Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: DNA splicing idea, something to keep 'Lab Rats' in business
From what I can tell, the devs are running with the 'risk vs rewards' system. With the system you have proposed you could make quite good DNA from relative trash.
Great reward, no Risk.
I agree that it would be an interesting addition to the game, offering an alternative gameplay style but I doubt it would even be considered given my above premise.
RicketyI wrote:
It sounds like a good idea but I don't like you chances of seeing it implemented.
From what I can tell, the devs are running with the 'risk vs rewards' system. With the system you have proposed you could make quite good DNA from relative trash.
Great reward, no Risk.
I agree that it would be an interesting addition to the game, offering an alternative gameplay style but I doubt it would even be considered given my above premise.
I have to say I concur. Even though it sounds fun and interesting.
Skep
RicketyI wrote:
It sounds like a good idea but I don't like you chances of seeing it implemented.
From what I can tell, the devs are running with the 'risk vs rewards' system. With the system you have proposed you could make quite good DNA from relative trash.
Great reward, no Risk.
I agree that it would be an interesting addition to the game, offering an alternative gameplay style but I doubt it would even be considered given my above premise.
I'm not sure thats true. I grant that the risk vs. reward is lower than it is now. However I don't think thats a fair comparison. BE has the lowest reward and highest risk of any proffession in the game. Heck I spent 3 days and 4 deaths trying to get the 10 samples I needed to make the perfect "rancor". First combine critically failed. Lost 5 samples. The next succeeded but with a +14.9 tool and a +39 station I ciritcally failed experimentation twice. Final result using the 900+ meat and 900+ flora was a Rancor I could have tamed in the wild. I've been a WS and I have to say that the rewards there are much bigger and the risks are much lower.
With creatures we have no ability to use factories and that means that our risk will always be higher than just about any other crafter. We're competing against natural tameable creature so you need to do t least well or your product is worse than the "free" version. DNA splicing would almost certainly involve the possiblility of critically failing the combine. There be losing all your work to date. The level of this loss goes up as the potential reward goes up. Low level combines don't lose you much, but they also don't gain you much. Its still a huge time sink. If I want to go from CL10 DNA to CL60 DNAI need a lot of CL10 DNA. Assuming a 20% improvement from any given splicing. If I want 5 CL60 sample then I need to do 10 tiers of refining splicing per final sample (10, 12, 14, 17, 20, 24, 29, 35, 42, 50, 60). The total DNA samples need for this (5 * 2^10) would be 5120. Thats not including critical failures. I think Tal-N's proposal is a very good one (*****) and imposes a good mixture of risk, reward and of course the ever dev favorite, time sink.
Goodness Tal, I hope you're not at work doing this. 
I like this but there would of course have to be caps in place to control the absolute value potential of DNA. The way I see it the reason we now have a cap on sampling at around 75 is to prevent us from accidentally creating unusable creatures. I figure that the end result creature will have a cl within 5 or so of the dna used, more with experimentation. However if we used a spliced set of samples that are super high, near the max possible, which theoretically could be possible, and we end up with creatures like the older baby dna, which under this new system would shoot right off the cl scale. I would love the ability to tinker a bit more in the lab. For mad scientists we seem to spend more time in the field than the lab, more like big game hunters.
I've often thought that a "filler" dna should be available to everyone, something without any special characteristics but perfect for livestock or mounts. This filler could be gathered by anyone with scouting skills, and should of course be of low end value.The idea being hunters bringing back samples for the scientist, which while they are not of the best quality that could be obtained in lab conditions, is still viable.This would add and extra source of income for scouts and ease the strain for not scout/combat BE's.
I think the biggest difficulty currentlywith dna samples isstorage capablities. You can store 100k of steel in the samespace as a single sample of dna which we need 5 of to use. I understand the reasons for this but I can't help but wonder about other ways to improve this system. How about a Dna storage medium, like an extra backpack but only for dna. The devs have basically doubled the data pad space by adding POI's to them for free, they should be able to do the same for dna.
I think Mirrl made a very good point on the risk vs reward debate, especially in relating BE to other crafters. Currently, at least on my server, the single greatest monetary reward is from WS and that is a zero risk profession (AS nottoo far behind either). Compare that to the requirement atm that a BE *must* risk death frequently and I can easily see that lab rat style BE's feel they are getting the short end of the stick.
DNA sampling is simply too slow and haphazard to expect MBE to trade dna samples to other BE, and as Tal pointed out we all know full well that under the new system anything other than VHQ samples are basically going to get trashed.
I like Tal's idea as it stands.
As an alternative (very much inspired by Tal's line of reasoning tho), I might even extrapolate from it to allow non-BE to collect samples using BE made devices of some description that have limited charges (to avoid exploitation and over-sampling). E.g. novice BE can make a5 charge 'sampling pack' that gives anyone the ability to collect novice be level samples. MBE can make a 10 charge sampling pack that is able to retrieve (sub?) MBE level samples. Even though this allows a low-level be to buy master packs and use the dna samples themselves, they don't have the experimentation points to compete with a master. This concept would allow a 'lab rat' style BE to hire rangers and scouts to go out into the field, provide them with a few sampling packs and allow them to collect the dna samples.
Either, or a combination of both, could be introduced to give the less wilderness oriented BEs (e.g. tailor/BE) a chance to obtain the materials that every other profession is able to acquire by simple automated harvesting or buying from third parties.
It's not literally a risk vs reward system they have, indeed an armorsmith or a tailor has minimal risk for their profession however there is alot of effort. So it's more accurate to say effort vs reward. So with this dna splicing system you'd have the lab rats making an exceptional amount of effort in order to get the same benefit of someone who simply goes out and samples from the critters directly. Recall that it requires several combines to start raising the stats by around double the CL of what you sampled at the lower end of the scale for someone to go from CL10 to CL50 would mean well over 100 samples needed in the first place to produce just a single CL50 equivilent sample. However it would naturally be a very good sample which is 850+ in all of the stats if not higher.
Now thats a fair trade off and I currently hate the current system, if it can please me there must be something there which is working well 
I like this but there would of course have to be caps in place to control the absolute value potential of DNA. The way I see it the reason we now have a cap on sampling at around 75 is to prevent us from accidentally creating unusable creatures.
I have to disagree with there being a cap, just because something is not usable it doesn't mean that there isn't a certain enjoyment gained from seeing how far you can push the system by continually refining the dna again and again into the thousands. Naturally by the time you hit 1000 for any singular stat then your looking at further combines with another spliced dna sample that is also containing stats at 1000 then your slowly rocketing up the CL ratings. In the end if they did take up a system like this and leave it open ended you can see Bio-engineers taking up the challange to make the highest rated clone possible. Sure it cannot be used but it might very well be a collectable item for someones guild hall, another one of those status symbol trinkets that people like to own but cannot use like the krayt pearls or the Gunda painting.
Plus with RIS armor do you REALLY think that something which is so rare will be worn into battle? Most people will simply buy a full suit and put it on display in their house for all to see, if they then get a second suit they might use it in combat but you can bet they'd always keep at least one for display purposes.
I haven't been into Jabba's palace since i hit master scout on shadowfire with my commando/bh but when i was there I saw it was 100% resistant to everything..
..oddly enough it had 'steel door' listed under vulnerabilities
Ok, this idea sparked on another topic and as I see it this could be very handy for everyone but would be more beneficial for someone who doesn't have the ability to sample from wild animals thus preventing them to creating CL40+ critters under the new system without an exceptional amount of effort if they're not a scout or ranger. The concept is very simple but would require either a new crafting tool or a special template designed for this sole purpose.
The first point is that in order to help the lab rat bioengineers there needs to be potential for a dna trade, this can ONLY be possible if people are allowed to dabble in the professions sampling line and have the ability to get v. high samples at Sampling 4. Current this caps at high samples which as well all know isn't very usefull under the current system or even the new one. The very high samples should appear at sampling4 like they do at master currently and a new skill added to master which expands on the bio-engineers dna skills.
This concept is actually very simple, you take two or more sample of dna. Stick them into either a special tool or even a special template which has slots and then hit assemble. This would pull the some of thestats from the samples in order to create a new dna sample which is a random splicing of the original dna samples. Naturally it's a case of turning useless samples into something more viable. In order for this system to not be overpowered there needs to be a certain amount of math involved to make sure that someone with junk dna simply cannot create a dna sample with 900 points for each stat. Something like takingaround 60% from each stat in the two samples and then adding them together should surfice since the new dna samples will have stats in the low double figures for CL10 critters and the high triple diget figures for CL50+.
So if you take a single stat like power:300from one sample and power: 321 from another. In the spliced dna sample the power would bepower: 372. However dna splicing in or itself would be an science as you can in some cases find that you end up with results on the dinal spliced dna that are worse than one of the originals. Because of how the dna is spliced with 60% from each the larger the difference between the two stats being combined can lead to a decrease in that stat over the original. If you have one sample that is201 and the second sample is 634 then after they are spliced the final sample will be only 500 which is lower than one of the originals.
This problem does actually go away when you have higher rated samples so while people who use junk dna will need to careful match their dna which needs to be spliced higher CL dna with higher values needs the bio-eng to be less cautious. If you want to simulate how junk dna can be used to produce something like CL50 dna then you can run a simulation for a single stat. Less assume for the moment that you have hundreds samples of gnort dna which both have 15 for the fortitude stat and that your splicing them all together with the intention of making a nice CL 50 alike sample.
15 - 18 - 20 - 24 - 28 - 32 - 38 - 44 - 52 - 62 - 74 - 88 - 104 - 124 - 148 - 176 - 210 ect.. ect..
Now this might actually seem too slow, but then again it is just very low gnort dna being build up to something which is more like CL20 dna after just 17 splices of 34 samples. Some might see this as too low but it's really all a case of trialing and testing the speed. Going up to 80% might be more appealing as this changes the speed drastically.
15 - 24 - 38 - 60 - 96 - 152 - 242
Thus by taking 80% from each stat for the combine you only need 7 generations to go from CL8 to CL20ish amd thats from just around 14 samples.
But anyway, if masters can splice dna like this so that they can sit in a lab playing 'mad scientist' then you really do find that it opens the door for different playing styles. Since the lab rats are basically spending their time grinding junk dna to make a single sample of higher level dna it doesn't deprive the field scientists of the point of getting the dna from the source itself.
What do you think folks?
Yes Tal, I see you point regarding effort vs reward. A good idea