Guide to Botany
Your dream garden awaits!
Keeping it Green
When you click on a plant pot with an empty hand, you can check the plant to see how it is doing. Various indicators will appear when you do so, which describe the condition of the plant and soil - red indicators are bad, blue indicators are good:
| Message | Meaning |
|---|---|
| The soil is completely dry. | The soil has run out of water. This will quickly kill the plant. |
| The plant is dying. | Maltreatment or harmful chemicals are killing the plant. |
| The soil looks rich and fertile. | Indicates the presence of compost in the soil. Remember, this dries out the soil quicker. |
| The plant glistens with good health! | Judicious compost and water use has resulted in a healthy plant! |
| The plant is flourishing! | The plant has extremely high health. Expect good harvests! |
| The plant looks strange... | You have managed to grow a rare mutant strain of plant. This could be good or bad! |
| Weeds have infested the soil. | This pot has been infested with a weed-type plant. You will have to take special measures to get rid of it. |
In addition, you will receive a report of any chemical in the plant pot. Hopefully, there's at least water in it, but chemicals may also include stuff you've added like plant formula or compost. Some plants may produce nectar, a delightful treat for Space Bees. Harmful chemicals like toxic slurry may also appear, which usually require you to clean out the pot.
If you click and drag a plant pot onto yourself, you will completely clear out the pot. This not only empties any plant out of it, but completely cleans out all soil water, nutrients, everything. However, this will not work on pots infested with weeds! You must find a way to kill the weeds before emptying the pot if you want to get rid of them. Weeds will occasionally appear in unoccupied plant pots and may have various effects or even produce items, but remember - these are weeds and thus are useless and annoying at best, and downright dangerous at worst! Get rid of them when you can.
1986 Blue Ribbon Winner: Biggest Weed Harvest
Plants carry genes which affect various things relating to their growth and crops. While plant seeds are easy enough to come by from the dispenser or ordering crates of them from the Cargo Bay, these seeds start out completely plain and devoid of any particular genetic fluctuations. Every time a seed is planted, it mutates a bit - any seeds harvested from this plant will carry those genes, which will mutate again when planted - this way, you can breed plants for particular qualities. Genes can degrade as well as improve, however - so be careful not to end up with completely useless seeds which produce no crops, or result in plants that die instantly.
To get even more in-depth with planting you have the plant analyzer, which can scan a plant, fruit or seed for genetic variables:
| Species | Tells you what kind of plant it is. |
| Generation | How many times this breed of plant has gone through a full lifecycle. Incremented by 1 whenever a seed is planted. |
| Maturation Rate | How long the plant takes to grow from a sprout to a crop-producing plant. Lower is better! This is only marginally useful to single-harvest plants. |
| Production Rate | How long you have to wait between each harvest. Lower is better! |
| Lifespan | How many harvests the plant will produce before dying. Higher is better! This variable is irrelevant to plants with only one harvest. |
| Yield | How many crops the plant will produce besides its normal amount. Higher is better! |
| Potency | How powerful items produced by this plant are. This could be good or bad depending on what the crop is. Will change the quantity of chemical that can be extracted from each harvested item. |
| Endurance | How much the plant can resist dehydration, poison, and fire. |
With these, you can tell how much of a certain plant you can harvest, or how long it will live, or what you need to do to keep it alive. Some plants aren't just one-off harvests, you can tend tomatoes for multiple harvests if you want! In fact, should you keep the plant happy (with blue indicators above - rich and fertile, and very healthy), you will likely have a chance at harvesting MORE than you would if you had just plain watered it. Some plants may even inherit a special genetic mutation giving them indefinite life, as long as you tend to it. It pays to keep an eye on your plants! It's just a matter of knowing when to add water, or fertilizer, etc. Plants work the same way in real life - to an extent. Don't water your plants? They'll die. Overwater? Same deal. Be careful with your plants, they are fragile, little angels~
If you want to experiment, call in the Scientist and experiment with various different chemicals in the soil. Some types of chemical will add lots of nutrients to the soil, some chemicals have a mutagenic effect on the plant which causes the plant's genes to rapidly mutate, and some chemicals are toxic to plants and will kill them very quickly. Botany starts with several chemicals tailored to altering a plant's specific traitors-- Gro-boost for Maturation, Fruitful Harvest for production, etc. The special Mutriant Formula increases the chance of a plant growing into one of its mutant strains.
Adding compost to the soil will increase your harvest. You can make more harvest by stuffing stuff into the compost tank. Clicking and dragging will attempt to move everything in reach inside, so don't do it while you're standing next to your prize pile of primo! The soil will become rich and fertile, and the time it takes to grow may lessen, or your harvestable product may go up.
Botanist Machinery
The fancy stuff you use to enhance your plants and produce chemicals.
| Icon | Machine Name | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Plant Analyzer | Brings up a report of the plants genes, its current lifecycle, and the presence of any mutations. Its functionality is also built into your PDA. | |
| Plantmaster Mk3 | This machine performs a few functions. It can extract seeds from plants, which is great if you have a certain strain you want to grow more of. It can splice seeds together to tweak the desired plant's traits. It can also extract reagents from a seed and deposit them in a waiting receptacle, such as a beaker. | |
| Reagent Extractor | Processes certain items into reagents. Comes with two built-in storage tanks capable of holding up to 100 units of reagent each. You can then transfer the desired reagents to an inserted receptacle. | |
| Food Processor | Processes certain items into a different (often more usable) form. Available in the Kitchen. | |
 |
Still | Turns certain items into booze. Available in the Kitchen and Bar. |
Available Crops
| Name | Icon | Type | Yield | Harvests | Time | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tomato |  |
Food | 3 | 3 | Average | Makes Ketchup |
| Grape |  |
Food | 5 | 2 | Slow | |
| Orange |  |
Food | 2 | 3 | Average | |
| Melon |  |
Food | 2 | 5 | Slow | |
| Chili |  |
Food | 3 | 3 | Average | Hot Sauce (breed for potency) |
| Lettuce |  |
Food | 6 | Once | Fast | Starts at poor health |
| Carrot |  |
Food | ||||
| Lemon |  |
Food | ||||
| Carrot |  |
Food | ||||
| Apple |  |
Food | 3 | 10 | Very Slow | |
| Banana |  |
Food | 5 | 4 | Slow | |
| Corn | Food | Cornstarch or Popcorn | ||||
| Potato |  |
Food | ||||
| Peanut | Food | Peanut Butter | ||||
| Eggplant |  |
Food | ||||
| Garlic | Food | |||||
| Onion |  |
Ingredient | ||||
| Avacado |  |
Ingredient | Guacamole | |||
| Soybean |  |
Ingredient | Processes into milk | |||
| Pumpkin |  |
Ingredient | Average | |||
| Synthmeat |  |
Ingredient | 3 | 2 | Average | |
| Wheat |  |
Ingredient | 5 | Once | Fast | Flour |
| Sugar |  |
Ingredient | 7 | Once | Fast | Baker's Sugar |
| Contusine | Herb | 5 | Once | Average | Can extract Salicylic Acid | |
| Asomna | Herb | 5 | Once | Average | Can extract Ephedrine | |
| Nureous | Herb | 5 | Once | Average | Can extract Potassium Iodide | |
| Commol | Herb | 5 | Once | Average | Can extract Silver Sulfadiazine | |
| Venne | Herb | 5 | Once | Average | Can extract Charcoal | |
| Cannabis | Herb | 5 | Once | Fast | Smokeable, combine leaf and paper | |
| Catnip |  |
Herb |
| |||
| Space Fungus |  |
Weed | 3 | Infinite | Slow | Grows mold mushrooms |
| Creeper | Weed | None | None | Fast | Attacks other plants and spreads into adjacent empty pots | |
| Lasher | Weed | None | None | Fast | Will attack people standing next to it or trying to kill it | |
| Radweed | Weed | None | None | Slow | Emits radiation affecting nearby plants and people | |
| Slurrypod |  |
Weed | 1 | Once | Average | Will explode if not quickly harvested, spreading toxic goop. |
| Man-Eater | Critter | 1 | Once | Variable | Becomes ambulatory and aggressive if grown enough |
Crop Mutations
Whenever a plant's genes would normally mutate (when planted, exposure to mutagen, in the gene manipulator), there is a rare chance that the plant will become a mutant variant of its normal self. These have different effects depending on the species! This list is not complete, so feel free to experiment or pester more experienced botanists.
| Mutant Plant | Icon | Species | Info |
|---|---|---|---|
| Green Grapes | Grape | Heals x2 | |
| Rainbow Weed | Cannabis | Gets you extremely high | |
| Death Weed | Cannabis | Gets you extremely dead | |
| White Weed | Cannabis | Contains Tricordrazine | |
| Chilly Pepper | Chili | Cools you down | |
| Ghost Chili | Chili | Extremely spicy | |
| Psylocybin | Space Fungus | A potent hallucinogen | |
| Amanita | Space Fungus | Very toxic | |
| Omega Slurrypod | Slurrypod | You really shouldn't eat this. | |
| Synthbrain | Synthmeat | ||
| Synthbutt | Synthmeat | Grow your own hat | |
| Egg Plant |  |
Eggplant | Harvests... eggs. |
| Steel Wheat | Wheat | Makes metal fillings | |
| Rainbow Melons |  |
Melons | Unpredictable effects |
| Blooming Lasher | Lasher | ||
| White Radweed | Radweed |
Splicing And You
Adapted from a forum post by ISaidNo
Each plant species has a variable called "Genome" which is used to track how similar two species are to one another. Generally two species from the same group (eg fruit, veg, herbs) will have genomes which are close to each other, and thus easier to splice.
When splicing, the formula for your chances is worked out like so:
- 1: Start Splicing Chance at 100%
- 2: Compare the genomes of the two seeds, subtract the lower one from the higher one
- 3: Multiply the sum of step 2 by 10, then subtract that from the splicing chance
- 4: If either seed has damage from infusing, subtract damage amount from splicing chance
- 5: Cap splicing chance between 0 and 100 to prevent bugs
- 6: Perform the check to see if splicing succeeds or not
So, an example.
You're trying to splice Weed (genome 2) with Synthmeat (genome 7).
You start with 100% splicing chance.
Subtract low genome from high genome: 7 - 2 = 5
Multiply that by 10: 5 * 10 = 50
Subtract that from the splicing chance: 100 - 50 = 50
Assuming you haven't damaged either seed with infusion, you have a 50/50 chance for this splice to succeed. That's not so good odds, of course. So how can we improve them?
When seeds are successfully spliced, the hybrid has a new genome which is the average of the two, calculated by adding the two plant's genomes together and then halving it. Assuming you successfully spliced Weed and Synthmeat, the new genome would be (from (2 + 7) / 2) 4.5.
What you need to do is chain. The genomes are generally done by group: Herbs have very low genomes, grasses and veg are in the middle, and fruit has very high genomes. Alien plants and weeds have genomes that are all over the place. This isn't a general rule either, there are exceptions here and there! Commol has a genome that's more in the vegetable group than the herb group with it being a root rather than a leaf, for example.
Out of this World
Certain artifacts can be put into plant pods with... unusual effects. Experiment!