Botanist

Overview

Botany/Hydroponics is the department of the station which is responsible for growing produce and medicinal plants. Botanists can supply the chef with ingredients to make many in-demand dishes (e.g. pizza), the bartender with fruits/sugar for booze, medbay with various medicines, and the Quartermasters with shit to sell so they can order more monkeys. Realistically, nobody expects the botanists to do anything but grow and smoke weed. Because of this, botany is a good place to go when you're still learning the game. Hydroponics is located two doors south of the bar and botanists can be identified by their green suits.

Getting Started

First off, grab a produce satchel and a watering can from one of the lockers. Then, take a seed of your choice from the seed dispenser and place it into one of the pots located in the westernmost portion of the department. The plant will grow over time, until it becomes harvestable. Click on the plant with an empty hand to harvest it, and then drag one of the items into the produce satchel in your pocket/bag to quickly gather up all of the harvest. Then click a floor tile or crate with the produce satchel in your active hand to empty it and do whatever you want with it.

Taking care of your plants:

Every plant that isn't a weed needs water to live, and any live plant in a pot will gradually use up the pot's water supply. If the plant doesn't have enough water, it will slowly lose health. Unhealthy plants will give worse harvests and can die if they don't get attention. Conveniently, there is a water indicator on every pot. If the indicator is yellow or red, the plant needs to be watered. If it's green, then the pot is fine. If it's blue, then you've given the plant too much water, which hurts the plant, but not as much as not having enough water.

You can use fertilizer to make the plants healthier and increase crop yield, but they will need more water. Extra fertilizer can be manufactured by placing unwanted seeds and produce into the compost tank.

Better Plants through Science

Located directly south of the seed dispenser is a plant gene manipulator. With it you can modify the genes of a seed to make a better plant. Place seeds into the machine, select seed irradiation, and then pick a stat to try to improve. Be careful though, every time you irradiate a seed, there's a chance that the seed will be destroyed. This chance increases as the seed is more irradiated.

The plant stats are:
Maturation rate – Affects the time it takes for a plant to grow to maturity. Lower is better.
Production rate - Affects the time it takes for a plant to grow from maturity to harvest. Lower is better
Lifespan – Affects the number of harvests possible from a single plant. Higher is better.
Endurance – affects the amount of time a plant can live without water or with poison. Higher is better.
Potency – affects the amount of drug which can be extracted from a plant's harvest. Higher is better.

Irradiating seeds may also lead to mutant plants, which are usually cool. Use a plant analyzer or a botanist pda to scan the seeds for any unusual genes.

Okay now how to get weed

Get a screwdriver and a multitool, use the screwdriver on the seed dispenser, pulse the wires until you find the one that gives you access to cannabis seeds. You don't need insulated gloves for this. Then after you grow the dank, pick up a leaf and a piece of paper, click on the paper to roll it up into a blunt, put it in your mouth, and light it up. Then go pass out in a tunnel to get eaten by a changeling.

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