Alien Crops

Alien Crops

Alien crops are natural (non-engineered) species with exotic products used in food and, in later stages, genetics and processing. Their defining rule is that they are found, not fabricated — exploration, not the machine chain, is how you earn their seeds.

Natural vs derived strains

Each alien species is either natural or derived:

• Natural strains are wild species. They are discovered, never synthesized. The fabrication chain will refuse to produce a natural-strain seed regardless of research state.
• Derived strains are bred or engineered from discovered stock. Once researched, they behave like engineered foods and may be produced through the fabrication path.

This distinction is enforced server-side: synthesizable() is false for every natural strain, so no manual, automated, or component-forged route can fabricate one before it is discovered in the world.

Acquisition

Alien species are unlocked at the Seed Research Bench from a discovery sample, which records the milestone and returns the corresponding Alien Seed. The seed is then planted on a sufficient-tier grow bed and cultivated like any other crop, dropping Alien Produce on harvest. This path is fully standalone; where planet worldgen is available it adds further native sources without changing the rule that natural strains are found rather than synthesized.

Products and effects

Alien produce is edible and may carry a bounded signature effect just like engineered food, subject to the same server-authoritative potency and duration caps.

See also: Engineered Foods, Planet Varieties.