Assassin Highmate?

[Edelgris]

This showed up in my game recently. I don't know, something about this seems a bit off to me...

Race: Highmate
Empathic and effortlessly beautiful, these designed companions and concubines have the unique ability to psychically bond with a mate. In a certain context, they seem to be perfect - happy, charming, and kind. However, they are also inept at manual tasks, physically weak, and mentally incapable of violence even if their life depends on it.

Childhood: Athlete (nullifies all social skills for some reason)
Past: Stiletto Assassin

Why does this happen? As far as I can see, I have no mods that affect character generation, so I assume this is generated by the core game mechanics.

A character that's genetically compelled to be kind, emphatic and nonviolent somehow ends up as a professional killer. I don't know, it just sounds kind of impossible to me. How is an assassin who is incapable of violence supposed to work? How is a race who's core features are removed by their background supposed to work?

The game shouldn't generate backgrounds that negate genetic traits. Alternatively, it should generate them on 'genetic conditioning' premise, which in this case would grant the character the ability to be violent.

[EDIT]: To clarify on the topic of this thread, I'll add some additional arguments:

"My argument is that a conflicting situation where a nonviolent, athletic-adverse species such as Highmates get a background of combat and athleticism should not result in all combat and social skills being completely unusable. I.e: the game either gets corrected so that such conflicting backgrounds do not occur, or the conflict is managed in a sensible way, which in this case would be to let social skills be trainable, despite a background of athleticism and combat - because the only explainable (albeit flimsy) excuse for such a character to exist, is that their Highmate genes were added after their background ended."

Alternatively: "If we suppose that a character that has had a violent background goes on to inject a xenogerm that renders them unable to use combat skills, then that should not exclude them from at the very least being able to use and train their newly genetically enchanced social skills up from zero."

[Khan Boyzitbig of Mercia]

Well a highmate is a baseliner with implanted genes, they could have been captured at some point and forced to become a harmless individual, or some other reason.

[Edelgris]

Originally posted by Khan Boyzitbig of Mercia:

Well a highmate is a baseliner with implanted genes, they could have been captured at some point and forced to become a harmless individual, or some other reason.

They are xenohumans, which is described as a human subspecies i.e. they were in this case born with the Highmate genetic makeup. If two Highmates reproduce, they spawn a Highmate child, iirc.

Regardless, it feels counterproductive that the game should come up with these types of characters.

[Khan Boyzitbig of Mercia]

Nope. Xenogerms are implanted not born, highmate is a xenogerm. Neanderthal, Waster, Pigskin and Impid are all germline aka born with those genes.

[Edelgris]

Originally posted by Khan Boyzitbig of Mercia:

Nope. Xenogerms are implanted not born, highmate is a xenogerm. Neanderthal, Waster, Pigskin and Impid are all germline aka born with those genes.

Regardless of whether this is correct, as I said in my previous post, I don't feel like this really matters. Although, it would mean the Wiki needs correcting, as it describes Highmates as a subspecies.

The main problem is characters who's racial traits and background traits cancel each other out. The character is incapable of both violence and social skills, which makes no sense no matter which way you look at it.

[SievertChaser]

I had a Highmate Pirate, too. Reminds me of Xev Bellinger's backstory from Lexx, just more radical - conversiom into a perfect sex slave as punishment.

[Edelgris]

Originally posted by dennis.danilov:

I had a Highmate Pirate, too. Reminds me of Xev Bellinger's backstory from Lexx, just more radical - conversiom into a perfect sex slave as punishment.

I haven't watched much Lexx, but I suppose Xev Bellringer holds some actual interesting qualities, as opposed to a Highmate with a paradoxical background, which just ends up being a nothing-burger.

[SievertChaser]

Originally posted by Edelgris:

Originally posted by dennis.danilov:

I had a Highmate Pirate, too. Reminds me of Xev Bellinger's backstory from Lexx, just more radical - conversiom into a perfect sex slave as punishment.

I haven't watched much Lexx, but I suppose Xev Bellringer holds some actual interesting qualities, as opposed to a Highmate with a paradoxical background, which just ends up being a nothing-burger.

The psychological rewrite part got mildly sabitaged in favor of DNA from a rather nasty alien critter. Looks like a highmate, kills things like a hussar.

[Goldtooth™]

Racial generalisations do not take over skills of a colonist. I had an Imp raider show up that had 10 animal skill and plants and 0 shooting, despite the race being bad at animals and plants.

Just because Pigs suck at crafting, doesn't mean you won't see a pigskin pawn with 12 crafting and a background of crafting and sniping.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by Edelgris:

Regardless of whether this is correct, as I said in my previous post, I don't feel like this really matters. Although, it would mean the Wiki needs correcting, as it describes Highmates as a subspecies.

It is correct and it absolutely matters. The pawn could have been turned into a Highmate yesterday, their backstory is what they did in the past. Maybe they got tired of being an assassin and willingly decided to remove that part of them, or maybe as Khan said they were captured and forced into being a sex slave (which is what many Highmates are created for).

Originally posted by Edelgris:

The character is incapable of both violence and social skills, which makes no sense no matter which way you look at it.

From a realism point of view this doesn't matter, there are a lot of pawns incapable of a lot of things, it's easily explainable. From a gameplay point of view, it's a non-issue because it's trivially easy to change, implanting any gene into a xenogerm xenotype like Highmate will remove all the Highmate genes. You can "fix" the pawn for free with minimal effort, if you don't have any spare genes on hand just extract one from the Highmate, hope it's the beauty gene, then implant that one gene you extracted back into them which will delete all their other genes and make them capable of combat again.

[Edelgris]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Originally posted by Edelgris:

Regardless of whether this is correct, as I said in my previous post, I don't feel like this really matters. Although, it would mean the Wiki needs correcting, as it describes Highmates as a subspecies.

It is correct and it absolutely matters. The pawn could have been turned into a Highmate yesterday, their backstory is what they did in the past. Maybe they got tired of being an assassin and willingly decided to remove that part of them, or maybe as Khan said they were captured and forced into being a sex slave (which is what many Highmates are created for).

Originally posted by Edelgris:

The character is incapable of both violence and social skills, which makes no sense no matter which way you look at it.

From a realism point of view this doesn't matter, there are a lot of pawns incapable of a lot of things, it's easily explainable. From a gameplay point of view, it's a non-issue because it's trivially easy to change, implanting any gene into a xenogerm xenotype like Highmate will remove all the Highmate genes. You can "fix" the pawn for free with minimal effort, if you don't have any spare genes on hand just extract one from the Highmate, hope it's the beauty gene, then implant that one gene you extracted back into them which will delete all their other genes and make them capable of combat again.

This sounds more like apologism for an oversight rather than an actual argument. I'm not looking for a fix for something that I feel shouldn't be in the game either.

The way the game handles these types of situations is lacking. If a character's backstory is that they were an assassin that later decided to become a Highmate, then Highmate traits such as social skills should be present. But they are not. They are not even trainable. They are just mutually cancelled out, so that the character has neither assassin/athletic traits, nor Highmate traits.

If the character is to be paradoxically gimped into oblivion just as a "♥♥♥♥ you", then the game should generate a background that clearly reflects that particular scenario. The mechanics that created this instance of character creation need improvement.

[Astasia]

You don't seem to really understand the main concepts of the game. Most pawns are bad in some interesting way, this isn't new. The fact you even made this thread to discuss this pawn just goes to show you the game is doing things exactly as it should be. It made an interesting pawn with a story that could be interpreted in any number of ways. Your lack of imagination and misunderstanding of game mechanics led you to this rant, and it's clear you are just aren't going to let go of that, but without realizing it you provided another example of why we all love this game.

[SievertChaser]

Originally posted by Edelgris:

Originally posted by Astasia:

It is correct and it absolutely matters. The pawn could have been turned into a Highmate yesterday, their backstory is what they did in the past. Maybe they got tired of being an assassin and willingly decided to remove that part of them, or maybe as Khan said they were captured and forced into being a sex slave (which is what many Highmates are created for).



From a realism point of view this doesn't matter, there are a lot of pawns incapable of a lot of things, it's easily explainable. From a gameplay point of view, it's a non-issue because it's trivially easy to change, implanting any gene into a xenogerm xenotype like Highmate will remove all the Highmate genes. You can "fix" the pawn for free with minimal effort, if you don't have any spare genes on hand just extract one from the Highmate, hope it's the beauty gene, then implant that one gene you extracted back into them which will delete all their other genes and make them capable of combat again.

This sounds more like apologism for an oversight rather than an actual argument. I'm not looking for a fix for something that I feel shouldn't be in the game either.

The way the game handles these types of situations is lacking. If a character's backstory is that they were an assassin that later decided to become a Highmate, then Highmate traits such as social skills should be present. But they are not. They are not even trainable. They are just mutually cancelled out, so that the character has neither assassin/athletic traits, nor Highmate traits.

If the character is to be paradoxically gimped into oblivion just as a "♥♥♥♥ you", then the game should generate a background that clearly reflects that particular scenario. The mechanics that created this instance of character creation need improvement.

I'm actually going to agree. Skill (and probably aggression) genes should probably be able to "break through" background restrictions.

[Edelgris]

Originally posted by Astasia:

You don't seem to really understand the main concepts of the game. Most pawns are bad in some interesting way, this isn't new. The fact you even made this thread to discuss this pawn just goes to show you the game is doing things exactly as it should be. It made an interesting pawn with a story that could be interpreted in any number of ways. Your lack of imagination and misunderstanding of game mechanics led you to this rant, and it's clear you are just aren't going to let go of that, but without realizing it you provided another example of why we all love this game.

Your opinions on this matter are subjective. You are not an authority on this matter, nor in a position to pass judgement. Hence, you're not in a position to claim that my opinions on this are wrong. You are in fact taking this even further by ragging on me as a person. That is not constructive. It's taking things too far, and you should stop.

If you think that I don't understand that characters in games like these are supposed to have flaws, even detrimentally so - you have either failed to understand or respect what I'm saying.

There is a difference between what's an entertaining detriment and what's lacking game design. In this instance, the game has fallen into the latter category.

[Wasted]

you're wrong, just accept it and move on

[Astasia]

Originally posted by Edelgris:

Your opinions on this matter are subjective. You are not an authority on this matter, nor in a position to pass judgement.

Not really, because that's how the game works. You can either understand and accept it, or you can continue to waste your breath complaining about it. I'm not the one calling for change, I don't need to make any argument. I've made an attempt to explain to you how it is and why it is, maybe when you cool down you will understand what I meant and learn to appreciate it, or not, that's up to you. You know as well as I that your rant on the Steam forum isn't going to accomplish anything though.