Geneticist, What Would You Like?

[Dreviore]

So I've decided I'd like to actually contribute to this here community, be warned my goal might never actually become a reality due to the spaghetti that is Genetics. That and this would be a side project for me between school, my two jobs, and my play time. Worst case scenario Skull doesn't like my vision and it never reaches a public server.

So, Geneticists a very non-RP centric job, and tends to lead to someone turning a monkey into a telekinetic hulk, then self injecting themselves, and honestly I'd like to change this.

First thing Im aiming to do is keep persistence between rounds on blocks, but have the blocks be different for each ckey.

Next I'd like to remove the chance factor from it early on, and eventually flex it into the kinda job you can do solo, but you can accomplish a lot more if you work with other departments.

Right now this is my early on vision...

Each block represents a specific part of your genetic structure, hair color, skin color, your characters weight, health, speed (to a very miniscule amount), ability to cross species under certain circumstances (something I'd delve into a lot more once I get the groundwork done).

Issue I've run into is ideas, and an understanding of what others might want. Overall I want to make this job about more then monkies, and the single scientist trying to learn the blocks, and make it more into testing aliens, learning their genetic differences, learning what you can accomplish through cross splicing, perhaps your dream of being a furry human could be accomplished.

[K0NFL1QT]

Sorry, Skull already has his own vision for things to do with Genetics. Unfortunately what he's done so far is add in interesting things, and then take all his interesting addons and put them into a Biologist role in Medical, leaving Genetics as is but as a part of Science. This is what is coming with the new map, if it ever finally drops.

For the Geneticists who still choose to radiate monkeys; I would love non-randomised blocks, but I don't imagine that's going to be popular because certain shitters inevitably ruin it. I would also love a cleaner method for mutating characteristics such as skin color, hair color, hair, etc. You can do all that as is, but it's just the same 'radiate blocks until value X' as it is for powers.

I'll drop in a quote from an absolutely stellar dude;

Since we've switched to newcode that is completely without Genetics in any form, I've been thinking about a fresh take on the role. The part that everyone hates about Genetics is the chucklefuck who ruins it by rushing for Hulk/TK/X-Ray, the top tier powers, and then goes rogue. Good Geneticists that don't do that get to sit in one spot and press buttons on a console all shift, and then not play with any of the cool stuff they discover. And really, those powers aren't the fun things about a Geneticist from an RP standpoint; it's the potential to take a creature and make it better, but in plausible ways that aren't 'now your eyes shoot lasers'. We do need Genetics in a form, it's mechanically useful for fun things, and for getting players back into a round, and it's thematically rich in the way that it allows deaths to be both canon and impermanent; we don't need 'powers'.

We need a Genetics system that still permits creation of protohumans, because protohumans are just so useful. You can use them for surgery shenanigans, greater scope revivals in the cases of body destruction, you can use them for Sciencey weapon testing, you can use them to practise combat moves, setup fake murder scenes, living blood bags and gene sources. Lots of stuff you can do with protocreatures. I also think Skull was headed in a good direction when he implemented the organ printer and tried to minimise general genetic fuckery. The problem was that organ replacements were hardly ever needed. You could already fix damaged organs with surgery, or chemistry. So, how do we combine these ideas and Make Genetics Great Again? The Biological Engineer. The Organ Splicer.

You know how the DNA Scanner deducts biomass from a cloning pod and spits out a clone of whoever you scanned? Well, what if you could choose to clone a blank? It consumes biomass, takes the same amount of time, but pops out a bald protohuman with no defects. No monkey SE tweaking necessary, only biomass. Select the race, print out the most bald, generic version of skrell, tajaran, unathi, etc. All mindless and ripe for organ/blood harvesting... or whatever fun things you want a protocreature for.

But that's only half of it. Take the old bio-printer, this also now consumes bio-mass instead of metal, but prints enhanced organs. This whole Geneticist idea really is more of an organs expansion, in lieu of stripping out powers. You can have a variety of printable organs of varying biomass costs depending on their effect, and these would cause noticeable changes without being zero-to-hulk. Every organ requires its specific surgery to implant, which means no more self-testing Geneticists on a rampage. It's all about subtly enhancing others.

For example, engineered limbs or implanted organs could;

give immunity to alchohol related poisoning, for that one bored assistant who keeps coming in with massive liver damage

Increase the damage threshold of bones.

Increase the natural rate of regeneration, as well as metabolism.

Increase capability for seeing in the dark.

Permit breathing different atmospheres, or widen the threshold of pressures that can be breathed in.

Allow radiation resistance.

Increase movespeed slightly.

Add the 'jump' ability, at a reasonable distance.

There's a lot of possibilities that are slight improvements, but each one is minor and doesn't turn you into an unstoppable hulk. Each one requires surgery to install. You might also need a new way of generating biomass to counter the costs for all of this, but there's usually a lot of wasted biomass in the morgue if you know what I mean. Make a big human blender, mulch that dead guy right up, stick the meat in your protomaker or bioprinter. Monkeys would also fit in the blender.

As far as I can tell, most of these ideas should be easily achievable. The only 'new' thing is the manblender actually just a gibber, the rest is copies of things that already exist but with slight changes, like a list of enhanced organs or a cloning pod that only spits out preloaded protohuman blueprints. Thoughts?

[Nanako]

With the mention of organs, i would like to say that trauma kits being a magic fix-all during surgery for all organs instantly, is a bit of a cop out.

I'd like to see repairing organ damage be made harder, like requiring specialised single-use equipment, a unique one for each type of organ. so there'd be more reason to cut organs out of corpses or grow them in labs, and transplant them into patients

but i also think cloning is a mechanic that massively cheapens death. When an entire security team and command staff gets wiped out, people just drag the corpses into medbay, and then its like an industrial processing line to magically get living crewmen out of them again, with very little personal attention. i don't thinknit should be removed, but maybe massively limited, so that cloning more than 2-3 people per shift would have some significant cost in resources or power, and actually pose a question as to whether it's worth the expense

then a geneticist could have more role in producing stem cells, and.or biomass, and whatever other magical biological components would be needed to drive cloning.

Chinese geneticists have created supermuscular hulk pigs for the purpose of producing more meat. That's a pretty valid reason to enhance muscle mass of animals. Hulked out monkeys could give more biomass for cloning.

[the_furry]

skulls separating genetics from medical? damn I liked the duality department thing. made genetics pretty interesting. though im surprised cause theres a good chance of random genetic issues poping up during cloneing. and cloning was a huge part of a geneticist job, made them relatable to the rest of the crew.

[Rusty Shackleford]

If anyone's going to do anything regarding genetics, I would beg them to take a look at the stuff I wrote up while I was still on the loreteam, regarding different forms of cloning (Direct-Copy, Indirect-Copy, Flash Technique, Blank Technique, Brain Transfer).

[Dreviore]

If anyone's going to do anything regarding genetics, I would beg them to take a look at the stuff I wrote up while I was still on the loreteam, regarding different forms of cloning (Direct-Copy, Indirect-Copy, Flash Technique, Blank Technique, Brain Transfer).

 

Could you link me to it?

Mind you I'll still be working on this, just not very dedicatedly, especially considering all the "No point, Skulls working on something" I'm getting.