Guide to hydroponics
Basics of Botany
Hydroponics and the Botanists who work there are important to the station, especially in longer rounds. Botanists grow plants that the Chef can use for food. Without botany, the station will have to live off of beef jerky and space twinkies, or starve to death.
Your Area
Hydroponics is divided into two rooms. The big southern section is where you'll spend most of your time growing goods. Trays and two vending machines, one with seeds and the other with miscellaneous items such as nutriments and tools for your job, are available where you grow plants. The bio-generator can be used to recycle plants and produce things for the station. In tandem is the seed dispenser used to reproduce your product. The northern area is where you can grab most of the equipment needed to work in botany.
Plants require nutriment and water to grow. They are also bothered by pests and weeds.
Hydroponics Trays come equipped with alerts that show specific colors to tell you what's happening with your plant. From left to right:
- ▮Green: Ready to harvest.
- ▮Red: Low health.
- ▮Red (flashing): Weeds/pests.
- ▮Yellow: Low nutriment.
- ▮Blue: Low water.
Tools that are of use in botany:
Wrench: Used to move your trays around.
Wirecutters: Used to set up the irrigation system. If 30u or more of water is put into trays while the irrigation is set up, water will be shared across trays. This will also distribute things like unstable mutagen.
Hatchet: Chops tower-caps into planks. This is also a very robust tool that can be put in backpacks.
Spade: Digs up grass floors and removes all plants and weeds from a tray.
Cultivator: Kills Weeds.
Plant Analyzer: Determine stats of plants and produce.
Plant Bag: Collects up to 50 items or 100 seeds from your harvest.- Portable Seed Extractor: Can harvest and pick up plants and turn up to 100 plants into seeds.
Plants 101
Take some seeds from the vendor and put them into the trays. Make sure to keep them weeded with a cultivator and watered. Some plants have a varied growth times, such as wheat growing faster while watermelons or apple trees take a little longer before you can harvest from them. Sometimes these and other stats of a plant are effected if you ignore them after the light warns you of their status. You have a choice of 5 nutriments depending on if you hacked your machine or not. Once your tray flashes green, you're set to harvest. If you want to replicate the plant to continue growing more, just insert a harvested plant into the seed extractor.
Biogenerators
The bio-generator makes items out of the nutriment in plants, such as watermelons and pumpkins which have a 20% nutriment boost trait. To get biomass, grab a spare bucket and equip the machine with it then put your harvest plants inside. Open its interface and process the plants. If you somehow run out of nutriment in the vendors, remember you can print the three standard nutriments here. You can recycle any plant, though if they don't have nutriment like bananas, the efficiency is very low.
DNA Extractor
A recent addition, this allows you to extract genes and stats from seeds. This is a very useful machine for mass producing plants, saving time and is super easy.
- How to use
- Go to a locker in the back room and take out the box of plant data disks.
- Load a disk into the machine along with any seed packet of your choice.
- Extract a seed trait to the disk, the seed packet will be destroyed (Note: Not all seed packets will have traits).
- Put in another seed packet.
- You can now modify the seed's stats and genes based on what's in the plant data disk.
- Useful seeds for maxing production
- Potency: 50 for Tower-cap mycelium and Cotton
- Yield: 10 for Tobacco
- Production Speed: 1 for Wheat
- Endurance: 50 for Lime
- Lifespan: 60 for White-beet
Plants
There are three types of plants. The biggest category is "normal plants". The much smaller ones are "mushrooms" and "weeds". They are a little different from the normal plants:
- Mushrooms need less light, and suffer less from lack of it.
- Mushrooms don't need water to grow. They still use it, though.
- Mushrooms' yield can't drop to 0. It will always be at least 1.
- Weeds don't suffer from high weed level.
Empty trays can be occasionally overtaken by a weed. Possible plants include:
- 1/6 chance for Reishi.
- 1/6 chance for Starthistle.
- 1/9 chance for Nettle.
- 1/9 chance for Harebell.
- 1/9 chance for Fly Amanita.
- 1/9 chance for Chanterelle.
- 1/9 chance for Tower Cap.
- 1/9 chance for Plump Helmets
Chemicals
Fertilizers
- E-Z-Nutrient: Makes your plant mutate once every time it's ready for harvesting, and has no effect on the yield.
- Left 4 Zed: Makes your plant mutate twice, but it will only produce one plant at most - if the plant's yield is 0, then nothing is produced! You'll have to use another fertilizer to harvest the normal yield of the plant.
- Robust Harvest: Makes your plant produce 1.3x as much, and will never mutate it. Useful if you already have good stats, are using unstable mutagen and don't want random mutations to interfere, or simply don't want to bother with mutating at all.
- Nutriment: A fertilizer. You can get it from the Chef, or by using your own plants. Heals the plant.
- Ammonia: Also a fertilizer, same effect as nutriment. Get it from the Chemist or hack the Nutri-Vend to get this.
- Diethylamine: A very powerful fertilizer. Twice as effective, meaning 1 unit diethylamine adds 2 units nutrient. Heals the plant AND also kills pests. Get it the same way you get Ammonia.
Pest Removal
- Pest Killer: Kills pests, and adds a small amount of toxicity.
- Weed Killer: Same as above, but for Weeds.
Stats
- Unstable Mutagen: Used to randomly mutate plants without harming them directly with toxins. Only use 1 or 2 units for optimized results.
- Radium and Uranium: Same chance to mutate plants, but you need 10 units, they also damage the plant and add toxicity.
- Saltpetre: Ask the chemists for this, this increases potency and has a chance to increase yield as well.
Plant Meds
- Charcoal: Makes your plant less toxic. You can get it by whining to anyone who works in Medbay.
- Cryoxadone: Heals your plant, via miracles. Also lowers toxicity. Get it from the Chemist, or find a nice doctor to steal some from cryogenics.
- Holy water: If you can get the Chaplain's attention and make him bless your water, it will heal your plant a bit.
- Ash: Heals your plant and adds nutriment. Also kills weeds.
- Saltpetre: Heals your plant, increases potency and decreases production time.
Plant Killers
- Plant-B-Gone: Seriously damages the plant. Also lowers toxicity by magic and kills weeds.
- Toxins, Acids, Fluorine, Chlorine: Damage the plant.
- Sugar: Makes pests and weeds grow stronger. Unless you plan to use some mutagen to unleash giant spiders upon the station, it's of no use.
- Phosphorus: Damages plant, drains water, kills weeds and, surprisingly, adds nutriment. If you manage to get your hands on a lot of it, you can use it to kill useless plants without hurting the next plant.
Advanced Botany
Maybe you want to grow something more impressive than the tiny potatoes your plants probably produced. Or perhaps you got unlucky and harvested only one of each. A plant's stats determine all this and more, and true botanists are unafraid to PLAY GOD and change them!
Stats
Use your plant analyzer on a growing plant. You should get something like this:
- Plant Age: 5
- Plant Endurance: 15
- Plant Lifespan: 25
- Plant Yield: 4
- Plant Production: 1
- Plant Potency: 5
- Weed level: 2/10
- Pest level: 3/10
- Toxicity level: 0/100
- Water level: 86/100
- Nutrition level: 7/10
You can also scan the growns:
- Plant type: Normal plant
- Potency: 5
- Yield: 4
- Maturation speed: 6
- Production speed: 1
- Endurance: 15
- Nutritional value: 1
- Other substances: 0
And seeds (you can also see these stats from inside the seed extractor storage):
- Plant Endurance: 15
- Plant Lifespan: 25
- Species Discovery Value: 0
- Plant Yield: 4
- Plant Production: 1
- Plant Potency: 5
These names may be confusing at first. Here is what they all mean:
- Age: Age of the plant. Only relevant in terms of the lifespan stat.
- Endurance: Max health. Between 10 and 100. Not very useful, unless you leave your garden often.
- Lifespan: When the age is above lifespan, the plant starts losing health. Between 10 and 100. Not important at all in plants that can only be harvested once, unless they die before harvest. Barely useful for the other ones, because you can always plant it again.
- Yield: How much product you get each harvest. Between 0 and 10. Pay attention to this, because if it drops to 0, you won't harvest anything.
- Maturation Speed: Age cycles before the plant can start production. The first harvest will be (Maturation Speed + Production Speed).
- Production Speed: How fast your plant reaches harvest. Between 1 and 10 -- the lower the faster. The plant has to wait (Production Speed) age cycles before each harvest.
- Potency: The most important stat. Between 0 and 100. Basically, this determines plant power. Mostly affects the amount of chemicals in the plant, though some have additional effects, such as stun length for bananas. To get the amount of a given chemical in a plant, multiply the reagent in the chart by the potency: for example, 10% nutriment will be 5 nutriment at 50 potency.
Traits
Some plants have special traits, that can be transferred through the Plant DNA Manipulator. It is a well-known strategy to make a plan of which plants to grow to extract the traits you need to mass murdering the whole crew supporting others.
- Lighting
- Bioluminescence: Causes the plant to glow, emitting light equal to 4% of potency. Available in multiple colors.
- Strong Bioluminescence: Causes the plant to glow, emitting light equal to 6% of potency.
- Shadow Emission: Causes the plant to reduce lighting by 24% of potency.
- Growth
- Fungal Vitality: The plant behaves like a mushroom: It needs neither water nor light.
- Weed Adaptation: The plant behaves like a weed: It does not need nutrients and is immune to weeds.
- Perennial Growth: Makes the plant be harvastable more than once, time for the products to be harvested again is determined by the production speed. Does nothing on replica pods.
- Electricity
- Electrical Activity: Gives the plant electrical charge, making it recharge batteries of devices on the consumer when fully consumed by the plant's potency as a percent; it will also have up to a 20% chance depending on potency to electrocute on slip if it also has Slippery Skin and on hit if it has Liquid Contents.
- Capacitive Cell Production: Enables you to create a battery from the plant by adding 5 cables. Maximum capacity is dependent on potency. Capacity is multiplied further if Electrical activity is also present in the plant, making it competitive with powercells.
- Reagent-application
- Liquid Contents: Allows the plant to be squashed when thrown or slipped on, leaving a colored mess and trash behind. Also splashes everything in targets tile with reagents and applies other trait effects (teleporting, etc) to the target.
- Hypodermic Prickles: Will inject its contents on the target on throw hit and on slip if it has Slippery Skin. The exact amount 1-20u depends on the plant's potency.
- Gaseous Decomposition: The plant will emit it reagents as a cloud when squashed (Liquid Contents). Size of smoke cloud depends on potency.
- Other
- Slippery Skin: Causes the plant, or any products of the plant, to become slippery. The slip time is (Potency * 0.08), divided by 3 unless the plant has lube or is a banana. Maximum slip time is 7 seconds.
- Bluespace Activity: Gives the plant bluespace properties, making it teleport people hit if the plant has Liquid Contents, and on slip if it has Slippery Skin. This usually destroys the plant, but there's a 50% chance for it to teleport randomly instead if the effect is activated via slipping. Potential teleport radius depends on potency, with 5 tiles being the maximum. Having this trait reduces the throw range of the plant to 3 tiles.
- Densified Chemicals: Doubles the reagent-capacity (that is 100u instead of 50u for most plants), allowing more reagents genes to be effective in a single plant.
- Fire Resistance: Protects lavaland-plants from fire.
Mutations
To change the stats, you need to mutate your plant. Keep in mind that mutations are completely random, but you can do a more efficient job depending on how much you're willing to cooperate with other departments.
- Of your starting fertilizers, E-Z Nutriment makes the plant mutate once every time it's ready to harvest. Left 4 Zed makes it mutate twice, but you'll have to replace the nutriment to actually harvest something! Finally, regular nutriment has a very small chance to mutate the plant into a different species.
- You can speed up the process drastically by using unstable mutagen (Use your biogenerator or ask the Chemist). The effects of mutagen depend on how much you use. Best applied after transferring it to an empty spray- / condiment-bottle, for greater control over the amount used (Right-click -> Set transfer amount). Pour 5 units on your plant and prepare for...
- 10% chance of the plant losing lots of health instantly. The plant can die because of this.
- 10% chance of mutation into a related species. This destroys the old plant and plants a new one. See the plants table for information on these mutations.
- 15% chance of a hard mutation.
- 25% chance of a soft mutation.
- 20% chance of nothing. You get a message when this happens.
- 10% to grow some weeds.
- 10% to produce pests.
Or, if you don't want to bother with species mutation, pour 2 units for a guaranteed hard mutation, or even 1 for a guaranteed soft mutation. This method is mostly safe (if a plant mutates weed growth rate 10 its tray can be instantly overtaken) even if you don't have backup seeds, but you need a dropper/fertilizer bottle for this.
- You can use radium and uranium, but they cause ill effects, and if you can get radium, you can get mutagen.
- Make sure the plant has a yield of at least 1 before harvest, in case the yield has been changed to 0 by repeated mutations.
- R&D can also make a wonderful thing called a Floral Somatoray. It has two options: Increase yield and mutate the plant. In yield more mode, every time you fire it at the plant, there is a chance the yield will increase. The chance becomes very small when you reach high levels, but it's very useful for low-yield plants. It can even raise yield from zero! In mutation mode, it will always induce a soft mutation.
Further details about the effects of various chemicals are in the expandable tables below.
Hard Mutations
- -4 to +4 to lifespan
- -10 to +10 endurance
- -2 to +2 production
- -4 to +4 yield
- -50 to +50 potency
- -4 to +4 weed rate
- -10 to +10 weed chance
- 3% to mutate a new trait
Soft Mutations
- -2 to +2 to lifespan
- -5 to +5 endurance
- -1 to +1 production
- -2 to +2 yield
- -25 to +25 potency
- -2 to +2 weed rate
- -5 to +5 weed chance
Advanced Chemicals
| Chemical | 1u | 2u | 5u | 10u |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unstable Mutagen | Soft Mutate | Hard Mutate | 10% to lose 10 health
10% to mutate species 15% to hard mutate 25% to soft mutate 20% to do nothing 10% to grow weeds 10% to grow pests |
n/a |
| Radium | Reduces health by 1x the amount
Increases toxicity by 3x the amount |
Soft Mutate | Hard Mutate | 10% to lose 10 health
10% to mutate species 15% to hard mutate 25% to soft mutate 20% to do nothing 10% to grow weeds 10% to grow pests |
| Uranium | Decreases health by 1x the amount
Increases toxicity by 2x the amount |
Soft Mutate | Hard Mutate | 10% to lose 10 health
10% to mutate species 15% to hard mutate 25% to soft mutate 20% to do nothing 10% to grow weeds 10% to grow pests |
| Chemical | Effect |
|---|---|
| Ammonia | Increases health by 0.5x the amount
Increases nutrition by 1x the amount Increases yield of the seed by 0.01x the amount |
| Saltpetre | Increases health by 0.25x the amount
Decreases production time of the seed by 0.01x (with a probability of amount%100) Increases potency by 0.5x the amount |
| Diethylamine | Increases health by 1x the amount
Increases nutrition by 2x the amount Adjust yield of the seed by 0.02x the amount Kills 1-2 pests |
| Strange Reagent | Spawns a hostile tree or killer tomato |
| Chemical | Effect |
|---|---|
| EZ Nutriment | 80% to soft mutate
15% to hard mutate |
| Left 4 Zed | 50% to soft mutate
25% to hard mutate 12.5% to mutate species |
| Robust Harvest | Increases yields by 30%
Stops natural mutations |
| Mushroom Paste Fertilizer | Stops natural mutations |
| Earthsblood | Increases progress to self sufficency |
| Charcoal | Reduces toxicity by 2x the amount |
| Toxin | Increases toxicity by 2x the amount |
| Milk | Increases water by 0.9x the amount |
| Beer | Decreases health by 0.05x the amount
Increases water by 0.7x the amount |
| Fluorine | Decreases health by 2x the amount
Increases toxicity by 2.5x the amount Decreases water by 0.5x the amount Kills 1-4 weeds |
| Chlorine | Decreases health by 1x the amount
Increases toxicity by 1.5x the amount Decreases water by 0.5x the amount Kills 1-3 weeds |
| Phosphorus | Decreases health by 0.75x the amount
Increases nutrition by 0.1x the amount Decreases water by 0.5x the amount Kills 1-2 weeds |
| Sugar | Grows 1-2 Weeds
Grows 1-2 Pests Increases nutrition by 0.1x the amount |
| Water | Increases water by 1x the amount |
| Holy Water | Increases water by 1x the amount
Increases health by 0.1x the amount |
| Soda Water | Increases water by 1x the amount
Increases health by 0.1x the amount Increases nutrition by 0.1x the amount |
| Acid | Decreases health by 1x the amount
Increases toxicity by 1.5x the amount Kills 1-2 weeds |
| Fluorosulfuric Acid | Decreases health by 2x the amount
Increases toxicity by 3x the amount Kills 1-4 weeds |
| Plant-B-Gone | Decreases health by 5x the amount
Increases toxicity by 6x the amount Kills 4-8 weeds |
| Napalm | Kills 5-9 weeds
If the plant is not fireproof: Decreases health by 6x the amount Increases toxicity by 7x the amount |
| Weed Killer | Increases toxicity by 0.5x the amount
Kills 1-2 weeds |
| Pest Killer | Increases toxicity by 0.5x the amount
Kills 1-2 pests |
| Nicotine | Increases toxicity by 1x the amount
Kills 1-2 pests |
| Cryoxadone | Increases health by 3x the amount
Decreases toxicity by 3x the amount |
| Ash | Increases health by 0.25x the amount |
| Nutriment | Increases health by 0.5x the amount
Increases nutrition by 1x the amount |
| Virus Food | Increases health by 0.5x the amount
Increases nutrition by 0.5x the amount |
| Blood | Increases nutrition by 1x the amount
Grows 2-4 pests |
| Honey | Decreases health by 1x the amount
Kills 2-5 pests |
| Buzz Fuzz | Increases health by 0.1x the amount
Increases nutrition by 0.5x the amount Kills 2-5 pests |
Replica Pod Cloning
The Replica Pod is a very special plant. It can be used to grow dead people back to life, in the case that genetics is destroyed. To clone someone, follow these simple steps:
- Take a blood sample from the body using a syringe.
- Inject it into the bag of seeds.
- Plant the seeds.
- Let the plant grow and harvest it.
- The cloned person will become a podman. They are a little different from normal humans (They regenerate in light but suffer in darkness).
- If you forgot to inject blood, you will get seeds. There's a chance that it will produce more than one seed, and this chance depends on both luck and the plant's yield.
If you ran out of seeds, remember that cabbage can be mutated into a replica pod.
Upgrading your trays
Fertilizing trays with earthsblood (grow Ambrosia Gaia)will slowly upgrade them. You can check the progress by examining the tray. Upgraded trays will glow, need no water / nutrients and be resistant to pests and weeds. They will keep the effect of the last fertilizer, so you might want to use robust harvest before fully upgrading them.
Other Notes
Kudzu
Usual plant stats affect active kudzu in the specific way:
- Potency of the seed will make kudzu mutate more on spread (The chance to mutate on each new piece is potency / 10).
- Production will affect how fast the kudzu can spread, usual kudzu spreads at a rate of 20% of the amount of pieces per tick but no more than 30, production changes the cap (30 * production / 50) and the percent of processed pieces per tick (20 * (production / 50)).
Killing the last piece of kudzu will create a kudzu seed on its place with all the mutations of the piece saved in the seed, so if you reactivate it new first piece will have all the same mutations the seed has and will spread it to all the progenitors. Kudzu can gain mutations only on spread, here is the list of all of them:
| Mutation | Rating | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| CO2 consumption | positive | Consumes CO2 from the air |
| Space covering | positive | Makes vines grow vine floors over space |
| Light | positive | About 40% of the vines with this mutation emit light slightly more powerful than PDA |
| Transparency | positive | Makes vines look-through |
| Toxins consumption | positive | Absorbs plasma from the air |
| Explosive | minor negative | On death vines with this mutation explode with a 0,0,2 power, clusters of this vine will chain-explode one after another |
| Fire resistant | minor negative | Makes vines ignore fire damage, be it plasma fires or welders |
| Vine eating | minor negative | Vines with this mutation will eat vines without it |
| Toxicity | negative | Eating vine with this mutation or walking thought it will cause you toxin damage |
| Aggressive spreading | negative | On spreading vines will cause effect of mini-explosion on the tile they spread to, mobs buckled by this vine will also experience effects akin to minor explosion |
| O2 consumption | negative | Absorbs O2 from the air around |
| N2 consumption | negative | Absorbs N2 from the air |
| Thorns | negative | Makes mobs touching or going through vines recieve physical damage |
| Hardening | negative | Makes vines not die fast from sharp objects, but makes non-sharp objects(hands included) be more effective against them, on the full maturation block the passage |
| Flowering | negative | Makes vines very entangly and spawns harmful flowers occasionally, flowers after destruction spawn flower mob that is agressive and attacks |
Adding special chemicals to the tray when the seeds are growing will affect the specific kudzu mutations:
- Adding 5u of welding fuel will remove random positive mutation with a 20% probability
- Adding 5u of phenol will remove a random minor negative mutation with a 20% probability
- Adding 5u of sterilizine will remove a rangom negative mutation with a 20% probability
- Adding 15u of blood will change the production value of the seeds by a random number in the range from -5 to +15
- Adding 5u of amatoxin will change the production value of the seeds by a random number in the range from -15 to +5
- Adding 5u of plasma will change the potency value of the seeds by a random number in the range from -15 to 5
- Adding 10u of holy water will change a potency value of the seeds by a random number in the range from -5 to 15
Sandstone and Soil
If you grow some grass seeds, harvest it and then pick up the grass and use it (click on it in your hand), you will prepare grass tiles. Get a crowbar and remove some floor tiles, then place grass tiles in their place. In addition to looking nice, it can be used to get some sand. Just dig it with your spade and you'll get two piles. Now, pick up the sand and use it; you will make a sandstone brick. Using three bricks, you can make a soil plot, which is like a tray, except you can walk over it and there are no lights. You can also build a sandstone door with 10 bricks.
Science can build hydroponics trays. They can also upgrade them by replacing the matter bins, and this increases the water and nutrient capacity of the tray.
Wood and Drying Racks
First you need to get some tower-cap seeds, grow them and harvest them. You can then use a hatchet (and some other things, but it's not important) on the logs to chop some planks. They have many uses: You can make chairs, tables, wooden floors and so on. A unique thing here is a drying rack. You can use it to dry a plant, and then smoke it. First, build a rack with 10 planks or find the ones in the botany back room (through maintenance). Then, grab a plant you want to dry and put it in the rack. Click on the rack and toggle drying so that the red arrows light up. Give it a few seconds and it's done.
Note: You can dry any plant and smoke it to consume all chemicals that were in it. You can smoke dried apples if you want, and get nutriment from them.
Things You Can Make Out of Your Plants
- Add some cable to a potato to make a potato battery.
- Glowberries and glowshrooms, as the name suggests, glow. Use the harvested plant in-hand to plant them on any surface.
- You can carve a pumpkin with a hatchet. Carved pumpkins can be worn and you can toggle them to emit a weak light.
- You can make a cob-pipe out of a corn cob.
- You can carve a carrot with a hatchet to make a shiv. It's not very strong but it's good at slicing things.
- Flowers and ambrosia can be worn on your head.
- Add dried ambrosia, wheat, tea aspera tips or tobacco leaves to a tower cap log to make a torch.
- Dried plants are able to be smoked from rolling paper, found in smoking vending machines or the biogenerator.