Guide to Genetics

The Department

Ready to play God? Good! Because it's about to get very interesting.

The Genetics department is located between the Medical Bay and the Science Department. It has different sets of animal cubes to use as test subjects, and two DNA modifiers that allow you to do the actual work. This is where you'll be spending most of your time... hopefully your partner can hold a conversation.

As a geneticist, your job is to:

1. Discover beneficial mutations and distribute them to the crew, as appropriate,
2. Watch over the adjacent Cloning Lab and make sure people are cloned on time,
3. Cure people of genetic diseases, if any are contracted.

Most of the time, you won't need to worry about the Cloning Lab. The crew may encounter Radiation Storms during a shift, which cause genetic mutation and radiation damage. Curing people of diseases they get from rad storms and other sources of radiation is easy (the secret ingredient is either mutadone which can be found in the medical vendors, or a Clean SE injector which you can make right away using the DNA Manipulators), but occasionally the same accidents that lead to genetic disability also give folks superpowers – it may be wise to scan the genome of every rad storm victim before applying mutadone.

That leaves finding beneficial mutations and distributing them. Two methods to find good mutations are detailed below, one significantly faster (and more fun) than the other. Your Department SOP prohibits you from distributing genetic powers to anyone except Command staff on Code Green, and even that is only allowed with a Research Director's approval. Code Red allows the same for Security staff. In a shellnut: no fun allowed if you're a stickler for the SOP.

Getting Started (Making a Clean SE)

The following will help you take the first steps in a shift. At the end of this process, you will have a humanized monkey, and a "Clean SE" (A clean-slate injector that allows you to 'undo' unfortunate mutations in someone's Structural Enzymes. Useful when your coworker starts having epileptic fits on the floor.) The actual science of modifying genes to unlock powers is described further below.

• NOTE As a geneticist, you will often have a coworker in your office. It is wise to make an arrangement on who works on which blocks before you do anything. This typically means one geneticist working their way up from block 1 and the other working their way down from block 54.

1. Get a monkey cube from the box of monkey cubes on your nearby desk. (Or whichever other animal you wish to torment with your experiments.)
2. Unwrap the monkey cube and hold it under the sink in the nearby pen.
3. Grab whichever animal you have. Or drag the victims sprite onto the DNA Modifier to put them inside
4. Click on a DNA Modifier to stuff the animal inside.
5. Click on the DNA Modifier Access Console to open its menu.
6. Click Modify S.E. (S.E. meaning Structural Enzymes).
   • In this menu you will see 55 seperate blocks. The first sub-block of block 55 dictates whether an animal is a lower lifeform or humanoid.
7. Click the first sub-block of block 55 and use irradiate block to irradiate it.
   • This step will need to be repeated until the first sub-block has a value that is under 8.
   • (Optional) After this step is done, you can right-click the DNA Modifier and Eject DNA Scanner to remove the test subject. If everything was done correctly, it should be a humanoid. Try to keep the test subject out of the modifier as shortly as possible as the effects of DNA modification may have caused it to become irradiated.
8. Have a look at the first sub-block of all blocks, 1 to 54. Make sure all values are below 8.
   • If they are not, modify the first sub-block until they are all of 7 or below.
9. Once all the first sub-blocks from blocks 1 to 54 are below a value of 8, go to the transfer buffers menu.
   • You want to save Subject S.E. in buffer one of the three available buffers.
10. Click the text next to Label: and set it to Clean S.E.
    • Congratulations, you now made a fail safe should you inject yourself with one of the many disabilities!
    • NOTE: This clean S.E. can also be used to treat certain disabilities in newly cloned crewmembers.
    • NOTE: You can also use a block injector of your clean S.E. to clear a specific disability block.
11. Click Injector to create a syringe with the test subject's S.E. inside it.
    • The syringe will spawn on top of the DNA Modifier Access Console. Click on it to pick it up. Or if it spawned under it for some reason, right click the DNA Modifier, move your mouse over the syringe and pick it up like that.
12. Store your syringe in your workplace or on you. It is best to have a complete clean S.E. around at all times.

Notes:

1. To inject yourself, simply put the injector in an open hand and click on your character's sprite.
2. As you modify DNA, whatever you are working on has a chance to be irradiated. A well-prepared Geneticist makes sure to keep an irradiated subject within the DNA Modifier and to keep a modest stash of charcoal and potassium iodide around to treat the inevitable toxin damage. (Both chems can be found in MediVends.)
3. A block injector will only inject the block you select. For example, Block 24 is Mute and Block 25 is X-Ray Vision. If you use a normal injector, you will be mute and have Xray vision. However if you use a block injector and select Block 25, you will have X-Ray vision and NOT be mute. It's a great way to stack all the overpowered powers and seemingly ignore the subject's crippling defects!
4. Some powers, notably X-Ray Vision and Hulk, have a large chance of not being applied to a subject via block injector. If you're sure you have one of those powers, just keep trying.

Hexadecimal Numerals

The number format in each block is a Hexadecimal. In summary, the numbers and letters are organized like this, from lowest to highest:

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F

Each block has 3 sub-blocks of hexadecimals. Think of each block like a triple digit number, where you edit the digits, or "sub-blocks", in the hundreds, tens, and ones place. For the purpose of this instruction, saying to set a specific block "below 800" means that the first sub-block of that block must be less than 8 - the other two characters in that block don't matter. In another example, setting a block to "above DAC" means:

• The first sub-block must be equal to or higher than D (E or F)
• If the first sub-block is D, the second sub-block must be equal to or higher than A (B, C, D, E, or F)
• If the second sub-block is A, The third sub-block must be equal to or higher than C (D, E, or F)

Note: If the first sub-block is E or F, the potential of the entire block will already be active, as it is higher than DAC, and will not require the editing of the second or third sub-block.

Likewise, if the first sub-block is D, and the second block is B or higher, it will not require editing of the third block. It's a bit easier to try to get a B or higher in the second sub-block than to try get a C or higher in the third.

Unique Identifiers (UI)

Unique Identifiers are your cosmetic details - eye color, skin color, hair style, hair color and gender. All colors are in RGB, with 0 meaning absence of that color, and F meaning the highest value of that color.

Although all species have the same number of Unique Identifiers, some blocks will have no effect on certain species. For example, only species with scales or fur will be affected by changes to blocks 8-10 while block 7 only applies to species with varying skin tones such as humans. This same rule applies to head accessories and body markings, as not all species may have them.

Blocks	Their usage
Blocks 1-3	Hair Color RGB values
Blocks 4-6	Secondary Hair Color RGB values
Blocks 7-9	Beard Color RGB values
Blocks 10-12	Secondary Beard Color RGB values
Block 13	Skin Tone 1(0)-220(F)
Blocks 14-16	Fur/Scales RGB values
Blocks 17-19	Head Accessory RGB values
Blocks 20-22	Head Marking RGB values
Blocks 23-25	Body Marking RGB values
Blocks 26-28	Tail Marking RGB values
Blocks 29-31	Eye Color RGB values
Block 32	Gender < 800 = Male > 800 = Female
Block 33	Beard Style
Block 34	Hair Style
Block 35	Head Accessory Style
Block 36	Head Marking Style
Block 37	Body Marking Style
Block 38	Tail Marking Style

Unique Enzymes (UE)

Unique enzymes determine your identity, basically the name that people see you as when they examine you, and when you talk. These are separate from unique identifiers, but usually are changed together.

Structural Enzymes (SE)

Structural Enzymes contain data relevant to your genetic structure. This governs your race, powers, and disabilities. For those that handle genes with care, however, great benefits are to be had.

Blocks 1 - 54

These are all randomized powers (major, minor, and intermediate), disabilities, and a few empty blocks.

Block 55

This block governs whether the subject is a humanoid or not.

• Humanoid = below 800
• Animal = above 800

Powers and Disabilities

Any of blocks 1-55 may be the block for a special power or disability. Powers and disabilities are calculated at round-start, thus are not different for each person. Some blocks don't have powers and will give nothing even when at FFF on the sub-blocks; there are more blocks then disabilities/powers. Also, if you want to be totally able to turn back without the disability/power you just got, make sure that you only injected the cell block you have chosen to irradiate, and you got the not irradiated version of the block (get it first before irradiating it [Transfer buffer]>[Subject's S.E]>[Block/Cell injector]). Injecting a SE injector will not guarantee that the power or disability is activated. It will set the blocks the injector has but the blocks will activate at a random chance after each injection. If you for example inject yourself with block 1 first and it does nothing. Then you might get two powers if you inject yourself with block 2 due to the second injection triggering the activation all of the genetic blocks.

Genetic Instability

As you inject yourself with additional powers, you genes will become more unstable. On the other hand, the more disabilities you have, the more stable your genes become. Each power and disability has an instability value relative to its strength. If you want to become an all-powerful super being, you'll have to balance out your powers with some disabilities, or face some nasty consequences.

Your genetic instability starts at 0. Different powers will add varying amounts of instability, while disabilities will subtract from it.

• At 20 instability or below, you will face no adverse reactions. This is where you want to be ideally.
• From 25 to 35 instability, your skin will occasionally start to feel like it's bubbling off, dealing minor burn damage.
• From 40 to 65 instability, your body will additionally start warping, causing minor cellular damage and deforming limbs, making them useless until healed.
• After 70 instability, your body will warp extremely often, causing death within minutes.

Major Powers

These require a block of DAC or higher to have a chance to activate.

Trait	Instability	Sensation	Effect
Cryokinesis	+10	You notice a strange cold tingle in your fingertips.	Causes minor burns and lowers the body temperature of an individual. Will not effect those with the Cold Resistance mutation.
Empathetic Thought	+5	You suddenly notice more about others than you did before.	Tells you the pain-level, intent, and random thoughts of another person. Can be blocked by Psy-Resist.
Hulk	+15	Your muscles hurt.	You turn green and become super strong. You can't be stunned and your punches can break through reinforced walls. You will lose this power and can collapse if you get below 25% health. WARNING: This power makes you unable to use guns or weapons such as an E-sword.
Jumpy	+5	Your leg muscles feel taut and strong.	Allows you to leap roughly a screen and 1/4.
Matter Eater	+5	You feel hungry.	Allows you to eat almost anything, including any restraints placed on you, live explosives (except C4), and people's limbs. The head and chest cannot be eaten.
Dwarf	+5	Everything around you seems bigger now...	You can walk over tables as if they were floor tiles.
No Breathing	+10	You feel no need to breathe.	You do not need to breathe.
No Prints	+5	Your fingers feel numb.	You leave no fingerprints.
Psy-Resist	Neutral	Your mind feels closed.	You cannot be telepathically spoken to, spied on with Remote View, and Empathetic Thought cannot read your thoughts.
Telekinesis	+15	You feel smarter.	Allows you to move objects with your mind and affect things in your sight range. Cannot be used with Remote Viewing.

Intermediate Powers

Intermediate Powers require a block of BEA or higher to have a chance to activate

Trait	Instability	Sensation	Effect
Chameleon	+10	You feel one with your surroundings.	You become invisible while not moving. Cannot be used with Cloak of Darkness.
Cloak of Darkness	+10	You begin to fade into the shadows.	You are partially invisible depending on the lighting of your current environment. Will over-rule Chameleon if both mutations are active.
Cold Resistance	+10	Your body is filled with warmth.	You are no longer effected by cold environments and Cryokinesis cannot harm you. Cannot be used with Heat Resistance.
Morphism	+5	Your body feels if can alter its appearance.	You can change your skin tone, hair, eyes, and gender at will.
Polymorphism	+10	You don't feel entirely like yourself somehow.	Allows you to mimic the appearance and voice of others, a bit like a changeling without the death. You may only mimic a person immediately next to you.
Regenerate	+5	Your wounds start healing.	Doubles your nutritional health regeneration. So when you eat you heal more.
Remote Viewing	+5	Your mind can see things from afar.	You can remotely observe other people who also have this power.
Telepathy	+5	You feel you can project your thoughts.	You can talk to people through their minds over long distances. Can be blocked by Psy-Resist.
X-Ray Vision	+15	The walls suddenly disappear.	You can see everything in your sight range, even through walls.
Speed Boost	+5	You feel swift and unencumbered.	Allows you to move in hardsuits without movement penalties.

Minor Powers

Minor Powers require a block of 802 or higher to have a chance to activate.

Trait	Instability	Sensation	Effect
Heat Resistance	+10	Your skin is icy to the touch.	You are no longer effected by hot environments.
Shock Immunity	+10	Your skin feels dry and unreactive.	You are immune to shocks. These include events such as touching an electrified door.
Sober	Neutral	You feel unusually sober.	You cannot become drunk, but feel free to try to anyways.
Strong	Neutral	You feel buff!	Doesn't do anything. But at least you're buff now.

Disabilities

As tempting as those powers may seem, there is also a very high chance of you getting a disability. These always manifest when the block is at 802 or higher.

Trait	Instability	Sensation	Effect
Blindness	-15	You can't seem to see anything.	Your vision is nearly non-existent and restricted to an extremely tiny area.
Chav	Neutral	Ye feel like a reet prat like, innit?	A number of words are replaced with their British counterparts.
Clumsiness	-5	You feel lightheaded.	You drop things a lot, are generally clumsy, and guns explode in your face.
Color Blindness	-10	You feel a strange prickling in your eyes as your perception changes.	Removes all color from your vision, turning the world an inky black-and-white.
Comic	Neutral	Uh oh!	You speak like a clown, oh the horror.
Coughing	-5	You start coughing.	You cough a lot and drop things when you do so.
Deafness	-15	It's kinda quiet.	You can't hear anything.
Dizzy	-5	You feel very dizzy...	Your movement direction becomes randomized
Epilepsy	-10	You get a headache.	You become prone to debilitating seizures.
Hallucinate	-10	Your mind says 'Hello'.	You start to hallucinate.
Horns	Neutral	A pair of horns erupt from your head.	Causes you to have horns; does not negatively effect health in anyway.
Incendiary Mitochondria	Neutral	You suddenly feel rather hot.	Causes you to spontaneously ignite when used.
Lisp	Neutral	Thomething doethn't feel right.	Replaces every 's' you say with 'th'.
Loud	Neutral	YOU FEEL LIKE YELLING!	All shouting, all the time.
Mute	-10	You feel unable to express yourself at all.	You lose the ability to speak. Noises like screaming or groaning are replaced by "loud noise!"
Nearsightedness	-10	Your eyes feel weird...	You have reduced vision, and require glasses, medicine, a clean SE block, carrots or surgery to see better. Note: Will not grant genetic stability if cured.
Nervousness	Neutral	You feel nervous.	You stutter when you speak.
Obesity	-5	You feel blubbery and lethargic!	You become fat.
Radioactive	-15	You feel a strange sickness permeate your whole body.	You emit radiation, causing toxin damage to yourself and all organics near you.
Swedish	Neutral	You feel Swedish, however that works.	All W's are replaced with V's, and you occasionally say 'Bork Bork Bork!'.
Tourettes	-10	You twitch.	You curse randomly and twitch, which causes temporary paralysis.
Unintelligible	-5	You can't seem to form any coherent thoughts!	Rearranges your speech, making it difficult for others to understand you.
Grey vocabulary	Neutral	Your vocal cords feel alien.	You talk like greys, using the wingdings font.

Radiation

Continuing from the above practical example with the monkey (now "humanized") still inside the DNA Modifier, you have three ways to discover new genetic powers:

• Radiation Emitter Settings
  • Change how long and how harshly the monkey gets blasted by radiation. Default settings are adequate.
• Pulse Radiation (Main Menu)
  • Inaccurately and randomly modify any of the monkey's UI or SE with a single pulse.
  • Basically useless for finding mutations. It's quite hard to tell which blocks have been activated at a glance after pulsing, and the process is, well, random.
• Radiation (Inside the Modify Unique Identifier or Modify Structural Enzymes sub-menus).
  • Accurately modify a single sub-block.

The simplest strategy is as follows: start at Block 1 of the Structural Enzymes and radiate that block until the number is "DAC" or higher. Then, remove your monkey and see if anything seems strange with him. The catch is - not all disabilities or powers are easily visible. For a dangerous disability like Blindness, you can check your monkey's eyes to make sure their pupils narrow with the penlight you should have:

1. Move the penlight to an open hand.
2. Click on the penlight to turn it "On".
3. Click on the Damage Zone in the top-right corner of your HUD to indicate that you want to target the eyes.
4. Click on the monkey to "direct the penlight" into their eyes.
   • If you see "pupils narrow", the monkey's eyes are normal. An "eerie glow" means X-Ray Vision, and "no reaction" means the monkey is blind.
   • Note that other animal subjects, like farwas, have eyes that always emit an "eerie glow." It's not X-Ray Vision. I'm sorry.

If you notice something wrong with your monkey, like twitching, you know that block is a disability. Make a note of it, then Radiation that block until it's back below 800 to make it normal again. You can also use your injector, or Transfer Buffer > Transfer to > Occupant. Both the injector and occupant-transfer cause a small amount of toxin damage (about 4-5, which can be identified by the occupant's Health %) and between 20-50% radiation (identified by the Radiation Level %). The radiation level can be reduced by using Inject Rejuvenators, and the toxin damage can be cured by using the pills or syringes contained within Anti-Toxin First Aid kits on your subject.

Then, continue down the line of blocks until you have a structural enzyme string of only powers with zero disabilities. Saving this buffer is highly recommended unless you don't want someone else to find it (in which case, you could edit the label to something like "All disabilities" to fool people).

Example Scenario

1. Block 1 is radiated to DAC
2. Monkey is removed to check for disabilities, but appears to be clean.
3. Geneticist saves the monkey's SE, outputs it into an injector, and injects himself to see what the block does.
4. Nothing happens.

Note: This is a good sign. Because disabilities have a 100% of manifesting above 802, having nothing happen means one of two things: A) The block is one of the few blank blocks in the genome or B) The block contains a power but conflicts with some mutation you currently have active on yourself.

Random Mutations

At all times, there is a chance that radiating a specific sub-block will not work. Instead, a different random sub-block will be radiated. Furthermore, this chance increases as your subject's Radiation Level increases. This is most identifiable then you radiate a sub-block, but it doesn't change, in which case either:

• (Likely) A different, random sub-block of either Unique Identifiers or Structural Enzymes has been modified.
• (Unlikely) The radiated sub-block just happened to land on the same number.

This can be easier to control by using Inject Rejuvenators, which will slowly lower the monkey's Radiation Level. Only 90 units of rejuvenation are allowed in the subject. Rejuvenator overdoses do not negatively affect the subject at this time, so it is recommended to keep your subject on Rejuvenators while radiating them to ensure that radiation levels immediately and continuously decrease. The DNA of dead subjects can be modified just as easily as that of living ones.

Due to this chance of random mutations, you must get in the habit of "cleaning the SE", which involves reading over the first sub-block of every block in the Structural Enzymes to make sure that no other blocks are over 800. For example, if you're testing block 1 and you finally got it above DAC, your process to do so may have inadvertently modified block 2 to 900 (which would cause a disability or a minor power). This would make it difficult to determine what block 1 is doing to your monkey.

Nokko's Faster Method

Getting all 54 blocks to DAC one-by-one, using the method described above, will take a single geneticist 20 minutes, in ideal conditions. (It takes 6-11 presses of the "Irradiate Block" button to get a block to DAC, and each press takes 2 seconds.) However, that doesn't account for testing each block for good powers, time lost to station shenanigans, etc. Genetics is slow!

However, there is a slightly better way!

A chemical called Unstable Mutagen will always give disabilities when ingested. (Ingested, not injected, smoked, or applied via patch.) It is very simple to make, and either SciChem or MedChem can help you get some. If you feed a monkey about four large beakers of the stuff (400u), three things will happen:

1. It will become a humanized monkey,
2. It will start emitting radiation,
   • Helpful note: there are radiation suits are south of your Genetics Lab, in Medical Storage. Some can also be found in the EXPERIMENTOR room in the Science department. If you do get some radiation poisoning, consume potassium iodide (found in MediVends) and inject yourself with a Clean SE, or mutadone, if you get any bad mutations.
3. It will (hopefully) get all 24 disabilities in the game. This is somewhat random and you may only get 23.

Once you scan this genome, you get a (somewhat) perfect negative of every genetic power. Note down which blocks are above 802 in the genome. At this point, you can throw away the all-disabilities data, or keep it around if you're the sort who might have a use for it. Now, perform the same block-by-block procedure on a fresh monkey, and skip the blocks you noted as being disabilities earlier. Only 30 blocks to scan, so it's supah-fast!

Cleaning

In order to "clean" a subject of unwanted disabilities or powers, the key is to make ALL of the Structural Enzymes blocks that you want to be normal less than 800. Unfortunately, this can be challenging, as radiating the subject too much will likely cause random blocks to change, making your effort infinite if their radiation level is not kept in check with Rejuvenators. A good alternative for this is using Mutadone. The medical vendors have 5 pills at the start of the shift each containing 20u of Mutadone. Giving one to a mutated patient will clear his SE to his default, meaning he will lose all disabilities and powers gained while onboard the station.

Transfer Buffer

The Transfer Buffer is a useful tool for saving your work, though it is always recommended that you take written notes on each block as you modify them. Furthermore, as stated in the practical example, it is highly recommended to keep a clean buffer saved just in case.

• Save
  • UI (Unique Identifiers)
  • UI+UE (Unique Identifiers and Unique Enzymes)
  • SE (Structural Enzymes)
• Transfer To
  • Occupant - Transfers the saved data from that buffer into your subject in the DNA Modifier. Causes a large amount of radiation to blast the subject.
  • Injector - Creates a syringe that you can carry around with you to inject yourself or others. Causes a small amount of toxin damage, but requires time to produce new injectors.
• Disk - Take a disk from the nearby Diskette Box and click on the DNA Modifier Access Console to load it.
  • Save To - Saves the data from that buffer to the disk.
  • Load From - Loads data from an existing disk into the DNA Modifier Access Console.
  • Eject Disk (Main Menu) - Remove the disk.