Spicing up Genetics.

[Kotlol]

Posted in a previous topic.. but due to request I am going to add it here.

Genetics is one of the three branches I believe has one of the most boring gameplay loops of all time.
RNG and waiting...  The bane of Botany and Rancher alike.
Ranchers on the other hand have not much way to work around it while botanists can.

While we can't really remove the RNG factor (for balance reasons and variaty reasons.)
We should decreasing the waiting or give alternative tasks and ways to get more resources so genetics can push to the end game where everything is streamlined.
So I looked at other departments, namely Mining and Science how to spice things up and here we go with the "COPY PASTA"

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)

In my opinion since it will take forever to redo Pathology, why not just make it an "artifact type" research for genetics to go on.
We can use similiar code but have the effects be alot of mutations and even mutations that cannot be unlocked by genetics but can be found in Mutini's and such.
A random element where the genecists has to be carefull with activiting the Sample, since some only work by injecting while others could escape when heated and infect the closest person. How it will work as I said.. Devs will decide that fate.. But since it's not controlled by players what effects and spread it gets.. it's 100% the devs can set the variables (So no more mass infection every round)

Anyhow.. let's start discussing these 3 ideas I had to make genecists be more active in getting genetic materials or unlock mutations in a different way.
The worst thing of certain jobs is the waiting period between experimenting or doing something.
So why not give em something else to do while waiting?
More interaction is always good.

Add your thoughts in the reply.

[George_Manning]

I think it would be kind of cool (especially on an ice planet map) if there were frozen gene samples you could find while exploring that you could then send to genetics.

[Kotlol]

I think it would be kind of cool (especially on an ice planet map) if there were frozen gene samples you could find while exploring that you could then send to genetics.

Could be that mining also finds "samples" in certain asteriods. Just like artifacts.
The only difference is this will add thing to do with mining to capture those samples and such...

And it would just be "artifact research genetics" if we do that route even if it's the most logical one.
In my opinion?
There is an old feature on cargo that has you request medical stuff on the console.. uuh some sort of "request" seperate from buying supplies.
That could be a way to make samples appear and then when you find out what it is.. send the research back for extra money for both genetics and cargo.

[Flaborized]

Harvesting bonus research material currently basically all ties into interacting with other Actual Players. Previously you could get them from activators used on monkeys, but that was removed (and subsequently the amount gained from activators increased) and the job became a lot more interactive and fun. The idea of being able to generate research points by hurting someone and then curing them with a functionally infinite resource I feel pulls it away from the clean design where you're incentivized to give people mutations they want either via activator or gene booth.

I also feel that if you play efficiently you can plow through the genetics tech tree shockingly quickly and consistently. Advanced mutation research is available after researching 20 mutations, which hastens things nicely, and if you can get high complexity DNA you can finish everything super super quickly. Once you disintegrate the research budget and expend all of the points you can out of your own mutations, actually going *outside the lab* and giving people cool mutations they have can bring it heaps and heaps of research points while you're waiting for the tech tree to tick down.

I think this is a very fun playstyle and works well, since interacting with other crewmembers is much more interesting than Not Doing That, so it's good that the current optimal paths require it mostly. I'm against adding a means to generate points by damaging people and then healing them or by using corpses since I think it goes against the current design ideas of the job, but I don't represent anybody but myself and this Gaming Opinion does not represent the admin team's thoughts in any way. Genes tied to exploration stuff could be cool if fleshed out though imo

[glowbold]

Would be cool to get an NPC in a crate sent to cargo with a "research all genetics" requisition, ala the medical "remove all organs" staffie-in-a-crate req. Could have the sale also add to the research budget directly or something, too.

[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.

[Mirodir]

I just talked about genetics with a friend the other day. (Edit: Look who ninja'd me)

For me the biggest issue is how repetitive it is and how there is no room for experimentation. A good geneticist, despite the RNG, can easily get the important couple beneficial mutations in 10-20 minutes, 90% of which are spent staring at the pop-up, and is then bored for the rest of the round as nobody will want to have anything to do with them anymore.

I came up with 3 three things I'd like to see (other than a complete rework, which I think would be best, but probably too big in scope):

1. I think taking a book from Artifact Science's page would be very beneficial. Mutations spawn without names and it's the geneticists job to figure out which mutation does what. Once they give it a name, the computer will label that gene the same name for everyone. To simplify it a little, maybe the computer is gonna spit out, say, 3-5 possibilities for a given mutation and the geneticist has to figure out which of the three it is by either activating it in the monkey, the person in the booth, or in themselves and then observing what happens. That way Geneticists would actually be medical scientist. They have a hypothesis, test it, and check the results. Also to spice it up a little they could sometimes spawn already empowered, stabilized, reinforced, etc.

2. This would would be a whole other can of worms in terms of complexity and effort to implement: Make "empowered" not available at the click of a button and not binary but instead each mutation would have a scale from 0% empowered to 100% empowered. (The code already kinda supports this already with regular being power=1, empowered being power=2, but most mutations I looked at yesterday just do a check if power>1 for their empowered versions). In addition to what we have now, there would be a few "bonus" base pairs that you could experiment with and the more of them you get right, the closer you get to 100% empowered. But there's no actual feedback from the computer telling you how close you are to 100% empowered and you'd have to test it experimentally by seeing which strings of base pairs make a mutation stronger. (Maybe getting half or 75% of them correct would already give you the full power or something because getting 100% of them correct through experiments alone for the full effect sounds like hell.)

3. This might be very controversial, but I think the gene booth is a horrible idea. Especially on maps where the booth is off screen from the gene lab, it completely removes you from interacting with anyone. I do have to say that I mostly play on RP so maybe this is completely different on the classic servers. My suggestion to fix this would be to remove the gene booth completely and instead have a Injector fabricator IN YOUR LAB. It should be easy to tell it to spit out a desired number and type of a mutation you have in storage (similar UI to current fabricators?), but you'd then have to either do the injections yourself or coordinate with the rest of medbay. E.g. bring them near the front desk, tell the doctors about them and let them do the injecting.

[Kotlol]

Harvesting bonus research material currently basically all ties into interacting with other Actual Players. Previously you could get them from activators used on monkeys, but that was removed (and subsequently the amount gained from activators increased) and the job became a lot more interactive and fun. The idea of being able to generate research points by hurting someone and then curing them with a functionally infinite resource I feel pulls it away from the clean design where you're incentivized to give people mutations they want either via activator or gene booth.

I also feel that if you play efficiently you can plow through the genetics tech tree shockingly quickly and consistently. Advanced mutation research is available after researching 20 mutations, which hastens things nicely, and if you can get high complexity DNA you can finish everything super super quickly. Once you disintegrate the research budget and expend all of the points you can out of your own mutations, actually going *outside the lab* and giving people cool mutations they have can bring it heaps and heaps of research points while you're waiting for the tech tree to tick down.

I think this is a very fun playstyle and works well, since interacting with other crewmembers is much more interesting than Not Doing That, so it's good that the current optimal paths require it mostly. I'm against adding a means to generate points by damaging people and then healing them or by using corpses since I think it goes against the current design ideas of the job, but I don't represent anybody but myself and this Gaming Opinion does not represent the admin team's thoughts in any way. Genes tied to exploration stuff could be cool if fleshed out though imo

While some of these changes are great and thanks for adding things I didn't know when I made this. (THANKS! gave me more info)
My problem remains the same.. "Downtime and unable to do anything else"
And the player who is in the pod is stuck too. Genecists wanna move around more or have people come in and don't feel like they have to be in a pod for 5-10 mins to get the research done.

Mirodir

-Yea pretty much 90% of the post-

Removal of the pod is a risky thing, but I like this idea of testing things for this.
I like the idea of finding out things...
But I love the suggestion that Flaborized gave with you draw some blood from a target and use that to research DNA.
Sure it's limited at that range then having someone in the pod, but... now the genecist can examine samples.. and the player doesn't have to stay in a pod.

I think Mirodir, My idea number 3 and Glamurio may have a fun revamping for Genecists... but also leaving the OLD style intact.

[Chomusuke]

How about biochemistry. Basically everyone starts with a potential of base chems and in rare cases slightly advanced ones (no full on secrets but maybe stuff like pepperoni or paper you know like basics). The kind and amount of chems would be random per shift and be inherent to the body rather then the genome itself.

Geneticists now need to go around scan people using their gene scanner for both genes that might be interesting as well as their chem potential and its stats. They take genetic samples aka blood and use pathology to manufacture a genome that can use the potential of chems to produce an injector or a pathogen.
The injector will add a new gene to the person which will then catalyze the production off the chems inside the person. The pathogen converts the persons blood the genome belonged to into a steady supply of the chems. Stats like production amount/frequency could be altered by sampling a lot of genomes from people and doing pathology magic

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Make genetics able to work with plants as well. Adding and/or removing chems or (un)wanted mutations at the risk of changing the genome other relevant stats or destroying it.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If it isnt cursed enough already add another cryptic programming language based on the good old ATGC's where the gene sequence tells you what jobs different sections have and in order to splice they need to be inserted at a location where they dont cause the gene to malfunction or turn into another less complex and therefore less usable one.

[Kotlol]

How about biochemistry. Basically everyone starts with a potential of base chems and in rare cases slightly advanced ones (no full on secrets but maybe stuff like pepperoni or paper you know like basics). The kind and amount of chems would be random per shift and be inherent to the body rather then the genome itself.

Geneticists now need to go around scan people using their gene scanner for both genes that might be interesting as well as their chem potential and its stats. They take genetic samples aka blood and use pathology to manufacture a genome that can use the potential of chems to produce an injector or a pathogen.
The injector will add a new gene to the person which will then catalyze the production off the chems inside the person. The pathogen converts the persons blood the genome belonged to into a steady supply of the chems. Stats like production amount/frequency could be altered by sampling a lot of genomes from people and doing pathology magic

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Make genetics able to work with plants as well. Adding and/or removing chems or (un)wanted mutations at the risk of changing the genome other relevant stats or destroying it.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If it isnt cursed enough already add another cryptic programming language based on the good old ATGC's where the gene sequence tells you what jobs different sections have and in order to splice they need to be inserted at a location where they dont cause the gene to malfunction or turn into another less complex and therefore less usable one.

I always felt like genetics should work with botany and chemistry in some way..
ESPECIALLY BOTANY! Would be fun to use the retooled pathology lab for that.

[Glamurio]

How about biochemistry. Basically everyone starts with a potential of base chems and in rare cases slightly advanced ones (no full on secrets but maybe stuff like pepperoni or paper you know like basics). The kind and amount of chems would be random per shift and be inherent to the body rather then the genome itself.

Geneticists now need to go around scan people using their gene scanner for both genes that might be interesting as well as their chem potential and its stats. They take genetic samples aka blood and use pathology to manufacture a genome that can use the potential of chems to produce an injector or a pathogen.
The injector will add a new gene to the person which will then catalyze the production off the chems inside the person. The pathogen converts the persons blood the genome belonged to into a steady supply of the chems. Stats like production amount/frequency could be altered by sampling a lot of genomes from people and doing pathology magic

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Make genetics able to work with plants as well. Adding and/or removing chems or (un)wanted mutations at the risk of changing the genome other relevant stats or destroying it.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If it isnt cursed enough already add another cryptic programming language based on the good old ATGC's where the gene sequence tells you what jobs different sections have and in order to splice they need to be inserted at a location where they dont cause the gene to malfunction or turn into another less complex and therefore less usable one.

I love basically everything in this post, minus the last programming language bit, because we truly don't need more of that. Botany inclusion is a big big yes, and I also love the idea of geneticists walking around and pricking people to get their DNA / blood, get rid of the database that lists everyone's genes and simply have them walk around. As controversial as it is, monkeys need to be replaced with humans / plants because it increases the amount of player activity. The monkeys make it so that geneticists will always prefer to grab them instead of a real person to research, and that lands us in the same problem territory.

Also, on the matter of injectors, I'd much prefer if a geneticist just had an injector that they can re-use, realistically it may seem unhygienic, but we already do this with syringes anyway and it would get rid of the 20+ empty injectors landing in the trash every shift.