Future cloning.

[Jerkops]

I dunno, I DON'T LIKE CHANGE ((

That does seem like the core argument against it, but it seems like after the robotics and engine overhauls, genetics really is the next big thing that needs attention.

I really like the idea of using the cryo tanks as a way to preserve the "life" in a corpse instead of just being a slow and stupid way to heal someone. You could really kill two birds with one stone by incorporating the useless cryo system into genetics somehow.

My contribution to the genetics idea would be, as I said earlier, to make genetics powerful enough to clone a dead person using only a blood sample or a chunk of flesh, but make it a somewhat attention-intensive and lengthy process so that it's not feasible to do it if you have a pile of bodies waiting outside the door.

If we care about realism at all (and I'm not saying we do, or even that we should, but it might be fun anyway) you could feasibly clone a person from a single strand of hair or a drop of blood, if all you need is readable DNA. I've never coded in BYOND or played with the SS13 source so I don't know exactly how it works, but from what I've gathered, DNA is a variable that is only stored in corpses before they decompose. I don't know if or how it's possible to store DNA in blood or body parts, but maybe there's some clever shortcut, or the genetics revamp in the works is already addressing that.

But if you could store DNA in blood, or body parts, and you took that sample to genetics, you'd need to purify the DNA to ensure that there's no contamination from foreign organisms in it. This could be impossible if the sample is old or mixed up with other stuff.

You'd also have to "grow" a body. The DNA of genetics test subjects or patients never really mattered before, since injecting someone with DNA or mutating them in the modifier magically changed every bit of DNA in their body. Throwing a bunch of biomatter into a vat and eventually pulling out a fresh braindead human would be the analogue to building a borg suit in robotics. This is where you could use cryo tubes - they preserve and gradually repair the bodies to be used in cloning. Maybe you could make it so they can be programmed to fix a body to have more "human-like" DNA so that it's more receptive to the modification step.

The tough part would be getting all of the DNA in the body to match the DNA of your purified sample - the person you want to clone. I guess that's where the modifier would come into play, and where genetics would get difficult. Instead of just stabbing someone with an injector, you'd have to fiddle with numbers, with the difficulty of the process being a factor of how much sample you begin with, and the amount of similar DNA in the body you're using. If you took a blood sample from a fresh corpse, then stuffed the corpse and some additional meat (for repairs) into the cloning vat, purified the blood sample, then put both the sample and the body into the modifier, it wouldn't be that hard to clone the person successfully. But if you purified some blood you scraped off the floor and then used it to modify a body made entirely of synthflesh and monkey meat, it would be a very difficult process with a lot of weird mutations and possible meat-cubing.

Those are some of my ideas, looking forward to the genetics changes whatever they are.