Crew splicing

[Bee]

I don't want to be rude here, but everything available that explains this in-game is gibberish.

There's a button on the top-right that I can get to toggle between Crew and Adaptations
There's a button on the top-left that says "Cleanse" that really should have a warning because it somehow resets...something...everything? I don't know.

Is sort of looks like killing bosses l117 raises some sort of resource. What that resource is, I don't know. It might raise "Discipline" or maybe "Verdanix?" depending on which you click.

This is all dog's breakfast. Things raise. You might be able to put points into...somthing. If you click "Adaptations" you get into another baffling menu that only activates if you de-activate your levelling of the other series of menus.

This is confusing menu nightmare.

[Bee]

change aspect is when when the crew is in offline mode

And that happens when? When they're in "cleanse" or when I'm literally offline?
And how and why would I switch?

the rank is on the aspect, like the old crew at set levels your award ranks, which you can then spend on the skills to boost effects on your tabs, bottles are cap research helix is specis. This rank is reset also when cleansed.

Ecch tbh I really don't understand most of what you're saying. My thing says 8 Rank 3. Is this level 8 rank 3? What does the level 8 mean? What does the rank 3 mean?

All I know is it gave me 1 point, which I put into the left circle. Everything else is greyed out.

[best bulliet target]

yes when the crew is cleansed, it is offline or dead. you can then change its aspect.

remember how crew levels needed their stat to gain a level? same thing, each level raise the rank but also the speed of which acclimition is gained.

acclimition levels are the only thing that is keept thou out a cleanse, it 2 purposes are lowering the corruption gained from leveling aspects and while the crew is cleansed it well then like the OD start to raise the levels in adaptation.

[freakwave147]

Basically, the splicing has 2 modes. You have the active mode where you gain mastery by killing the big ships and that gives you levels(they reset on cleanse) and the levels progress your Acclimation(Stays on cleanse). The more levels, the faster you gain acclimation.

When you have gained acclimation, you can cleanse the the crew member and the acclimation you have gathered starts generating progress in the adaptations. These adaptations speed up the mastery gain.

So Splice the crew member, gain levels that generate acclimation, cleanse the crew member and level up the adaptations, and splice again. So switch between the 2. When you Splice the crew member, you can have 2 aspects, they gain acclimation separately, so change the crew member before you Splice.

Splice to aspect 1
Cleanse to gain adaptations
Splice to aspect 2
Cleanse to gain adaptations
--Repeat

[best bulliet target]

yep and once i've unlocked the second slot the rotation is gets simpler. no changing of aspects. And once the value in those other boxes are meet you gain an other crew to do the same thing with again.

only "hard part" is trying to gain the next levels in the upgrade tab.
The crews corruption/humanity bar max needs to be decypered atleast for me.

[adeyke]

When starting out, the splice/cleanse cycle is pretty straightforward. Eventually, however, more complex strategies emerge.

The way corruption works is that every level of an alien aspect beyond its acclimation increases it by 1, while every level in discipline reduces it by 1. You have a maximum corruption amount, which means you'll eventually have to alternate between the aspect and discipline in order to keep leveling, but there's also an adaptation that lets you increase the corruption cap of that crew member.

If you have enough discipline levels, the corruption can go negative. Negative corruption is humanity, which doesn't have a cap.

So, as I see it, there are all of these possible modes (and you'll definitely want the AI automation settings to make implementing these easy):

1. Inactive, using your built-up acclimation to get adaptations.
   
2. Focus on humanity, keep alien aspects at zero. This gives you the humanity upgrades quickest, but it gives literally nothing else.
   
3. Focus on humanity, keep alien aspects at acclimation. This still gives you the humanity upgrades, but somewhat slower. Meanwhile, you can get a bit of acclimation from the alien aspects and a bit of the human abilities.
   
4. Balanced focus, keeping corruption at 0 or 1. This is how you maximize the human abilities. You need alien ranks in order to get rank points and discipline in order to increase the abilities' scaling.
   
5. Focus on corruption, letting an alien aspect go max. This how you earn the corruption upgrades (though how many ones you'll be able to earn this way is limited by your max corruption), build up acclimation, and get the alien abilities.

It potentially gets even more complicated when you have the second alien slot, though I suspect you usually want to focus on one and keep the other at its acclimation level.

[✙Кокось✙]

Originally posted by Bee:

There's a button on the top-left that says "Cleanse" that really should have a warning because it somehow resets...something...everything?

I dont know how splicing looks in the first day, but today there is warning window that tells you that if you agreed cleanse, aspects and abilities will be reset, even if you just hover mouse over button "cleanse" you will get some text will explanation what will be reset and what doesnt.

Originally posted by Bee:

You might be able to put points into...somthing

there is literally 4 upgrades to put points to, less than prewious crew system, and there is also text when you hover mouse over, that explin what upgrades do, and they totally simple, research bonus and specimen research bonus, how this is hard?

more looks like you just skipped all info popups and random button pressing didnt help

[Bee]

Originally posted by ✙Кокось✙:

Originally posted by Bee:

There's a button on the top-left that says "Cleanse" that really should have a warning because it somehow resets...something...everything?

I dont know how splicing looks in the first day, but today there is warning window that tells you that if you agreed cleanse, aspects and abilities will be reset, even if you just hover mouse over button "cleanse" you will get some text will explanation what will be reset and what doesnt.

Originally posted by Bee:

You might be able to put points into...somthing

there is literally 4 upgrades to put points to, less than prewious crew system, and there is also text when you hover mouse over, that explin what upgrades do, and they totally simple, research bonus and specimen research bonus, how this is hard?

more looks like you just skipped all info popups and random button pressing didnt help

It's "hard" because it's obtuse. Thematically this is all function with no form.

With crew, this was simple to visualize, because it resembled something that could possibly be real. You can imagine taking on crew members, and them being assigned to stations, and working in ways that would increase the overall capabilities of the ship. For instance, having a "Researcher" working in the science lab, researching stuff. Or somebody in the engine room, tinkering to give you more warp power.

This new system is in comparison, kind of bananas. What is going on here?

What is this "splice?" The currency that drives it comes from taking down capital ships..what is literally supposed to be happening here that makes it make tangible sense? Is there some kind of alien influence that you peel off these ships and somehow it attaches itself to your crew member?

And this affects his "discipline" or his "Verdanix?" I gather that if you study all the pop-ups and the info tab, you can get to a point where how to use this function eventually gets easy, but is it in any way *sensible?*

The UI is the way you interact with the *story* of what is happening in the game. And largely, this makes sense. You're flying a ship through enemy territories, upgrading your ship as you go, and harvesting resources from defeated enemies. Research, sensible, reactor, sensible, conquered bases, sensible, warp drive, sensible, piercing the veil, sensible. Sending your fleet off on expeditions, sensible. All of these things you can easily convert to a sort of story of what's happening, that makes sense.

I can't presently think of a way to translate this splice system into a sensible story that would help explain what you are doing. Okay, it's a UI, and you can learn from pop-ups and such how to *use* it, but what does it *mean?* What's going on here? I don't mean "which buttons do I press in what order to get more numbers on this game I'm playing?"

[Bee]

So I've got this "Spliced Researcher" who may or may not be the same Researcher that I had in Crew back before that system got maxed and led me into the new system.

As I defeat capital ships on Sector 117 or above, he gains "mastery." That mastery can go into "Discipline" which is somehow related to his "humanity." As his Discipline rises in level, it provides points that can be put into "Research Discipline" or "Research Enlightenment" (after 20 points are already put into Research Discipline).

Or, I can choose instead of mastery going into Discipline, to go into his "Alien Aspect." If he gains "Verdanix" he can acquire bonuses to specimen research, or if he gains levels in "Xyloquant," he can provide bonuses to Warp Speed.

Raising levels of Alien Aspect also raises "Corruption," so I gather. If Corruption outpaces Humanity (which is a function of Discipline), Alien Aspect stops gaining levels.

Hopefully I have this right up to this point.

Somewhere in here is also "Acclimation" which...rises. When the Researcher is "Active." Acclimation determines how fast "Adaptations" level.

Adaptations (currently 1/1 on this Researcher), accessible only when the Crew member is "inactive" give permanent bonuses to the rate of other Splice-system increases.

So at any given time, I should decide whether the crew should provide active bonuses (Warp or Specimen Research) or be in cold storage, gaining Adaptation levels.

Okay, if all of that is right, I think I've wrapped my head around what's going on here.

What makes it a bit confusing I think is the re-purposing of some of the Nouns here. "Mastery" was already a thing back when the crew was normal, and I understood how it fit into the other systems, and how to boost it, which was especially important when it came to gaining upgrade points for permanent crew upgrades. Warp upgrades could increase Mastery gain, which was a thing you really only turned on briefly when you had enough Crew Sleeves to increase a dude's Mastery level, to get that sweet upgrade point.

Is this new splicing mastery considered the same stat as the old mastery? More importantly, do Mastery Gain upgrades on the Warp menu increase splicing mastery as well? This would explain why there are Mastery Gain upgrades so far along the Warp upgrade tree, which I had been wondering about (since Crew tended to max long before those Warp upgrades were plausibly reachable).

The other re-purposing that I find odd is the Verdanix and Xyloquant. Those are "Alien Specimens" that I am pulling through the "Veil" with my "Veil Piercer," and hitherto have been used for "Specimen Research" and as an ingredient in "Alien Synth."

So is what's going on here is, I'm grafting alien specimens onto my Researcher, which is lowering his humanity and increasing his corruption, but in return boosts his ability to research more specimens?

I really need to be able to put this in a story-like context, in order to keep it straight. When I sit down to put some effort into Space Idle, I need that to remember what the heck it was I was working on. This isn't even the only space-themed idle/incremental game I'm running--"galaxy idle clicker" is usually open on a 2nd monitor, and possibly "Cell to Singularity" over on the right-most monitor. This is on top of things like running a hobby-farm and home-schooling the kids and running a theater production company, so my brain needs to turn these things into stories in order to keep them straight.

[adeyke]

With unspliced crew, you had to shoot down the small ships in order to gain experience levels (this was always rather abstract, but we just accept that it's how RPGs work). Now, they've learned all they can from that and can advance only from defeating capital ships.

Additionally, you've spliced alien DNA into their genome. You can choose to have them either resist it by building up their discipline or give in to its corrupting influence. A researcher who builds up their discipline can give you even more insight into applied and fundamental research. One who embraces the Verdanix influence can learn help you research the alien specimens.

[Bee]

Originally posted by adeyke:

With unspliced crew, you had to shoot down the small ships in order to gain experience levels (this was always rather abstract, but we just accept that it's how RPGs work). Now, they've learned all they can from that and can advance only from defeating capital ships.

Additionally, you've spliced alien DNA into their genome. You can choose to have them either resist it by building up their discipline or give in to its corrupting influence. A researcher who builds up their discipline can give you even more insight into applied and fundamental research. One who embraces the Verdanix influence can learn help you research the alien specimens.

Thanks!

It's kind of wild when you think about it--how many systems there are now running concurrently. Your crew is getting all alien-funked-up, your fleet is off plundering the galaxy for artifacts, researchers researching away, reactor cores slowly building up, base slowly filling out, occasional dips into the warp, the occasional new shard drop or upgrade, and synth or fixtures plugging away, either on stuff that's going to evaporate in event of a reinforce, or more permanent alien upgrades, which are smaller but persist.

It's definitely come a long way and gotten more vibrant from "scroll up and upgrade your lasers."

[best bulliet target]

i got to say it was quite elegant the way you put it into context. kinda want it posted in the guide section.

[RaptorSolutions]

I've spent a day and barely understand it tbh. Though at least I've gotten a routine going, like spend a couple hours doing the corruption thing because the in game tips suggested that, then cleansing it and let it do adaptations for a few hours, then splice again, rinse and repeat.

Honestly I probably wouldn't get it until a step by step guide to how to optimize it comes out. Explaining the details just get's me confused if I cannot see how all the details comes together.

For example I learned a lot from the sector 74 wall guide, because they actually show you how the theory works in practice.

[sycocys]

To me it just seems like an overly convoluted way to add a 3rd layer of research to the game.

At this point I find it less interesting than trying to level out the last base honestly.

[freakwave147]

Personally, I really love the whole splicing feature. It has none of the needless complexity of the normal crew, but a rather simple rotation. I assume this will change when the bonuses start getting bigger, and I have to actively change the skill points, but the fact that bio sleeves are not involved, already makes it a winner in my books.

[adeyke]

I have the feeling that part of the negative reaction to splice is that people have forgotten how fiddly crew was initially:

You have limited crew slots. You also have limited sleeves available, so if you swap around the crew too much, you'll run out and need to prestige to get a new set. Each crew member has a primary stat and a secondary stat, each of which you can level up. However, if you invest at all in one of those stats, one of the abilities becomes useless, and if you invest at all in the other stat on any of your crew, another ability becomes useless. Meanwhile, some abilities get stronger by having more crew members leveling up the same stat. There's also a powerful ability that comes with a big drawback, so you have to be careful with it. And there so many different reward systems for having good crew: highest stat ever increases XP gain, certain stat threshold award rank points to spend on abilities, certain highest stat ever milestones among the entire crew award permanent upgrades, filling up the mastery bar both gives bonuses to that crew member and gives you a mastery point to spend on upgrades. Also, you need to spend salvage and void matter to make the crew level up faster and have stronger abilities.

That's pretty complicated.

It's just that, with time, you get used to it, you get powerful enough that you no longer have to worry about things (e.g. you can reprint on a whim if you earn several sleeves per minute), and you get upgrades that remove the drawbacks.

I certainly agree that splice is complicated. I just think that many of the ways in which it's complicated were already present or had some analog in the pre-splice crew.