Give Porta-Gene another chance?

[BaneOfGiygas]

Just give it floor bolts and that'll solve a lot of the problems of thievery right there. Hell, didn't it actually have floor bolts to begin with?

Spoiler!

I would honestly rather see the Port-a-medbay return instead.

Who said it ever left?

[Archenteron]

add a portabarber imo

Thank you for reminding me of a scene from a classic movie

[Paineframe]

TBH, I feel like at least 50% of the problems with the last Porta-Gene test run was less geneticists being shit and more the crew having a semi-sanctioned hate boner for Genetics. If you (as I tried several times) set up the Porta-Gene somewhere public and invited people to step right up and get some mutant powers, people would steal the Porta-Gene and crush it, because they knew the Admins would look the other way.

Genetics was super overpowered and broken at the time, and the geneticists were absurdly irresponsible about it, so people had it out for the geneticists because destroying every genetics machine was the only way to prevent the station from being overrun by invisible screaming radioactive monkey corpses teleporting randomly around the station.

Even after most of the issues with the genetics update had been worked out, though, geneticists were still shit with the Portagene.

[Anticheese]

And again, would often go to isolated parts of the station and continue their research on monkeys so they could inject themselves with every power and never have to look at another human until the shuttle gets called.

[Frank_Stein]

Eh, I think there's too much focus on how things were when it was around. I think it's worth giving it another shot now that the cloner is public, and there's incentive to interact with people.

[BaneOfGiygas]

But the problem with having the Port-A-Gene only be usable on humans is that you might end up having geneticists fleeing to the diner first chance they get to experiment on Shitty Bill and pals, unless they can somehow be blocked as well.

I dunno, we've been through a lot of hell to get to where we are now with genetics, and what with how unbelievably disastrous the Port-A-Gene experiment was, I'm shaky on the idea of bringing it back. Mostly supportive, mind, but still pretty uncertain.

[RAWK_LAWBSTAR]

Clearly NT is fitting the porta-gene with shitty wireless power so it can't leave the station.

[Sundance]

I dunno, we've been through a lot of hell to get to where we are now with genetics, and what with how unbelievably disastrous the Port-A-Gene experiment was, I'm shaky on the idea of bringing it back. Mostly supportive, mind, but still pretty uncertain.

I'm of this state of mind, but with a far more negative undertone.

I don't think bringing the porta-gene back is a great idea, not even a good one. It's like the old saying "give an inch, take a mile", having something that can be moved will only result in 99% of the times it being moved to somewhere far away where being disturbed/eaten/drained of blood/blown up is less likely.

What would be a better idea is to make genetic testing area more public. In cogmap 2, it's kinda in a bit of a corner, which is disappointing. I'd like to see some method where people could just walk by, jump into the genetic scanner and jump out without having to go through a maze of restricted doors.

[Noah Buttes]

I never got to try the port-a-gene, but I don't see why we shouldn't give it another shot.

[Dabir]

I would be interested to see what happens with it now that you can't spend 50 minutes loading up to become an unstoppable grief machine.

[hipBEE]

what if you had to hoot it up to a terminal/wire with power or it had a powercell that needed recharging once in a while.

[Anticheese]

Having a public-facing genetics scanner and the genetics computer behind a wall in Cogmap 2 would be pretty boss.

[Archenteron]

On one hand: You could give the MD a Porta-gene tracker like how the janitor has(had?) a mop/bucket tracker program for their PDA.

On the other hand: Or we could just spawn a single porta-gene in addition to the normal genetics loadout and see how it fares for a week without brainstorming ten thousand restrictions to fix a problem that doesn't quite exist anymore?

[Grek]

Having a public-facing genetics scanner and the genetics computer behind a wall in Cogmap 2 would be pretty boss.

I disagree. The scanner needs to be next to the computer in order to function, and if you get into the tube you can pop out and use the computer. People would just do that and run off their own activators without ever talking to a geneticist.

[Erik]

Having a public-facing genetics scanner and the genetics computer behind a wall in Cogmap 2 would be pretty boss.

I disagree. The scanner needs to be next to the computer in order to function, and if you get into the tube you can pop out and use the computer. People would just do that and run off their own activators without ever talking to a geneticist.

it's not hard to change these things, i'd rather have a public facing machine rather than a portable machine allowing terrible turbonerds to just fuck off and never interact with the crew again.