Genetics: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

[TheOnlyRyan]

(( Before anybody reads this, It's 4:32am when I'm writing this so if I come across as a jerk, or my spelling is just appalling then I full heatedly apologize.
I love Goonstation and I love Genetics and I love how much effort has already been put into make it a more original and fresh experience for newcomers, with that said.
If you can get through reading all of the below, good on you, I know I couldn't.))
((((((I've tried to keep it spaced out, and not a huge wall of text, Edit the layout as you see fit.)))))

Genetics has always been one of my favourite jobs, for a lot of reasons.

You can be lazy, just sit around clicking buttons chatting to your co-worker and occasionally clone someone then get Hulk and run around naked.
I've played SS13 for about 4-5 years on pretty much every station that's out there, the first ever being Gibbed 1 and 2 on the original original donut, oh how amazing these times were.

I barely had a grasp of Genetics back then and pretty much could only clone people, these magical blocks and crazy numbers made no sense to me at the time.
Fast forward maybe a year or two playing SS13 on and off and I finally started to understand Genetics!!

I could get all the powers, Hulk Telekinesis being my favourite for obvious reason, this is before most servers nerfed tele to where you couldn't do it through cameras (sadface)

While once you got used to getting the 4 basic powers I guess you could say It lost the challenge, the originality and soon got boring.

Which is why when I first came back to Goonstation (Although I still like to think of it as good old poo ridden Gibbed) I thought, WOOWWW!! Look at this, this is different and cool!

That guy just turned my butt to gold! There's so many powers! This is great, so I decided to join my beloved job once again, and see how long it would take me to make the most OP combination imaginable.

My first round experiencing the modified and certainly original Genetics was confusing at first, I had seen nothing like it, but once I realized it's basically just G-C this, C-G that, it got very simple indeed.
Almost too simple, the only thing I struggled with was actually getting anything done in the time given.

I realize in recent times Genetics has been modified to speed up this process of getting powers and researching, but it still seems incredibly slow, who knows maybe I'm slow, I'm sure you'll tell me.
I don't know, I recently tried to play some more genetics, get back into it and try to find that love It gave me all those years ago.

I'd start a round, grab a monkey, scan it.. beg the AI for more money and get rejected, then before you know it the round's coming to an end, there's explosions, fires, traitors, god forbid syndicates.
I remember with the original genetics hopping a monkey into the machine and within 2 clicks I'd have Hulk, not because of how easy it was, but because I was lucky, and I think you should be able to get lucky at least once.

Even if you do get lucky with this Genetics ( finding a really nice power early ) you need to then wait the 20-30 minutes (Minimum) to get injectors, even going full on research, absolutely hammering away the cash to get injectors researched it takes that long.

It shouldn't... It just plain shouldn't.

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I don't want people to feel I'm smashing this Genetics, It's clearly well made, well thought of in the way it works, the powers are good (although I have a few that could make it even better) but all in all, It's very well made.
Everything is there to make it original, and it certainly feels original.

I realize a lot of people can do well with Genetics, and the fact it takes so long to progress doesn't stop them from having a blast.

I just think that Genetics on Goonstation has lost a lot of It's charm in the way that It's totally down to luck if you have good monkeys, It's down to if the AI is feeling like not a total **** * ****** ***** * ***** ... ** ...**** **** if he wants to give you the funds or not. It's down to if you can even find a power running around the station with your PDA out jabbing people ( Which I don't think works anymore, I think you need them to be in the pod, which adds to the impossibility of getting a good power)

Rounds can sometimes last just 20-30 minutes, if that. When there's a wizard or failindicates or blobs. You basically are forced to start from scratched over and over again if these rounds persist.

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I'm not sure where I'm going with a lot of this, because It would be fairly difficult to fix a lot of the things I personally think are wrong with Genetics.
I suppose I'll make a small list, and please don't just quote the list saying I'm smashing Genetics and the developers, because that's not my intention:

-Research time is too high in comparison with the fast paced rounds and quick ending rounds.

-Good (Fun) (Effective) powers are too rare, very rarely do you find them in monkeys (In my experience)

-Funding is too small to start with if you're looking to power through any research to get injectors, because that's always everyone's target, Injectors, which take 20-30 minutes.

-The challenge is taken out, the learning curve is much much lessened from the original blocks and the challenge of learning how to get powers to show up, now It's just a simple puzzle game with 4 options.

-Human test subjects experience little to no ill effects of being tested on, med bay and chemistry used to have to support Genetics through medication and anti radiation.

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Everyone round you can bet to see Chemists going around with their super serums, Roboticist's (given enough death) have a borg army, Scientists have annoying noise makers and medics are covered in blood.
It's not every round, infact I can't remember the last time I saw a guy running around with telekenisis, or Hulk, or anything really game changing or awesome. Although I did get to make everyone's butt golden a few days ago, that was neat.

I want to see Genetics thriving again, and personally I don't think it will be able to achieve that with how it is now.

Please don't bash me too hard over what I've written here, It's just my opinion.

[lifehole]

??? If anything genetics has been very overpowered recently. The ability to phase shift, explode/breathe fire, etc are all massively effective and I can't count the amount of times I've died as AI to a phase shifting asshole or seen antagonists get murdered by vigilante geneticists.

I still give money to geneticists every round in the area of 30-50k when I play AI.

The point of the new genetics system was to be easier and have more variety. Also if human test subjects got hurt by modifications/radiation then it would take even longer to get powers.

I don't generally play geneticst so I wouldn't really know, but what I do know is that dedicated geneticists have the capability to become very, very powerful most of the time.

Also rounds are hardly fast-paced. Most last 50+ minutes. When it's syndicate or wizard you need to be able to re-evaluate you priorities to something that can be done quicker. Like killing the wizard, usually.

[medsal15]

There is 1 thing I don't like in genetics: Stability. This thing is just unfair: you can have colored blood and things in your blood at the same time but nothing bad heppens if you have only good things, you can have a lot of borgs but nothing bad happens, you can have good mutations and your stability goes down and then you start bubling and talking blbl blbl.

[Roomba]

Before the stability mechanic was introduced, invisible TK hulks who could walk through walls and were completely impervious to most damage were a common sight by the twenty minute mark. Not exaggerating in the slightest.

Genetics got a buff a while ago, and then got nerfed a bit when people rightfully got tired of invincible rampaging geneticists. It's currently balanced as it is.

[DyssalC]

I'm gonna say something a lot of people will probably call me dumb for and list a bunch of reasons it's dumb, but maybe genetics just needs to be heavily changed.

And I'm not gonna lie, if it were changed to be similar to how Bioshock had plasmids and EVE and all that shit I wouldn't be unhappy.

[Ali0en]

Genetics was limited because it was heavily abused and ruined by your fellow players. Curse them for causing it. I think it's fine.

[Dr_Bee]

Genetics was limited because it was heavily abused and ruined by your fellow players. Curse them for causing it. I think it's fine.

I would like injectors to be cheaper/faster to make now though. so I can hand out powers to people more.

[Sundance]

Never had any particular interest in genetics, but from glossing over the wiki page (and bane's WIP) it just seems to me that there isn't enough BAD mutations to make you more stable.

[Sundance]

It's down to if you can even find a power running around the station with your PDA out jabbing people ( Which I don't think works anymore, I think you need them to be in the pod, which adds to the impossibility of getting a good power)

Also this, this should probably be fixed. This is akin to the mechanics scanner being bunched, which is p. bad.

[BaneOfGiygas]

I wasn't around for the days of OLD old genetics, so I can't speak to that or how it was in the slightest. I can, however, talk about my recent experiences in genetics.

I like the concept of genetics. I think it's a really cool idea that has a lot of potential. But everyone's always talking about how invisible telekinetic Hulks showed up every round before the genetics nerf, and...well, to be frank, I think that's a load of hyperbole. Even before the nerf, getting Telekinesis OR Hulk were practically adventures in and of themselves due to how rare they were, and getting both was practically unheard of. Superpowered people were much more common, yes, but those superpowers were almost always less overtly powerful things.

Now? I just about never see anyone with genetic superpowers. After my work on the wiki page, there were apparently widespread cuts to the genetic research time, but it still does nothing to alleviate the impracticality of genetic superpower research if you're only going to be able to get injectors as shit's blowing up and the shuttle's getting called. I should say, however, that the art of actually bringing people to the lab and offering to scan them for superpowers right there instead of waiting for injectors has practically been lost to the ages, possibly due to the inherent isolationist culture of genetics and everyone's natural avoidance of the place. Everyone's always complaining about how injectors take forever and a day to research but always forget that you can always just go in the scanner yourself. Not every Geneticist is going to lock you in the scanner forever and scramble your genes to death.

The recent surge of mutations requiring the little letter-puzzle locks is, I think, a fine balance of actual effort vs. waiting. Genetics is still primarily a waiting game, but it's rare that I get the sensation that I'm just twiddling my thumbs waiting for a timer to count down. The amount of time it takes to slot together the gene pairs and complete the letter puzzles always ends up being more than the amount of time I would need to wait. Right now, I think it's a nice balance.

The lack of PDA scanning and the thrice-damnable suffocation bug need to be fixed, however. The former was a MASSIVE convenience and probably the one thing that encouraged actual social interaction from Genetics, and the latter makes genetic research needlessly difficult after a certain amount of time. The stability mechanic is, I think, an interesting mechanic and prevents Geneticsts from becoming demigods. Some different numbers might need some tweaking in the future, but the system was an essential balancing component.

[Roomba]

I don't think the art of bringing people to the lab and scanning them was ever a thing. Pre-recent buff, I could never get people to stand still for long enough, and volunteering as a non-geneticist mostly tended to get me summarily ignored. During the days of the portagene, this largely resulted in geneticists locking themselves away with a valuchimp and buffing themselves to omnipotence in complete silence. After the nerf it seems to have reverted to the status quo. I dunno where this idea of benevolent geneticists comes from, during the genetics heyday pretty much every post was about how the cloner was ignored more than ever and the geneticists were unstable jerks who, if they were even present in the lab, were just as likely to telekinetically shove you into the reclaimer for being present than anything. There's a reason the portagene was removed and the reclaimer needs to be emagged to accept live bodies now.

[BaneOfGiygas]

That's why I'm saying that it's a lost art. Many problems that people have with genetics have less to do with genetics and more about geneticists, which subsequently is caused by the inherent nature of genetics being a thing what gjves you superpowers. You give someone a superpower lab, and in nine instances out of ten, they're going to lock themselves away and become fiercely territorial.

But the unfortunately rare instances in which geneticists aren't isolationist assholes and actively work to help out the crew instead of making themselves into every member of the X-Men at once are, if you ask me, when genetics really gets a time to shine. That just doesn't happen anymore.

[Roomba]

I don't know why you keep qualifying it with 'anymore'. There was no halcyon golden age where this ever happened. There is nothing you can change that would make this happen.

[BaneOfGiygas]

You're right, and I didn't mean to suggest that. It was a poor choice of words.

Regardless, hopefully my overarching point still stands: The issues with the mechanics are compounded by the issue with the inherent geneticist culture, and there should be some push in the mechanics to help foster, as mentioned, not beign isolationist assholes. But as far as what we can do for that...I'm quite frankly stumped. The Portagene experiment just made the problem worse, the gene analysis on the cloner has done nothing, and and to be perfectly honest, I'm starting to side with Dyssal: Only a complete overhaul of the system could fix it, and even THAT'S debatable.

[Paineframe]

It's a general player culture issue. Nobody cooperates, and the only times they accept help are when they're forced to by being literally incapable of doing it themselves. There's also the fact that standing around in the cloner while the geneticist works is boring, so nobody wants to do it. Honestly, the only things I can see fixing it is removing DNA Injectors altogether, cutting the monkey pen population down to just 1-2 people, or allowing genetic experimentation to be carried out on the person in the cloner. The first one mandates cooperation by removing the self-buffing mechanism altogether, the second heavily limits geneticists' ability to get to injectors without leaving genetics in search of more test subjects, and the third one gives geneticists the opportunity to do genetics on players without having to beg for volunteers.