Genetics Ideas/Discussion/Grumpin'

[Lombardo2]

What? This genetic system is new, in the old one you had a chance of activating disabilities, one of those completely changed your DNA. Powers had a chance of activating even if you were manipulating the correct block, plus everytime you changed a block it gave radiation. It was hard, getting powers was a excruciatingly Sisyphean task, but it was fun and very satisfying when you finally managed to get one.

[ISaidNo]

Okay, i'll break it down a bit.

1.Researching mutations: The ability to research mutations makes getting powers extremely simple, it's cheap and not very time consuming because you can research a lot of mutations simultaneously. So when the research is done the geneticist will only try to activate the powers and leave the disabilities alone, making it very safe and simple.

I like the ability to research them, but I propose to increase the materials cost to about 60 and the research time to about 400 seconds, that would discourage abusing this feature. To counter that, when you activate an unknown mutation that mutation is automatically researched. If it is a disability you would need to stabilize another sequence in order do deactivate it.

Researching the mutation is just one step of the process of activating it. Researching for the most part just lets you know what the mutation IS, as well as activates the ability to Reclaim or Scramble the mutation if you've unlocked the upgrades for that.

Bear in mind that there's not really much else to do once you begin researching - it's just waiting for a timer to tick down. While a wait time is good in measured doses, once you go over a certain threshold you're basically making the player endure tedium rather than actively engaging and challenging them as the means to get the reward. This is not a good idea! It's boring as hell and puts people off. A well-designed system will actively engage players in playing the game rather than hitting a button then going off to grab a sandwich or staring at the screen for a while.

In this instance, the tedium is twofold with your proposed change - you both have to wait MUCH longer for the mutation to complete researching, which currently you can't do anything about other than wait; but also you need to wait for materials to recharge. With a cap of 100, using 60 materials would leave you with 40, meaning you have to wait another 20 seconds to research a mutation again - assuming you do as soon as the materials have regenerated, you now have 0 materials and have to wait 60 seconds to research another mutation. These times do not factor in server lag, meaning you'll be waiting much longer than that! That isn't engaging at all, it's just boring.

You also have to bear in mind this would cripple the ability of players to do upgrade research while also researching mutations - encountering any genes that are very difficult to brute force (4 blocks, basically) means you're basically stuck waiting forever to do anything.

To address the other points here:
* Mutations are already auto-researched free of charge or wait if you unlock them. I normally adopt a strategy of looking for any 3 or 4 block genes, researching them if I have the materials, then brute forcing the 2 blocks while I wait for the research to finish. I'm usually researching upgrades while I do this too! This mitigates the tedium of the wait time a lot - i'm actively doing something other than waiting for a timer to tick down. Player engagement!
* I do agree things are perhaps a little easy at the moment - the only challenges present to activating a gene are you don't initially know what it is (countered by researching), having to cross-reference or brute force it, and occasionally decryption. I put decryption in specifically to shake things up a bit. I'm currently mostly trying to think of more challenges to present geneticists with.
* I'm not sure what you mean by having to stabilize other sequences to deactivate something. Deactivation is something that needs looking at currently, though again I would want it to be a challenge and i'm not sure how to go about doing that.

2.Messing with the DNA is harmless: You can modify as many pairs you want, the times you want without any cons. That makes very simple, you don't have the pressure of activating a disability or killing the subject by radiation.

I propose that when changing a single pair gen, the subject will get small radiation, the amount of radiation he will can be decreased by researching upgrades. Also, everytime you change it, you have a chance of modifying a random pairs in some potential, and a very small chance of activating a disability that then would need to be stabilized before deactivating it.

Why is pair modification bad, exactly? That's part of the puzzle! Sure, sometimes limitations on puzzles make them more fun, but what you're proposing here isn't the right way to go about it. It's excessively punishing the player for basically doing their job normally.

Irradiating the subject because you changed a G to a C while trying to figure out the puzzle is horrible. You'd basically need to stop every couple of modifications to administer anti-radiation drugs, increasing the wait time again and mandating the player do a chore if they don't want to kill the subject outright just by trying to figure out the puzzle. There's also this issue that Geneticists could very easily murder the hell out of someone by shoving them in the scanner, locking it and just modifying a pair over and over.

Modifying random pairs is also kind of a nasty trick to pull on the player. Imagine if you were playing Tetris, and the blocks that have landed were able to shift around on their own while you were trying to place a new falling piece in. Players would have to repeat work they've already done for no good reason other than the puzzle mechanics impose it on them, which is extremely irritating.

Crippling the subject with disabilities is another easy grief tool and doesn't really add anything, too. Besides, Radiation already does that pretty much!

3.You can research as many subjects a time: There's no limit on how many research can be running simultaneously, given with research budget, you can research everything at the same time. That makes very easy to get all the upgrades.

I propose a limit of 3 at the beginning of the round, that limit can be increased up to 8 with upgrades

Again, this is forcing players to wait. Besides, getting all the upgrades takes a lot of time as it is and some of them have requirements that must be fulfilled first.

The problem with these changes is that it punishes and limits the player too much rather than presenting them with a challenge. Sure, you could regard overcoming overwhelming boredom as a challenge, but considering we're playing a game here, if the players get bored in the first place we're doing something wrong!

[Lombardo2]

The problem is that if you know what a block does, then you are going to totally avoid disabilities, what's the fun on that? I meant, if you accidentally activated a disability, you'll need to fill a sequence before deactivating it. Maybe I'm just to crazy about hard things. But knowing what a block does before activating it removes the danger. The old system was ugly and bad compared to this, but you could get killed if you didn't took care; there's no danger in the new system, it's only pros, no cons, you just start getting powers without caring about radiation or disabilities. Maybe I just threw too much cons, but I feel like the system needs more cons in order to balance it, in the actual state I feel it's like

"I'll get powers!"

it should be

"I'll get powers after stepping with a few disabilities!"

[BlackPhoenix]

The problem is that if you know what a block does, then you are going to totally avoid disabilities, what's the fun on that? I meant, if you accidentally activated a disability, you'll need to fill a sequence before deactivating it. Maybe I'm just to crazy about hard things. But knowing what a block does before activating it removes the danger. The old system was ugly and bad compared to this, but you could get killed if you didn't took care; there's no danger in the new system, it's only pros, no cons, you just start getting powers without caring about radiation or disabilities. Maybe I just threw too much cons, but I feel like the system needs more cons in order to balance it, in the actual state I feel it's like

"I'll get powers!"

it should be

"I'll get powers after stepping with a few disabilities!"

Why? Why should it be "You might get some of these moderately okay things like glowy, but to get that, BE BLIND AND DEAF AND UNABLE TO WALK!"? That's stupid. New genetics has it difficult enough to get the good stuff, the bad stuff is there to either A. Weaponize, B. Reclaim, or C. Be a red herring.

[Lombardo2]

Why? Why should it be "You might get some of these moderately okay things like glowy, but to get that, BE BLIND AND DEAF AND UNABLE TO WALK!"? That's stupid. New genetics has it difficult enough to get the good stuff, the bad stuff is there to either A. Weaponize, B. Reclaim, or C. Be a red herring.

I don't know how long you have been playing with genetics, but it used to be like that, there where rounds where you couldn't even get a single power.

[Preid]

Why? Why should it be "You might get some of these moderately okay things like glowy, but to get that, BE BLIND AND DEAF AND UNABLE TO WALK!"? That's stupid. New genetics has it difficult enough to get the good stuff, the bad stuff is there to either A. Weaponize, B. Reclaim, or C. Be a red herring.

I don't know how long you have been playing with genetics, but it used to be like that, there where rounds where you couldn't even get a single power.

You appear to be missing the point. The old genetics WAS boring and usually a complete waste of time, that's why it was changed as far as I can tell.

[Marquesas]

I like the ability to research them, but I propose to increase the materials cost to about 60 and the research time to about 400 seconds, that would discourage abusing this feature. To counter that, when you activate an unknown mutation that mutation is automatically researched. If it is a disability you would need to stabilize another sequence in order do deactivate it.

Researching mutations already takes a massive toll on the amount of materials available - there is a plethora of mutations already, which makes mutation research long already. This is a very bad idea, especially combined with idea #3. The only thing this would do is RDs asking for the entire station budget for research instead of the sensible credit amount right now. Earlier on, you use a literal truckload of materials on researching mutations, while later on, your material is eaten by injectors/scrambling. The counter is also bad, because you could pretty much research most of the mutations by activating all of them on the available monkeys.

I propose that when changing a single pair gen, the subject will get small radiation, the amount of radiation he will can be decreased by researching upgrades. Also, everytime you change it, you have a chance of modifying a random pairs in some potential, and a very small chance of activating a disability that then would need to be stabilized before deactivating it.

The whole point of this was to make genetics deterministic and yet you want to make it a random mess AGAIN???????

I propose a limit of 3 at the beginning of the round, that limit can be increased up to 8 with upgrades

With the general researches taking up to 10 minutes already, most of your research slots would become useless and you couldn't research mutations.[/quote]

===Conclusion===

this whole thread is dumb

[ISaidNo]

Speaking of the research budget i see people ask for funds in there at the start of the round, should i start some cash in there by default? Whats the usual amount people ask for?

[Kaet]

I think 40k will last them the entire round, so thats what they ask for.

[BlackPhoenix]

Speaking of the research budget i see people ask for funds in there at the start of the round, should i start some cash in there by default? Whats the usual amount people ask for?

Since like 40 or 30k handles it for the whole round, I'd say start them with like...15k? So at least they can use it wisely or not at their choice, but the AI or HoP has to be generous if they want to spend like mad? Also, perhaps some other way to get more reserach credits other than reclaiming genes? Like making it possible to use the reclaimer to sell some enzymes for a quick buck?

[SARazage]

Give research like 10k at round start, that's enough to get started but then the AI/captain/HoP/RD have something to do at round start.

[atomic1fire]

Old genetics was dumb.

The way things were done before was "Did someone get powers and start sharing them with everyone, time to make powers harder"

At least now the crew can run around alphas style with superpowers or speech impediments.

I actually prefer it when the crew is rewarded for figuring stuff out.

Same with telescience, chemistry, artifact research and hopefully eventually that radio thing or pathology.

[Preid]

I think 20k is a reasonable amount to start with to get some research off the ground. Anyways, while I don't want to nuke genetics I do think that the sequence checker may recharge a bit to quickly as it is.

[BlackPhoenix]

I do think that the sequence checker may recharge a bit to quickly as it is.

Again, I don't think that needs changing. Most powers aren't super strong, and the old combos are next to impossible to get now, meaning the best one can hope for is like...a jumpy glowy hulk.

[Marquesas]

I think 20k is a reasonable amount to start with to get some research off the ground. Anyways, while I don't want to nuke genetics I do think that the sequence checker may recharge a bit to quickly as it is.

Yes, 20k should be the optimal starting fund for genetics as we usually ask for 40k at the start of the round which is either denied and genetics grinds to a painful halt, or granted and we don't need to ask for more credits again; 20k is entirely workable as long as you don't blindly spend it all on mutation research,.

The sequence checker's 20 seconds recharge rate is fine. I mean unless we're talking about a very, very rare power (which you're unlikely to stumble upon in any sane time, so it really doesn't matter), there will be another sample in your already scanned samples - and it's very likely to be this way since you can just store the DNA of the entire station.

Let me be clear on this, any nerf ideas focused at the research part of the new genetics is dumb. It doesn't need any fiddling with.