Balance suggestions, BGM change

src/en/space-station-14/departments/service/proposals/hydro-rework.md

@@ -80,18 +80,17 @@ Hydroponics should be able to make stuff that's useful for other people, and tha
 Current Hydroponics has very little job progress, because the only system beyond 'grow plants' is 'gamble on random mutations'. Cross-breeding provides minimal control over moving traits between plants at no cost to the plants themselves, and that will remain. For reliable results, the department needs a way to make plants have certain properties.
 
 ### Botany Genetics Machine (BGM)
-Despite the name, this does not introduce any genetics puzzles or mini-games for the player. Put produce in the machine to analyze it. This destroys the item inserted and takes a couple seconds. It will show the plant's type, traits, values, mutations, etc in full detail. Once a plant with a trait or mutation has been analyzed, you can create Botany Mutators that apply one of those to another living plant, which updates/replaces existing components/values. You can only pull 1 trait out of an analyzed produce, so if you have a plant with 4 great things you want to transfer, you need to analyze 4 different produce, and you may want those produce to make seeds or to actually use for something. Tough decisions can start showing up this way. This logic applies to both normal and high-risk mutations, and high-risk mutators do not require their target plant to have been exposed to plasma to work.
+Despite the name, this does not introduce any genetics puzzles or mini-games for the player. Put produce in the machine to analyze it. This destroys the item inserted and takes a couple seconds. It will show the plant's type, traits, values, mutations, etc in full detail like a plant scanner would. Once a plant with a trait or mutation has been analyzed, you can create one Botany Mutators that applies one of those to another living plant, which updates/replaces existing components/values. Binary mutations can also be used to create mutators that remove that mutation. You can only pull 1 trait out of an analyzed produce entity, so if you have a plant with 4 great things you want to transfer, you need to analyze 4 different produce, and you may want those produce to make seeds or to actually use for something. Tough decisions can start showing up this way. This logic applies to both normal and high-risk mutations, and high-risk mutators do not require their target plant to have been exposed to plasma to be applied.
 
-The BGM can save multiple values for a single variable as long as you've analyzed something with each of those values. Binary mutations can also be used to create mutators that remove that mutation. 
+As an additional 'cost', each mutator require a produce with the trait you want to make or remove from another plant. This might limit how fast they can be made, or means you need to use some mutators on additional plants in order to have a source for that mutator. This keeps the botanist growing and tending to plants consistenly instead of making 1 and walking away from their job. This would just mean that once the botanist has a good mutation, they will grow 1 repeat-harvest plant with that mutator applies and use its produce to make more of them later. Peas are a likely candidate as a source for this. We want to minimize entity spam, but also increase how much work botanists do for big results. As I think about this more, I start to prefer "1 produce = 1 mutator" more than saving each discovered value and spending biomass or something to create 100 of the same mutator. This will keep the advanced botanist busier, as they juggle growing their perfect plants with growing the gene-stock they need to get mutators to make their perfect plants, in addition to any other needs of the shift.
 
-* EX 1: A normal lemon tree get mutated to glow and consume 0.4 water. You could pull the water consumtion of 0.4 out of that sample, or the Bioluminescent to make other plants glow the same color, or any of the other normal lemon values. You would need a 2nd lemon to save the other.
-* EX 2: A apple tree gets a lot of mutations on a lucky streak. It has water consumption of 0.3, and 2u of pax, and it also emits frezon gas. You could add the water consumption 0.3 to the BGM's list beside the 0.4 from the lemon. Or add a mutation that gives any plant 2u of pax on harvest. Or a mutatator that removes frezon from the emitted gas list. You could also make mutators that remove pax from produce or add frezon to the emitted list with these apples, if you really wanted to. 
+* EX 1: A normal lemon tree get mutated to glow and consume 0.4 water. You could pull the water consumtion of 0.4 out of that sample, or the Bioluminescent to make another plant glow the same color, or any of the other normal lemon values. You would need a 2nd lemon to create a mutator for the other.
+* EX 2: A apple tree gets a lot of mutations on a lucky streak. It has water consumption of 0.3, and 2u of pax, and it also emits frezon gas. You could make one for the water consumption 0.3. Or one that gives any plant 2u of pax on harvest. Or a mutatator that removes frezon from the emitted gas list. You could also make a mutator that remove pax from produce or add frezon with one of these apples, if you really wanted to. 
 
-Botany Mutators are one-use items that only work on plants. They set values or add/remove components and are spent. This may require consuming additional biomass or an additional cost to create the mutators. These will normally be made by the BGM, but pre-made ones with particular stuff could be available elsewhere. Traitor items come to mind, allowing an antag to spend a few TC to immediately get a specific high-risk mutation without the time and effort, or grow plants with a specific chemical that helps their goals. 
+Botany Mutators are one-use items that only work on plants. They set values or add/remove components and are spent. This may require consuming additional biomass or an additional cost to create the mutators. These will normally be made by the BGM, but pre-made ones with particular stuff could be available elsewhere. Traitor items come to mind, allowing an antag to spend a few TC to immediately get a specific high-risk mutation without the time and effort, or grow plants with a specific chemical that helps their goals. These should be themed so that they're distinguishable from medical injectors, and be consumed on use without leaving a spent item behind. Current thought is that they'll look like fertilizer stakes. 
 
-This lets Hydroponics end up with powerful, useful plants over time. It requires them to engage with the random mutation system, but once they've identified something they want, they can keep it for the rest of the round. The biggest limiter on this is luck and time, as it can take a while for the mutation you want to actually show up. Additional resource costs on making Botany Mutators may limit down things, but the primary one is waiting for plants to grow and getting lucky on mutations you want to find. This doesn't exclude new Botanists from the process, since you could feed normal produce into the BGM to mix and match traits on baseline plants and still get a desireable result. It just may not be particularly flashy. A mutation-free plant with the growing speed of tobacco, the lifespan of tower-cap, the yield of cocoa pods, containing dermaline and bicardine to heal common damage, becomes a great snack for Security to munch on while hunting down troublemakers. Experienced players willing to gamble and experiment can do even better things.
+This lets Hydroponics end up with powerful, useful plants over time. It requires them to engage with the random mutation system, but once they've identified something they want, they can copy that and apply it to one super-plant or grow gene-stock to get a consisten supply of it. The biggest limiter on this is luck and time, as it can take a while for the mutation you want to actually show up and keep that plant alive to harvest produce from. Additional resource costs on making Botany Mutators may limit down things, but the primary one is waiting for plants to grow and getting lucky on mutations you want to find. This doesn't exclude new Botanists from the process, since you could feed normal produce into the BGM to mix and match traits on baseline plants and still get a desireable result. It just may not be particularly flashy. A mutation-free plant with the growing speed of tobacco, the lifespan of tower-cap, the yield of cocoa pods, containing dermaline and bicardine to heal common damage, becomes a great snack for Security to munch on while hunting down troublemakers. Experienced players willing to gamble and experiment can do even better things.
 
-(UNLIKELY: As a potential additional 'cost', each mutator may require a produce with the trait you want to make or remove from another plant. This might limit how fast they can be made, or means you need to use some mutators on additional plants in order to have a source for that mutator. This keeps the botanist growing and tending to plants consistenly instead of making 1 and walking away from their job. This would just mean that once the botanist has a good mutation, they will grow 1 repeat-harvest plant with that mutator applies and use its produce to make more of them later. Peas are a likely candidate as a source for this. We want to minimize entity spam, but also increase how much work botanists do for big results. I think this plan isn't where the right balance is for those.)
 
 ## Internal Danger
 Hydroponics doesn't pose much threat to the people doing it. It's not a department likely to be attacked or overtaken by antags. Kudzu is the biggest threat, and it's stopped with the hachet in your toolbelt. Tomato killers and death nettle are the only things that might actually hurt someone else. This must change.
@@ -119,7 +118,6 @@ But what you get out of this process is worth the danger. Some examples:
 ### New plant species:
 * Hellfruit. A plant not normally found on the station. Grows better in additional light, needs lots of water and nutrients, requires plasma gas to grow, heats the air around it, hurts the botanist if harvested without gloves, has a Yield of 1. But the fruit is so delicious and rare, someone will pay big bucks to eat it.
 * Pitcher plants. Grows Plant Beakers, which hold an amount of chemicals based on the plants potency and chemicals contained. Starts off with just water. Requires some effort and luck to make this bigger than Large Beakers, but should be possible.
-* ~~Cherry tree. Delicious fruit for pies.~~ In someone else's PR somewhere.
 
 ### High-Risk mutations:
 * Good/Fun:
@@ -138,13 +136,25 @@ But what you get out of this process is worth the danger. Some examples:
 * Bad/Chaotic:
 	* Fragile: Produce breaks and spills its contents if thrown or stepped on.
 	* Anomaly: plant turns into a plant anomaly, and needs Science to come handle it.
-	* Thorned: Produce or plant damages user on touch. Might already be implemented by death nettle somewhere.
-    	* Hostile: Plant attacks you for some damage when you touch it. Scales with potency.
+    	* Hostile: Plant (not produce) attacks you for some damage when you touch it. Scales with potency.
 	* Dangerous Kudzu types. There's a few in the code that should become possible to acquire.
 	* Furnace/Cooler: Starts dramatically increasing/decreasing the air temperature around it, and has extreme temperature tolerances.
 	* Anti-Killer: weed killer heals this plant dramatically, possibly also de-aging it some. Really bad if this also get a roll for kudzu.
 	* Big mob: Spawn an 'Audrey Jr' style monster that inherits all the EntityEffect mutations on the plant. Can break windows, attack people, and inject the plant's chemicals into them on attacks. If possible, eats people that are dead/crit. Signficantly more dangerous and durable than tomato killers. Possibly only available via pre-made mutator a traitor could buy with TC, and apply to a plant they crafted themselves, or specific to a mini-antag that wants to make a mean green mutha in outer space.
 
+## Balance Pass
+It's definitely optional, but the plant's growth requirements should probably get looked at and adjusted to make the Botanist's choice of plants to grow a little harder. I am always an advocate for using 'spotlight time' as the real measure of balance, saying that everything is best when everything's equally interesting and chosen. Some of that is going to be "Which plants does the chef want for cooking today", and that's outside of the scope of this proposal. We can look at the numbers for plant growth components and adjust those to minimize the strength of an obvious 'meta'. There will always be one, because there are numbers involved and people will read the code to find the best numbers, but we can make sure the meta is at least interesting and complex. This also will be the mechanical take on reducing entity spam. Pre-rework, the ideal min-maxed plant can create 510 produce across 85 harvests in 22 minutes in a single tray. I generally advocate the fix for entity spam is "Give botanists more interesting stuff to do than set a high score on produce grown", but the numbers can be adjusted to signficiant effect on that as well.
+
+This also provides a time to differentiate water and nutrient requirements between plants, and yield results overall. 
+Early plans on this:
+* No plant with the 'best' value in a growth component should be a repeatable harvest plant.
+* Confirm that no plants have a maturation number under their production number
+* Reconsider yield amounts. Do not forget the amount of stuff cooking recipes requires when considering this, but consider adjusting chem values instead of yield where possible.
+* Repeatable harvest plants should take longer between harvests each time it is harvested. If we add 1 tick (15 seconds) to the time it takes for a harvest to repeate each time it's harvested, that reduced the amount of harvests on the min-maxed plant mentioned from 85 to 11, dropping produce entities created from 510 to 66, without severly impacting the more typical cases.
+* Water consumption should be roughly connected to maturation, so players will have to keep up with watering fast-growing plants.
+* Nutrient consumpion should be roughly connected to the utility of the plant, with plants that are just for the chef being low and plants full of useful chemicals or having special use cases being higher. This should mean that a botanist growing lots of non-food plants should need to grow a couple baseline plants as compost or be acquiring significant amounts of fertilizer.
+
 ## Smaller changes to existing stuff
 
 * Sentient plants need changed. With new botany code, the sentient plant could have its aging/needs removed so that it remains present until someone uproots it from the tray instead of dying a few minutes later automatically. At a stretch, it could be given actions to do normal plant stuff, like grow its produce on a significant cooldown.
+* Advanced botany is extremely dependent on chemistry to do a lot of stuff. It might be nice to make a botany-focused chem dispenser and allow that to be ordered in cargo. It does not need all the chemicals avaiable for medicine, just the ones that make fertilizers and mutagen. Botany should acquire medical chemicals from the plants its grows, not a machine nearby.