Biotech custom xenotypes?

[Grumpy Old Guy]

I just got into the biotech xenotypes and I've been experimenting with custom xenotypes hoping they would be better balanced than the custom ideologies (that is to say balanced literally at all) and I've got to ask am I missing something because deathrest and hemogenic give you +7 which is more than enough to have to never sleep and to basically never die from blood loss.

Am I crazy in thinking that deathresting and hemogenic are in no way going to balance out the massive boon that is never needing to sleep? Hemogenic without the drain tacked on means what? One blood pack every ten days? So I'd need what two prisoners for ten people? And deathresting happens every thirty days and I need to sleep for maybe three or four days with the accelerator. By my math (assuming everyone needed 6 hours of sleep a night which they probably need more than that I can't remember but still) that nets me 90 hours of extra work time per month?

That seems like it would be completely OP to me or am I missing something here? Like it doesn't even seem close to an even trade off.

[XelNigma]

Your coming at it all wrong. This isnt the kind of game where your suppose to squeeze out every advantage you can.

The thing with custom xenos and doubly so for ideology is that your suppose to set rules and challenges for your self to play with. They are as easy or hard as you choose.

[Grumpy Old Guy]

Originally posted by XelNigma:

Your coming at it all wrong. This isnt the kind of game where your suppose to squeeze out every advantage you can.

The thing with custom xenos and doubly so for ideology is that your suppose to set rules and challenges for your self to play with. They are as easy or hard as you choose.

Have you played it? The game is very literally about being as efficient as you can be I don't know how you'd argue otherwise.

And the idea of a point buy system like they use with the xenotypes is that the points should in theory balance out what you take as bonuses and maluses if it doesn't it's made poorly since that is the entire point of the point system.

[MadArtillery]

Deathrest can be a bit annoying if a lot of the colony has it as you may need to drop people from raids or have say a doctor in deathrest when they are critically needed and waking early is 50% consciousness hit. Overall it is a pretty big buff, especially with the genes you can bring in with it but not 100% free as having someone out of commision for days at a time can be problematic. A lot can happen in 3 days. Mixing luciferium and deathrest can be tedius as you'll have to manually order someone to deliver it to them while they are out of commission. They can still thankfully breastfeed while in their coma.

Overall super strong but can and will inconvenience you at pretty bad at times. As long as your cook, planter. and doctor don't have it you should be fine though.

Hemogenic without the drain I haven't tried but with drain it's quite debilitating, especially if it's germline as having a ton of children all needing blood can make getting enough hard, especially with anomalies reduced human encounters. My whole run has been plagued with blood issues, especially after something teleported in to massacre my prisoners and then just when i restocked zombies ate their way in during a huge mixed attack onslaught of death. Of course having access to Leap with hemogenic is amazing, good stuff, always take leap even if it can get expensive blood wise.

[Grumpy Old Guy]

Originally posted by MadArtillery:

Deathrest can be a bit annoying if a lot of the colony has it as you may need to drop people from raids or have say a doctor in deathrest when they are critically needed and waking early is 50% consciousness hit. Overall it is a pretty big buff, especially with the genes you can bring in with it but not 100% free as having someone out of commision for days at a time can be annoying. Mixing luciferium and deathrest can be tedius as you'll have to manually order someone to deliver it to them while they are out of commission. They can still thankfully breastfeed while in their coma.

Overall super strong but can and will inconvenience you at pretty bad at times.

Hemogenic without the drain I haven't tried but with drain it's quite debilitating, especially if it's germline as having a ton of children all needing blood can make getting enough hard, especially with anomalies reduced human encounters. Of course having access to Leap is amazing, good stuff.

The difference between drain vs no drain is night and day. Hemogenic alone gives you -2 per day, the drain gives an additional -8 so it's -2 per day vs -10 per day. Massive difference, but in my opinion death rest and hemogenic drain both being worth 6 points is insane because in terms of management death rest is far easier to manage at least in my opinion.

One person with hemogenic need a blood pack every 10 days. One person with hemogenic and the drain needs a blood pack every 2 days.

[MadArtillery]

Originally posted by Grumpy Old Guy:

Originally posted by MadArtillery:

Deathrest can be a bit annoying if a lot of the colony has it as you may need to drop people from raids or have say a doctor in deathrest when they are critically needed and waking early is 50% consciousness hit. Overall it is a pretty big buff, especially with the genes you can bring in with it but not 100% free as having someone out of commision for days at a time can be annoying. Mixing luciferium and deathrest can be tedius as you'll have to manually order someone to deliver it to them while they are out of commission. They can still thankfully breastfeed while in their coma.

Overall super strong but can and will inconvenience you at pretty bad at times.

Hemogenic without the drain I haven't tried but with drain it's quite debilitating, especially if it's germline as having a ton of children all needing blood can make getting enough hard, especially with anomalies reduced human encounters. Of course having access to Leap is amazing, good stuff.

The difference between drain vs no drain is night and day. Hemogenic alone gives you -2 per day, the drain gives an additional -8 so it's -2 per day vs -10 per day. Massive difference, but in my opinion death rest and hemogenic drain both being worth 6 points is insane because in terms of management death rest is far easier to manage at least in my opinion.

One person with hemogenic need a blood pack every 10 days. One person with hemogenic and the drain needs a blood pack every 2 days.

Do keep in mind if you use any of the blood related abilities (and you should, god tier genes) you will need to keep that as part of your calculations. I burned 4 full bars from 100 to zero chasing a revenant through the snow.

[Grumpy Old Guy]

Originally posted by MadArtillery:

Originally posted by Grumpy Old Guy:

The difference between drain vs no drain is night and day. Hemogenic alone gives you -2 per day, the drain gives an additional -8 so it's -2 per day vs -10 per day. Massive difference, but in my opinion death rest and hemogenic drain both being worth 6 points is insane because in terms of management death rest is far easier to manage at least in my opinion.

One person with hemogenic need a blood pack every 10 days. One person with hemogenic and the drain needs a blood pack every 2 days.

Do keep in mind if you use any of the blood related abilities (and you should, god tier genes) you will need to keep that as part of your calculations. I burned 4 full bars from 100 to zero chasing a revenant through the snow.

Yeah I generally never use the abilities, I tried them but in terms of making custom xenotypes that extra points you get from not having them is worth way more than the abilities provide in my experience. I could have bloodfeed, spines, and jumping, or I could take a permanent buff that helps all the time like fast/happy.

[MadArtillery]

Originally posted by Grumpy Old Guy:

Originally posted by MadArtillery:

Do keep in mind if you use any of the blood related abilities (and you should, god tier genes) you will need to keep that as part of your calculations. I burned 4 full bars from 100 to zero chasing a revenant through the snow.

Yeah I generally never use the abilities, I tried them but in terms of making custom xenotypes that extra points you get from not having them is worth way more than the abilities provide in my experience.

You highly underestimat the power of instant perfect tends on all wounds simultaniously and the power of dropping agro with leap as the pawn ceases to exist temporarily reseting aim times and often leaving an enemy targeting someone else giving total free reign to say, stab someone in the face after preventing a multi rocket from ever being allowed to fire because it doesn't get to aim long enough. You pretty much get complete control of what enemies attack who, and if they get to ever fire a weapon at all.

[Grumpy Old Guy]

Originally posted by MadArtillery:

Originally posted by Grumpy Old Guy:

Yeah I generally never use the abilities, I tried them but in terms of making custom xenotypes that extra points you get from not having them is worth way more than the abilities provide in my experience.

You highly underestimat the power of instant perfect tends on all wounds simultaniously and the power of dropping agro with leap as the pawn ceases to exist temporarily reseting aim times and often leaving an enemy targeting someone else giving total free reign to say, stab someone in the face after preventing a multi rocket from ever being allowed to fire because it doesn't get to aim long enough. You pretty much get complete control of what enemies attack who, and if they get to ever fire a weapon at all.

Coagulate I love, I forgot to mention that one. The leap I didn't know made you invincible and drop aggro I should try that again.

[XelNigma]

Originally posted by Grumpy Old Guy:

Have you played it? The game is very literally about being as efficient as you can be I don't know how you'd argue otherwise.

as of writing this, I have 4,331 hours in the game. And I can say being efficient is the least important factor in any of my colonies. You dont need to be efficient. you dont need city walls, and you dont need kills boxes. You dont need all your crafting tables jamed together with your storage.

You can build a town that looks like a real town with different buildings for each "business" as it were and you will be just fine. Sure you might take some injuries and even some loses here and there, but thats part of the game.

The ideology was a DLC for people to set their own rules and themes for their colonies. to play the game with different rules sets.

The genetics is more about adding a new mechanic and toys to play with in game, but it still has the use of designing a theme and rules for your colony.
Designing your own super colonist over the span of colony by buying and extracting genes is a fun gameplay mechanic, a goal to achieve in game.
But just setting your self up with super colonists right from the get go is a fault on you.

[Garatgh Deloi]

Originally posted by Grumpy Old Guy:

Have you played it? The game is very literally about being as efficient as you can be I don't know how you'd argue otherwise.

No its not. Doing it that way sucks all the fun out of the game extremely quickly.

[Grumpy Old Guy]

Originally posted by XelNigma:

Originally posted by Grumpy Old Guy:

snp

Originally posted by Garatgh Deloi:

Originally posted by Grumpy Old Guy:

Have you played it? The game is very literally about being as efficient as you can be I don't know how you'd argue otherwise.

snip

It sucks the fun out for you, I find it fun.

Even if you take losses and build a town and don't use walls and don't use a killbox you're still playing the game the same way I am. You've taken the handicap you find acceptable and do the best you can with what you've allowed yourself to have. We're playing the same way just to different extents.

[stun]

You are entirely correct, OP.
You can take it further than that but ideologies and to a lesser extent starting xenotypes should be, generally speaking, considered part of the difficulty sliders much like the hex you embark on or the scenario you choose.

[Veylox]

Biotech custom xenotypes are a built-in cheat. You're not supposed to use them if you want balance.

If you want a balanced version of biotech's content, start baseliner and make your own xenotype during a playthrough

[James]

is never needing to sleep all that beneficial?

[Red Bat]

Originally posted by Grumpy Old Guy:

Originally posted by XelNigma:

Your coming at it all wrong. This isnt the kind of game where your suppose to squeeze out every advantage you can.

The thing with custom xenos and doubly so for ideology is that your suppose to set rules and challenges for your self to play with. They are as easy or hard as you choose.

Have you played it? The game is very literally about being as efficient as you can be I don't know how you'd argue otherwise.

And the idea of a point buy system like they use with the xenotypes is that the points should in theory balance out what you take as bonuses and maluses if it doesn't it's made poorly since that is the entire point of the point system.

The idea of this game was never about being balanced. Even the ingame tooltips tease the idea that failing due to having terrible colonists is part of the experience. I don't think it was intended that people reroll hundreds of times on the starting colonist screen to get the best start for example.

Personally for my custom xenotypes I went with xenotypes that sounded entertaining over xenotypes that are super efficient. Like having a smokeleaf dependent plants and shooting specialist, or a catlike crafter xenotype who spends half the day asleep. I feel like if I'm using custom xenotypes to just have better xenotypes than the default ones, I'm basically just kind of cheating.