Botanist
| SERVICE STAFF | |
| File:Generic botanist.png Botanist |
Access: Service and Hydroponics. Occasionally the Kitchen. Difficulty: Easy to learn, hard to master Supervisors: Head of Personnel Duties: Grow food and ingredients for the kitchen. Occasionally grow things for just about every other role. Guides: Quote: "No, I will not grow weed for you, stop asking." |
As a botanist, it is your duty to grow plants in hydroponics using the available trays
Hydroponics Trays
Your Trays are the most important part of your job. Without Trays, there are no plants. Improper handling of Trays can easily lead to plants dying, or becoming so weak and impotent that you wish they were dead. Let's go over everything you need to know about Trays here.
First off, there are five lights on your Trays. I'll go over what they mean, starting from the left.
- Green Light: Plant is ready to be harvested. Note that this does not always mean you will successfully harvest a product from it.
- Solid Red Light: Plant health is low. This is relative to it's max health, so if you rapidly boost a plant's health, this can be a false alarm.
- Flashing Red Light (X): The Tray is affected by weeds and/or pests.
- Yellow Light: The Tray is low on Nutrients.
- Blue Light: The Tray is low on Water.
Each Tray at round start can hold 20 Nutrients and 100 Water. It starts loaded with 10 Ez-Nutrient by default. These numbers go up when upgraded, but so does the power draw.
Each Tray can be CTRL-Clicked to enable Autogrow mode, turning the Tray a golden red. Autogrow mode keeps the Tray's water full, prevents Weeds and Pests from accumulating, and keeps the Tray fully lit. It also greatly increases the power draw, exponentially so when upgraded. Most botanists prefer to keep their Trays equipped with tier 1 parts because of this.
The Tray also has a plumbing port, capable of receiving both water and nutrients via chemical plumbing.
Tools and Equipment
Knowing your tools is critical as a botanist. There are two categories of equipment that you have available.
- Handheld tools/equipment
- Machines
Your handheld tools are your bread and butter for keeping plants alive, as well as improving their stats via grafts and nutrients. They are as follows:
- Cultivator - Used to remove weeds from a tray.
- Secateurs - Used to take a graft from a plant.
- Watering Can - It.. It's a can for watering. You know what it is.
- Spade - Used to empty a Tray of it's plant.
- Plant Analyzer - Used to scan plants, giving a readout of it's states, traits, chemical contents, and more.
- Plant Bag - Holds plant products and seeds. Can be used on a Tray to put harvested products directly into the bag.
After research unlocks them, there are three additional tools:
- Floral Somatoray - Allows you to force gene mutations and species mutations on eligible plants.
- Botanogenetic Plant Shears - Used to remove a trait or chemical from a plant, at the cost of reducing it's health.
- Advanced Watering Can - It's a watering can that generates it's own water. That's it.
Now for the machines that you will make use of.
- MegaSeed Servitor - This is THE vendor for your seeds. The 2nd most critical piece of equipment after the Tray's themselves.
- NutriMax - Sells extra tools, plant bags, and some basic fertilizer to get you going. Not as useful to experienced botanists.
- Seed Extractor - Plant goes in, seeds comes out. Also functions as a seed storage machine. It is a good idea to always keep one seed of each plant you grow. Also comes in a portable version that can be carried.
- Biogenerator - Recycles biomatter from plants to create advanced fertilizers, kitchen ingredients, paper, and even monkey cubes. The 3rd most important piece of equipment. Most botanists will dedicate a tray or more to funnel harvests directly into the biogenerator to keep it full of biomatter. When upgraded, it produces (and can hold) MUCH more biomatter.
Job Duties
Botany, as expansive as it is, has a relatively small list of duties.
- Grow food for the kitchen to use. Chefs will usually provide a list of their requests at the beginning of the shift, but they may ask for other plants later on as well.
- Fill the biogenerator with biomatter, and fill it before it runs low. Once upgraded, this thing creates an absurd amount of biomatter, and enough of a buffer may even last the whole shift.
- Provide basic materials to the crew. Wood, Leather, and Cloth are the main three, but you can also provide cardboard, paper, and bamboo.
- Grow plants for reasonable requests. You may be asked to grow holymelons for their antimagic properties, garlic for vampire threats, or drugs for the local maintenance crackheads. It's your job to figure out the reasonable requests from the absurd.
Once your duties are fulfilled, which usually does not take very long, the sky is the limit! You can dabble in plant gene editing, grow and refine medicines from plants, help chemistry with orders, and more! Just remember that you are responsible for Hydroponics, and if the clown gains access to lube-gas-plants, or a local rogue agent procures deadly plant-based acid or poison, you may be brought into question.
