Doing research fucking sucks, I know because I have been playing researcher for a bit.
The main issue with the current state is how to be effective you have to rely on rng or other roles, biomass works great IF you get the xeno corpses which happens very rarely, contracts are just grinding for some good properties and botany is still boring.
I think adding some way to make biomass with botany would be a good way to make it more engaging. the main issue right now is how you do busy work to get a chance to pull the handle on the slot machine. contracts have to be completed to see if there are any good properties (it never shows the actually good properties that you want). Contracts should be the main way to make credits, remove the research objectives and make contracts the way to get points so you actually get both properties, chems to work with and the points which you need for that work.
We could also just make botany chems better at what they are for, making them in large amounts is a lot of work for little reward outside of doing contracts which again, are just rng if you actually get anything from them. I would do changes but the rework isnt finished yet afaik but I hope we can get this implemented some day.
If you won’t have to do that, somebody with too much time on their hands will min-max it so hard that it will either need to be reverted, or outcome nerfed. If you have to rely on other players (and RNG, which is worse, but atleast something) then such risk of one "hyperfocused” guy in the field achieving too much is lessened.
If you raise the floor in that way, it will also raise the ceiling.
I forgot to add in the post itself, but one of the biggest issues I have with research is how they will spend all of their time trying to make the overpowered stims. All the property breakthrough papers will easily be found, so I thought of making those properties only be able to be found, as an example, in the far reaches of the colony (LV-624 caves, CC reactor etc.) where it is hard to access you could find a vial with a chemical which has that property, or make the “god stim” properties spawn rarely and make stims easier to make of lower effect, like a bonemending stim or organ repairing one should be able to be put out in a reasonable time in a round to make research a consistent force for marines. Balancing around the best players can work but a lot of people try research and don’t like it because you either min max or don’t even try to have round impact. I’m sorry research mains who sweat but I think we should limit what you can do and in turn make people with lower skill have bigger impact.
TLDR, make god stim properties or very good stims rely more on inteligence officers going into hard to reach places and not contract rng while making one property stims easier to make
The final feature of rework was to make biomass be optionally grind-able instead of redeeming the points, once injected into plant it would passively grow more of it, a researcher could scan the plant and see what properties it would need, if you added a chem with that property it would boost the amount of biomass in the plant. You could collect the said biomass when harvesting.
But I recieved poor feedback on this and general backlash so it got scrapped.
but to make research loop both attractive and engaging it needs a lot more content then there is currently, so no, in that sense research rework isn’t finished.
I don’t think it’s a bad feature, just one that you’d never actually use. I keep saying this, but the benefits of botany chemicals aren’t varied enough to justify using limited resources on them.
