Genetics RNG
Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2016 3:12 pmOkay so, to put it bluntly, I spent 20 minutes trying to change one block of genetics to D, E, or F, and given I haven't looked at the code in detail yet, I can't say I know how the RNG was fucking me that hard, but the point remains that genetics generally takes me upwards of two or three hours, which has, in fairness, sort of been the norm for doing it solo for a while, but I've had a thought as to how one could keep a lot of the RNG elements of genetics, while making it more of a "solveable" puzzle that didn't rely 100% on RNG to hit the values you wanted.
To begin with, most of the system would remain the same. Same values for UI/UE/SI, same setup for most of the modifier console, etc etc. What it would basically come down to is modifying what the radiate function does, and making it so that it's got a reliability rating.
So for starters, instead of rolling some random value for how the radiation modifies specific targets, as it seems to do now, when you click "Irradiate block," based upon a pair of calibration variables, it would pick a value to boost the hexadecimal value based on a range of calibration variables. One would be fixed, and randomized each round. Two would be +/- values, and randomized at the beginning of each round, but not fixed. Each irradiation pulse would multiply the base variable, plus or minus a random value in the +/- range, and add that to the current value (and cycle through from 15/f to 0 as necessary). Calibration of the machine through experimentation could be used to take the + and - values down to 0, leading to fixed modification of the values earned through experimentation much like a proper scientific process.
This could still work with the tendency to accidentally alter adjacent/random nearby values, instead of the intended one, but it would be significantly more reliable at the outset, and would allow for a more reasonably streamlined process.
... I'm not explaining this as well as I could, so I'm going to try and hash out some pseudocode, but in the meantime, the fact that genetics is wholly luck-based doesn't seem very science-y to me, and even if it does technically make it easier to get ridiculous powers, it also makes it more scientific, and improves the experience as a whole by eliminating some of that ludicrous RNG.
Seriously. 20 minutes of 5 and A, and literally nothing else. The RNG is just kinda ridiculous sometimes.
To begin with, most of the system would remain the same. Same values for UI/UE/SI, same setup for most of the modifier console, etc etc. What it would basically come down to is modifying what the radiate function does, and making it so that it's got a reliability rating.
So for starters, instead of rolling some random value for how the radiation modifies specific targets, as it seems to do now, when you click "Irradiate block," based upon a pair of calibration variables, it would pick a value to boost the hexadecimal value based on a range of calibration variables. One would be fixed, and randomized each round. Two would be +/- values, and randomized at the beginning of each round, but not fixed. Each irradiation pulse would multiply the base variable, plus or minus a random value in the +/- range, and add that to the current value (and cycle through from 15/f to 0 as necessary). Calibration of the machine through experimentation could be used to take the + and - values down to 0, leading to fixed modification of the values earned through experimentation much like a proper scientific process.
This could still work with the tendency to accidentally alter adjacent/random nearby values, instead of the intended one, but it would be significantly more reliable at the outset, and would allow for a more reasonably streamlined process.
... I'm not explaining this as well as I could, so I'm going to try and hash out some pseudocode, but in the meantime, the fact that genetics is wholly luck-based doesn't seem very science-y to me, and even if it does technically make it easier to get ridiculous powers, it also makes it more scientific, and improves the experience as a whole by eliminating some of that ludicrous RNG.
Seriously. 20 minutes of 5 and A, and literally nothing else. The RNG is just kinda ridiculous sometimes.