Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: Top 5 Official Dev Response
I'd settle for that, or add extra capacity to droid item storage - hell, even a DNA storage droid.
Then drop a camp get out my droid with a Food/Chem craft station and make them all into DNA templates, and I time this all with my moun downer. By the time I am done crafting I am ready to hit the moun again and most of the recently sampled and killed creatures have re-spawned.
my 33cents.
1) Cloning - Not much more to say here, a clear top issue - the deatils of which were listed in the SOP.
The issues with cloning should be fixed in the December Publish.
Hi Tal,
I believe the following issues were missed in the response from the Dev AND weren't addressed in the December publish:
Yes, we can make pets of "of any given CL", if you get really, really lucky, there is no actual control over it.
There is no complete control over HAM, damage, armor, SA or CL.Controlling all those factors in any one creature is impossible with the system currently in place. If you say you CAN control it to that level, please feel free to make me an exact HAM matched trio of cats CL 23 with AR1, high Kin and various SA's with ranged. Can I pick them up in 2 hours? (These are the sort of questions we have to deal with from OUR clients and I'd like to see a response that I can use to explain why I can't supply them what they want).
My biggest problem with cloning at the moment is it's "voodoo", not science. You can have various stats/resists/CL fluctuate wildly and SA's drop out both for no obvious reason. I've made clones that "conventional wisdom" says should have had AR1, but they haven't had it.
I consider the system is seriously broken and can at best be described as a "lucky dip", and without adequate documentation on how the system is _supposed_ to work, no one can actually say it is actually "working as intended" except the Dev that made it and lets face it, s/he has a vested interest in making everyone think it went in "right the first time"...
Sorry if I'm sounding "snippy", but the more I shake feathers and roll bones with this system the more frustrating it gets for me...it can be a fun parlor trick to mix things up abit, but once your over the "hey, isn't that cool, see the freak thing I made" and try to make something serious (i.e. Specific and repeatable) it really starts to annoy the hell out you...
Please include some of the tissue issues on the next Top 5 list. Some of us joined this profession to do tissues and would like to see the increase in selection that Holocron promised months ago actually get on the development schedule. There are TONS of skills out there which we could be making buffs for. Especially the other defensive skills and some of the offensive skills. Some type of crafting buffs would give us another large customer base also.
DNA Stacking...
Why not have a DNA sample yeild several identical samples that are by default stacked (like a factory crate?)?
The bio engineer would then be able to hold more without jeapordizing data storage space. This might require some balance tweaking to make sure you still end up wasting half a day getting the same ammount of DNA, but at least you wouldn't have to buy 3 large houses and designate one room to each kind of DNA you wanted to craft with.
I agree right now organisation is becomming a major pain. Maybe remove the DNA sample object all together and add it to an object in the datapad? Nah that doesn't make any sense either because then you can't have any excuse for not copying a creature again and again... BTW what's my In Character excuse for why I can't copy a manufacturing schematic ad-infinitum? It's just data...
oh well, more fuel for the think tank...
=-Adun
Storage : I personally keep less than 10 DNA samples at a time, so it doesnt affect me that much.
Experimentation & cloneing have improved massively, though some indication of CL level of a generic template would be nice - its currently a guessing game.
Rare resources : I hope they finally nail this one in Jan. Eggs, I can get, ti takes time but its possible. Mollusc & Milk however, are next to impossible.
I have a Master Chef aswell as a Master BE, so Im hoping we get this sorted.
The areas that need work IMO are the rarity of resources, difficulty sampling high level creatures and the Tissue line (needs more variety)
We don't care. Put your helmets back on and go sit in the corner.
DNA storage and stacking:
1) get a vendor. put everything in the stockroom. a vendor takes up 1 object space in a house, and I have over 500 items on a vendor. you can withdraw multiple items from a vendor with <ctrl> or <shift> <select>.
2) thank the devs for the generic template. your storage woes have been reduced by a factor of 5.
3) when sorting DNA, start a crafting session, and sort THERE, rather than in your inventory: selecting a DNA sample shows the 'donor'-type, and depending on your craft-window size, the physique and prowess stats. while still in the crafting session, you can move DNA samples into containers (backpacks or pouches). it's not perfect, but it works better than straight inventory /examines and sorts.
for the dna stacking thing... all they need to do is make a limited amount of different types of dna.
for example. all above average quality dna samples froma gnort all have identical stats, and serial numbers. all high quality dna samples from the same gnort are also identical, but slightly better (in ALL aspects) from the above average one...
and so on. each critter would therefore beable to drop only 4-5 different kinds of dna, and those will stack with like kinds from that critter.
then all they have to do is allow stacking of identical serial numbered items. but they'd also have to set it such that events that change the stats of an item (like slicing) actually change the serial number as well.
I do like the idea Tal-N had about the blood samples. Maybe if they made it so that once we do a dna sample on a creature, each "Blood vile" would have an option to "extract" a sample from it. Perhaps make it so that we can take 5 samples from each vile. That would give us a boost without having to recode too much. (Since it would be seen sorta like a factory crate of DNA samples).
The can even go as far as to make the stats of the sample we get randomize (along with the quality). Basically the blood vile could be named like:
Mutant Rancor DNA Vile
This would make it easier for us to see what the item is w/o having to examine each one.
Well the blood vials solution would be one easy and low capacity database method, especially if they make it so that blood is technically a resource and it can stack together from the same species thus giving them charges of a kind. This could be very easily done with a new tool we can craft which is a hyperdermic needle of sorts, the usual materials and experiment point systems apply meaning that a master can produce better needles than a novice. The needle itself determines the success rate of getting a viable sample plus it'd have charges allowing for multiple attempts.
This could then not only solve the storage issue but also the one whereby bio-engineers are unable to sample from aggro species without maskscent, having a means of producing a hyperdermic needle for any profession to use in order to extract blood samples in the same way that we take dna allows for BEs to have someone else gather the materials needed to make thier clones.
2 birds with 1 stone. Can't get much better than that.