Bio Engineer Archive

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I've had a few people ask if I can do species/sex changes, and as we all know, the answer is no. I think that just giving that as an option is too simplistic. There are certain things that I think should stay and be difficult to change, and this is one of them. However, I think that ID should have the option of changing them, and I have an idea of how this can be implemented across multiple professions. The thing is, all other professions have what seems like a gradiant of products or abilities, but for us, ID is just one thing--changing all your looks. There's no 'easier' or 'harder' or 'gathering the best resources' or 'spending more experimentation points.' You do one thing and you're done, whether it's changing muscle or skin. But I digress; hopefully you can see where I'm going.

What I propose is that ID's have a third screen (besides the normal ID stuff and the holoemotes screens) to change a person to the gender/species of their choice.

This screen would require the input of a resource crafted by a Bio-engineer. It could be put in by either the ID or the person being ID'ed, but it has to be present for the change to work.

This biological component that I'm suggesting would have to be crafted by a BE. I'm thinking that the tree it would be granted in is the same one that the creature-making tree is. I've never been a BE and so I'm not familiar with their profession, but from what I understand, you get little animals at lower levels and big, cool animals at higher levels. So, what could happen is that the less popular species like Mon Calamari and Ithorians would be available in the first box, and the really popular species like Zabs, Twi's, and humans would be available in higher trees or at Master.

Each crafted component would be granted a male and a female, so you would have to decide ahead of time what you wanted to be. Then you'd buy, say, a male Twi'lek component, pop it into the ID box, and off you go.

Now, since I think this should be difficult to come by, the BE would have to do some DNA sampling. Again, don't know exaclty how it works, but I'm assuming when you DNA sample one animal, you can make one animal. So, the BE would go along, looking for a male Twi'lek, and then DNA sample from him.

To again make this not an easy process, the sampling could cause wounds. I propose 50% wounds (so if you already have wounds, it won't completely kill you). Also, the person would have to agree to be sampled upon. Maybe a box could pop up saying, "So and so is trying to sample your DNA. Do you wish to allow this? You will receive X wounds." As an added feature, perhaps the BE could offer some amount of money.

So the whole process for the BE would be, sample DNA, craft the item, sell to the customer/ID. Customer or ID buys it, ID changes the species/gender of the customer.

Finally, if we want to limit the amount of species/gender changes even more (because I don't know if the previous scenario would cut it), make a component of the change-item be a looted object. I would say about mid-level drops, around the 35-45 range, because it should be difficult but not impossible, and accessible but not worth 1 c on the vendor.

What does anyone think?