this mod + vre hussars making hussars have 225x hunger rate is craazy are they even worth that..

best xenotype mod

Thank you!!

ahh got it thanks for the clarification still the my favourite gene mod so far

@0ddbase They affect different stats, and non-terrestrial is strictly a debuff to help alleviate the over-reliance that starjack previously had on skill-reducing genes.

isnt low gravity adapted and non-terrestrial basically the same thing? i feel as though one should be removed

oh my bad

@toetruckthetrain "The following xenotype mods have been checked and have patches included (if needed):
All Vanilla Races Expanded mods..."

is this compatible with all the VRE mods? (especially the ones that also alter vanilla xenotypes)

All riiiight then, thank you. Enjoying a lot the mod.Playing it alongide Better Gene Inheritance creates interesting hibrids

It's intentional. Hand genes are randomly selected by default. They're functionally different genes. The only overlap is that they have the same name, and Alpha Genes clawed hands aren't placed on Yttakin.

I noticed there is an overlap with Alpha genes on the "Clawed hands" for the Yttakin xenotype, it would chose only one of the two, either yours with 110% melee damage or Alpha genes with 80% manipulation. Should not make it so both are taken? or is it intentional that way?

makes sense thanks for answering

@0ddbase Talking and hearing capacities have significant overlap in their effects. Using both genes together would give a significant amount of metabolism for basically free.

just curious but why are the deaf and mute genes conflicting with each other? is it to stop min maxing or is there some other reason

@royallyTipsy I don't believe that would be a simpler solution. I could create a gene that specifically disables Artistic and only Artistic, but that also opens up the question of adding other genes that disable specific skills. I think that's a little boring and would encourage metabolism minmaxing when players realize they can stack skill-incapable genes with skill-decreasing genes. Alternatively, I could code some sort of specialized effect into Worker Drone to encourage only using them for manual labor. But then I'm forcing the player to work around a non-vanilla subsystem.

I prefer to use genes that help build on the story of the xenotype. Unfortunately, it's not always possible because sometimes you have to slap a skill-decreasing gene on a xenotype to balance their metabolism. But as much as possible, I want them to feel like a complete and coherent package that fits with the base game.

I don't think Worker Drone is perfect, but it fits with the vision I have for Proles.

>inconsistent with vanilla gene design
Fair point. But now I wonder if it makes sense to make Worker Drone a gene that simply disables Artistic, then slap Awful Intellectual on them to simplify the whole thing?

@royallyTipsy I've added poor intellectual to Proles at your suggestion, primarily to make their unsuitability as an intellectual pawn more obvious. It also made sense to have the corporate-engineered xenotype slightly less food than a baseliner.

Making worker drone mutually exclusive with intellectual or artistic traits is inconsistent with vanilla gene design. The Violence Disabled gene can be used alongside Poor/Terrible Melee and Shooting. Worker Drone is (or was originally) just an incapable of intellectual/artistic gene, so it should follow the same trend.

Observation: I understand why you allowed Proles to do Intellectual again (I saw that report about Mechanitor start) but now they can spawn with double passion and/or high Int stat. While I do appreciate your tendency to remove superfluous awful/bad skill genes and improve versatility of xenotypes, specifically in the case of Proles perhaps it would make lore sense to add bad/awful gene? If nothing else, the bad/awful genes highlight the affected skill in red, making it very obvious that the pawn should not be used for certain kind of work, while Worker Drone is "silent" that way, at least when it comes to Intellectual.

Another thing to consider: should or shouldn't it be mutually exclusive with Strong Intellectual/Artistic? This one I have no answers to, despite it becoming very relevant in case someone embraces their Prole with vampirism.

makes sense i never thought of it that way

@0ddbase Fine motor control has a direct link to a surgeon's ability to do their job in real life. That's about as good of a fit as any. Also, the ability to do a lot of small tasks quickly will translate to doing just about any larger task quickly, hence the labor speed bonus.

There's also several manipulation-related genes as it is. My goal was to create genes that fit well with the xenotype they were assigned to and not simply reinvent the wheel, so I decided that it was better not to make a reskin of elongated fingers and smooth tail.

shouldnt the fine motor skills improve manipulation instead of a generic boost to surgery and labor speed? i feel it would fit a bit better and make sense more

Note: Starjacks were just updated on unstable. I'm gonna have to do a second pass on the changes I made. Estimated to be out this week. It's gonna be weird because some people are on unstable and some aren't so I might not modify starjacks again until the vanilla starjack changes are pushed to stable.

@IPN Makes sense, glad we solved this mystery lol. No worries, I'll just use the VRE version since I just realized it actually IS still there, I just forgot the name (I'm a little dumb). Thanks again!

@Super Kami Guru Thanks for the explanation. Yes, the character editor mod is capable of that. The gene exists in the game even when hidden, so a mod could still expose it. I will look into creating a patch for it to work alongside VRE Highmates. I'm a bit busy this week so I might not get the patch out for a few days.

@IPN In my case, I made a custom xenotype before starting my colony. During the game I modified my custom xenotype using the "character editior" mod (which I've done a billion times before) and that's when I found it. I decided to add it since it doesn't have the punishment where the colonist leaves if the need isn't met that the VRE highmate's version had. Maybe character editor has the ability to reveal insatiable even though it wasn't meant to be? That'd be interesting.
Side note: thanks for taking the time to look into this so thoroughly.

@Super Kami Guru I investigated. VRE Highmates appears to break my gene, which I probably never caught before because I intentionally made that gene hidden when VRE Highmates is installed.

Insatiable is no longer something I want to keep on highmates, and it's been replaced. I'll look into fixing the edge case of insatiable being used while VRE Highmates is installed, but I recommend just replacing it with the Appealing gene instead.

By any chance, did you find the Insatiable gene in a gene pack or did it spawn on a pawn? It's not supposed to be available when VRE Highmates is installed.

@IPN Yeah, I do remember VRE highmates having its own version of that gene, but in my case, your version hides VRE's gene, so it's the opposite I guess (I checked the mod name in the gene's description to be sure). I figured it was your mod that was hiding VRE lol and that it was intended.

@Super Kami Guru If you are running VRE Highmates, my insatiable gene is hidden because that mod has its own lovin' dependency variation. Are you sure it's my gene?

If it is, I'll take a look. It's supposed to work with Way Better Romance and was working last time I tested it. I can look into adding compatibility for VE Highmate Expanded for edge cases where people are using my gene anyway in that mod.

Hey, great mod, but I'm having an issue with the "insatiable" gene. The "lovin'" need doesn't refill with a normal loving session, or if I use the "initiate lovin'" ability that comes with "VE highmate expanded". The only way I can fill it up is if I use the "hook up" option that I believe comes from the "way better romance" mod (I have to double check). Is there some weird incompatibility with that mod? I'm gonna remove it to test myself when I get the chance, but I figured I might as well as ask as well.

@royallyTipsy Yes. I'm pretty happy with the draft version I'm working on right now. Just gonna polish it a bit first before I add it to the mod.

@IPN, are you planning on giving Starjacks a balance pass? After playing with your mod I started to quite appreciate what you've done with the xenotypes here, so I hold hope I might see you give them a lift as well.

@Ryujin_73 Fixed

Hello, I am getting an error related to your mod that pertains to the highmates. It has something to do with this definition Skin_SheerWhite.
I am currently using this mod that changes the highmate, https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3250899013 , and one of the things it seems to do after poking around in the xml is remove that definition. Would it be possible to make an exception for this mod, or would I be better off seeing what that mod's author can do?

@Goomba Vanilla Genes Rebalanced by design won't work with this mod because this mod is doing the same thing.

If you can provide some specificity about what other mods aren't working well with this, I can look into including patches.

Hey, would it be possible to release the genes separately as another mod or add mod options to this on to "switch off" the rebalancing and additional xenotypes? I really love a lot of what this mod has to offer and especially the genes it adds but it doesn't work well with other mods I depend on (Vanilla Genes Rebalanced, Too Many Mods, etc).

@Rose Fixed.

@Turkwise The default slow gene reduces movement speed by 0.2 cells per second, which is about the same as a baseliner wearing a flak vest. It's not a major difference. The defining challenge of neanderthal raids comes from the Robust trait and strong melee damage, which they retain.

As for their intelligence, modern research suggests they were much closer to us than popular culture suggests, and that they could mix pigments, create jewelry, and develop/use complex tools. I don't know if that means that they were as smart as we were, but it feels like the Slow Study gene is not justified. Why would the almost-humans have that gene, but not the literal pig people? It also sucks to use Slow Study in-game. It just feels arbitrarily bad to play with, and I'm saying that as a person who prefers challenges.

Besides, all of the xenotype changes are done in xml. Feel free to change whatever you want.

Shorter legs equal a smaller stride which generally means you'd have a slower walking/running speed. The commonly accepted theory is that Neanderthals were sprinters, meaning they might have been faster in a short distance sprint than humans but were much worse at long distance running.

The intelligence part is also the most widely accepted theory as well and also makes the most sense. They'd be much closer to human intelligence than an animal but they still trade a lot of the higher thinking that humans are capable of for better developed senses.

It is not obvious to me why they should have a "slower gait in general". I am not an expert in how locomotion works in biology, so I have no idea how their different frame would've affected it. Are you an expert by any chance? Or at least have someone else to reference here?

Same goes for assumptions of their intelligence. Especially since something as broad as "intelligence" is fairly hard to measure even in organisms living today, not to speak of something which only survives as fossils. Maybe if we, say, time traveled a baby homo neanderthalensis to modern time and educated them the way we do modern humans, they would be just as capable or incapable as the rest of us.

Ill admit that they going off what we know they were probably better or at least equal to modern humans during a sprint, though they would still have a slower gait in general. I still wouldnt want them to move faster ingame purely for balance reasons though.

They were still not as intelligent as Homo Sapiens and definitely not as intelligent as modern humans however. Larger brains don't necessarily equal intelligence, at least not the type of intelligence that's valued in modern times. How it's formatted is more important, Neanderthals brains were more animalistic in nature, designed to improve their physical senses to better survive in the wild. So if anything, they should probably get a gene that improves their eyesight, in fact their impressive eyesight is one of their defining features.

@Gerewoatle, well, firstly, I would like to point out that the original commentator I was responding to was appealing to "actual Neanderthals" then proceeded to describe something noticeably different, which is the confusion I was then trying to rectify. Secondly, while I'd like to agree with you because it is the kind of setting that definitely allows for such a thing, the xenotype description is surprisingly specific: "Homo neanderthalensis was originally an archaic population of hominids that emerged over 200,000 years ago during the Pleistocene epoch. After they were replaced by and merged with humans 30,000 years ago, they were absent for tens of thousands of years until scientists resurrected them from ancient DNA."

@royallyTipsy - Or it's Ludeon Studios depicting a setting wherein neanderthals were genetically engineered by whatever civilization to be purposefully based on unga-bunga stereotypes rather than with any interest in historical accuracy.

A whole lot of the genetic engineering in RimWorld is very strongly indicated as being arbitrary and based on nothing more than "because we wanted to and because it makes us money" with an occasional thin justification that doesn't actually stand up to scrutiny. It's long past being about scientific progress or discovery in the year 5500, it's pretty much entirely a commercial and fashion pursuit.

@Turkwise, if we are talking about historical Neanderthals and what we know about them in 2k25, quick read of Wikipedia article gives these curious snippets:
- "The Neanderthal chest was deep and wide, with a proportionally expansive thoracic cavity, and possibly stronger lung performance. Neanderthals also had relatively more fast-twitch muscle fibres, and much higher caloric demands. ... Stronger lungs, more fast-twitch muscle, and shorter limbs would have also boosted sprinting efficiency."
- It also notes how Neanderthal brains are on average larger than Cro-Magnon, though it does then go on to admit that their culture seems comparatively simpler, at least in surviving archaeological record.
Temperature tolerance does make sense going from that source, but most of the xenotype was really just Ludeon reusing pop culture idea of oonga bunga stoopid caveman, not any sort of scientific sense or logic.

I like the majority of things this mod does but there's no way im going to willingly make Neanderthal raids even more overtuned than they already are.

And honestly most of your changes to them dont make much sense logically, actual Neanderthals are not "nearly-regular" humans, they're substantially different from modern day humans.
Stockier bodies translate to shorter legs and a heavier frame, they would definitely be slower overall. They would also definitely be considered dumb when compared to normal humans, their brains likely weren't suited for abstract thought and critical thinking. The temperature genes also make sense given that their bodies would be more adapted to living in harsh conditions.

Bug report: When starting a solo mechanitor run, if you change the xenotype of the starting colonist to "prole" the game freaks out and displays an empty box, requiring a restart. Doesn't happen on other scenarios, tested with no other mods installed (except harmony).

@royallyTipsy Fixed

A bug report this time: with Rimsenal Harana, Strong Stomach overrides Robust Digestion.

For now it's just these two notes, honestly. Firstly, patching Extremely Fast Runner from Lycanthropes to be even faster - which will probably make the wolves hilariously fast, but still, that's kinda the intent of that mod. Other suggestion was to apply all changes you did to vanilla Sangs to Strigoi/Ekki/Bruxa - mainly I was thinking of just swapping Fast Runner for Lunar Enthusiasm so the Impid Problem doesn't happen with them either, but I see now that that does change met efficiency a bit. I'll have to sit down and think over this for a bit more, so I'll have to get back to you on this a bit later.

Thanks for reply though!

@royallyTipsy This mod is designed to work alongside all of the VRE mods to make sure metabolisms don't get out of control. If you have specific balance ideas to help the mods work together better, you can provide a list. The more detail you provide, the easier it will be for me to look at.