Spicing up Genetics.

[Glamurio]

Gene harvester:

A device to harvest genetic material from anyone, however this damages their genetic stability and they need mutadone to recover it.
Monkeys give 5 per harvest, Players give 15 per harvest (changelings have a qurik of giving 30 even) . Damage is around 5%-15% per harvest (random). 
It takes 4-5 seconds to do one harvest on someone. They of course cannot move during this procedure.
Genetic material will be sent immidently to the genetic storage.

Genetic Reclaimer:
Yay! Genetics gets their own reclaimer so they can get extra genetics from dead monkeys or players.
The only difference? It spits out a corpse that is like it's been drained like a changeling would kill his victims.
Now genetics and changelings have something in common!! They drain corpses.
This means we can have genetics fight over a corpse to drain it, then toss it into the cloner reclaimer. Of course drained corpses will now give less reclaim.

Sample research:
While genetics is fun and all...we still have a dead section in medical, pathology... so while not retool some of it to genetics?
NO NO NO! I don't mean return it. I mean genetics can use that lab to research "Samples" they obtain.
Not make diseases.. more like check virus's, bacteria's and parasites for additional samples.
See it like artifact research but for genetics.
They get a sample sent in, they can research it to see it's mutation effects or activate it... but if they do it wrong the "infect themselves" with a mutation they can't get rid off till the virus, parasite, bacteria has been treated.

Can they infect others? Well it depends on the settings the devs/admins will allow for this idea.
But yea.. bringing back Pathology in a different way for genetics to research mutations in virus, bacteria and parasites for genetic materials and mutations makes the most sense. But no making on Pathogens... only researching samples found with random ones like artifacts.
When they run out... they gotta find more somehow... (might have to order some via cargo)

So, like I previously mentioned, I, too, believe that genetics is currently one of the prime candidates for a rework. There's a couple of really interesting systems buried underneath, and I know it's often played up as a meme, but geneticists being too absorbed into their consoles is actually a big issue that stems from the fact that the early game is often fairly boring and slow as you wait minute after minute researching various genes, and then slowly picks up while becoming suddenly very involved.

The gene harvester is a very cool conceptual idea, and I've spoken with others before that one of my personal issues with genetics is that it's very much just "put person in pod and press buttons". While I wasn't thinking of adding something fancy like a separate device, I do very much think that something as simple as drawing blood from a person and running tests on the blood instead of having a person sit in a pod for 5 minutes provides the same amount of having to interact with people, without the drawback of making people reluctant of reaching out to genetics because they simply don't want to dedicate 5 minutes of their round waiting for the genes to get researched.

The genetic reclaimer is also a cool idea that thematically ties together with the way that changeling interacts with bodies and could be a good way to streamline a genetic system in general. It also further ties in the idea that geneticists operate the cloning console, which is a long forgotten relic that still makes a lot of sense.

Additionally, one of the biggest draws for inspiration can be gained from artifact research. The idea of running random experiments with batches of DNA or blood and see what happens when you put it in a monkey is a lot more fun than simply picking from a list of options in a console. How about heating or chilling blood and / or people and seeing if that triggers mutations in the DNA? This could be tied to mutagen as a chem in general to cause such changes.

There's definitely an idea in mixing parts of the now defunct and abandon pathogen lab into this rework by repurposing some of the old equipment to allow running the new tests. The other idea is to shuffle some parts around and basically make the cloning lab part of genetics officially, it's already adjacent on all stations (if I'm not forgetting one), solidifying that concept not only helps unite the concept of cloning being related to DNA (who'd have thunk) but also grants us a bit more play-space introducing new consoles or game objects. Last but not least, I also think that genetics should then receive an additional team member or two, as with the increased size and responsibility there's plenty of room for it.