[Make killer tomatoes worth their name]

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)

[Make killer tomatoes worth their name]

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 ?

[Ionward's Botany Tier Guide]

Hijack ?

- Get amanitin from Amanita

- Put it in wheat, tomatoes, or whatever goes to the chef

- Watch as people die after some minutes without knowing why

- Hack your vendor so that it shoots its seeds (make sure to have one seed of important stuff in your plant bag)

- Blame atmos for the toxins damage if interrogated, and act innocent: oh, one amanita seed taken from the vending machine ?  No I haven't used it, the machine is broken, the seed's missing because it's shooting them around (bribe other botanist with infinite knowledge of plants and chemicals, he'll like it)

- Bonus points if you find gaseous decomposition: put fluorosulphuric acid, mercury, cyanide, densified and liquid contents and throw everywhere.  Use wheat for maximum speed of harvest

- Redtext because you forgot and ate the poisonous food