Omega weed balance suggestions

[PeakPerformance]

Context :

Omega weed is, by far, the most insane plant botany has access to : Not only does it have a whole slew of otherwize hard to get chemical, but it also has a snowflakey volume count for no other reason than to fit said chems, and the memes (volume = 420). 

This enables the creation of very potent stimulant mixes, as well as an absurd amount of chem stacking that really shouldn't be possible. In a world where stuns and chem stacking are king, this plant alone elevates botany to a whole other level. And all of this is accessible with as little as a cannabis seed, a bit of unstable mutagen, and a bit of luck. 

Here are the changes I'd like to propose, both for the plant's content, and its accessibility :

Plant content :

 -  Remove the snowflakey volume, bringing it on par with every other plants at 100 (leaving only Cherry Bombs to have a special volume).

 -  Change all chems contained inside of Omega Weed from 15% to 5%. Not only does this accomodate for the previous change, this has two additional really positive effects :

1. It makes using these plants as your source of stimulants harder to use, as you'll have to consume more in shorter intervals to keep yourself under their influence. More micromanagements while fighting means more fuck-ups, and more skill-checks.
2. It messes up with a lot of synergies with other plants' traits, as most other chems are usually in the ranges of 15-20%, sometimes 10%, rarely less or more. Addiction is not the threat when you can produce an infinite amount of plants, OD is. This way, the range of chemicals you can add to the mix without impeding the base chems, and without making you od is much more limited.

Accessibility :

 For this, I have two potential propositions, either : 

1. Cannabis evolves into lifeweed, deathweed, or rainbow weed. All of these "tier 2" cannabisses can either evolve into another tier 2, or Omega Weed. Finally, Omega weed can evolve (devolve) back into another tier 2 cannabis. This makes it so more work has to be put into achieving it initially, and it's more prone to bad RNG, especially if someone is just dunking UM and it evolves twice in quick succession. This, however, makes the amount of seeds in the vendor, and the delay caused by bad rng less relevant. 
2. Cannabis evolves into lifeweed or rainbow weed, and these two either evolve into death or omega weed. This is more aimed at forcing the botanist to dunk slightly more UM, than right now and harvesting at least a t2 cannabis before they can go ahead and safely achieve Omegas. It prevents them from pre-emptively planting a bunch of t1 cannabis to get extra seeds in case of bad luck, too. 

These two options will make omega weed more time and ressource intensive to reach, and coupled with the content rework would seriously dampen its power. These changes are also incredibly easy to implement, and hereby are attached modified hydroponics/grown/cannabis.dm pages, two versions for both accessibility options, for your review.

All in all, I think these changes, would mean a lot in bringing the absurdity botany can reach down, without taking any of the other really fun stuff away. Sure there are still other plants and combinations of chems that are really powerful, but nothing as over the top as the I-never-go-down things you can make with the omegas currently, with little to no drawbacks.

 

Cannabis suggestions1.txt Cannabis suggestions2.txt

[Eler00]

Botany is far from an overpowered department/job, if you ask me. Yes, they have access to very potent tools such as omega weed if they are skilled and actually focus on it rather than making a million bananas for the clown or whatever. But we have to compare them to departments like science which can print a whole armory and mechs or cargo with guns and more. I think in the overall department balance, botany doesn't need a nerf.

 

If you really want to bring omega weed down, it should in my opinion come with buffs to other botany tools and plants to keep the overall powerlevel consistent.

[nice3333333333]

currently with omega weed, it's also really easy to produce Initropidril in large doses. Which combined with hypodermic prickles, make quite the nasty throwing weapon. It can knock a victim down, and stop their heart within seconds right after. Thought i'd add this to the "omega weed op" topic.

[TheMaveran]

I dunno, having your chems look like this and then soloing the entire security team, killing all of comand, and then a red alert level ERT and then FINALLY dying to gamma borgs - may infact be too much for a single traitor to accomplish? I would like to know some thoughts on how you beat someone like this, mechs? Mechs are considered OP too- poor comparison honestly.

Edited August 7, 2020 by TheMaveran