Mildly Mutated changes

[Soleil]

Currently Mildly Mutated is a zero cost trait that randomly activates one of your latent mutations at the start of the round. Anything from Regeneration to accents or Radioactive. Typically players who get a good or neutral mutation continue with their round as usual, while those with negative mutations head to Medbay to ask for mutadone.

Playing medical recently, it's noticeable how frequently people ask for mutadone right at the start of the round. This feels personally slightly powergamery, as players are choosing a trait only to negate it immediately if it's not beneficial. For most other players I've spoken to though, the round start mutadone routine and queue can be annoying for both parties involved.

So I propose we change it so your mutation always starts Reinforced. We can adjust its trait cost to positive or negative if need be. This means mutadone can't remove it at all and you need it removed manually in a GeneTek scanner. If you roll a bad mutation and want it removed round start, you will have three options. You could simply die and get cloned, though this is troublesome if you're a Puritan (why are you picking mildly mutated and puritan!?). 

For the other alternatives you will have to go interact with the poor isolated geneticists and hopefully jumpstart their research a little. If there are none, the AI can help. Simply scrambling DNA removes all your active mutations, or if its not as urgent you can be a test subject for genetics as they try to hunt down and research whatever bad mutation ails you and work towards mutation storage/individual mutation scrambling. Or you can just deal with it and go work while the geneticists work towards this and have your department laugh at your silly accent.

[Zamujasa]

making it reinforced sounds like a surprisingly apt solution to that problem

[Emimiyu]

Maybe also put a whitelist for it so? EMP and radioactive gene can be sucks for other players. I do think spawning with radioactive gene and accidentally radiating everyone who tried to heal you is funny, but it might be not fun for anyone... or spawning with emp gene right near robots.

Though, I don't have really a strong opinion about the whitelist

[Lord_earthfire]

I feel like a blacklist would be needed. Only for stuff like radiation, tinitus and blood toxification. You can manage most other stuff, even alcohol production or the emp gene, surprisingly well.

Then again, i don't think the gameplay you mentioned is much of an issue at all. It gives medbay something mildly to do at round start. And without a blacklist there are some genes that make it very unfun to play, most notable tinitus. Calling soneone powergaming for removing these genes sounds very wrong to me.

[Egregorious]

I cannot attest to how powergamey it is or isn't, but I absolutely love Mildly Mutated for roleplay purposes right now. I take synth limbs just for the offchance I get Vestigial Ballistics and get to spend the entire round crying out in pain as my arm constantly explodes off only to stick it back on like lego.

Being able to somewhat pick-and-choose when a mutation enhances or diminishes the round for you is kind of key with it in terms of RP. Getting Ethanol Production and heading to medbay at the start of the round to do patient RP just to see how experienced the doctors are is fun. Spending the entire round drunk or dead from alcohol poisoning is not as fun.

A lot of mutations are department-specific as to how impactful positively or negatively they are. Being a chef or mailman that can only say 'butt' is hilariously fun for a round, because most people can pretty much infer what you're trying to say when you're doing your job. Whereas being a gimmick role or department head - someone who's job RP largely lives and dies on being able to communicate somewhat succinctly - can ruin the round for you.

One of the problems I'd foresee with giving them Reinforcer is, as you mention, you're not removing the ability for people to powergame with it, you're just taking the onus off of medical doctors prescribing mutadone and moving it to the Geneticist's scramble cooldown - encouraging a wait time and possibly an uninteractive queue. Which I think is just introducing annoyance more than it solves a problem.

I think if you're really scared of powergamey uses for Mildly Mutated, consider just blacklisting all the 'best' mutations. If the biggest issue is people asking for mutadone, instead stick some 5u mutadone pills in the public med vendor. I personally enjoy it as a roleplay-enhancer-randomiser, and if it were difficult to remove the mutation when it makes the round difficult to RP I would probably stop taking it. Whereas the powergamers probably wouldn't stop taking it, they'd just demand a scramble from genetics.

[Soleil]

I don't really see how the Reinforced solution would negatively affect people who like the trait for roleplaying purposes. If you get something you really want removed, it's much easier to chat and roleplay with a geneticist for a minute as they fix you up than a medical doctor who is getting set up for the shift. And honestly, moving the onus to the geneticists brings some very welcome attention to one of the most isolated jobs as well as a nice source of chromosomes and research.

Absolute worst case scenario you have to wait 120 seconds for the scramble cooldown and there's at least two GeneTek scanners on most maps, so you could be waiting for two minutes with radioactive if two people got there before you, but for me that's a positive. Doctors get to deal with this radioactive patient for two minutes as geneticists panic before they can fix you. All in all a much more eventful and engaging interaction than walking into Medbay, asking for mutadone, saying thank you and leaving.

And personally I don't like the blacklist/whitelist idea at all, because while very rare, those EMP/Radioactive/blood toxification moments are really funny and silly shenanigans is what you sign up for with the trait.

[Mouse]

I think Radioactive ought to be blacklisted because it can seriously fuck over other people.

Especially if you're a goddamn roach.

[Lefinch]

I like this entirely because its another reason to go engage with a player potentially.
I would worry that you'd end up with a queue of adversely affected mutants, but frankly the spread of mutations is so broad I'd assume even in highpop its not exactly going to form a queue every round. If it does once that's just funny.

Edit: on the flipside, if it's lowpop and there aren't any and somehow no doctors willing to give a go that's a problem, but then again so is not having an engineering team in lowpop and we manage.

[Egregorious]

Absolute worst case scenario you have to wait 120 seconds for the scramble cooldown and there's at least two GeneTek scanners on most maps

The absolute worst case scenario is more like the only geneticist available is new and several people want the scramble cooldown. Now there's a bunch of people waiting in several minutes of pointless queue, and a new geneticist feeling bad because a bunch of disparate crew members are yelling at them to purchase the Radiation Emitters upgrade in a very out-of-character fashion in the first few minutes of the round. 

I think my issue boils down to the scramble button being on an unlock time and cooldown. I simply do not like the idea of moving something that is provably consistently something people will do at roundstart onto an annoying cooldown. I think it promotes uninteractive wait times, and the upside that it might discourage people to powergame something that isn't super powergamey in the first place just doesn't seem worth it.

As someone who ends up playing genetics somewhat frequently, my experience is roundstart is the time you least need to encourage people to interact with it. If people come to genetics at all it's usually the first 10 minutes anyway.

[Kotlol]

Yea as it is now, its powergamey.
But if some super disruptive mutations like radioactivity and emp are gonna run rampant... and be reinforced.
We are changing 1 problem for another.

Insted of "Mutadone"
Everyone will ask genetics to remove the genes insted. And I already think genetics has the worst job in the world at the start round.
Cause their start round includes:
- People who want to help them and be researched on. (good people)
- People who want to be MONKEY (ugh)
- People who want certain mutations.
- People who know you don't have certain mutations but want to told when you have them.

And genetics at round start is SLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW. So not only do you not have everything at hand to help everyone.
You also are getting bothered alot at the start.

But then 15 mins pass and now you are isolated with the rare interaction coming in.

So this change will just rush the genetics more. :/ If anything...we need genetics to be faster at the start or blacklist some mutations like some people recommend.

[meaow589]

This should be great also has a delay effect not at round start should be more cool.like trying to work-interact and suddenly mutate!

[jan.antilles]

Just made and PR'd this change: https://github.com/goonstation/goonstation/pull/19930

[crunchwarp]

Woe upon me that I had ever posted at all!! Please ignore me and my bad opinions xP My apologies

good ending feels like you go to genetics and say “hey can you scramble my genes” and then they do that and you leave, as opposed to going to genetics and saying “hey can I get some mutadone” and you get some mutadone and then leave. 

The bad ending is there are no geneticists and the AI doesn’t know how to help or ignores you and oops now you’re dead because you kicked yourself in the head 1000 times. Already on classic there are a lot of situations where getting mutadone is not easy. I saw two different rounds in one day where different people ended up dying roundstart to the radioactive one. That was less than a week ago 

I like mildly mutated because the accents are absolutely hilarious and sadly you can’t choose to talk like Scooby doo in the character creator. But some of the genes are just fundamentally not playable with. If you blacklist the really bad genes (the pr that was posted doesn’t do this, from what I could tell) then it feels like you’ve somehow buffed the trait, and if you don’t you’ve created a bunch of not especially fun situations. 

And what happens when you wake up radioactive as a nukie…?

[Zamujasa]

I dunno, not a big fan, personally. The good ending feels like you go to genetics and say “hey can you scramble my genes” and then they do that and you leave, as opposed to going to genetics and saying “hey can I get some mutadone” and you get some mutadone and then leave. 

The bad ending is there are no geneticists and the AI doesn’t know how to help or ignores you and oops now you’re dead because you kicked yourself in the head 1000 times. Already on classic there are a lot of situations where getting mutadone is not easy. I saw two different rounds in one day where different people ended up dying roundstart to the radioactive one. That was less than a week ago 

those are risks you take when you take a trait that randomly enables one of your genes. sometimes you win the lottery and get breathless or regenerator or cold resist, sometimes you win the lottery and get drunk or radioactive

it's like plasmalung: what if there's nobody around to give you more plasma when your tank runs out? gotta consider that when you take the trait

I like mildly mutated because the accents are absolutely hilarious and sadly you can’t choose to talk like Scooby doo in the character creator. But some of the genes are just fundamentally not playable with. If you blacklist the really bad genes (the pr that was posted doesn’t do this, from what I could tell) then it feels like you’ve somehow buffed the trait, and if you don’t you’ve created a bunch of not especially fun situations.

for what it's worth, as someone who has trouble reading accents, every one of the accent traits is a "not especially fun situation"; but again, the person is picking the trait intentionally, so you get what you pay for

And what happens when you wake up radioactive as a nukie…?

known issue and it's being worked on at the moment; ideally they would not get (disruptive) traits at all

[kakolookiyam]

With plasmalung you at least start with a tank, and its trivial to tide another tank.

If you spawn with radioactive and you're on a round with no geneticists or new geneticists, its a death sentence from the start of the round. Normal medbay staff will at best be able to keep him stable, and then pray that theres a HoP, Captain, or Medical Director (quite possible in classic during low pop) because otherwise they'll be in medbay the whole round.

I guess there is a sort of analogue to this, rolling anti-histamine with the anti-allergy trait, but I don't think thats a particularly fun trait interaction either.