The base biotech DLC leaves you with very little to do before the industrial era. At most, you might be able to recruit a few colonists of exotic xenotypes. But that's boring, and prevents tribals from engaging in crimes against nature genetic experiments.
I wanted to remedy that, in a way that wasn't just reskinning the vanilla Biotech machinery (is a DLC considered vanilla? Does it even matter?). To that end, tribal colonies have now been given an entirely new system to interact with xenogenetics.
Okay, but what does the mod actually [i]do?[/i]
It's centered around a new plant, called the 'genospore'. A fungus, that can only be grown in darkness. If you have ideology installed, that makes the 'tuneller' meme ideal. Otherwise, just roof over a patch of land, and use that.
Using that genospore, a bit of herbal medicine, and some psychite tea (it's medicinal, alright?) you can craft a drug, that will infect your colonist with the genospore. Alternatively, you can give it to your prisoners through the 'adminster drug' operation.
This infection is incurable, unless you have a mechserum on hand. Unless you perform a surgery to extract the xenogenes. The further along the infection is, the larger a percentage of the patient's genes you get. Just remember that performing the operation after 75 % severity [i]will[/i] kill the patient.
The result is a "genetic essence", that can then be consumed by a pawn, to implant those genes ('reskinned xenogerm'? Pfft, keep such slanderous accusations to yourself, thank you very much).
List of drugs currently in the mod
[list]
[*] "Extracting genospore": The one that the mod is centered around. Allows you to extract xenogenes from a pawn.
[*] "Assimiline": Prevents geneshock, xenogerm regrowing, and xenogermination comas, in exchange for a fatal addiction. Good for stacking several genes in a single pawn. Less good for long-term surivability in said pawn. If the debuffs seem to appear anyway, give at an in-game hour, and check back again.
[*] "Genospore incubator": An alternative extraction surgery (requiring a research from the medieval tech-level) will create this drug. While the effects of this are similar to those of the basic drug, extraction of this one provides multiple identical xenogerms, the contents of which are determined when the drug is created (following the same rules as a regular genospore extraction)
[*] "Genospore splitter": Functions like the incubator, except this one splits the genome into smaller packs. The closer a pawn is to 90 % infection, the closer the result will be to 1 gene per pack. Two notes for this one: First of all, an extraction at 90 % severity may generate [i]a lot[/i] of xenogerms. So don't be shocked if your hospital suddenly gets flooded with the things. Second, and related to that, creating a coherent xenotype from all these individual genes may require using an assimiline afflicted pawn as medium. Unless you have a lot of time on your hands, that is.
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Future plans
For all intends and purposes, the mod is still in development. I intend to add options to have a bit more control over the process. My current, loosely defined, plans are as follows:
[list]
[*] A version of each of the previously mentioned drugs, that can handle archite genes. At the moment, I intend to balance this by introducing luciferium into the recipe (although without the addiction upon consumption), but I am nothing if not fickle, so that could change long before I actually get around to implementing it.
[*] Maybe, if I can figure out the coding, a way for colonists to convert these offbrand xenogerms into industrial genepacks, and the other way around. That way, genepacks can still be useful for tribal colonies, and the genetic essences may still have a place in more industrialized settlements.
[*] I do also wanna make some intergrations with Ideology and Anomaly, although I have far less concrete plans for those. For Ideology, maybe some memes or precepts about the ethics of using this... 'risky' form of genetic extraction. Maybe even a meme that allows colonists to survive extraction at higher severities. As for Anomaly, I have some vague ideas for rituals involving things like turning xenogenes into endogenes, inducing random mutations into an unfortunate victim, and maybe even some hazardous 'ressurrection'-rituals. Oh, and turning people who die of the infection into shamblers, or some other form of zombie. Because this is still a parasitic fungus, and I am [i]incredibly[/i] basic.
[*] Maybe a config menu. Could be useful, so people aren't entirely at the whims of my haphazard fascimile of a 'well balanced experience'.
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Frequently asked questions
Okay, I didn't actually have any playtesters for this, but all the cool mods have an FAQ-section this is a convenient format to adress things that don't fit anywhere else.
Is it compatible with [x]?
Should be. Whether it's a mod that adds more xenogenes, a mod that impacts the inheritance of xenogenes, or any number of genetics-related mods, it should be fine. I haven't changed any code or XML, only added my own. Maybe if a mod modifies how xenogerms work (their function, not just a retexture), that could be an issue. But I don't think I've seen any mods do that, so it's entirely a shot in the dark. I do, however, feel fairly confident in saying that it should work with Combat Extended.
Why is the gene tampering so lethal?
Two reasons. Number one, is that it explains why people would move away from the practise. When somebody invents a machine that [i]doesn't[/i] force you to go through a mountain of corpses to make your hair curlier, that's going to be the preferable option. The second reason, is that the management aspect of having to keep tabs on an (almost) incurable infection adds a level of balance. Do you cut it close for maximum payoff (and guaranteed death), or do you play it safe? Do you stick to ethical extraction from your own colonists, or create a genefarm of raiders, that rival the worst of human experiments?
The visuals are... interesting
That's not a question! But also, yeah, I'm more of a programmer than an artist. That's not to say I'm much of a programmer either, but it's still my stronger side. Since I'm not about to comission an actual artist for a silly mod (and refuse to use AI), you will have to make do with this. If I ever get a firmer grip on the Rimworld artstyle, I will definitely come back to overhaul these sprites a bit.
Why a fungus?
My original idea was a 'chestburster parasite', so to speak. And while I scrapped the chestburster, the idea of a parasitic organism that was able to mess with people's genetics stuck with me. It felt appropriately alien and disturbing. I even loosely based the actual genospore design on the cordyceps fungus, although my lack of artistic skill may have held that vision back, somewhat.
Why not just call it 'the genospore mod', or something like that?
1: While the genospore may be the core resource, the mechanics of the mod are still very much centered around pre-industrial access to biotech genetics. B: A bit more cynically, the current title contain words that people would actually be searching for. Titling your mod after a made up word is a [i]great[/i] way to show up at the very bottom of every search result ever.
