Botany Design Doc

[ahandleman]

Not really sure this is ready to merge yet, but wanted to post it and get commentary.

Trying to get a good writeup of what I think the goals of botany design should be, as I'm thinking about ways to fix some of the pain points in the department (mainly the wide gap between experienced and inexperienced botanists).

[iaada]

In this document you prescribe a lot of solutions and write a lot of descriptions of how things should be. A prescriptive document has it's place, but what I'm looking for in a design document is the fun. I want to know why a player enjoys the proposed gameloop, and how it fits into the game as a whole.

From your second design pillar I got the feeling that your design is all about the gambling. That's a valid design, but I don't think gambling should be a central pillar. The goal of a botanist shouldn't be to gamble, but to invent a brand new apple and steal the market share of honey crisp.

Finally, you have this document described as "botany" when what you're really writing about is the "botanist" role. Botany is the game system, and ideally much broader than the one role. Botanist is the game role which mans the "hydroponics" subdepartment, and is the topic that you wrote about. You should rename the document to either botanist or hydroponics.

[iaada]

An issue I have with "faster and more productive" in that Botany has historically produced too many items. Entity count and technical concerns aside (RIP point light mutation), getting a ton of items has a high possibility of breaking other designs with exponential growth.

It's great for Botany to be providing for others and even getting better at it over time, but the focus shouldn't be on more but better. To harvest one huge blood tomato, instead of six moderately sized blood tomatoes.

Also in this pillar you get bogged down a lot in specifics. "What" they're doing is presumably deep and varied, and something to be expanded upon later. Your telling me the number one most important thing about the design here, and I need to know why it's good and how it fits (reference pillars).

Suggested change

	## Pillar 1: Botany is a Provider
	The goal of the Botany department should be to provide for the station. Food for the Kitchen, bounties for Cargo, and reagents for Chem. Core progression for botany should give botany the tools to make this production faster and more productive. Ideally botany, while being able to make use of \*some\* of their production, will need to give it to other departments to see the best use of it. This means favoring making precursors over finished chemicals, bounties instead of raw sellables, and ingredients, not ready to eat food.
	Botany should feel at its best when getting special treats for other departments \- not when they squirrel away in their botany hole for 60 minutes then come out with a god plant.
	## Pillar 1: Hydroponics is a Provider
	The moment to moment goals of the botanist is in providing for individuals across the station. They produce a wide variety of items, but few with any use to themselves. Lacking the ability to achieve their dreams on their own the botanist gives away what they make in exchange for what they want, masking their greed in a veil of generosity.

[iaada]

I would refactor this section into a more abstract goal than naked gambling and specific implementation. Talk about the fiction of being in the role, and what feelings the mechanics are meant to invoke. It's also good to connect the second pillar to the first to weave a narrative through the design.

And always keep in your mind how you can tie your words to the core pillars. Describing different options speaks to player agency, and jokes help to ground yourself in the comedy pillar. Mention chance for unpredictability and chaos, and try to reference other systems when it doesn't distract from the proposed design.

Suggested change

	## Pillar 2: Gamba is King, Sometime a Jack Will Do
	Random mutations and luck based rolls should be better than their more consistent counterparts. If you randomly get a chemical on a plant, it should be better than a plant which is guaranteed to have that chemical. This encourages players to roll for better options and leads to asymmetric shifts where botany is producing different things in high quantities each shift.
	Skill expression should come from how you put together the various pieces you get.
	Most things should be possible in worse forms with relative consistency. If the station needs omnizine, botany should be able to work towards and produce it \- just not at the same rate as if they get a lucky omnizine roll on something.
	## Pillar 2: GMOs are Good for You
	In order to be a good provider, Hydroponics need good produce. The role of botanist is primarily concerned with creating better plants than what they started with. They carefully iterate new strains with precise tools and refined chemicals, or throw caution to the wind and chance it with uranium. All in pursuit of the universe's most electrically charged grape.

[iaada]

Your core concept is your elevator pitch; Tell me everything I need to know in one paragraph. One sentence if you can swing it, and maybe even make it funny. I want to see Hydroponics through your eyes. What's your vision? What am I supposed to feel when I think about the Botanist?

For example, take the game's core concept:

Space Station 14 is a game where disasters, enemies, and incompetence conspire to make each shift aboard the station a unique and hellish experience.

It doesn't explain moment to moment gameplay, but paints a picture of what the game might be. It inspires the imagination, while displaying a sense of humor to establish a tone. I might not know what Space Station 14 is exactly but I'm inspired to think about what my Space Station 14 would be.

[iaada]

This is a good pillar in helping to describe the difficulties to be expected, but again is very specific about what those costs are. You want to spark imagination in the top level design, not prescribe a solution.

Suggested change

	This also means that gambling should focus more towards randomness on **WHAT** you get. Ideally there are pros and cons to most outcomes, instead of randomly getting either a good outcome or a bad one.
	## Pillar 3: Good Things Have Costs
	Having an awesome plant that produces massive quantities of stuff is great. It should also require more work. Balancing these costs is the botanist's primary loop, making do with bad mutations while they work and barter their way to better results.

[iaada]

It's here where you could (optionally) include a player story. This would still be pretty light on specifics, but begin introduce some structure to the previous abstractions. It would describe a problem or two and how it's overcome, and float some ideas about what the "endgame" looks like.

Next a segment on the appearance. "How it looks" is not often written down but no less important. What are it's primary colors? It's secondary colors? It's vibe?

Finally after that I have roundflow, and here's the closest a top level design document gets into specifics. In the player story we only focused on the player perspective, but now work the design into the greater game. What does it contribute, and how does it interact with the rest of the game. How does this design improve the experience of everyone? What challenges has this design had in the past, what challenges do you expect?