Bio Engineer Archive

with all the changes that just hit, many of the previous issues have become dated. examples of CURRENT issues:

DNA storage. get a vendor. put everything in the stockroom. vendors count as ONE item in a house. I have over 500 items on a vendor. problem solved. I don't see any way to make DNA stack otherwise, and the addition of generic templates already cuts storage problems by a factor of 5.

DNA sampling. several issues:

higher skill = more aggros. it SEEMS that the system currently works like this (numbers offered are purely arbitrary (and only represent low CL critters), and are only meant to illustrate the tendency for higher aggros at higher skill):

at novice, DNA sampling can 50% fail, 50% succeed. on sampling (success or fail), death 50%, aggro 10%.

DNA 1: 40% fail, 60% succeed. death 40%, aggro 10%.

DNA 2: 30% fail, 70% succeed. death 30%, aggro 10%.

DNA 3: 20% fail, 80% succeed. death 20%, aggro 10%.

DNA 4: 10% fail, 90% succeed. death 10%, aggro 10%.

master: near perfect success. death nil, aggro 10%.

that doesn't look too bad at first... but here's what happens. novice samples nuna, gets 1 DNA, nuna dies (very low chance for aggro, high chance to kill). master samples nuna, gets multiple DNA, nuna aggros (very low chance to kill, increased chance to aggro with muliple samples). I don't mind nuna-attacks, but when you play with bigger critters, the fact that aggros become OVERALL more likely really hurts. wouldn't it make more sense toincrease aggros at lower levels to %'s near the 'sample-kill' rates, while progressively lowering aggro %'s as the chance of harm to the 'donor' decreases? if a needle can kill a critter during a sample, it seems that the critter is more likely to notice it and take offense... as sampling skill increases (and the danger to the 'donor' decreases) shouldn't the 'unfriendly response' (aggro) chance ALSO decrease? personally, I'm much more likely to respond violently to an untrained phelbotomist than to a skilled surgeon.

DNA samples at master don't seem to accurately reflect the DNA harvest skill: AA samples should be common for DNA 4, and fairly UNcommon for masters. also, I don't think that the donor CL is factoring well into the equation: AA samples for high CL critters at master makes sense, but a master sampling nunas should get ONLY VHQ samples.

VHQ samples don't seem to have significantly higher values than HQ... nor AA over A, and so on.

if the cap for sampling is CL75, then display a message: you cannot sample from %TT. this CL check is already working for the /tame skill.

while the experimentation on template crafting was explained as 'an average of the experimentations on two stats' and therefore an issue that will require a fix to ALL crafting, it'd be nice to get more information about this... right now, we've just been told that the numbers don't seem to make sense, but they are working as intended.

experimentation works on templates, but not on clones. flora and meat resources for clones list required stats, but nowhere in the crafting process is the effectiveness of these shown... 'moderate success' or 'amazing success' both seem about as likely, even with junk resources.

crit fails eat resources. crit fails occur at a VERY high rate. architects no longer lose resources on crit fails, and metal/ore/etc are MUCH easier to gather than meat/DNA. fix the rate, or drop the resource consumption.

templates and clones offer the option to make a manufacturing schematic. remove this option.

clone skins don't list any minimum CL. I doubt that a master veermok has a higher min-CL than a submaster blurrg.

clone skins determine movement speed. 'rabbits' are painfully slow, while cat-types (and possibly bipedal reptiles and dogs) are fast. why there are ANY rabbits left in the galaxy is beyond me... at their current speeds, they should be easy prey. perhaps tie clone speed to prowess/action or some similar stat (offer terrain negotiation for psych?).

DNA templates don't show a CL stat... and the CL may vary depending on the skin chosen. a good DNA template is an awful waste to experiment with on differing skins to determine a final CL.

skillmods over +25 have no effect, despite the listing in the skillsheet. if the cap is +25, list no more than +25 to the appropriate skill.

certain creature specialsseem to beverboten: specifically AOE's and bleeds. if these specials are unavailable on clones, then they should show as nulls in the samples. currently, they seem to raise the CL without offering value. alternatively, allow clones a lesser version of the special attack (poison spray = med poison, plague strike = strong disease, etc) where the AOE version is sampled.

bugged wildtype resists and armor make for overpowered clones (kamurith-types, especially).

lower successes allow BioE's with submaster skill to make effective low-CL clones, while masters suffer from an increased CL for their efforts. allow experimentation to REDUCE the CL of a clone, and reward skill with lower CL's, rather than the current reward for 'unlucky' crafting.

milk has escaped comment. fish/eggs/etc has been promised. I'd like a better answer, but I'll just wait and see. I fished 7k survival xp and came away with a total of under 350 units of fish. eggs are fairly easy, but still tedious. other seafood? forget it.

skill point requirements for BioE are fierce. 15+14 for scout: hunt 4 AND 15+14 for medic: O Chem 4 is rough... compare that to DE (who need love, too), AS, WS, chef, tailor, and architect, which require 15+14 for artisan and one skill line (admittedly, DE needs master artisan to be effective)... HALF the skill points to qual these elite crafting professions compared to BioE. for an effective BioE, add explore 4 (another 14 points, assuming you don't master scout at this point for the CL on /examine and for the maskscent boost). add artisan (ANOTHER 15 points)to survey for flora resources and (more points) use a vendor. BioE and medic/doc/CM are all (at least in part) CRAFTING professions which currently have only the WORTHLESS skill /medicalforage to work with. ALL other crafters are 15 points closer to vendors, and automatically get survey skills at novice.

/medicalforage? please. remove it, or make it do something useful. FISHING is more productive.

tissues apparently offer benefits to chef products. this is not seeing use, and the resource requirements for a +8% duration (micronutrient supplement) seem ludicrous.

petstims and pet vitpacks give BioE xp ONLY on the finished product... the components count for med crafting xp. I get my components from a doctor anyway, but the xp seems abyssmally low for making these USEFUL tissues. requirements for petstims should be more in line with their equivilent stim counterparts: petstim B's should have similar resource requirements as stim C's, etc. pet vitpacks should benefit from advanced medical components.

xp for BioE is lousy. UXP seems to be absent on tailor tissues and clones AT LEAST, and may be missing from other products as well. micro supps take 15 meat, and give 105 xp in practice mode. master BioE takes over 500k xp. 5000+ micro supps is a LOT to work through, using a resource difficult to obtain, to master the profession. WS is somewhere around 875k to master, and the 'generic grind item' gives 300 or so xp. xp for WS requires metals (easily harvested by machine, unlike meat) and advances three times faster... though the total xp required is less than two times that of BioE.

DNA 4 can be reached (relative to the other skills) quickly, while crafting the DNA required to finish this skill line gives about enough xp to learn the tier 1 BioE skills. conversely, master artisan (or nearly so) can be achieved with the diggings of survey 1-4.

the new cloning system seems nice, but raises MANY questions... CL seems to vary wildly, and most of my lower CL clones show better stats than clones 5 or 10 CL's higher. armor. specials. skins. experimentation. we can't well test the new changes without a clear idea if the INTENT behind them.

LOTS of changes, very little documentation offered.

there are other issues, but these seem to be currently discussed in various sections of the forum. the previous 'Top 5 issues' have been 'answered.' the newest changes have rendered many previous issues of importance moot, or of LESS importance than the new issuesthat have been created.