Guide to hydroponics

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Hydroponics. This is your home.

Basics

Hydroponics and the Botanists who work there are important crewmates, especially in longer rounds. Botanists grow plants, obviously. Without plants, the Chef will run out of ingredients for food. Without the chef, the denizens of the station will either have to live off of beef jerky and space twinkies, or starve to death. Now that you understand why this is important, let's get started!

Your Tools

Hydroponics area is divided into two rooms. The big southern section is where you'll spend most of your time. It has trays where you grow plants and two vending machines, one with seeds and the other with everything else. There are also a seed extractor, a biogenerator, and several sinks and water tanks. The smaller northern section has three lockers, a crate with some tools, and some more equipment on the table.

Plants require nutriment and water to grow. They are also bothered by pests and weeds. To check on a plant, click on the tray. It will show you the levels of water and nutriment, and if there's too many 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.
• Red: Weeds/pests/toxins.
• Brown: Low nutriment.
• Blue: Low water.

Now that we know how to tell what a plant needs, it's time to plant some. Take wheat, potato and grass seeds from the MegaSeed Servitor, and plant them in different pots. Next, gather some equipment.

• Bucket: Set transfer amount to 70 (right-click), fill it in the sink, pour it on the tray. Simple.
  • Alternately, toss your backpack away and get a backpack water tank. It holds much more water. Click the icon in the top left corner to extend the nozzle, then use it like a bucket.
• Cultivator: Removes weeds from the tray. Keep in mind that weeds grow in empty pots, too, which can be good or bad.
• Plant analyzer: Shows detailed stats of a plant. Will be useful later. You'll have this in your apron storage already when you arrive at the station.
• Plant bag: Used to collect plants on a tile. Holds up to 50. Get it from NutriVend.

Those are the things you won't need to have on you all the time:

• Wirecutters: Used to set up the irrigation system.
• Multitool: Used to hack your machines, should you choose to do so.
• Hatchet: Used to chop wood into planks.
• Shovel: Used to dig up grass floors and cleaning the dirt.
• Wrench: Used to move your trays around.

Growing the Plants

Now all you need to do is wait until your plants grow. You will know your plants are ready to harvest when the green light at the far left of the hydroponics tray starts blinking. Get to the pot and click on the plant to harvest your produce. Pick up one of your harvested produce and put it into the Seed Extractor machine to get new seeds. Then take your plant bag and click on the tile with the plants. This will put everything into the bag. Now, click on the smartfridge with it to load it. The chef can access the smartfridge, and will hopefully soon start making food.

The grass is a little different. First, you don't need to put it into the smartfridge - it's not for the chef, it's for our biogenerator. Take your bag and click on the pot with grass once it's ready to harvest - this puts growns into your bag. Time to set the biogenerator up. Don't forget to replant the wheat and potatoes. Store any extra seeds in the fridge or in the seed extractor; the seed extractor is ideal for seed storage as it shows the stats of the seed's plant.

Biogenerator and Irrigation

The biogenerator is a neat machine that can make items out of biomass. To get biomass, you need to put your plants inside. Hovewer, it needs a beaker to work. You can either go to Cargo and ask for a large beaker, or use a bucket. Either way, unload your bag into the machine, open its interface and process the plants. You should see that you now have some biomass. It's important to know that you can make all three types of standard nutriment here, for the time when your stock runs out. Grass is a pretty good plant for this: it grows quickly, quite tough, can be harvested multiple times, not needed for the chef and has other uses. You can recycle any plant, though if they don't have nutriment (e.g. bananas), the efficiency is very low.

You can connect hydroponics trays with the hoses to set up the irrigation system. Just use the wirecutters on the trays you want to connect. Then, every time you pour more than 30 units of water on any of the trays, it gets evenly spread between them. It actually works on any chemical, but if you're pouring 30 units of something other than water on a tray, you're probably doing something wrong.

You can use a wrench on a tray to move it, then wrench it again when you're done moving it.

Plants

See Guide to plants.

Chemicals

Some of the chemicals have various effects on the plants.

• 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 twice 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.
• Pest Killer: Kills pests, duh. Also adds some toxicity, but very little.
• Weed Killer: Kills weeds and adds very little toxicity. Useful if you don't have a cultivator.
• Plant-B-Gone: Seriously damages the plant. Also lowers toxicity by magic and kills weeds.
• Unstable Mutagens: Effect is described in the mutations section.
• Radium and Uranium: Same chance to mutate plants, but you need 10 units, they also damage the plant and add toxicity. Worthless.
• 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.
• Anti-toxin: 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.
• 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.
• Ash: Heals your plant and adds nutriment. Also kills weeds.
• Saltpetre: Heals your plant, increases potency and decreases production time.

Bad things:

• 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.

"Why is my banana so tiny?"

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.
• Production: How fast your plant reaches harvest. Between 2 and 10 -- the lower the faster. If it reaches 10 it will be quite some time before you will ever be able to harvest anything from your plants
• 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.

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 specie.

• You can speed up the process by asking the chemist for some unstable mutagen. The effects of mutagen depend on how much you use. Best applied after transferring it to an empty fertiliser bottle, for greater control over amount used (Right-click > Set transfer amount). Pour 5 units on your plant and prepare for...

• • 10% chance of the plant dying instantly. Be sure to have backup seeds in case this happens.
  • 10% chance of mutation into a related species. 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 help and try to explain to security why you didn't use pest spray.

Or, if you don't want to bother with species mutation, 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 if you can get radium, you can get mutagen.

• 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 normal stat mutation.

Replica Pod Cloning

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.

There's a chance, based on potency, that a cloned person will become a plant-human. They are a little different from normal humans (e.g. they regenerate in light but suffer in darkness). The higher the potency, the higher the chance of them not being a plant.

If you grow a replica pod without any blood, there's a chance that it will produce more than one seed.

Mushrooms and Weeds

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.
• 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.

Trays, whether empty or occupied by plants, can be occasionally overtaken by a weed if their level is 5 or more. In that case the 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 Chanterelle.
• 1/9 chance for Tower Cap.
• 1/9 chance for Plump Helmets.
• 1/6 chance for Starshittle.

Other Notes

Sandstone and Soil

If you pick up the grass and use it (click on it in your hand), you will prepare astroturf. Get a crowbar and remove some floor tiles, then place astroturf 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-caps, grow them and harvest them. You can then use 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. 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 smoking it will give you 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.
• You can carve a pumpkin with a hatchet.
• You can make a cob-pipe out of a corn cob.
• 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.