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# System prepended metadata

title: BioScience
tags: [Rework]

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tags: Rework
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# BioScience

- Cram Virologist, Xenobiologist and Geneticist into a single role; Bioscientist.
- They get either a gigantic autism fort or a secure wing.
- Functions like atmos to engineering. A subdivision of science.
- No head, just a dean, QM tier. (BioScience Dean - BSD)
- Make the RD and dean conflict with eachother a bit, is fun.
- Science is focused on general science, Biosci is focused on biology. (duh)
- Xenobio Retooled for more biological effects (more consumable based)
- Genes arent free anymore (gotta put genetics rework ~~in another hackmd~~ it's down below)
- Monkey Zone
- Basic Medbay access
- increased compatibility between the virology, xenobiology, genetics subsystems to reinforce the connection
- bins connected to space 
- separate airlock for "public bioscience access" (basically a reinf table with shutters, behind an airlock on both sides)
- turrets at the main entrance from the hallway to shoot people without access?
- Light collusion with Botany (system shock 2 many meme lel) (vines with tumors)
- should have breach points that are manageable (so either you have to go through space or take a little risk to break in, somewhat more than with other departments but less than going into the AI sat)


## Funny ideas for some other time
- Meta: Z level between med and sci, under the south hallway with reinforced glass tiles above so that you can enjoy watching the horrors unfold below (blind spots should exist)
- Chap gets a damage bonus against abominations


## Collusion inclusion
- Xenobio: Extracts can feed into Viro's virus, needed for genetics to function over a certain level
- Xenobio now evolves slimes by feeding it monkeys with viruses (basic slimes don't need virii)
- sentients (humans) with viruses are even more potent; nugget role for that
- Virology: Can spread geneticist genes, helps xenobio slimes evolve
- Genetics: The end goal of the three, fed by Xenobio and Viro
- Pipeline: Xenobio=Viro>Genetics


## Xenobio rework (rough ideas)
- Slimes dont have mutation chance anymore "They are what they eat"
- Augmented monkies affect what they become
- Normal monkies generally give lower tier slimes
- while monkies that have a virus, were augmented by genetics, etc can change the outcome drastically
- extracts now can be fed into genetics for genes

# Mutations and Tumors: The New Genetics

## Mutations: What are they and how will you make them?

Under the new system, genes won't just be a simple choice of having an "x-ray" or a "telepathy" mutation. Instead, genes will be made of 'frames' - little snippets you put together that effectively code an effect. There will be a number of types of frames:

- target frames, codifying what *organ* will be affected by the gene
- conditional frames, codifying when the gene will activate
- protein/? frames, codifying the effect of the gene

The frames will be randomly assigned at the start, and each frame will have multiple possible effects (within reason). Some of those effects may be deleterious, requiring the geneticist to balance the frame with other frames or with entire other genes.

It will be possible to have more than one of each target, conditional or protein frame per gene. This way, you can tune your effect to your liking. They will also be able to be composed - so you could have two target frames composed to each other (think an 'and') or two target frames separate (think an 'or'). I would probably not allow logic more than one deep, though. In fact, I'd probably only allow a limited selection of frames to compound (maybe it should be a different concept)

Protein frames won't necessarily be tied to the organ you're working with, but across similar organs they should have similar effects.

### A small example 
Think of the classic thermal vision - in new genetics, it would be an eye target frame (or multiple, to make sure you're not affecting other organs) combined with let's say an "alpha-oxycondrobizinone" (or some other random name - the other frame would have a random name as well) frame that causes the eye to create thermal cone cells. However, in the new system, this probably wouldn't make those cones see through walls - an additional 'bluespace'-oriented frame would have to be composed to the frame.

On the other hand, maybe you want some more complex eye augmentations. What if your eyes naturally had integrated mesons, t-rays, maybe the ability to sense blood altered by nanites, viruses or aliens? You'd experiment with various frames until you found the ones that let you see those things, or find indications that if applied to the right organ they would.

So what would those indicators be?

In the case of the thermal frame, applying it to your 'nose organ' instead would allow you to smell and gain a live feed on temperature variations in the air. Applying it to your ears would instead allow you to hear the temperature fluctuations inside pipes. Effectively, the frame would be a thermal-sensing component. In fact, you might even be able to use it as a conditional frame...

### What other effects could they have on organs?

A short list would go something like this
- alter their primary purpose, as seen above
- make them secrete chemicals, which are directly applied to the organ (maybe you could secrete mannitol straight into the brain)
- extend their purpose, by adding subcomponents (see Tumors), though this may impact their primary purpose

### What organs though?

As you can see above, it wouldn't just be the organs currently recognized by surgery. I'm not 100% on this, but for the sake of consistency, it would be nice if all additional organs were added there as well - but it's kinda optional.

Additional organs I'd envision to help with this:
- muscles (how else are we going to do hulks? well... #Tumors, but you get what I mean)
- the nose
- skin (as an organ)
- diaphragm? I can think of some funny things you could do with this
- blood system as an organ? or maybe marrow
- bones

### Hormones
A simple detour to our story, 'hormones' would have the same purpose as in real life: signaling between the various genes you've created, allowing you to control them with your mind or other organs. Basically, the gateway to creating full genetic circuits, for all your devilish needs.

## Tumors: The building block of your next-generation abominations

Alright, so we can alter organs to achieve most of what we could with old genetics and more (like t-ray-frame-nose letting you smell the composition of the air? just saying), but it feels like we're severely limiting ourselves. How are we going to replace genetic instability, and how are we going to go above and beyond (besides, of course, more options, player creativity and a gameplay loop that involves you more into the process than the carpal tunnel inducing exercise that is current genetics..)?

The answer is new genetics' biggest asset and biggest enemy: tumors, both internal and external.

Tumors appear as a consequence of a new mechanic that will be required to make your genes work: Accelerated Growth Factors.

When you insert a gene into yourself, most of its effects cannot be felt. You might start synthesizing some chemicals at a slow rate, but otherwise that's it. Your genes stagnate, and you feel like a fool. All that work, for some funny chemicals in your bloodstream.

That's where virology especially comes into play. Accelerated Growth Factors are basically steroids for your genes; some of them are chemicals (you'd start with a basic packof them which wouldn't be very powerful, but would allow you to test genes - unstable mutagen?), while the more powerful ones would generally come from powerful viruses and slime extracts. Radiation itself would be an AGF!

Upon injecting AGF, your genes would spring into action, rearranging your internal organs to create desired effects. However, this comes at a cost. First of all, any tumors that already exist in your body (most would probably spawn with one or two benign tumors) would start growing to a size determined by the power of the AGF.

Even more so, any inaccuracy in your genes would start showing through quite powerfully, in a nonlinear manner which would force you to be more accurate the more AGF you want to chug. Your targetting frames have a small inaccuracy where they could also technically target an organ that doesn't exist? Well it exists now, and it's growing rapidly. I hope whatever you accidentally created there isn't functional... Of course, maybe you WANT it to grow, so you create genes that target the fake organ to create it in the first place.

Tumors would give you full freedom to combine gene frame components, allowing you to create new limbs (probably not very functional ones), heads (maybe even with brains - give them the new limbs maybe), pustules to shoot with, a second heart so that you have more stamina, are more resilient to stun batons and won't die if only one of them has a heart attack, you name it. The only limit is how much autism us coders have to implement the building blocks (some stuff will always have to be hardcoded, it's just a fact).

Of course, tumors aren't all fun and games. First of all, AGF by themselves make you consume food faster. If that's not enough, the tumors themselves start consuming food out of your bloodstream. If you're still somehow hanging on there somehow, then after a certain point of consumption, your tumors start consuming your blood wholesale. At that point, you have to consider: How am I going to solve this?

- I could just be content with simpler genetic mutations which don't require a lot of AGF, which means all I have to do is visit the doctor to get my tumors removed every now and then (like 30 minutes) and eat a bit more than usual
- I could accept that I'll die in maybe 45 minutes, enough for the round to complete before I expire to the tumors growing to absurd levels
- I could genemaxx myself to the point where the time between my genes fully activating themselves is maybe 10 minutes and use that time to rampage across the station, thankful that I rolled traitor or perhaps that I have culties to murder. Maybe I'll just genemaxx+AGFmaxx so hard that I'll die before all of my genes even activate, becoming a station-wide threat as I continually mutate for 15 minutes
- if I'm truly devilish, I can go one step further and mutate myself so I can devour more food, chemicals for sustenance, electrical energy, other players, or maybe merely drink their blood to sustain myself in some sort of vampirism
- any combination of the above


## Tools of the trade
### The GeneEditor:tm:
This machine is what you're going to use to assemble your new genes. Insert disks with discovered genetic frames (and the material to assemble them), and given the right blueprints, it prints mutators for you.
You can also insert a blood sample, extracts or organs, allowing you to extract frames or components out of it, inspect the genetic code of the person you took it from etc.

### The Biopsy Analyzer
Insert tumor or organ and look through it. The biopsy analyzer exists to answer a simple question: what the fuck am I looking at? Given a tumor or organ, it tells you at a molecular level what changes have occured to the tissue you're looking at, allowing you to understand what your gene frames were doing.

### PET Scanner
Inject radium and growth agents into a body. Shove the body into the PET Scanner. Turn the PET Scanner on and find out what tumors are recent fast-growers - useful for finding out what organs a certain gene you injected affects.

### Basic gameplay loop

Take monkey*. Inject with experimental genes created through the CRISPR Machine. Give it growth factors. Watch it die horribly. Cut the monkey apart and look at its organs and tumors through the Biopsy Analyzer. Persistently label the frames (for ease of use). Make new gene, take monkey, rinse and repeat until you're satisfied. Hope you don't accidentally create an abomination that will kill you. 

*or if you're adventurous or need really powerful genes: take a nugget

## How will slimes and viruses come into this? (WIP)
Terrible virus effects infecting monkeys -> high risk high reward frames. The faster the monkey dies or is horribly affected, the better the frame. Gives viro a good reason to make bad diseases

Slimes -> create specialty frames, integrating stuff like bluespace, plasma, gold (or even traitor crystals) into DNA structures
-> the special frames will be created through abominations (you have to apply the slime to an infected human)

## Random ideas
Mirrors inside a tumor + inserting a crystal (diamond, bluespace) into the tumor through surgery (or less powerful: create a less powerful one) + photoluminescence + promote neuron growth = tumor that shoots lasers. Beware: you'll get very hungry

## Idea zone
- Should we have turrets near the entrance?
Personally i'd only do it if the entire station has normalized turrets in general high security areas.
Buco: turrets right now are only really used in areas non-heads of staff (or carbons in general) aren't supposed to go. I guess that doesn't matter much though, as much as "is it fun to add them to the biosci entrance targetting abominations with too many genetic changes" (I wouldn't have them target normal crew). I don't know the answer, and I don't think I will until we build the biosci wing