Guide to Genetics
This guide is only a basic guide on how to do Genetics. Genetics is rather still in development, meaning that the wiki page can be outdated or have wrong information at any time. That being stated, Genetics is rather easy, fun and powerful if you know what you are doing...
Harvesting Genes From Animal to Mutants
Genetics is heavily limited at the beginning, this is due to your vital equipment not being upgraded, so it is recommended to get Pico Manipulators for all your machinery to save you DNA, meat and time!
The first thing you will likely notice in the lab is the Gibber, like the Chef's one it is meant for Monkeys, Spiders and other critters native to maintenance, and outside faunas from birds to even a render if you are lucky, too! You will likely want to hack it by using a multitool on it about 7 times before you are able to grind up those poor, hopefully, dead bodies.
The thing next to the Gibber is a Meat Spike, by grappling anything you can put the corpses up there and harvest meat from it, which is really useful so that, with the Gibber, should give you a fair amount of resources for a good start.
Monkeys and Humans limbs can be butchered for a small amount of meat, simply put legs or arms onto a table and use a knife on it to acquire one more slab of meat needed to finish your project, or get a head start on the next clone!
Once you have meat at hand you have to use the Xenofauna Genetics Pulper, located in the top right of the main genetics lab. When meat is added, turn on the Pulper to convert that slab of meat into DNA samples, upgrading this is vital to saving meat samples! DNA samples are the key to your genetics work so make sure not to scrap every flesh into a smoothie.
Gathering Animal Protein is a huge part of making a clone, at the start of the shift without upgrades a cow can cost around 600u of the liquid, so it is important to not want to waste too much at the start of the shift. That's where the Soteria Advanced Grinder comes into play, this marvel of science allows anything to the south tile of it to be eaten up automatically, saving you clicks! It can hold a lot of reagents and does not auto-dispense them into bottles unless you tell it to. Lastly, the Soteria Advanced Grinder has the added feature that, when click-dragging a B.I.D.O.N. canister to the machine on its **West tile** will connect them up, and allow you to directly transfer the stored liquid to the canister saving you loads of time filling them by hand or bucket!
A few tricks to get loads of Animal Protein are -
- Cutting up meat slabs into slices, this well taking an extra step will result in a few more units of Animal Protein.
- There is a Cow mutation that lets you milk them for Animal Protein, basically giving you an endless but slow amount.
- Medical might have a few spare bottles around due to needing roach meat themselves, it might be best to check the chemical fridge or ask around!
The Soteria Genetic Analyzer
This imposing analyzer can be understood easily after a few minutes of tinkering! Adding in the DNA sample will show you plenty of mutations, by looking closely you can notice that they are all called "???" at first, this is due to the machine not having them analyzed. You may only be able to do 2 at a time, but with upgrades it allows for more. Analyzing a block or DNA sample will tell you what mutation it has, by hitting "Analyze" then marking the block you want with the "Mark" button will turn its color from Yellow into Green. For those that are color blind, it turns a checkmark into an "X" as well and states "Unmarked" otherwise.
Hitting "Sync with RnD" will give RnD's main console points depending on how many DNA you have scanned and what they were, this is handy for RND at the start of the shift or when they need those last few points for new researches, making your lab a likely priority for upgrades!
Getting past the first few unknown blocks is easy but getting to the more advanced and rare nodes may be harder without mutating them. To mutate a block, click the "Combine" or "Key" icon button and merge two or more other mutations to the top list going left to right. In case of a miss-click, you can click the "Remove" button to prevent that copy from being combined. Doing this should give you a new mutation when done correctly with a good match. Though they may need to be analyzed to reveal what the mutations are.
Aside from "Combining", you might notice the function "Merge". This will merge two DNA samples into one, rather useful for making super clones of a mutation cocktail. Same mutation stacks onto one another for "Copies."
After messing around merging and combining these genes, its "Instability" will rise and fall, fluctuating due to how many mutations are present. Each mutation adds its own amount of Instability. Do **NOT** let things get to 100%!
DNA Sampling and Wheeling are Done, Now What?
To the left side of the lab, you can see three Soteria Xenofauna Cloning Vats, these large tubular machines are where you add those lovely spliced samples, as well as to the Advanced Grinder and a B.I.D.O.N. canister to the West. The canister must have Animal Protein to clone animals, otherwise, it will stall out. Make sure that you don't run out of protein or your experiment can end up with a half-cloned flesh pile of wasted materials, time, and work. The Cloning Vat can clone just about any animal as long as they are organic, so long as you can get a viable slab of meat out of it to get that DNA sample. Leaving a Cloning Vat untended can lead to the animal breaking out if fully cloned, making a horrible mess to deal with. It is best to not stray too far from your work, luckily, a fully cloned animal will bang on the glass a few times giving sound and chat cues!
If you want to clone something with the mutations active, you need to head back to Soteria Genetic Analyzer and make sure that the mutations you want are active in your clone, this is shown by the nodes being colored bright green, the inactive mutations will flash bright red. For those that are color blind, there are written descriptions underneath. Be sure to always check what is and is not active before cloning.
Be. Sure. To. Always. Check. BEFORE. Cloning.
When cloning something that is hostile and dangerous, make sure to have Trauma Teams or armed guards at the ready in case of an attempted breakout, and remember ALWAYS FOLLOW SoP.
Mutations in You
The first thing you should do before having anyone consent to having mutation is to document everything you are doing and testing. If you are testing on yourself, then make sure to note this down. Once that is done, if you are lucky there will be some uranium around the RnD lab in order to print Blue-Ink Mutagenic Purgers, these are vital to clearing mutations and undoing mistakes, so always have at least one or two around for safety.
Cows, birds, and even monkeys are fun to toy with, but now you might test on humans, for Science of course! Well, it is rather simple to get a Mutagenic Injector, load the sample into it and inject yourself. This will inject 9 different mutations at once, and some might not be active. No need to worry as you have Blue-Ink Mutagenic Purgers, this resets all your mutations removing them all in one go, you did print one out, right?
Bureaucracy
To some the most fun, to others a painful paperwork system that has no real reward other than covering you from the iron hammer that is Marshal looking to shut down your fun experiment. Be sure to always have your papers, finding and collection of data scanned copied and filed away otherwise you may be visited by a large group of really trigger happy Blackshield and angry Marshals just looking for any reason to start a shootout or an arrest!
Tips and Tricks
- Follow your sop
- Follow Your Sop
- Follow. Your. Sop
- Always make sure to get consent and propper paperwork as outlined in Sop
- If you are running low on animals, Lonestar cargo can import basic ones.
- Many foes the Prospectors face have great mutations and valuable data inside them! Make sure to secure deals with them to get those harder and rare faunas out in the fields!
- Follow! Your! Sop!
But what is the room to the right side of the lab?
That's the old DNA genetics lab, which still works too even with this completely better and new system added to Sojourn!
To use that one, here's a bare bone basic guide - Slam in a monkey, and save to buffer.
U.I is how they look, controlling hair colour, eye colour hair and other things like horns and wings.
Rejuvenators are used with a beaker that can be added to the DNA modifier, this allows you to inject your subject with whatever contents were in the said beaker, typing anti-mutation or anti-radiation based chemicals.
Go to its S.E.
Mutate the 3 left most number or letter to a D or greater (E and F are greater)
Print out a single needle of it to test, inject it into someone or yourself. Theirs a small cooldown and you will have to save to an S.E buffer every time you want to test out a new 3 digit code.
See if it gives you powers, repeat as you go though!
Some clear as day mutations are -
TK, X-ray, Blindness, Stuttering, Hulk! Many more.
The test subject doesn't need to be alive to mutate them, so no need to worry about the dead monkey inside the pod!
Be careful though, as each needle is radioactive and will slowly kill you or your test subject, it's a silent killer so work with medical to give you anti-radiation chemicals.
Much more inadept guides can be found in other wikis or learned in-game.
