Make killer tomatoes worth their name

[Homtoh]

I know, I know: just order a buttload of bees, inject them with fluorosulphuric acid, and enjoy the view, as dozens of people will have their blood turned into acid and literally melting from the inside out.

But I think killer tomatoes should get some love.  Sure, they do some amount of damage, but even when in great numbers, they're easily dealt with: pew pew, maybe a grenade, and they're done, they're pretty squishy.

What if...they get squashed when they die ?   As it works now, whatever you put inside the seed doesn't count: you could put acid and hypo, no effect; you could put Phlogiston, no effect, etc.  Even when butchered, the tomato slices only carry nutrients, even if you removed those nutrients with the DNA manipulator.  IF they squash when they die, the reaction of whatever is inside (with separated chems of course) would occur, and you could make, for example, kamikaze tomatoes.  Or maybe have them work with hypodermic prickles: if they manage to bite you, you get injected with whatever they're carrying.  Or both !

There's kind of some foundations already to make them a nice weapon for traitors.   Make them so they can only carry a limited amount of chemicals inside (afterall, part of their chemical capacity will be taken by...well, the ability to live, so it'd make sense) and voila, powerful yet maybe not too powerful weapon: since they've got limited chem capacity -even with densified- you could have phosphorous + potassium + sugar (to make for gaseous "manually") but then there'd be very little chem capacity for everything else -that is, the chemical weapon/s you're spreading with smoke-.    UNLESS you're lucky with your strange seeds and get something like Phlogiston production, or gaseous decomp.  This would also make it more of an RNG weapon rather than a go to one.
Don't have gaseous or phlog ?   Ok, have the smoke chems inside, but now you only have chemical capacity for maybe some acid, or put phlog chems inside and you got some little fireball: nothing too overpowered.

By dealing with its chem capacity you could tune it to be powerful yet not overpowered.

Different thing is if you allow it to have an effect with hypodermic prickles, but you get the idea

And yes, "BoTaNy Is AlReAdY oVeRpOwErEd", but other departments are too !  And given the sillyness of plants in ss13, I think it makes sense for botania to have some of it too :D

What do you think ?

[Spacemanspark]

4 hours ago, Homtoh said:

And yes, "BoTaNy Is AlReAdY oVeRpOwErEd", but other departments are too ! 

I find that glossing over the fact of just how powerful botany already is and trying to pretend it's a non issue isn't really appropriate. 

Botany has things ranging from deadly kudzu, deadly plants that can zap people with lightning bolts for massive aoe damage, teleport people around, cause lube to appear, spread poisonous gasses and whatever other chemicals can be shoved into it. Healing plants, death nettles, nymphs, killer tomatoes, glowshrooms that spread autonomously and fuck over slings, I could go on. 

Botany is already a rather interesting department once one gets into it, with plenty of goofy and intriguing elements to discover and toy around with. 

Yes, other departments (looking at science) are obscenely powerful, but that doesn't justify raising the bar to absurd heights on other departments without careful thinking. I'd personally have science looked at and rebalanced before touching botany as it is. 

[procdrone]

a traitor botanist that knows what hes doing is already silly op. endless heals. endless poisons, endless teleports, endless explosions, endless antistuns, endless stuns... ON TOP of uplink.

Just no. Botany doesnt need any reinforcement

[necaladun]

2 hours ago, Spacemanspark said:

I find that glossing over the fact of just how powerful botany already is and trying to pretend it's a non issue isn't really appropriate

This.
 

Something already being overpowered is not a good reason to make it even worse.

 

Sure, killer tomatos could be more interesting and deadly - but the overall effect on the game would be another fairly silly gimmick botany have to be overpowered with. It's just not worth it when you look at the cost compared to benefit.

[das bread]

8 hours ago, Homtoh said:

And yes, "BoTaNy Is AlReAdY oVeRpOwErEd", but other departments are too !  And given the sillyness of plants in ss13, I think it makes sense for botania to have some of it too :D

I think the desire to seem cooler than other departments is showing through here. Experiment with what you already know, and you'll see any department has gameplay you can make silly and fun.

[BryanR]

Hahaha, no.

I'd come out of retirement just to shoot this idea down if anyone even took it seriously.

Before I turned grey I had an event with my Syndicate Intern in which a crew botanist with 100+ Killer Tomatoes made it a literal headache for me to do anything and that was using everything at my disposal short of a mass delete command. They're stupidly overpowered in numbers and can easily take out any mech (especially since they took out two dark gygax) if the poor thing gets surrounded.

[Kyet]

9 hours ago, Homtoh said:

What do you think ?

I think botany is already ridiculously overpowered, and requires severe nerfs.

I'd be against buffing them in any way, killer tomatoes or otherwise.

[Homtoh]

6 hours ago, Spacemanspark said:

I find that glossing over the fact of just how powerful botany already is and trying to pretend it's a non issue isn't really appropriate. 

Botany has things ranging from deadly kudzu, deadly plants that can zap people with lightning bolts for massive aoe damage, teleport people around, cause lube to appear, spread poisonous gasses and whatever other chemicals can be shoved into it. Healing plants, death nettles, nymphs, killer tomatoes, glowshrooms that spread autonomously and fuck over slings, I could go on. 

Botany is already a rather interesting department once one gets into it, with plenty of goofy and intriguing elements to discover and toy around with. 

Yes, other departments (looking at science) are obscenely powerful, but that doesn't justify raising the bar to absurd heights on other departments without careful thinking. I'd personally have science looked at and rebalanced before touching botany as it is. 

Kudzu: how many times have you seen kudzu ?

Zapping plants with massive AoE damage: no, they do not deal massive AoE damage, just stun (and not for long)

Teleport: that is pretty op yes, but only in some occasions

Lube: pretty op, yes

Poisonous gasses: just wear gas masks, it literally is the easiest counter and counters at 99%

Healing plants: they cause addiction

Killer tomatoes: weak

Glowshroom: valid hunting and bannable if spread unless announced

You could go on: go on !  I can go on too

4 hours ago, procdrone said:

a traitor botanist that knows what hes doing is already silly op. endless heals. endless poisons, endless teleports, endless explosions, endless antistuns, endless stuns... ON TOP of uplink.

Just no. Botany doesnt need any reinforcement

Endless heals: no, because addiction, unless he gets the weak heals which are meh

Teleports: kinda op, but if you're unlucky, no, they're not (you could teleport a sec officer right in front of you: you don't have control of where your target teleports to)

Antistuns: brain damage, good luck with that

Stuns: capsaicin ?  Nobody uses that, people use teslium and the like to stun and that's got its drawbacks (or hell even water + potassium)

[MattTheFicus]

Saying brain damage is a "counter" to the available anti-stuns is a MASSIVE meme considering a good botanist gets a "free" chem dispenser and can make as much mannitol as they want or need.

Botany is annoyingly painful enough to deal with as Sec or Crew when they want to antag, and annoying enough as antag when some valids/slaps nukies or hijack with. They dont need anything, except maybe a solid slap with more nerfs.

[McRamon]

1 hour ago, Kyet said:

I think botany is already ridiculously overpowered, and requires severe nerfs.

I'd be against buffing them in any way, killer tomatoes or otherwise.

Id say nerf most ridiculous weapin of mass destruction botany tools and make interesting ones better

[Spacemanspark]

2 hours ago, Homtoh said:

Kudzu: how many times have you seen kudzu ?

As an admin, I've seen and dealt with players using it quite often. Too often. And Kudzu is quite an overpowered plant, there's no denying that. 

2 hours ago, Homtoh said:

Zapping plants with massive AoE damage: no, they do not deal massive AoE damage, just stun (and not for long)

Even if it didn't deal damage, it still stuns and is more or less infinitely spammable. 

2 hours ago, Homtoh said:

Teleport: that is pretty op yes, but only in some occasions

Being able to randomly teleport players around, sometimes into space or other deadly areas is extremely ridiculous. 

2 hours ago, Homtoh said:

Poisonous gasses: just wear gas masks, it literally is the easiest counter and counters at 99%

This doesn't solve everything, and claiming people should adopt a meta and forgo roleplay to wear a gas mask 24/7 is quite ludicrous. 

2 hours ago, Homtoh said:

Healing plants: they cause addiction

I barely see anyone dealing with the tail end of addiction from these plants, especially the people that game the system. 

2 hours ago, Homtoh said:

Killer tomatoes: weak

I've watched people kill megafauna with killer tomatoes. 

2 hours ago, Homtoh said:

Glowshroom: valid hunting and bannable if spread unless announced

100% false. The most that will happen is an admin mass deleting all of them. Frankly I wouldn't oppose it either being removed or if staff started to consider it validhunting, but that's neither here nor there. 

[procdrone]

addiction doesn't matter for any of the meme chems because you have endless supply to keep you going without withdrawal effects. + what spark said.

[PeakPerformance]

Even if we disregard everything else regarding botany, the killer tomatoes by themselves are actually pretty good. Sure they go down easily, but a couple of bites will break your bones pretty reliably, and, most importantly... you can make literally hundreds in minutes.

 

What you're proposing with the squash mechanic is - imagine someone that could spawn hundreds of blob spores that could do pretty much any of the crazy stuff botany can do. AND they hurt when they bite ya. Could do phlog or lube smokes, tesliums arcs, it's ridiculous. 

 

Even by itself, straight up buffing killer tomatoes is a pretty bad idea - they're honestly decently strong already. Considering everything botany has on top of that ? Not in a million years, please.

Edited December 24, 2020 by Peak

[Mitchs98]

On 12/22/2020 at 12:24 PM, Homtoh said:

Zapping plants with massive AoE damage: no, they do not deal massive AoE damage, just stun (and not for long)

Just wanna point out that teslium plants DO actually do a fair amount of damage(I've been hit by them enough to know that they are, in-fact, decently good at damaging everything around them unless they're insulated against it.). 

Overall Spark summed up the rest of how I'd respond to your various counterpoints quite nicely. Botany is overpowered as hell as it is already if you know what you're doing, and frankly it's not that hard to get to that point once you start learning it. It takes effort, some wiki studying, and some testing in-game. But it's fairly easy to bring the station to its knees with a tiny bit of good RNG on your side(sometimes not even that) and some time; time of which you usually have plenty as unless Botany is already openly doing crazy shit no one will ever question you.

Killer tomatoes themselves already do a good amount of damage, not everyone is going to have a ranged weapon or a grenade they can pull out of their ass and gun them down. Being on the receiving end of them personally many times, I can safely tell you even one tomato can spell a much needed trip to the medbay. Get a lot of them and you're basically dead without a ranged weapon.

Even if tomatoes AREN'T that good...botany needs no buffs. It's arguably more brokenly OP than science, and that's saying quite a bit. Especially as said above addictions are a moot point since you can just grow an endless supply of whatever you need.

[Jayne Steller]

I've seen people kill a colossus on lavaland with killer tomatoes alone. I've had a bag of healing tomatoes that you throw onto yourself and heals all kinds of damage. Botany can be the end and create all for dangerous and useful things on station. That being said it's overpowered as it is quite limitless. Most departments are restricted and have to ask for something from a head or others will notice and say something about suspicious behavior but all botany has to do is ask for a chem dispenser at round start from science or get some unstable mutagen from medical. It is not restricted in any shape, way or form. Botany doesn't need stuff like guns when they can make acidic tomatoes that put you into crit with two or three hits and has the capability to fight a giant mech if they wanted to.

Overpowered, why the hell can botanist fight mechs?

[robveelben]

Botany really doesn’t need to be stronger as the people above stated as what I am worried about is that if botany is to strong that sec cannot deal with them without using lethals and what your suggestion is just that I do not approve of this thing to be added.