I am confused about Genetics.

[Chthonic Guardian]

SO the first real save I played I was able to use the species menu and change traits. I did it for both my and some of the species that immigrated.
I don't believe I even went genetic ascension tradition. Not sure if I went Evo Engineering perk.

Now I am not sure when all of this happened as I played to around 2500 before being wiped out.

This game I have not been able to do any tinkering with my own species, as I have had zero picks all game. I have gone evo evolution and just selected Genetics, and still no picks.
I have 4 trait points though, just can't use them.

I was able to spend 2 pick points on another species that immigrated, but my species sits just like it started, untouched and with zero pick points.

I am just getting clone vats.

Did I miss something? was there some research I have not gotten or done to give me picks?
I searched and it seems you are supposed to start with 5 picks? Or are the talking about when you start your custom game and set your species up that you get 5 picks.

Maybe I am just being impatient and they come later, like at end of doing all genetics ascension tree?

I just loaded the save for the start of the game, to make sure I didn't have the 5 picks, but it is zero picks.

I don't want to keep playing this ave if I am wasting my time because I went genetics and can't use it because I never got any trait pick points.
Maybe they come with clone vats?
Why did the one species have pick point and none of the others did?

[Chthonic Guardian]

Is it "genetic resequencing" in the genetics ascension tree that give you pick points?
Maybe I am just thinking it came so much earlier in my first game because I didn't know what I was doing..
I don't know why the one species had pick points and I was able to do them?

[AurumHawke]

Pick points are how many traits, beneficial and negative, an empire's species (plural) can have
Trait points are how many points those traits can cost, plus refunds from negative traits.
Empire design uses the same pick/point limits as genemodding, just using the baseline limits every empire starts with.

Negative traits should only require an any-empire genemodding Research to remove (and the trait points to pay for removing its refund).
Beneficial traits require the "Genetic Resequencing" Tradition to remove.

[Chthonic Guardian]

Originally posted by AurumHawke:

Pick points are how many traits, beneficial and negative, an empire's species (plural) can have
Trait points are how many points those traits can cost, plus refunds from negative traits.
Empire design uses the same pick/point limits as genemodding, just using the baseline limits every empire starts with.

Negative traits should only require an any-empire genemodding Research to remove (and the trait points to pay for removing its refund).
Beneficial traits require the "Genetic Resequencing" Tradition to remove.

Yes, I was aware how the points work. But you can have 1,000 trait points to add and remove the various traits on various species in your empire, but if you never have any pick points to use to use them... and that is where I have been all game so far.
I don't remember my first game being like this.
I was setting one species up to be soldiers, anther to colonize mining habitats, another for farming habitats etc.
I kept an original population so I could modify them differently because they still had trait pick points since they were not part of any of the modifications.

This game I cannot do anything.

Yet one species immigrated with 2 pick points, so I could make a small change with them and modified them to prefer tropical and added a 2 point trait.

That is it. All the research and picking engineered evolution and genetic tradition and I can't use all those points I got, because zero pick points, STILL.

Something seems very off.
The downside of genetic is some people don't want to do all that micro-managing, but this is ZERO micromanaging because I can't modify anything.

[AurumHawke]

I think there's only one thing in the entire game that adds 1 trait pick (if it still exists or ever existed, of course).
But you need to unlock the options to remove traits to free up trait picks to add better traits.
As long as you have the removal options you should have full control over every non-event trait a species has.
The "ideal" genetic template is always Erudite, Robust, Fertile, and whatever else you can get after those. Livestock have their own, of course, starting with Nerve-Stapled.

The downside of genetic is when you have and use species other than your founding species, or someone has xenocompatibility and those half-species actually end up as entirely new species because one of the parents was genemodded so the game can't figure out what's half-what.

Edit: Oh, right, Xenocompatibility adds 1 trait pick to its resulting half-species...

[Chthonic Guardian]

Originally posted by AurumHawke:

I think there's only one thing in the entire game that adds 1 trait pick (if it still exists or ever existed, of course).
But you need to unlock the options to remove traits to free up trait picks to add better traits.
As long as you have the removal options you should have full control over every non-event trait a species has.
The "ideal" genetic template is always Erudite, Robust, Fertile, and whatever else you can get after those. Livestock have their own, of course, starting with Nerve-Stapled.

The downside of genetic is when you have and use species other than your founding species, or someone has xenocompatibility and those half-species actually end up as entirely new species because one of the parents was genemodded so the game can't figure out what's half-what.

But If I get one trait pick to use the entire game, why do I even get 6 trait points? Removing a trait to give me more points just uses the 1 pick.

I wish I had saved my previous game saves, so I could look back and see when I got the trait picks that I was able to use to make changes.
This just sucks and I feel like I got nothing for the Perk or the tradition. Just a bunch of stuff I cannot use because I never got any trait picks to use it.

It is obviously something wrong on my end, or no one would ever pick genetics if they never got any picks to modify anything... I wish I knew what it was.