Make genetic instability scale according to the mutations

[APARTHEID]

Hang the engineers for not starting the engine, space the botanists for growing exploding tomatoes, gib the mechanics for just existing, and so forth,

[BaneOfGiygas]

encourages people to actually leave the lab

Wasn't the whole point of all this to make them actually do their job? Doesn't that entail doing the exact opposite of that thing?

The problem here is that, for a while, geneticists have never really been required to leave their lab. This itself is not an out-and-out problem, but it's the level of detachment from the rest of the crew that's the REAL problem, here. It's not very common for a geneticist to be paying attention to the radiochat while doing genetics research, and the longer a geneticist remains detached from the goings-on of the station, the more cranky they'll get when people barge into their office, the more likely they are to miss corpses, and so on and so forth. It's just the nature of the job and the workspace. Some geneticists avoid this, but they're far and few between.

Geneticists have an all-time low motivation to actually do their job now that it's come to this. People are actively antagonizing them, the ONE ASPECT of the job that drew them to it in the first place has been shot in the kneecap, and even the admins seem to hate them, from the tone of the changelog. What reason do they have to clone people? To keep people from being pissed off at them? Why even bother playing the job anymore at that point?

Hence my previous observation regarding the rather worrying lack of geneticists after basically everyone's been complaining about them. This is, indeed, a bit of a problem. Those complaints were rather justified in most cases, but still, people who antagonize helpful geneticists (unless they're actual antagonists) are being shit.

I don't want to be turned into a meatcube for trying to gain all the accents, for fuck's sake, man.

No one does, that's silly.

[Crumplehat]

The problem here is that, for a while, geneticists have never really been required to leave their lab. This itself is not an out-and-out problem, but it's the level of detachment from the rest of the crew that's the REAL problem, here. It's not very common for a geneticist to be paying attention to the radiochat while doing genetics research, and the longer a geneticist remains detached from the goings-on of the station, the more cranky they'll get when people barge into their office, the more likely they are to miss corpses, and so on and so forth. It's just the nature of the job and the workspace. Some geneticists avoid this, but they're far and few between.

Please please please stop forcing me to interact with the crew. I don't get what's wrong with me wanting to be safe in my little cubicle while still bringing people back to life, giving them their stuff back, and punting them back out the door. I'm still depressed that mining doesn't get to be free-wheeling loners out on another z-level anymore.

I get cranky when people barge into my office because three or four people will almost invariably barge in behind them, start running around like lunatics, and steal shit from high-profile corpses whose stuff we can't hide away anymore since we don't have lockers (we can get the emergency ones or others but that's the point, that we have to go steal them). And since people like to make a game of stealing the monkeys to prevent us from doing power research, those bodies are our primary source of biomatter, and we can't very well reclaim them with their stuff on if they're in line to be cloned.

We try to avoid the crew because by and large the crew is a bad crew. They're just awful. Don't deny it. Half of them want to murder you, the other half wants to annoy the crap out of you. Maybe some 10% are chill but they're usually the ones that leave us alone.

Hence my previous observation regarding the rather worrying lack of geneticists after basically everyone's been complaining about them. This is, indeed, a bit of a problem. Those complaints were rather justified in most cases, but still, people who antagonize helpful geneticists (unless they're actual antagonists) are being shit.

There was a round not too long ago where the AI bolted open the genetics lab because some station head ordered the medbay doors open. Even when he clarified later that he only meant the front airlocks to Medbay, the AI refused to close them. And all the cyborgs bitched at us, even as I scrambled to clone people around the hordes of assistants and clowns that invariably kept flowing through, stealing stuff. I get that some of it was meant as a joke but it was frustrating, getting shat on for trying to be helpful. And if I'm doing the cloning work, someone else takes my place at the DNA modifier, so when all the cloning's done I'm left to stand around like a chump trying to fight off people trying to rob the corpses.

That is not farting spaceman fun. That's not farting spaceman fun at all.

[Frank_Stein]

encourages people to actually leave the lab

Wasn't the whole point of all this to make them actually do their job? Doesn't that entail doing the exact opposite of that thing?

I mean people with superpowers. Most of the time people just stick around giving themselves everything, or wait for someone to do the same.

I do think that cosmetic/silly powers shouldn't count against it, and that negative powers should take points off, though.

[FloozyBarge]

Slowly dying because you used 3 injectors is dumb. Not to mention it causes a chain reaction. You get 3 muts, then you start mutating because of low stability, then you get radioactive which kills you and muts you more, suddenly you're a meat cube. Stability as a whole is a dumb idea. What if you actually punished the people who went all shitter with genetics instead of doing this.

[Daeren]

I'm cleaning up the code for instability at the moment. I'm already seeing a few parts that are, on their own, likely leading to most of the problems people have. For instance, there's the chain reaction effect, the instability values are a little strange in some places, and stuff like Fat makes you more unstable because

I may be grouchy at bad geneticists, but this was a little too far.

[FloozyBarge]

Genetics Stability all mapped out.

http://pastebin.com/hsMupuf8

[FloozyBarge]

Also, I still find the stability thing a bit wacko. You should be able to have a couple of muts without having to load up on a ton of disabilities. Because if you don't you end up talking in blubs and you slowly take toxin, brain, and brute damage. It's getting better, just needs some more fine-tuning.

[Dr_Bee]

-40 for not needing oxygen anymore? so I choose risking meat-cubing myself or just grab a set of internals and a oxygen tank. yea the instability numbers are horrible. just horrible. I say scrap the entire system for now and redo it entirely.

[Frank_Stein]

Does that mutation make you immune to being choked out?

[Hulk Hogan]

In my opinion, I have no problems with Geneticists gaining superpowers such as hulk, or having laser eyes. Its an incentive to research. Maybe research time should double, to prevent Geneticists from getting mutations so fast. The only reason why I enjoyed playing Geneticist, was because I could have many superpowers. The big issue is that some Geneticists never clone. Some people might have a problem with Geneticists never leaving genetics, but Geneticists aren't the only ones who do this. Geneticists need to clone and the ones who never clone are shit. A quick solution (but maybe not a great one) is to job-ban geneticists who never clone, or abuse their powers to an extreme. I don't know. We need a system where geneticists should spend more time cloning, but on some rounds, there aren't a ton of people dying all at once, or corpses flooding medbay. I might be wrong, but I think the instability system should be fixed or replaced with a new system all together. A good geneticist shouldn't be punished for what shit Geneticists have been doing.

[Vunterslaush]

Does that mutation make you immune to being choked out?

Does it work that way for ling as well? If so then I would say yes.

[BaneOfGiygas]

-40 for not needing oxygen anymore? so I choose risking meat-cubing myself or just grab a set of internals and a oxygen tank. yea the instability numbers are horrible. just horrible. I say scrap the entire system for now and redo it entirely.

Combine this mutation with Cold Resistance and you basically have changeling-level spacewalking powers. This also lets you completely ignore plasma and other harmful chemicals in the atmosphere. This is not an insignificant ability.

Even so, Bad shit doesn't start happening until you hit -100, so I hear. So you're not going to turn into a meat cube for one singular mutation (save for possibly Mutagenic Field, but that's a given.) Or, at least, you shouldn't.

[Crumplehat]

If I'm being perfectly honest I agree that the whole stability thing should get the boot, too, but I was hoping sucking up to whoever put it in in the first place would make it easier to get it toned down at least.

Like seriously, if I'm trying to get a bunch of powers, I basically don't stop trying to get more, because that's the fun of it. You see what you can get before the round's over, so you can show off on the shuttle. By the time you've gotten many good ones (basically, as many as you could reasonably fit under the -100 limit anyway) the round's usually almost over. It's rare that you can accumulate a shitload of powerful mutations unless everything's falling in your favor (nobody's actively trying to murder you, someone's put money into research, and you can actually find more than two or three good ones without frantically scrambling monkeys at a lunatic pace - most of which just plain doesn't happen).

You have to really work to get those kinds of results. Like someone said, if someone's willing to put that kind of effort into their research (assuming they actually balance it by cloning people), why punish them for it? Incentives for cloning have already been added and haven't even had time to let the paint dry yet, so why add punishments to discourage research?

But whatever. It feels like arguing that's a moot point at this point so I'll just be happy if it's at least made more manageable so I can be a disco skeleton.

Combine this mutation with Cold Resistance and you basically have changeling-level spacewalking powers. This also lets you completely ignore plasma and other harmful chemicals in the atmosphere. This is not an insignificant ability.

It's also an ability one can duplicate with a space suit (Nassa suit in particular) and internals. Useful for little more than being more fashionable when you spacewalk. Getting a space suit and internals also takes significantly less effort (anaerobic metabolism is pretty damn rare from what I've seen).

[APARTHEID]

-40 for not needing oxygen anymore? so I choose risking meat-cubing myself or just grab a set of internals and a oxygen tank. yea the instability numbers are horrible. just horrible. I say scrap the entire system for now and redo it entirely.

Combine this mutation with Cold Resistance and you basically have changeling-level spacewalking powers. This also lets you completely ignore plasma and other harmful chemicals in the atmosphere. This is not an insignificant ability.

Even so, Bad shit doesn't start happening until you hit -100, so I hear. So you're not going to turn into a meat cube for one singular mutation (save for possibly Mutagenic Field, but that's a given.) Or, at least, you shouldn't.

It starts any time you're under the natural 100 and gets progressively worse until you're a meat cube. I personally like it because it adds the risk that was missing from Genetics; if I try to brute force way too many mutations on a target, I risk overmutating the poor guy into a hunk of meat.

On the other hand, I did meatcube at around 70, so