Genetics
Every seed can carry genetics — five traits that tune how a crop performs. Genetics travel with the seed and the planted crop through planting, harvest, breaking, the Planter/Harvester, storage, and reloads. Seed tooltips show each current trait and the total against the 15-point cap.
A resource crop can roll the configured bonus-seed chance only on its first harvest. The bonus seed inherits the parent's genetics and begins its own harvest history; the planted parent keeps its history when broken and replanted. Each seed therefore gets at most one reproduction opportunity instead of repeatedly cloning improved genetics on every harvest. Area harvesters and crop towers do not award bonus seeds. Existing seeds and their traits are retained.
Traits and caps
| Trait | Effect |
|---|---|
| Yield | Extra output per harvest |
| Speed | Faster growth (larger age steps) |
| Hardiness | Tolerate an otherwise hostile open-air world, up to a configured limit |
| Oxygen output | Offsets a greenhouse's nutrient upkeep |
| Food potency | Raises a food's signature effect, never above the species' own cap |
Each trait ranges 0–5, and the sum of all traits is capped at 15. These caps are enforced the instant genetics are decoded, networked, spliced, mutated, or read from a component — a hand-edited or forged value is always clamped back into range, so no trait can exceed 5 and no seed can exceed a total of 15. Hardiness relaxes only open-air hostility; it can never skip the engineered greenhouse requirement that high-tier crops have.
Genetics Station
The NF-powered Genetics Station works on seeds:
- Analyse — right-click the station with a seed in hand to print its traits and total.
- Splice — two seeds in the input slots produce one output seed whose every trait is the higher of the two parents, then clamped to the total cap.
- Upgrade — a seed plus Resource Fragment raises the seed's lowest trait by one.
All of these use the same deterministic, capped maths, so an operation can never push a seed past its caps.
See also: Breeding, Pollination.