Enhancing the Printing Pod

[Guinaro]

Since you can obtain any duplicant with the characteristics of your choice at the start of the game and with enough patience, I really want to have some of that control in game aswell.
And I think I found an non-overpowered way for this.

How about we use the "Reject All" feature for this:
Upon choosing "Reject All", you get the option to pin one of the characteristics of one of the three presented duplicants to a list.
You would have 2 lists: Keep Or Prevent.
The characteristics can be:

• The look (and name) of a duplicant
• The stress reaction
• A negative trait (max 3 negative out of a total of 4 kept traits)
• A positive trait (max 3 positive out of a total of 4 kept traits)
• An interest (max 3)

The Keep List makes it so that upon a new Cycle of the Printing Pod the first Duplicant possesses all the characteristics on this list.

The Prevent List makes it so that upon a new Cycle of the Printing Pod, no duplicant has that characteristic.

Since characteristics are still determined by the Random Number Generator. It will take several printing pod cycles before you have your ultimate duplicant, as you are only allowed to choose one characteristic out of all of those presented to you.

Also once you print anything, thus including a Care Package from the Printing Pod, both lists get reset.

If you aren't very picky and only want to focus on interests it will take you probably 9 - 15 game cycles before you have the dupe you want. If you focus to have everything fixed to your liking it will take minimum 8 x 3 printing pod cycles = 24 game cycles, but since you can only choose one characteristic at a time, and need to be lucky that every time you need to pick something the actual characteristic you want is available for choice, I think at average it will take you more in the range of 30 - 45 cycles, possibly even much longer, depending on your luck or pickyness. Which to me seems like a nice trade off, as you could just pick the first one, that is somewhat decent and use that duplicant to develop your base more quickly. Still if you run a base for 1000+ cycles, it seems a nice way to actually be able to have the actual duplicants you want. It will also hopefully counter the rushing the number of duplicants for new players.

I think the actual way we could do is with a series of popups.
Popup 1: Do you want to Reject All (For those who want to keep the total random element), Keep Characteristic or Prevent a Characteristic.

When Choosing Keep or Prevent:
Popup 2: Do you want to "Keep/Prevent" a Look (and name), a Stress Reaction, a Trait or an interest, and also a Back Button
Popup 3: Full list of the previously chosen category of Characteristics of all 3 Duplicants and a Back Button. Hovering over the Characteristics could have a textpopup, given the explanation of said charateristic.

Maybe we can also provide an option on the printing pod to view the lists and options to fully clear a list or remove individual choices from a list  (if you for whatever reason have changed your mind).

All of this could ofcourse be implemented in a seperate mode, just like you can avoid Care Packages, but I feel this would prevent a lot of frustration with the players.
A mod that forces you took take a pick each cycle is already made.
There is also already a mod, that makes the Reject All button simply Reroll the Printing Pod choices.
I feel this would be a nice in between way.

 

[metallichydra]

the stress reaction is tied to the dupe

[Guinaro]

Not really, because with the save game editor Duplicity you could assign any of the I think 4 stress reactions to a dupe. So I assumed it should be possible, to reassign them to different dupes, at least technically it is feasible.

[metallichydra]

12 minutes ago, Guinaro said:

Not really, because with the save game editor Duplicity you could assign any of the I think 4 stress reactions to a dupe. So I assumed it should be possible, to reassign them to different dupes, at least technically it is feasible.

i would be really sad if my nikola got stressed and suddenly began eating all my food ...

[Guinaro]

I'm not claiming that the initial stress reaction should differ from what is currently set for a duplicant. But with this system you could mix it up and have your Nikola Binge Eat when stressed instead of wrecking the whole base. It is your choice, wether to change stress reactions or not. Nobody is forcing you too.