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[DEVBLOG#213] Genies, and how we plan to make the game harder. (Patreon)

Published:
2022-12-11 15:00:34
Imported:
2022-12
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Content

Hey folks and welcome to a breakdown of what the Vanilla Races Expanded - Genies will bring to the table.

When I initially played with the genies, I hated the fact that they more or less look and play like 'skinny wimps that are good crafters'. It doesn't quite resonate with my vision for what xenotypes should be. 

When I first heard about genies, I expected them to be this complex race with many drawbacks to offset their high usability in every colony - I mean, to me at least, crafters are the most essential part of a mid to late game colony.

Now, I don't want to talk smack on the DLC - after all, I helped create it. However, genies were awfully disappointing. I don't know, maybe I just expected something different, especially after completing a playthrough of Mass Effect, maybe I expected genies to be a bit like the quarians - socially inept, with no immunity system to offset their practical skills.

Fortunately, I have a great team of modders who helped turn by dreams into a reality.

Now, please remember: this mod might not be for you. It's not a typical 'add more flavor' kind of mod. This mod is a bit like ordering a coffee from starbucks and receiving a coffee machine instead. You will have to learn how to play genies from the start, as they do force you to adapt your playstyle quite considerably.

Inspired by the Mass Effect series, I tried to bring the genies a bit closer to the quarians. We have included genes that make them absolutely worse than wimps - they will now bleed out twice as fast, and will take twice as long to regenerate their wounds. Their immune system is a thing of the past - any infection will now kill them without proper treatment with a brand new drug - antibiotics.

'Oskar', said a concerned fan, 'Why would you put something as important as antibiotics in a race expansion?'

Well, because without antibiotics, genies would be unplayable. Any illness or infection would be a game over for them. However, Vanilla Medical System Expanded is still on the table, and will definitely also feature antibiotics, so calm your jimmies.

I have prepared all the infographics and more or less have the mod ready for release, but I'd like to know your opinion about it before I upload it - in case there is any glaring issue, I'm sure you will point it out.

Files

Comments

Slmkaz

I do like that the antibiotics can be crafted with just herbal medicine and psychoid leaves, since my initial first reaction was how would they function in lower tech levels of play. Personally I love what you could almost call an exacerbation of their flaws and strengths since that makes them much more unique. Though will antibiotics be the only way for them to deal with their weak immunity? I mean even the quarians eventually developed suits/helmets and ways to more adequately protect themselves. (Which also could help for when players' colonies swell to massive size)

Oleg Oleg

So a first thing, antibiotic addiction is (in my opinion) not neccesarily a good idea, considering it's literally a life saving drug for these pawns. Perhaps an antibiotic addiction immunity is needed for them Alternatively, just make the effect be decreased by the antibiotic resistance hediff, just how there is a hediff for any other drug, except this one doesn't modify time but effect, potentially, thus punishing you with something else than just an increased resource cost As for slow illness, the thing that probably needs to be said straight away is "it probably needs to also slow the immunity gain speed" since else it literally doubles your immunity to disease ratio I also propose a gene to be made in the future, something along the lines of "fast metabolism" that boosts the infection gain rate but also immunity gain to have a pawn be out of bed and fully functioning a lot faster

Oleg Oleg

Also another thing, I would ask for all the genes in all the mods to be put into one big mod to be accessible to everyone, with the genes being able to be deactivated (if you don't want a specific gene to show up in gene packs) and the xenotype mods depending on these I ask for this because I can imagine how people might like some genes but don't actually want the xenotype to be changed. Basically they still want coffee now, but they also want to have the coffee machine for other uses

Oleg Oleg

A question too, if I may ask. Since currently they appear in raids, does that mean that the way they raid will be changed with either different weapons or different raid styles, since a raid is almost 100% certain death for them, even more than it is for the other raiders?

Matthew

Every day my dreams of a SOS2 Quarian colony are getting closer to reality

Matt

One of my favorite additions here is the slow diseases gene, which feels very flavorful for custom races. I do think it might work better as a 1 cost metabolic efficiency gene, though. To me, the downsides it presents makes it significantly worse than super immunity, which is also a two cost. It's essentially impossible to die due to an infection with super immunity, and you're back to work faster. It's generally just better. Though it should still be near impossible to die with slow diseases, the slow recovery makes this feel more at a level with strong immunity.

Dimitry Minchenkov

Speaking of quarians. We will probably need to wait for at least 6 months to get news on Turians and gangs mod?) IIRC, it was partially made.

Roku

I kinda like this, I'd love to see more Xenotypes and an expansion of the Occular xenotypes to make them more impactful. Or maybe some plant based xenotypes? Love the work of you and your mod team.

Karl Schreyer

I like the idea of the antibiotics being necessary for Genies to live, but the +100% immunity gain speed for 12 hrs seems like it may be too powerful for other races. In terms of balance, any baseliner with antibiotics will never really have to worry about infections again. Instead of doing a +100% immunity gain speed, could the antibiotics instead SET immunity gain speed to minimum 110% for 12 hrs? This would make it so no matter what xenotype takes antibiotics, they are only slightly above normal immunity gain speed so effective tending would still be necessary.

sorastro (edited)

Comment edits

2026-09-10 22:00 @Oskar, the mod is great as usual! Now, antibiotics are already a part of industrial medicine pack. I would just make a gene for genies which makes their immunity system work better if you use industrial or glitter world medicine on them. I think it’s the same design idea just executed in more vanilla fashion. When I say work better, it can be the idea from the post - carriers of the gene get better effects from advanced medicine or glitterworld - bigger immunity gain factor / better healing factor / medicine potency. Without it - well, dead. I think it will be better gameplay wise. Alternatively, make antibiotics be outstanding from medicine, like in real world, let it rollback a small portion of the disease progression (like 5%). It will give a little bit of additional time to all pawns to develop immunity. But use it with genie specific gene as well - make antibiotics work for them 10x better. With antibiotics the player will keep offsetting the infection in genie by 50% per dose until they are back in the field, without it, well dead. Hope it helps!
2022-12-11 17:11

Garrett Hall

Someone already pointed out that industrial/glitterworld medicine should already have antibiotics as a part of the pack (what else would they be using to treat disease in normal colonists), and someone else mentioned that antibiotics might break disease balance for non-genies. If it would be possible to make a surgery that requires industrial medicine that brings immunity gain to 100% (for 36 hours) that can only be performed on a genie, this would eliminate the need for a new medicine item. The other suggestion of a genie sensitivity to industrial+ medicine for diseases would work too. Someone else said that they were worried about genies being very difficult to maintain for low-technology colonies if they required industrial+ medicine, but I think that would be even more flavorful given the fact that genies are an engineered species meant to exist in hi-tech civilizations. This would add a cool challenge to low-tech colonies where a medieval colony might devote great amounts of resources to keep the researcher who is bringing them to the Industrial Age alive, or a tribal group might be led to risk a raid in order to get the medicine for the crafting specialist pumping out masterwork bows for them. .1 also seems a bit extreme immunity gain and wound healing. Genies being downed for 5 days instead of a quadrum from a good beating would still be challenging but not what would be too long in my opinion. Also, it would be nice if a genie with 2 archotech kidneys and whatever other modded implants could have a chance of surviving malaria. .3 might be a good number. I think that having diseases last longer for genies basically no matter what would be a good balancing mechanism too (and would be in line with slow wound healing and fast bleeding), so if antibiotics or whatever system you end up implementing only adds ~60% immunity gain that would lead to a situation where diseases last longer and treatment is more urgent even if treatment materials are present. On another note, metabolism +1 for hemophiliac seems pretty low given that this is how genies in colonies and raids will die a majority of the time. Wound healing and low immunity being .3 and all 3 traits being +3 metabolism would keep the total the same, but I’m sure a lot of these numbers will change regardless. Really appreciate the work you’re doing on this, I’ve had a lot of fun playing with genies but they are pretty broken as is, and immunity/health is a super cool way to balance it.

Alexandre F.

See I find it a bit immersion breaking that they are left with a metabolism +2, while having the "no immunity" gene at +4 and the "slow disease" gene at -2. Like, they're now extremely more vulnerable (even more than they were), it requires an additional drug to circumvent it, and just adds some more ressource management just to have them in their colony. Like there's no reason for me as a player to not just keep extracting their genes until I can remake the superior genie version that doesn't have that effect and pump them out as I wish. And if there's no reason for me as a player is there really a lore reason to why anyone else in the galaxy wouldn't have the same line of thought ?

Thomas Male

Love the concept and the ideas of all the genes. This is starting to give me Red Rising vibes, and I'm all for it. I might even have to try and make a Red Rising colony now that all of these Genes make it a possibility.

Artemis Martin

Grateful for these changes. A lot of the Xenotypes are built on thinly-veiled stereotypes, and I know some other autistic folk and I were uncomfortable with the original presentation of "they're awkward, wimpy, and have special interests: which is enough to no longer consider them passably human."

Michael Beltran

Will the “Phenomenal Aptitude” gene conflict with the genie’s existing “awful at” genes? Eg. Will we end up with genies that are phenomenal at Social, despite that being against their lore description?

Michael Beltran

Also, maybe I need to play it first but I feel that the +12 to a skill isn’t worth the new level of fragility Genies have. The original +8 was already a big boon. I imagined that maybe genies being so physically fragile, yet mentally gifted and having “an aptitude for machines” that they would get a boost to being a Mechanitor; whether a % boost to bandwidth, or maybe the mechanoids they control have a higher skill level than regular mechs? Especially the art reminds me of Megamind and his swarm of mechs! That being said, I think the changes to their immunity sound great to balance their huge skills boosts.

Red Lizard

I defininetly agree with the point that antibiotics are too powerfull as they are, it sounds a bit too simple but could they not just be usable by Xenotipes with the no immunity gene? You could explain it by saying that it just gives them a normal immune system and wouldn't help someone who already has one.

Deinopis

Antibiotics giving +100% immunity gain speed to anyone seems a bit overpowered. Maybe genies should have antibiotics dependency with drawbacks being immunity gain penalty and higher chance to catch disease and even carcenoma develoment. Something similar to AIDS but genetically induced. Antibiotics could give +10% while being benificial to others and critical to genies.

Devy

I agree with the rest about the antibiotics being a bit too powerful. How about instead genies have to wear a full suit for example like quarrians to raise their immunity gain speed and reduce disease risk.

Stim

I can see the logic behind it all, but the antibiotics things bothers me. Maybe change it so that they don't get immunity naturally, only get a set amount from treatment like with the sensory mechanites. That way you still have some hope even with some lower means, but you will need some good doctors or some very quick access to good medicine.

Iapetus

I was really hoping this would have been fixed in the DLC compatibility patch and i'm tech illiterate, but if you're doing biotech updates would it be possible to make the name lists for certain xenotypes optional cultures for ideology I've noticed the Impids and yttakin all have there own but you can't include it in an ideologian.

John Tippin

I don't really like the idea of genies not being automatically good at both crafting and intellectual. They are supposed to be the "engineer" xenotype. It's even included in their lore description. "natural aptitude with machines allow them to manipulate devices with remarkable precision " and "so much of their brains dedicated to analyzing machines."

Rossum

I'll admit that when I saw genies as a race my first thought was toward the "genie in a bottle" sort of thing, a powerful being bound into servitude due to a bottle or item their master controls. Basically the genies could be an engineered race who are powerful (intelligence and crafting being very useful skills) but were intentionally nerfed in ways to make them easier for their masters to control. The immunity deficiency makes sense, though I imagine solving it could take different forms like the antibiotics, a bed equipped with a machine that boosts immunity (something like the Sleep Accelerator. Put it next to a bed to help boost immunity or something like a dialysis machine), or perhaps a biocoded device that creates synthetic antibodies for them. Or maybe in an emergency they can somehow extract antibodies from a hemogen pack to boost their own immune system, making them sort of like a weaker version of sanguiphages in that they need a regular supply of hemogen from prisoners or donors to work (or at least until they can research antibodies or a high-tech alternative). It could be amusing if the original slave race of genies were designed with this immunity limitation in the hopes of keeping them under control, but some genies rebelled and developed a cheap way to boost their immune system using hemogen.... and due to the aformentioned lack of social skills their creators put in them saw no problems with turning their creators into hemogen farms to exploit them as they themselves had been exploited. That insident could somehow be related to Sanguophages, either they became sanguophages later or based their technique on them. Or... perhaps another limit could be that Genies have trouble digesting food and are limited to eating nutrient paste or baby food (baby food being useful if they don't have access to paste, but they probably dislike it). Though I suspect limiting the high intelligence/crafting race to "only" being able to eat the most nutritionally efficient food in the game would be less of an actual limitation and more just playing a bunch of stereotypical transhumanists.

Liam Swinn

Edit: rereading this was way more aggressive than I meant. fixing I hope these also help lay a lot of the groundwork for quarians when you eventually get back to doing the ME series. Because those are the mods I am most anticipating. I know they are on the back burner as they are a side project. I greatly anticipate them eventually coming out at some point.

Jack Hazardous

Wait does this mean my genies are just fucked if i dont have a hospital/drug lab?