Plantdex

Discussion in 'Blocks and Crafting' started by Nica911, Mar 30, 2012.

  1. Nica911

    Nica911 Star Wrangler

    In the 'announced game information' created by Blue, it says that you will be able to document plant species. Will you be able to cross-breed the plants to grow new plants that are usable to make better tools (Potions, Poisons)?

    Some plants would be easier to breed because of simple plants with some plants, but harder to breed with others because it is incredibly complex, say it can withstand heat, water, darkness, and be able to create an invincibility potion, so you may need a more complex machine to handle all that without exploding half of your home. Certain plants may go so well together that they create a allele that has never been in their gene pool.

    Sometimes you might create a plant not found on the planet, like making a plant able to live underwater on a volcano planet.

    Some plants that are cross-bred may have incredible bonuses (tripoids for instance) that you could trade with over and over again, until the buyers find out how to make that plant, and so you have two choices.

    1 (If you wanna be a professional herbalist in-game). Keep trying to find different kinds of op plants.
    2 (if your lazy). move to a different planet, because I'm sure some species of traders are dumber than others.

    You might even stumble onto a plant that has been extinct for it's high value, say for being able to withstand heat, or be the God of Grapes or the Prince of Pumpkins.

    Shout-out to Dmmoebius for expanding on my idea greatly.
     
  2. HazardJake

    HazardJake Void-Bound Voyager

    I would believe so, I do remember something similar to alchemy being in the game. The game would certainly be able to handle something like this!
    ~Jake
     
  3. dmmoebius

    dmmoebius Master Chief

    For the ultra-awesome materials make it so that you can only get the materials through a sterile cross-breed or the creation of triploid plants (ie, no second generations or seeds).
     
  4. Nica911

    Nica911 Star Wrangler

    So your saying a complete accidentental overdose of power by mutation of a machine of some sort?
     
  5. dmmoebius

    dmmoebius Master Chief

    No, not really.

    We currently cross-breed and intentionally create triploidy plants (triploid, means three sets of DNA). It isn't even really a mutation or even gene manipulation (in the modern sense), just careful breeding. Mules are an example of a sterile cross-breed while seedless watermelons and bananas are examples of plants bred to be triploids.

    Yep, whenever you bite into a (seedless) banana you're actually eatting something that has 3 sets of chromosomes instead of the normal two.

    Of course, we're dealing with alien species and the FUTURE. So, even if the devs do go this route maybe we can go with a Star Trekkian gene theraphy FUTURE tech that allows us to create non-sterile offspring. You know, kind of like how humans somehow can breed with everything in the universe in Star Trek . . . the future is weird.
     
  6. HazardJake

    HazardJake Void-Bound Voyager

    It would make the universe fairly diverse with that huge amount of combination breeding ;)
    I'd still like to see a tree that grows sunflowers instead of leaves :D
     
  7. Nica911

    Nica911 Star Wrangler

    I know the meaning of tripoid, I was using my example as a for instance, like say you are cross-breeding plants, and you come across one cross-breed that is a 'tripoid' and you find out what you used, so you can use that formula over and over, TIME TO EDIT!!!
     
  8. dmmoebius

    dmmoebius Master Chief

    I was apparently, incorrect, polyploidy can exist in reproductive plants. It isn't because there are more than two strands of DNA, it is because there is an odd number of the strands of DNA that they end up sterile. Not that that matters for the game. I think we should be more concerned with the concept rather than 'how it works.'

    As for your comment Nica . . . I'm confused. Before you made it sound like 'mutations' due to accidents. Though . . . you know, that gives me an idea . . . or two actually.

    As we go further up the tech tree we can 1) clone extinct species we find and 2) collect different genes/traits we find. IE, we can recreate different traits in different species if they are closely related enough. I don't know how viable that is in the current structure, but it would be fun. You breed a thousand flowers and you get a new allele for that flower type*: it unlocks . . . plants that die faster! However, if you unlock two other alleles you get plants that: die faster but can survive on superheated worlds! Of course, you could have the labs research mutations to discover different alleles on known species.

    *an allele is kind of like variations on a single gene, which may or may not result in the expression of new traits. I think it would be a fun concept because you could have thousands of alleles to play with and only a handful that actually do anything for a species: so you'd get super excited whenever you discovered something new, just to find out that, when matched with all your other known alleles it doesn't do anything awesome.

    P.S. Nica, congrats on knowing what I meant by triploidy. I added the clarification for anyone that didn't know because it isn't exactly commmon knowlede. I didn't mean to sound patronized or anything along those lines. I just realize that my vocab can be over other people's heads and that isn't necessarily a good thing.

    @HazardJake, under the allele and genetics manipulation ideas you might be able to get that tree with sunflowers for leaves :) . . . I don't guarantee that'll live very long though. :(
     
  9. Nica911

    Nica911 Star Wrangler

    You are a very smart man @dmmoebius
    I don't know about cloning but maybe you stray so far from the original plants that you stumble onto the formula for an extinct plant.
    I like your trait variant idea though but I don't know how I would say that. EDIT TIME!
     
  10. dmmoebius

    dmmoebius Master Chief

    @Nica: Thank you for your compliment.

    I think I managed to stray a bit off topic . . . Hmmm, maybe I should repost some of this somewhere else?
    *cutting cloning from this post to repost else where*

    Well, as far as the allele idea goes. You could suggest that as you breed, cross-breed plants you discover new genes (via mutations) that can be 'spliced' into other plants? Most of these do nothing, but some are either harmful or beneficial to the species. Some of the harmful genes can be combined with other genes to produce beneficial effects that lessen their negative impact (or make it worth your while, at least).

    That's as simplified as I can go while maintaining the essence of alleles.

    My inner-nerd hates me for this, but . . . a further simplifications is to say we randomly discover new traits as we continue to work with plants. Super simplified.

    I prefer the alleles idea because there's the potential to play around with it after the initial discovery and see what happens.
     
  11. Nica911

    Nica911 Star Wrangler

    Thank You @dmmoebius for expanding my idea, and I will EDIT, and re-message @Tiy when I think it is worthy of his eyes.
     

Share This Page