Botany Design Pitch

src/SUMMARY.md

@@ -278,6 +278,7 @@ Space Station 14
 			- [Secdog Unit Ghost role](en/space-station-14/departments/security/proposals/SecDog.md)
 	- [Service](en/space-station-14/departments/service.md)
 		- [PR Guidelines](en/space-station-14/departments/service/guidelines.md)
+		- [Botany](en/space-station-14/departments/service/botany.md)
 
 		- [Proposals]()
 			- [Plant Genetics](en/space-station-14/departments/service/proposals/plant-genetics.md)

src/en/space-station-14/departments/service/botany.md

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+# Botany
+
+## Core Concept
+
+The botanist is the station's supplier of fresh produce and raw chemical resources, from berry juice to bicaridine. But plants are complicated organisms with much room for growth, in more ways than one. With the power of botanical science and a bit of ""genetic"" """engineering""", a great botanist can design bizarre fruits and horticultural solutions, and like any great scientist, maybe create more problems in the process.
+
+## Introduction
+
+The basic loop of Botany is simple and intuitive enough for anyone to jump into - plant a seed, give it water and nutrients, remove the weeds, and harvest it when it's ready. The purpose that produce serves for the rest of the crew is straightforward - chefs need ingredients, bartender needs juices, chemists need raw chemicals.
+
+However, plants are complicated and fickle organisms, with many variables for growth. Plants are time-consuming to grow and limited in yield and quality, and you only have so many trays. They are needy, and require continuous maintenance. Each plant has its own numbers, with much room for adjustment and improvement.
+
+The difference between a mere backyard gardener and a true botanical scientist is ambition. You can throw tomatoes at people you don't like - but what if you could destroy your enemies with the power of improvised tomato bombs? What if you could make a pumpkin pie that'll REALLY knock their shoes off? What if you could make miracle cure apples, and save the world?
+
+## Design Pillars
+
+### P1: Botany is a science
+
+Botany should invoke curiosity, and reward experimentation and discovery. Botanists need a way to look at their data, and reliable ways to modify their variables. 
+
+Designing an interesting crop should make you look and feel like a mad scientist. Producing a plant that does its job well should be a product of accumulated skill via knowledge and observation.
+
+### P2: There is always room for growth
+
+Botany is about setting goals, and devising a procedure to get there. What kind of plant do I want? How do I make it? There are multiple paths to reach your goals, each one viable to pursue for one reason or another. Some are weak but reliable, some are effective but risky, some are resource-intensive or time-consuming.
+
+You can't make the "perfect plant" reliably every round, in a reasonable amount of time, with a reasonable amount of resources - but you can certainly try to make "good" ones.
+
+### P3: Botany is always interesting
+
+Botany should not require the cooperation of a busy coworker and an hour-long wait before you can get into "the interesting part". A botanist should be able to play and experiment at all levels of the round's progression.
+
+An advanced botanist's procedure often consists of adding chaos to their plants (mutations) and moving traits and numbers to their other plants (crossbreeding). Botany should have various sources of chaos to draw from.
+
+### P4: Share the fruits of your labor
+
+Botany is a provider of unique resources. It should be useful, or at least novel in ways that can be shared. A botanist often has little intrinsic use for their produce, so why keep them to yourself? Your unusual produce should be worth showing off.
+
+## Objectives
+
+The term "botany" is currently far from being utilized to its full potential - botany is not just mere agricultural work, but a whole subject of plant study. Though, a space botanical scientist certainly might skew a bit more "mad" than your average ecological surveyor.
+
+The variables that go into growing plants are a wide-open door for optimization and dynamic mechanical design. The stats and characteristics of a plant are a resource that can be modified, moved around, and iterated on. A good botanist wants to look for ways to make their plants better so they can effectively and efficiently address the needs of the crew. A great botanist can set ambitious goals and has an idea of how to reach it.
+
+There should not be one "best" way to get the best results - each method has its tradeoffs, a balance of risk vs. reward, or isn't always available. Botany should feel like a puzzle with many possible end-goals and many solutions, and fun can be had in exploring new methods, refining your process, producing something that bewilders the crew, or watching your plants do something completely unexpected.
+
+A new plant species should add new resources to the sandbox - for both other crew (such as cooking ingredients) and the botanist themselves (in the form of stat and trait composition). New traits can be developed to add variety to the kinds of interactions you can have with your plants.
+
+Basic botany should remain easy to understand, but a plant might do something novel and observable to pique the curiosity of an amateur gardener. While the underlying systems and dynamics might be complex, the data should be easy to understand.
+
+### Example 1: The Amateur Botanist
+
+An amateur botanist reads through their botany guide and dispenses a few seeds based on what they think would be useful. Wheat? Tower-caps for wood? Tomatoes?
+
+The botanist examines their plant's stats and traits. The tomatoes have a trait that cause them to burst when thrown, while the tower caps have a trait that requires a sharp tool to harvest them.
+
+While monitoring the health of their plants, they notice one of their tower-caps is using less water. Upon examination, the tower-caps have **randomly** acquired a trait that halves the plant's water usage. The botanist doesn't know what to do with this information yet, but, hey, they might as well use the tower-cap with the good trait for seeds!
+
+The botanist later plants cocoa, which has a high water consumption rate. The botanist finds out that they can crossbreed a plant to transfer their stats and traits, so they crossbreed their "halved water consumption" trait into the cocoa, bringing its water usage to a reasonable level.
+
+### Example 2: Miracle Cure Apples
+
+An advanced botanist wants to make a plant with the ability to cure all ailments. To do so, they have three primary goals:
+
+- Give the plant healing properties.
+- Make the produce strong enough to heal *anything*, even high damage levels.
+- Distribute their miracle cure to the crew - either by making lots of produce, or something else.
+
+The botanist decides to use apples as a base crop, to send a message of how they *really* feel about the station's doctors. Plus, they know apples can be mutated into golden apples to produce **doctor's delight**, a "universal" healing chemical.
+
+They have a variety of options to increase the potency of the plant, many of which have a lot of trade-offs. Their most accessible option to start is using robust harvest, which increases the plant's potency, but reduces yield. They have 60 potency now, but the trees only make 1 apple.
+
+The botanist needs to change the species of the apples into golden apples. They could use unstable mutagen, of course, but they may have other options. They try a technique that produces golden apples from apples more consistently, but it hurts the seed in the process.
+
+They do this and end up with a damaged golden apple seed, so they have to plant the golden apple seed in order to take healthier seeds. While the golden apples are pretty good, they're no cure-all yet; they're not strong enough, they're slow to produce, and they don't cure *everything*.
+
+The botanist plants oranges and gambles with mutations to produce **extradimensional oranges**, which contain haloperidol - which removes a wide variety of drug effects. In the process, the oranges develop a handful of negative mutations, adding a variety of tradeoffs in exchange for increasing the plant's potency by small amounts.
+
+The botanist crossbreeds haloperidol production and some of the more "acceptable" negative traits from the oranges into the golden apples, increasing its potency to 84. The plant is starting to do some strange stuff now - like spitting acid at the botanist - but it's fine, they have a work-in-progress miracle cure right on hand! (They may consider ordering a biosuit.)
+
+At this point, the botanist might want to consider producing *more* of their medicinal apples, at least to keep up with their own health. They have a few options:
+
+- Increase yield, which is very likely to reduce potency.
+- Increase production rate instead, making the trees more frequently harvestable.
+- Plant more acid-spitting golden apple trees (dangerous, obviously).
+
+They try the second option, lowering the plant's production time and minorly damaging the seed in the process. This is fine, because they took measures to ensure the seed's health.
+
+Now the botanist wants to maintain multiple trees of their medicinal apples, but there's just one problem - the golden apple trees' acid spit attacks would almost definitely render the place uninhabitable. The botanist considers their options:
+- Remove the acid spit trait from the golden apple trees, reducing its potency but increasing their own survival chances.
+- Build defensive fortifications, or simply stay out of Botany.
+- Add another trait to the plant that synergizes with acid spit, so that the acid spit attacks inject doctor's delight into its targets!
+
+This botanist, genius that they are, decides to pursue the third option. They could crossbreed with nettle, which has a trait to inject chemicals into the holder that also happens to affect acid spit, but they would need to order exotic seeds. They could also try using their apples or oranges to gamble for this trait using unstable mutagen.
+
+Once the botanist does this, they come to a realization - now their plant tray is a mobile medicine delivery turret! They could leave their plant in a public hallway. People passing by would be hit with medicinal acid spit, and the crew would definitely thank them! (The haloperidol will *probably* put them to sleep, but at least you'll wake up sober...)
+
+As a side effect, you can no longer pick up the apples bare-handed without injecting some of its contents into you - but whatever, that's fine, right? It'll cure you!