Bunch of new genetics powers

[PKPenguin321]

I wrote a thing with a bunch of ideas for the new genetics system. I don't know if I'll actually get around to coding all of them, but thus far I have PRs up for a couple.

Here is my sheet of all the powers I want to add and have jotted down. I haven't stuck to this 100% in the PRs below and I don't know if I'll actually get to everything.

Here is the 0th PR, written before I started keeping a sheet.

Here is the first PR, with Insulated and Shock Touch.

Here is the second PR, with Antenna, Paranoia, and Mind Reader.

Here is the third PR, a bundle of disabilities from the sheet.

Please feel free to leave feedback, tweaks, new ideas, raw vitriol, etc. I'd like to know what you guys think about all this. This is kind a preemptive feedback thread, I guess.

[wesoda25]

Damn you’ve been on a roll the past week with all these ideas/PRs.

[somerandomguy]

flashdark and global broadcast are going to be hilarious
people are going to stabilize robust soul (if they get it) to circumvent the damage
all in all really cool

[confused rock]

I was going to add a moth specific mutation that would allow them to see a tile farther, but I wasn't sure how to extend the view range without it being reverted if the person used a pair of binoculars and back again. Not sure if that's a good idea.
Maybe mind reader could check people's memory or moodlets? I suppose moodlets would be an antag check but an antag check already exists and it's called x-ray :^^^)
worst idea I've ever had: radiation + strength is hulk for humans. radiation + clumsy could give lizards a 1 tile tail whip

[PKPenguin321]

I was going to add a moth specific mutation that would allow them to see a tile farther, but I wasn't sure how to extend the view range without it being reverted if the person used a pair of binoculars and back again. Not sure if that's a good idea.
Maybe mind reader could check people's memory or moodlets? I suppose moodlets would be an antag check but an antag check already exists and it's called x-ray :^^^)
worst idea I've ever had: radiation + strength is hulk for humans. radiation + clumsy could give lizards a 1 tile tail whip

If you made binoculars add/subtract view range rather than hard set, you could make a gene that adds/subtracts view range and they could stack together with no issue.

[Boris]

Idea for a power, Cryokinesis, let's you fire a ball of cold with a long-ish cooldown that cools people down if it hits someone, or makes whatever floor tile your pointing at when you use it slippery, if you put a power Chromosome on it it'd freeze people in cubes of ice making them unable to move/get harmed till they break out of the ice or someone else breaks them out, also makes it make floor tiles slippery in a 3 by 3 area.

[datorangebottle]

I like a lot of these ideas, keep up the good work. Shock touch is fun, as is EMP touch.

[Dr_bee]

Matter phaser should make you lose all your clothing when you use it, but remove the other downside. It is basically all access, so giving it the same restriction as ventcrawling for monkeys would be good. plus the idea of a naked person running through walls is fucking hilarious.

Also gigantism should give some negative stability. It is a disadvantage to be easier to click on.

[Gousaid67]

Matter phaser should make you lose all your clothing when you use it, but remove the other downside. It is basically all access, so giving it the same restriction as ventcrawling for monkeys would be good. plus the idea of a naked person running through walls is fucking hilarious.

To add on to this, make the synchroniser chromosome allow you to keep a jumpsuit,basic clothing aswell as held items going through, but still not backpacks,armors and belt items.

or make the fail chance based on what kind of wall you go through, rwalls should have a 75 percent chance of you failing to pass through , and be stunned for longer, while normal walls being easier.

[PKPenguin321]

Matter phaser should make you lose all your clothing when you use it, but remove the other downside. It is basically all access, so giving it the same restriction as ventcrawling for monkeys would be good. plus the idea of a naked person running through walls is fucking hilarious.

Love this idea

[confused rock]

I fucking love all of cave of qud's mutations but most of them would be redundant like flame hands when we have fire breath and phasing when you are thinking of matter phaser but here's a few I still like:

Spinnerets:when active, leave spider webbing as you walk to slow people down.

Stingers:could give changeling stings but as a genetic power.

Wings: self explanatory, we have angels so

EMP: give off emp blasts at complete random, not so good.

[wesoda25]

Bush.

You can turn into a potted plant at will.

[PKPenguin321]

EMP: give off emp blasts at complete random, not so good.

Will probably add this as an ingredient for EMP touch and give it really low range since EMPs can be useful if the AI and its borgs go rogue.

[oranges]

I'm not comfortable adding more powers without adding new things to the genetics job to unlock them.

What that might look like is really up to the idea guys, but I don't just want to extend teh existing gameplay.

[PKPenguin321]

I'm not comfortable adding more powers without adding new things to the genetics job to unlock them.

What that might look like is really up to the idea guys, but I don't just want to extend teh existing gameplay.

I think it's fine because new genetics allows for plenty of powers to exist without making the department super OP.
The 100 genetic instability cap means that you can't just stack powers forever, and stronger powers can be made so unstable that you can't stack them with others at all. Adding powers for the sake of it won't unbalance the department.
In fact, adding a larger pool of powers (and disabilities) means that there will be a lot more variety between rounds, as you often won't see the same unique batch of powers more than once in a row.
Basically, half the point of new genetics is that we can expand the department without unbalancing the game. I think you should reconsider your stance on this.

[oranges]

Do you have any kind of numbers/knowledge about how many powers it's possible to stack? I.e is that an actually meaningful tradeoff or is it just a paper tiger?

I'm wiling to be convinced otherwise.

Also can someone explain to me how chromosomes fit into all this?

[PKPenguin321]

Do you have any kind of numbers/knowledge about how many powers it's possible to stack? I.e is that an actually meaningful tradeoff or is it just a paper tiger?

I'm wiling to be convinced otherwise.

Also can someone explain to me how chromosomes fit into all this?

"Genetic Instability" is essentially a new damage type. A weak gene will give low instability, for example Glow, which gives you only 5 instability. A strong gene can give lots of instability, for example hulk, which currently gives 40 Instability. Negative traits (like epilepsy, cough, etc) typically don't give or take any instability.

If you exceed 100 instability, you'll get a 60 second timer before something (usually instant death) happens unless you can rid yourself of your mutations before then. The code for it can be found here. Now that I look at it there is some stuff that might be disagreeable, but this can be tweaked, too.

The tl;dr of instability is basically: The stronger a power -> the higher the instability -> the less powers you can fit overall. A current example is that you can't take all of old genetics powers anymore (cold resist + TK + xray + hulk + dwarf + chameleon); hulk alone puts you at nearly 50% of your capacity for powers, and the system is so easy to tweak that if this is still too little it can be changed in one line. It's a very real limiter when it comes to genetic powers. Is hulk worth taking if it means giving up maybe 3 other powers, all of which are less useful on their own?

As for chromosomes, those aren't merged yet (if they even will be). The PR for them is here. My understanding is that they're essentially random modifiers for powers, but upon a cursory glance it seems that they're just buffs. Consider looking over the PR or speaking to its author, I haven't looked into myself.

There's another argument for adding more mutations, that being that the new system for unlocking them isn't entirely RNG anymore. A large number of mutations will be hard to unlock, and even just finding the mutations you want in people can be difficult in the first place. You can also set the difficulty to unlock an individual mutation in the code to make certain mutations harder to acquire (by way of making the minigame puzzle harder to solve). There are Combination Mutations that require multiple other mutations to be unlocked and saved (and DNA consoles have very low disk space, meaning you can't save too many powers at once), adding yet another time and effort gate to certain powers. One of the ideas I have in my spreadsheet in the OP for this thread plays off of this concept, with four very hard to unlock minor powers that you must combine, combine, and combine again to get a very robust power (that also has 99 instability). I think there's a good amount of potential in this, and genuinely hope this post was informative to you. If you haven't yet, you should give new genetics a try.

[oranges]

Alright that sounds fine, mind you, the species dullahan conversion should be removed in my opinion, it's very buggy.

[obscolene]

Idea for a power, Cryokinesis, let's you fire a ball of cold with a long-ish cooldown that cools people down if it hits someone, or makes whatever floor tile your pointing at when you use it slippery, if you put a power Chromosome on it it'd freeze people in cubes of ice making them unable to move/get harmed till they break out of the ice or someone else breaks them out, also makes it make floor tiles slippery in a 3 by 3 area.

this already exists on goon, even the name of it is cryokinesis. except you don't need a 'chromosome' to power it up, it just does that by default on goon.

[Boris]

Idea for a power, Cryokinesis, let's you fire a ball of cold with a long-ish cooldown that cools people down if it hits someone, or makes whatever floor tile your pointing at when you use it slippery, if you put a power Chromosome on it it'd freeze people in cubes of ice making them unable to move/get harmed till they break out of the ice or someone else breaks them out, also makes it make floor tiles slippery in a 3 by 3 area.

this already exists on goon, even the name of it is cryokinesis. except you don't need a 'chromosome' to power it up, it just does that by default on goon.

I am aware, where did you think i got the idea from?

[PKPenguin321]

PR up for a number of disabilities from the sheet in the OP:
https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/42524

[Shadowflame909]

The worst part of new-genetics to me is the lack of ways to remove genetic instability.

I mean you accidentally take on too many powers, and then you rush for your mutadone. BUT THEN thanks to the new cloner nerfs, causing everyone to spawn with brain traumas. You realize all of your mutadone is gone for some reason.

So you try to use the machine in an effort to take off some powers, but then you realize. "Oh shit. New genetics. I don't think I even have a clean S.E anymore" You rush over to chemistry and your turned into a pile of ash.


Maybe I'm just missing something hard, but holy crap with you using the Machine to get mutations 1 by 1. And the machine has a long cool-down after getting one mutation, mistakes like that are just way more deadly and lead to you getting perma-deathed way more often.


The point of this salt is to point out that the high chance of perma-death from forgetfulness/negibility is so good, that you may as well find a gimmick to antag with it and permanently remove people from the round. Like e-bow, Hulk and 2 genetic powers.

Edit: Mainly because above was something I experienced, which is why I posted this. So literal im ded from experience.


I'm glad Genetics is getting a shitload of new content though, Thanks PK-Penguin. You do it for free, but it'll lead to the benefit of longer rounds.


Now we just need someone to give Cargo, Medbay, and the Captain the same treatment so people stop calling the shuttle after stubing their toe/stop self-antagging to create reasons for the shuttle-call.

[wesoda25]

Tough skin. You take reduced damage from brute and burn. Kinda like how lizards are resistant to heat, but this applies for heat, cold, and brute. Obviously this sounds pretty OP so there'd need to be some sort of setback.

Jagged skin. A combination of Tough Skin and something else (idk the other genetics traits). If you are attacked via melee means, you deal a fraction of the damage done to you to your attacker.

[Shadowflame909]

Tough skin. You take reduced damage from brute and burn. Kinda like how lizards are resistant to heat, but this applies for heat, cold, and brute. Obviously this sounds pretty OP so there'd need to be some sort of setback.

Jagged skin. A combination of Tough Skin and something else (idk the other genetics traits). If you are attacked via melee means, you deal a fraction of the damage done to you to your attacker.

The setback would be that it'd be 99 instability, thus not allowing any more powers. Only like a 10% armor resistance (Sec-Jumpsuit and other standard armor resistances.) It'd probably require some combination, too.


Hulk prevents you from being stunned and allows you to have a jackhammer for hands. I think this isnt so bad