Bio Engineer Archive

I started thinking about this by reading the thread of the CU's effects on the BE profession, and more specifically, how difficult it may become to obtain meat. Personally I think they may just up the number of units harvested per creature level, but that's besides the point.

As BEs we primarily use meat and flora. Both are organic, both will have cells and protiens and all that jazz. So I started wondering, if we can take desirable aspects of certain creatures, and through breeding and generations, make them into a more desirable creature, why not do the same with flora? Obviously this is unlikely to happen, and would have to be implemented carefully so that it didn't become overpowered, but...

Already in today's technology we can breed plants. Surely a scientist of the futuristic Star Wars universe can do so?

There were plans for a botanist profession if memory serves, and perhaps this is what they would have done, to be honest I can't remember. But the way I see it, BE's need a larger market. Weaponsmiths can sell to all combat professions, and sometimes to non combatants (C12 grenades). Droid engineers can sell to crafters, some combatants, rangers/scouts, medics/doctors/CMs. Architects can sell to anybody who needs a building. Shipwrights sell to everybody who has JtL. Armorsmiths sell to all combatants and some non combatants. Tailors potentially sell to everybody in game, though it seems armor is the newest fashion. Chefs sell to every profession out there. Bioengineers however, sell only to CH's, Chefs, and Tailors. Why should we have such the small market? Sure, we also sell non-CH pets to everybody, potentially, but how would the weaponsmiths feel if they could only sell to riflemen, pistoleers, and carbineers. They could sell to everybody else, but only a maximum of two weapons, weapons that wouldn't decay for months and months.

But back on topic. If we could modify flora recources slightly, we would be able to widen our market by selling to professions who need quality organics. Perhaps we wouldn't increase recource quality, but make "meat supplements". Modify flora enough that it serves the purposes of meat (Tofu anybody?).

I see us taking a large sample of a resource, say 1000 units a try. We would then attempt to give it more desirable qualities, be they higher stats or being more meatlike. We might combine two resources, or even 10 resources. Modifiying the flora would be more of an art than a science, not unlike making pets. When we have our acceptable new resource, we would make a schematic for it. (yes, you heard right). The original resource(s) would then be put into a factory (made by an architect), along with the schematic, and out comes a new flora resource. Perhaps to get 1 unit of the created resource, you must put in 10 or more units of the original resources, to prevent this from being overpowered.

Thank you for your time, and if this idea has already been posted, I apologize for wasting board space.

evfields

evfields,

thanks for taking the time to post this. I've certainly read other suggestions that are similar to this (although most focus on meat rather than flora). I think we need to be a little careful not to step on toes here (particularly scouts and rangers) when it comes to creatures harvestables, but otherwise I like the idea. One thing I want to do this month is re-organize our FAQ a bit and set aside a section that links with the proposals that people have come up with here. We've had so many, and they always generate a little enthusiasm and then are quickly forgotten about a week later. Stay tuned for that.

I think your proposal is pretty cool overall for the flora part at least.

Making flora more "meatlike" made me laugh pretty good. Not because it's a bad idea, just because I think it's funny to have a guage of the meatlike quality of a plant.

The hyper-flora that we create could be used as an additive in tissues. Secret research data anyone?

Very very cool idea, I would prefer it to work with floras to floras only though.

However, I doubt that it will ever be implemented. Just imagine the database size explosion if they go from many resources (what we have today) to an obscene amount (all kinds of experimented new ones made by BE's). It is not like a few pets for players, and 22 for a MCH, but potentially a house full or more for every crafter in the game. So many possible new resources. Just seems to be too expensive to make for real.

True, I didn't think enough about what this would do to rangers, though if the rangers get some of the changes they wanted as of last time I dropped by their boards (2 months manybe), they'll be far less dependent on creature harvesting. Flora to flora only sounds fine though.

I know it would certainly add extra items for the servers to keep track of, but at the same time, they would be stackable like normal resources, it would potentially reduce the amount of regular resources needed to track since they would be used to create new ones, and if a weaponsmith makes a nice run of T21's, and many riflemen get them and put them in their homes, it's another specific item for the server to track, just as if a BE/farmer/botanist made a new flora and many chef's kept it around.