Xenoflora, A way to give use to that elusive ????? trait in Strange Seeds

[Raydon1206]

As some of you might be aware, strange seeds in hydroponics can sometimes roll a trait called ?????, which as far as the code says, does aboslutely nothing. However it used to be tied to a plant called Alien Weed, which gave me an idea: Add unique researchable plants to Lavaland.

How it works at first will be simple: A miner will be able to find a unique flora while on lavaland, denotable by a unique sprite compared to the other four plants as well as a description of "Undocumented Plant" or some such. They can harvest a sample of this plant and then bring it back to be redeemed for mining points. Upon redemption, Hydroponics will be given a message much like science is when new materials arrive, and will be able to come pick it up unless cargo decides to ship it to them directly.

As for the researching the trait part, I'm not too sure how to go from there. Perhaps it could require growing a certain amount of samples to be analyzed before you can find out the trait in some cases, or be immediately noticeable in the case of chemicals. We could treat it similarly to strange seeds but also give them unique traits only found on these Xenoflora plants.

Open to suggestions for traits that might make sense for this of course, and thoughts like always.

[Viz]

There was once xenobotany here I believe, I haven't been playing on Paradise for long enough to know the rationale for its removal but it might be worth it looking into. 

[Spacemanspark]

As much as I'd love to have a xenobotany subsection again... science is already stupidly overpowered.

[destinycall]

Botany isn't part of SCI.   Isn't it Support?

If it is fleshed out a little more, xenobotany could be used as a way to balance out botany/rnd power.   

For example, if glowshrooms were no longer available from the hacked vendor or rare seed crate, you would need to wait for a miner to bring in a sample before completing RnD plants.   Other key plants could also be "lavaland only" so access would be more limited and depend on more interdepartmental cooperation.

[procdrone]

following this logic, botany is also stupidly overpowered.

[AffectedArc07]

Adding yet more power to three of the most overloaded departments in the game doesn't seem like a great idea at this time. The ???? trait was never really tied to anything other than debugging and bug-testing entities. A so called "Alien weed" is more theoretical in nature rather than anything  concrete that ever existed.

 

 

[PacifistDalek]

This could potentially be used as a way to lightly nerf botany instead of buffing it, put existing traits locked behind miner cooperation rather than adding new ones

[Sweaterkittens]

On 10/16/2021 at 8:23 PM, Raydon1206 said:

 

I love the concept of having more interesting things to find and do on Lavaland than just get gamer gear. Stuff like this is great, in my opinion, if it's implemented properly. It encourages cooperation between departments and makes for unique RP. You still get the good feels of finding something neat, but without it being something that upsets the round balance. Even if it had nothing to do with the ????? trait, adding cool xenoflora to find for Botany to then grow would be very cool.

I agree with the other issues being posted here, however, that both Botany and Mining are both extremely powerful as is, and don't necessarily need more toys. I think @PacifistDalek has the right idea in that it would be good to have this potentialy replace some existing traits - or alternatively, just make for some fun stuff to grow even if it's just cosmetic.