Xenobiology and Fun

[Scones]

Xenobiology already borders on sleeper OP with the variety of slime cores at your disposal, not to mention golems + sentience potioned mobs to do your bidding.

Yes, it's heavily RNG - Kor has a PR up to change mutation numbers, if I'm not mistaken. But don't claim the end results are underwhelming.

[onleavedontatme]

Modular aliens/bio weapons.

Machine that deconstructs simple mobs to unlock attributes of them (their attack, their movestyle, their sprite, special powers, their health, whatever)

Like deconstructing a carp would give you weak melee, carp sprite, spacemove. Deconstructing a blobbernaut would give wallsmash. Probably not every attribute of a creature in a single deconstruct.

Other machine would let you build custom creatures, set their faction/hostility. Points system so you cant just freely shove everything into one creature. Dunno what resources it would use. Could make a swarm of space bees that shoot fireballs, or an unpushable corgi with 200 health.

Something I'd like to do/might try after this migrant mess if people are interested. Sorry if this isn't exactly what you had in mind, but your idea about a biomass printer got me thinking

Also I could probably add a "create slime" reaction to every core like the grey one has.

[bandit]

As someone who plays xenobio quite a bit since the change, I find it really fun as it stands.

That said, I like the OP's idea, sort of like xeno-genetics. Possibilities:

- Basic stats for mobs to mutate. A less precise system than genetics, because simple mobs have a less complex structure than humans and lizards (this is my explanation to handwave away all the coding that will be needed to rehaul mobs this way), more like mutating plants. Can affect things like:
-- Speed. Self-explanatory. Obviously would have to capped, probably somewhere around alium hunter. Will also need some kind of numerical representation.
-- Color. Self-explanatory.
-- Size, also self-explanatory. For animals that drop meat, they'll drop more meat. Have fun with your genetically engineered giant breasted chickens, chef!
-- Strength. How robust they are, how hard they hit. Obviously this also needs a cap.
-- Max health, self-explanatory, probably needs a cap.
-- Docileness, how likely they are to be friendly and how much provocation they'll need to go hostile. s
-- Similar things that are easy to achieve without respriting.
You actually have to mutate the animals to do this. Without a genetics system (please no genetics system) there are two ways to accomplish this:
-- Easier, more dangerous way: Low doses of Unstable mutagen, 5u from a syringe, much like botany plants, with the potential to overdose and kill the mob.
-- Harder, not dangerous way: Stable mutagen. There's even an intuitive place for it: green slime extract + blood, would give you a bottle's worth. To encourage departmental cooperation it'd be cool if this worked for botanists too, like unstable mutagen with zero chance of bad effects (no killing the plant, no decreasing yield/potency or increasing production). It wouldn't be OP because it is inherently limited.
-- Much harder, guaranteed way: Stat enhancers (think blatantly stolen from Pokemon, like Carbos and shit) that you can feed mobs to increase their speed, strength, whatever. Capped at a certain point to prevent excessive min-maxing. Would have to be a fairly high-level get from xenobio. Like maybe each is a reaction from the sepia slime, holy fuck it might actually be useful.

Those are basic stats. Now for abilities:

- Every ability mobs have goes into a pool. Milking, grabbing items from hand, dancing around like Ian, whatever. If a mob breeds with another mob of the same type, they'll pass on abilities 100%; but if they breed with mobs of a different type, they have the chance to pass on their abilities. Either they get them all, get none, or more likely get something in between!
- But how to get mobs of different species to breed? Add some sort of aphrodisiac (WHICH DOES NOTHING ON HUMANS, ANY RP STOPS HERE, FUN IS OGRE) to encourage different species to mate, causing the babies to inherit their parents' stats, colors, and powers. You can selectively breed mobs, of course, which will give you a bit more control on how your babbies turn out.

- All of the above has obvious applications for traitoring. But for a more direct mode: Space Rabies has been brought up from time to time as a virus/syndicate item/etc. that can be used on mobs. For traitoring, I always liked the idea and think it would fit well here. Maybe just use the red slime reaction for it.

- WILD FUCKING IDEA: Allow mobs to be given virus symptoms, some of which will be expressed (mutated goliaths VOMITING BLOOD, corgi hair loss, voice change into the sound of other animals), some will just make the animal a carrier. If mobs breed while infected by a virus, they pass it on to their children. We already partially have this with monkeys.

- Also we may already have this, but it'd be cool if a docility potion took away mob's ability to attack AT ALL. For those who want their sentient gold slime monsters to be able to nuzzle them too, not just maul them.

[callanrockslol]

Modular aliens/bio weapons.

Machine that deconstructs simple mobs to unlock attributes of them (their attack, their movestyle, their sprite, special powers, their health, whatever)

Like deconstructing a carp would give you weak melee, carp sprite, spacemove. Deconstructing a blobbernaut would give wallsmash. Probably not every attribute of a creature in a single deconstruct.

Other machine would let you build custom creatures, set their faction/hostility. Points system so you cant just freely shove everything into one creature. Dunno what resources it would use. Could make a swarm of space bees that shoot fireballs, or an unpushable corgi with 200 health.

Something I'd like to do/might try after this migrant mess if people are interested. Sorry if this isn't exactly what you had in mind, but your idea about a biomass printer got me thinking

Also I could probably add a "create slime" reaction to every core like the grey one has.

I'm actually trying to do something like this with genetics powers but I can't into code very well. I want corgis that can tackle and spit acid