Give Porta-Gene another chance?

[69andahalf]

why not make it so it requires a powersource

either by powercells, hooking it directly into an apc/powergrid

it'd be nice so that someone can't just rush and immediately steal it and hide somewhere in maint for the entire round with it

Why not make it like the portal in telescience where is draws a massive amount of power?

It'd be cool if there was a downside to using a port-a-gene, such as the machine glitching out and resting someone's genetics entirely, changing them into someone else, or giving them a new set of random genes. Something that makes it more annoying to use than the ones in genetics so they don't hide off in a dark corner and only come out at the end of the round as a genetic monster to murder the antags.

It might also be nice if you had to build one from a circuit board found somewhere in telescience or the debris field. It could be found in some old broken down part-a-gene, surrounded by horribly modified monkeys out for blood. It'd at least explain why it's buggy/has a huge drain on power.

There was something hufflaw was working on like this, but I don't know if he wants to talk about it or not.