene was planted with the plant, do the grindy process and wait for them to finish every time you transfer ONE GENE from one plant to another, plant it and the only way to tell if it works, if the fruit of the plant you planted has the reagent you spliced with the other when you use you're plant scanner (this also means you have to wait for it fully grow). OH BOY! By the time you've done the process, done it again to get the corn oil tomatoes, planted them, waited for them to grow. This takes 30 minutes MINIMUM of sitting in the lab playing left click simulator rather then interacting with others, and can take even 1 hour and 20 minutes and that's just for one gene! I once made such evil kudzu that it would kill and infect that station, putting people to sleep, poisoning them, and spreading like a plague, then the shuttle was called so I had to resort to using a revolver to shoot up some sec before round end (creative, huh?).

There is a MILLION solutions to this problem I can think of, so here are a few:

Make it so that way you know what the genes do.

Make it so that the genes are always the same.

Make it one machine so its less grindy and you don't need discs.

My favourite: Make it one machine, you stick in a seed packet on side, and the other and the other side, in the middle is a list of genes, you click a gene and BOOP other packet gets it, the genes are labelled like : Makes plant glow, or if you click the corn oil adds the corn oil.

This is something that if fixed would make aurora that much greater, for several reasons. It would allow Xenobotany to be much more accessible, because its like the only job everyone just sorta scratches there head at, I'm sure of you are at my explanation, but it would allow more players to access it, as its probably lowest played job (except xenobiology, but everyone dies). It would also just make it so it had a purpose, because people do fuck all right now when they do pick it, it would allow creativity to flow, so people could make the tastiest apple ever that is purple and shaped like a fucking banana BUT ITS AN APPLE! But that would take a whole round to do, or create a badass deadly plant as antag and use it to be badass. It wouldn't even be hard, I'm not a coder, but I'm pretty sure it would be pretty simple to just copy one variable to another (I'm not a coder, inb4 dats not how u do it u wud do eet lik dis). Its sad to see so much potential go to waste, but that's the way it is right now.

Edit: How the fuck does an advanced race of combined alien species with the power to teleport not understand what fucking genes do what, they clearly have the fucking technology to.

TL;DR:

Xenobotany is monotonous, no one knows how to play it, system has to be fixed to make the job useful, do it by fixing gene splicing.

Edited July 3, 2016 by Guest

[Ryan Falcorino]

I know how to do it. And to find the regent gene: All you have to do is splice on genes until the yield/endurance changes. the gene that changes those two has a almost 99% chance of being the regent gene. All this would do would making xenobotany easy mode. All this job takes is time and learning the tricks. No real need for change.

[alexslayer30]

I know how to do it. And to find the regent gene: All you have to do is splice on genes until the yield/endurance changes. the gene that changes those two has a almost 99% chance of being the regent gene. All this would do would making xenobotany easy mode. All this job takes is time and learning the tricks. No real need for change.

That's not what I'm arguing, of course that's what you have to do, but doing that can take an hour, and I used to play for like 9 hours plus of just doing this over and over to make drugged tomatoes to use as a chemical weapon, but by the time I'm done, round is half over. Its not a matter of skill, its a matter of luck, and trust me, I have a system for doing this and cutting down on time hard. also, the gene thing, only works if you plant it and bear fruit, then you know its the reagent gene, and that's the only time it tells you.

[Ryan Falcorino]

Yes - But every other gene tells you if you got it, without needing to plant it. You can also order exotic seed crates to speed up gene finding. And most jobs can take up a hour of gameplay to do what you want to do.

These are your suggestions.

 

Make it so that way you know what the genes do.

Make it so that the genes are always the same.

Make it one machine so its less grindy and you don't need discs.

My favourite: Make it one machine, you stick in a seed packet on side, and the other and the other side, in the middle is a list of genes, you click a gene and BOOP other packet gets it, the genes are labelled like : Makes plant glow, or if you click the corn oil adds the corn oil.

 

If every gene will always be the same, and the machines are all merged, and nothing is ever different, then with one exotic seed crate, you could create a fast spreading vine that injects lethal amounts of chemicals into someone within twenty minutes of the shift start. That would be insane, and theirs no real reason. Most single antags (Traitors, changelings, ect,) take around a hour or so to prepare their job's shit and such to do what they want to do. And if your not a antag, you can still make whatever you want to make within one hour if you work hard at it.

[Nanako]

Ryan has a point.

Xenobotany is pretty engaging because of this mystery, and work involved in creating stuff.

However, you do also have a point that the round is usually close to over before you can make something cool.

I have a compromise, and it's a simple one.

Have a few genes each round be already identified. maybe 1-3 of the possible genes, chosen at random, you'll be able to know what they do. Perhaps there's research notes pinned to a wall from the last worker there telling you what they discovered

This would keep the same process, but make it a little shorter