Can Someone explain the Genetics to me?

[pasta864]

I don't understand a thing of the genetic part of this update. Can someone explain in a comprehensible way?

[StormMoon]

I havent fully understood the mutation part. But basically every gene is a stat of a creature. If you put multiple connecting genes together they get a little boost based off how many connections they have.

[キュウリジョー]

It's not super well explained in-game, so it's mostly just my (likely flawed) observations. That said, all of the loci represent stat boosts. The baseline seems to be 0 for every stat if there's no associated locus. The genome represents how many loci you can actually activate at any given time. Larger genomes give smaller boosts per locus but allow you to use more loci, small genomes offer fewer loci with more powerful boosts. When you have multiple genomes, the bonuses you receive are cumulative and are the total of all of the loci across all of your genomes. The loci themselves each have 4 arms, the arms can be one of four colors (red, green, yellow, blue). The object is to attach loci to each other by placing them in such a way that arms of the same color are touching. When that happens, you form a connection and the bonus is increased (I believe it's about 50%). If you connect a chain of loci to one of the yellow Amplifiers, all of the loci that are connected to the chain are doubled in effectiveness.

The two "wildcard" factors to me are the bad genes and the mutagenic genes. From what I gather, the mutagenic genes make it more likely that a member of the subspecies will spawn with different loci than what you've specified, but that's mostly just a guess. It could also relate to them spawning as new subspecies or just same variance in stats. It's hard to say without any official documentation being made available yet. I think the bad genes just cancel out any potential connections between the loci they're touching. They're not well explained anywhere nor are the effects super obvious to me. But I can say for sure that giving a creature a genome full of bad genes makes it trivial to kill them off, so The Accomplished achievement became completely trivial to unlock. Also, the effects of loci DO stack, so you can fill up a genome with whatever locus you want over and over again to make something hilarious. I made giant ants to subject the world to EDF-style shenanigans, which was a lot of fun.

[VividDreamers]

My only question is why does some of the gene arms show one color but on the genome itself the color sometimes changes from the shown. It's messing up my attempts at making generally weak but perfect animals as it's impossible to know what works and when.

[CatGamer]

It seems to be based on the sequence of the gene. For instance, Warfare III is GAC TGC GGG AGC AGG. The middle letter is G in the last four triplets, and the four arms of the gene are all yellow, like G.
It's not like normal DNA, where A pairs with T and G pairs with C, instead it just needs to be the same letter on both genes?
Though, looking at other genes, they don't follow the same pattern, so maybe it's just a coincidence.

[CatGamer]

Genes need to be gold to get the synergy bonus (doubled effects). This only happens when all arms are paired with valid neighboring genes.
Harmful genes halve the effects of neighboring genes. Multiple harmful genes don't reduce it any further. For whatever reason, Health I, Speed I, and Damage I round up instead of down, meaning they are unaffected by harmful genes. Attack Speed isn't rounded at all and will provide +0.5 instead of +1 if affected.
Amplifiers act like mutagenic genes, except they don't increase Mutation Rate and can't be moved.
Mutagenic genes affected by harmful genes will still connect to neighbors but won't increase Mutation Rate.
Tainted Amplifiers are caused by an amplifier being affected by a harmful gene. They won't ever connect to neighboring genes which means neighboring genes will never achieve synergy.
A gene with no neighbors at all will always be synergized.
Amplifiers sometimes have no neighbors.

[CatGamer]

It's also apparently possible to naturally find a subspecies with an "empty gene". If anyone else encounters this, consider screenshotting it and notifying me. I'd really like proof that I didn't imagine it.

Also, uplifted species keep the same genes.

[flarefighter]

Also, for some reason, the Female and Male boosts seem to automatically synergize with everything just like Mutagenic Genes and Amplifiers, letting you create some freakishly overpowered creatures.

[CheeseMerchant]

Originally posted by CatGamer:

It's also apparently possible to naturally find a subspecies with an "empty gene". If anyone else encounters this, consider screenshotting it and notifying me. I'd really like proof that I didn't imagine it.

Also, uplifted species keep the same genes.

I encountered the same a couple of times. It gave an error in the games console window as well when it happened so i think its a bug currently.

You did not imagine it