Guide to hydroponics

Welcome to the farm

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Hydroponics. This is your home.

Hydroponics and the Botanists who work there are important people on the station, especially in longer rounds. Botanists grow plants and supply the Chef with various fruits, vegetables, shrooms and even chemicals at times. Without those the chef cannot make most types of food. Without those types of food, the denizens of the station will have to live off of vending machines or fried meat, which is not all that exciting. That said, make sure to ask or listen to the chef for what he wants, unless you're not all that interested in making food and would rather experiment with new breeds of plants... you could even make killer tomatoes!

What is where

Hydroponics has three areas to it. The main area that leads to the hall is where you’ll be spending most of your time. This is where you will plant and tend to your plants. In it are multiple trays for growing, as well as a Nutrivend and MegaSeed Vendor vending machines, Seed Extractor, Biogenerator, lysis-isolation centrifuge and a bioballistic delivery system. In the backroom is where you have your lockers, grinder and a ChemMaster 3000, so you can get some extra use from your crops. There is also a crate with some supplies and access to maintenance in this room. To the left of that room and above the Kitchen is a small garden that is shared by you and the chef. There are some soil plots in there for extra growing as well as the drop-off for cargo’s MULEbots.

Your gear

Tools you’ll need:

• Bucket: Holds up to 120 units of liquid in it. Hydro trays hold 100 units of water in them but setting the transfer amount on your bucket to 70 (by right-clicking it) will be enough for watering your plants when they need it. There are a few lying about Hydroponics, but you can always get another from an autolathe at cargo bay.

Alternately, toss your backpack away and get a backpack water tank. It holds much more water, up to 500 units! Click the backpack with an empty hand or the icon in the top left corner to extent the nozzle, then use it like a bucket.

• Mini-hoe: This is your most trust-worthy tool that you should always keep on you. This allows you to remove weeds from your trays to keep your plants nice and healthy. Weeds can also grow in empty trays, which may be good or bad. Can be found in backroom lockers.
• Hatchet: Your second most trust-worthy tool. Not as lifesaving to your plants as the mini-hoe is. Quite the opposite, actually. If you have a plant you don’t want around anymore a few good hits with this will mess them up to be pulled out. Useful if there is a weed growing in a tray that you don’t want. Also found inside backroom lockers.
• Plant Analyzer: This tool, when used on a tray, seed packet, or grown crop will tell you detailed stats it has. We’ll go over these later. You start with one, but there are extras in the lockers.
• Plant Bag: Most people only have two hands and plants tend to pop out more than you can carry. This is where the plant bag comes in. By clicking on fruits while holding the bag you can scoop up all of them at once! Holds up to 50 crops and seeds. There are some in the lockers and NutriVend vendor.

Extra tools you don’t need but are useful for when you get more into your job.

• Spade: You can use these for digging up grass floors you plant for some sand. There's only one spade in the backroom, so make sure to share it around with other botanists as well.
• Wrench: Useful for un-wrenching your trays and machines from the floor so you can move them around. There are a few in the backroom crate.
• Wirecutters: Need another plant you have planted but don’t want to get a ton of seeds out of one crop? Snip off a bit of your plant and plant that instead! There is a limit to how many times you can snip it though and each time lowers its health. Rush over to tool storage or bug cargo bay for one.
• Crowbar: Well you can’t plant grass on solid floor. Tear off those cold, metal tiles and replace them with soft, soothing grass floor. Get it the same way as wirecutters.
• Botanist Belt: What better way to carry all these tools than with a Botanist Belt? This nifty green belt can hold most of your tools here. Your mini-hoe, hatchet, plant analyzer, spade, wrench, and wirecutters will all have a place to fit. Make one from the biogenerator with 300 units of biomass.

Time to get GREEN

So now that you know your way around and got all your tools ready it’s time to start learning how to plant your crops. Plants require nutriment and water to grow. They are also bothered by pests and weeds. To check the plant, Examine (Shift + Left Click) the tray. It will show you the levels of water and nutriment and if there's too much pests/weeds. You will get a message like this:

Hydroponics Tray has Potato Plant planted.
The plant looks unhealthy.
Water: 78/100
Nutrient: 6/10
Hydroponics Tray is filled with weeds!
Hydroponics Tray is filled with tiny worms!

In addition to that, each tray has lights that tell you when a plant is not okay. From left to right:

• Green: Ready to harvest.
• Red: Low health.
• Flashing Red: Weeds/pests/toxins.
• Yellow: Low nutriment.
• Blue: Low water.

Now that we know how to tell what a plant needs, it's time to plant some. Normally the chef will want tons of wheat so make that the first crop you plant. Also make sure you’re growing anything they might want that they can turn into food. If that’s done then start growing whatever you want from the MegaSeed Servitor and plant them in different pots. Check this chart for a list of all the plants available to you.

Growing the plants

Now you play the waiting game. During this time weeds might try sprouting in your trays to which the red indicator light will flash. Just use the mini-hoe on them to clear out all the weeds. You may also want to replace the nutriment in the trays with Robust Harvest from the Nutrivend. Robust harvest doubles the plant's yeild, at the cost of not allowing any mutations. Once the plant is fully grown, the green light will start shining. Get to the tray and use your plant bag on it to pick off all the grown goods. Then take one of each crop to the Seed Extractor to get some extra seeds just in case you run out. This is very important for single yield plants like wheat and potatoes. The rest of the plants you collected then go into the Smart Fridge so the chef can start cooking. If you have any extras that the chef isn’t going or can’t use, then you can put them in the Biogenerator. This is a very important machine in longer rounds as your Nutrivend WILL run out of nutrient bottles and Cargo most likely won’t order a restock for it, let alone in time if they do. It does need a container to work but a bucket has been conveniently placed next to it for this purpose. Once you fill the machine with some plants you can activate it and get biomass stored in it. Use can use this biomass to make multiple items but what you want it for most is its ability to make more nutrients. It can also make meat slabs just in case the chef runs out of dead bodies corgis Pun Pun their own meat supply.

Growing the Good Stuff

While working in Hydroponics you’re not just limited to growing food that the crew can eat, but also some of those more recreational substances. Most mushrooms and few plants have reagents in them that are considered illegal to possess and considered harmful if ingested. If you decide to go this path then expect Security to come banging on your door if you distribute harmful plants.

Mutations and selection

Now that you've grown some food for the chef and some plants for your generator, you can try to make your plants stronger. This is made by mutations. 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:

-Plant Endurance: 15
-Plant Lifespan: 25
-Species Discovery Value: 0
-Plant Yield: 4
-Plant Production: 1
-Plant Potency: 5

• Age: Simply shows how old the plant is.
• Endurance: Max health. Between 10 and 100. Not very useful, unless you leave your garden often.
• Lifespan: When the age is above lifespan, 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.
• Yeild: How much growns you get each harvest. Between 0 and 10. Pay attention to this, because if it drows to 0, things get pretty bad.
• Production: How fast it grows. Between 2 and 10, the lower the faster. Overall, not as useful. Most of the time, half of your trays is going to be empty anyway.
• Potency: The most imporant stat. Between 0 and 100. Basically, this determines plant power. Mostly affects amount of chemicals in the plant, though some have additional effects.

To change the stats, you need to mutate your plant. Keep in mind that mutations are completely random. That's why you should plant several plants, mutate them, and then choose the one you like the most. To mutate the plant, you can use following methods:

First, E-Z nutriment makes the plant mutate 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! Nutriment has a very small chance to mutate the plant into a different species.

You can speed up the process by asking the chemist for some unstable mutagen. Pour 5 units on your plant and prepare for...

• 10% chance of death of a plant. Never use mutagen without backup seeds.
• 10% chance of specie mutation. This destroys the old plant and plants a new one. See the plants table for the information on these mutations.
• 15% chance of heavy stat mutation.
• 15% chance of normal stat mutation.
• 20% chance of nothing. You get a message when this happens.
• 10% chance of weeds mutating. If weed level is less than 5, nothing happens, otherwise you get a random mutated weed.
• 10% chance of pests mutating. Again, if pest level is less than 5, nothing happens. Otherwise, three spiderlings are spawned. Shout for security and try to explain why you didn't use pest spray to them.

Or pour 2 units for a guaranteed heavy stat mutation, or even 1 for a guaranteed normal stat mutation. This method is safe even if you don't have backup seeds, but you need a dropper for this.

You can use radium and uranium, but they cause ill effects, and really, if you can get radium, you can get mutagen.

There are many other chemicals you can use on your plants. Check the chemical table for a full list.

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, every time you fire it at the plant, there is a chance the yeild 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 the mutate mode, it will always induce a normal stat mutation.

You and Dionas

There is one special seed packet that you can get from the MegaSeed Vendor called a Diona node. You know how they say “Plants are people too”? Well these seeds literally are. When planted they will need extreme care and attention. Keep them watered and feed with nutrients and when they are ready to be harvested, out will pop a cute little diona nymph! These guys are very useful in botany as they can eat out weeds and pests from your trays, as well as replenish their nutrients. Also they look adorable and can be worn on your head!

Mushrooms and weeds

There are three types of plants. The biggest category is "normal plants". Much lesser 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 need nutrients to grow. They don't need water however but still use it.
• Weeds don’t need nutrients to grow but they do require water.
• Weeds don't suffer from high weed level.
• Mushrooms and weeds can't be overtaken by weeds in a tray.
• Mushrooms' yield can't drop to 0. It will always be at least 1.

The tray, empty or with a normal plant in it, can be occasionally overtaken by a weed if their level is 5 or more. In that case old plant is destroyed, and a new one will sprout in its place. Possible plants include:

• 1/6 chance for Reishi.
• 1/9 chance for Nettle.
• 1/9 chance for Harebell.
• 1/9 chance for Amanita.
• 1/9 chance for Chanter
• 1/9 chance for Tower Cap.
• 1/9 chance for Plump Helmets.
• 1/6 chance for Starshitle

Produce from your produce

There’s more than just food to some of the stuff you grow.

Sandstone and soil

If you pick up grass in your hand and use it (click on it or the use key) you will turn it into two tiles of grass. Take that crowbar and start tearing up hydroponics but be careful not to click on any of your trays (it’ll rip all the components out and destroy the plant it had in it). In addition to looking nicer than crummy metal floor tiles, you can dig it up for some sand. Just use the spade or a shovel and you’ll get two piles of sand. Picking up the sand and using it will make a block of sandstone. If you use three of them then you can make a soil plot. It’s basically an extra tray except you can walk over it, but it won't have indicator lights. You’ll have to keep an eye on these to make sure they have enough nutrients and water. You can also use 10 blocks of sandstone to make a sandstone door.

Got wood?

Tower-caps that you grow produce a type of woody log. Once you harvest one you use your hatchet to chop them up into wooded planks. Wood has many uses: you can make chairs, tables, wooden floors, doors and so on. Engineers might come looking for some if Mining isn’t delivering enough metal.

Seed storage

For the love of all that is robust, DON’T PUT THE SEEDS IN THE SMART FRIDGE. All because you can doesn’t mean you should. They take up extra space and make things harder for the chef to find. If you have to store extra seeds then get a second plant bag and put them in there. There’s no good way of storing extra seeds but that’s the easiest so far.

Extra things you can make out of your plants

• Add some cable to a potato to make a potato battery. Then cry when you realize R&D already make ultra-capacity cells.
• Glowberries and glowshrooms, as the name suggests, glow. Not a whole lot but get enough together and they can brighten up a room.
• You can carve a pumpkin with a hatchet. This pumpkin can then be worn on your head and lit up as a light source.
• You can make a cob-pipe out of a corn cob. If you do this, expect crew members to provide something to smoke in it as well.
• Flowers and ambrosia can be worn on your head. Unleash your inner hippie!

Beekeeping

For more information about beekeeping, see https://nanotrasen.se/wiki/index.php/Guide_to_beekeeping