Research rework - Xenobiology edition - #12895
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Hello. I wonder, what kiVts thinking about it. As I remember, last rework specifically mentioned, that heavily groundside reliant gameplay - is part of the problem. And here we go again: no bodies = no advanced research, which could happen in low-pop round and/or if xenos are winning. |
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If there's no relevance to groundside at all, research becomes a fully self-contained gameplay loop -> most endgame content can be reached without interacting with groundside. Also, there's a key distinction here from IO data, IO data was something only IOs could procure and was something players had to go looking for specifically. Xeno bodies is something that naturally gets produced as a byproduct of marines playing the game, so it's something that research players are basically always going to have access to. Additionally, research still has a way to generate advanced chems even without xeno bodies, the point is that it's just slower to do: you have to take the less advanced contracts. But this still means you could end up making a stim even if marines don't provide you any xeno bodies via the contract system as it provides a way to get points. There is still a gameplay loop even if somehow the round ends up with 0 bodies being sent shipside, but I genuinely think this is unlikely because of how easy it is for marines to secure xeno bodies. |
Test merge deployment history:Test Merge Deployed @ 08/10/2026 14:55:49 +00:00:Server InstanceRevisionTest Merge Updated @ 08/10/2026 16:20:29 +00:00:Server InstanceRevisionTest Merge Updated @ 08/10/2026 17:14:32 +00:00:Server InstanceRevisionTest Merge Updated @ 08/10/2026 19:09:43 +00:00:Server InstanceRevisionTest Merge Updated @ 08/10/2026 19:43:32 +00:00:Server InstanceRevisionTest Merge Updated @ 08/10/2026 20:39:02 +00:00:Server InstanceRevisionTest Merge Updated @ 08/11/2026 00:35:06 +00:00:Server InstanceRevisionTest Merge Updated @ 08/11/2026 02:06:09 +00:00:Server InstanceCM13 Live RevisionOrigin: 74c04bd Test Merge Updated @ 08/11/2026 07:38:02 +00:00:Server InstanceCM13 Live RevisionOrigin: 5fdd4e6 Test Merge Updated @ 08/11/2026 08:32:39 +00:00:Server InstanceRevisionTest Merge Updated @ 08/11/2026 13:29:19 +00:00:Server InstanceRevisionTest Merge Updated @ 08/11/2026 21:11:37 +00:00:Server InstanceRevisionTest Merge Updated @ 08/12/2026 02:13:27 +00:00:Server InstanceCM13 Live RevisionOrigin: da283ac Test Merge Updated @ 08/12/2026 03:14:23 +00:00:Server InstanceCM13 Live RevisionOrigin: 2de69ec Test Merge Updated @ 08/13/2026 01:28:49 +00:00:Server InstanceRevisionTest Merge Updated @ 08/13/2026 02:20:09 +00:00:Server InstanceCM13 Live RevisionOrigin: 1642f4c Test Merge Updated @ 08/13/2026 03:51:09 +00:00:Server InstanceCM13 Live RevisionOrigin: 2281510 Test Merge Updated @ 08/13/2026 04:49:04 +00:00:Server InstanceRevisionTest Merge Updated @ 08/13/2026 04:50:40 +00:00:Server InstanceRevisionTest Merge Updated @ 08/13/2026 04:55:01 +00:00:Server InstanceRevisionTest Merge Updated @ 08/13/2026 06:22:18 +00:00:Server InstanceCM13 Live RevisionOrigin: 21dc526 Test Merge Updated @ 08/13/2026 07:34:13 +00:00:Server InstanceRevisionTest Merge Updated @ 08/13/2026 19:46:55 +00:00:Server InstanceRevisionTest Merge Updated @ 08/13/2026 22:17:23 +00:00:Server InstanceRevisionTest Merge Updated @ 08/14/2026 01:56:09 +00:00:Server InstanceCM13 Live RevisionOrigin: 40c6e6b Test Merge Updated @ 08/14/2026 02:26:56 +00:00:Server InstanceCM13 Live RevisionOrigin: 4d09b1e Test Merge Updated @ 08/14/2026 04:57:59 +00:00:Server InstanceCM13 Live RevisionOrigin: 2221d54 Test Merge Updated @ 08/14/2026 05:28:45 +00:00:Server InstanceCM13 Live RevisionOrigin: 140474d Test Merge Updated @ 08/14/2026 07:29:47 +00:00:Server InstanceCM13 Live RevisionOrigin: c890d89 Test Merge Updated @ 08/14/2026 08:00:33 +00:00:Server InstanceCM13 Live RevisionOrigin: 4ed86ac Test Merge Removed @ 08/14/2026 14:05:07 +00:00:Server InstanceCM13 Live |
The issue was complete research inability to do anything if IOs are dead. You would have 6 reagents from botany and the coat chemicals and thats it, if IOs are dead there is literally no other way of reliably getting chemicals. With that, you would watch the paint dry as you would get passive income. As long as research has some agency on their own, the issue likely won't reappear. |
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In general I'm not really keen on forcing renegade - I would prefer you make it possible to obtain a tamed hive (see ciphering and how its capped to 6 so ending on XENO_HIVE_DELTA) rather than taking away player autonomy. At least with a tamed hive, a person will eventually opt into a hive and tamed hive inherently is tamed by whoever is designated as the leader.
As far as weed slowdown reduction (WRS), I'm extremely skeptical because A) marines can already keep up with xenos on weeds as is (which is terrible) and B) MST already exists. At a minimum it should be incompatible with MST.
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Worth mentioning that it's still likely to be very lategame content. I'm fine with making it incompatible with MST but it's worth mentioning that MST does nothing to reduce weed slowdown reduction, it only impacts equipment reduction, in that sense, MST is pretty worthless for traveling over weeds. While I think it'll be pretty strong, I also think it'd act more as a tiebreaker similar to the nuke when rounds have gone on long enough and neither side can properly push the other. Weeds give a huge defensive advantage to xenomorphs so it would be useful in that regard for allowing marines to push fortified positions (especially hive weeds), which may make any sort of push otherwise impossible. As far as the testmerges have been, no one has been able to actually produce one of these lategame chems as far as I've spectated because it requires a round to have gone on for long enough, which I think is fine. A round that goes on long enough has stuff like the King xenomorph and nukes etc that help to bring the round to a close, a chem unlocked via 2 queens dying that helps you push weeds is no different. It's worth mentioning that it's not really possible to force a corrupted xenomorph to renegade. You need to use an IV drip to administer the chem and it takes around 10-15 seconds because they need 50u in their system to transform. Meaning that a xenomorph can just run away or refuse. I originally had it make a tamed hive but the problem with tamed hive is that you need to somehow tie it to a single individual, which makes it hard to properly do. If the scenario you're worried about is someone throwing a smoke grenade filled with the chem to convert corrupted into renegades, I don't think that'll be possible, they would metabolize the chem faster than it could accumulate in their system to go over the 50u threshold. |
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About the pull request
This reworks research so that botany is no longer part of the core gameplay loop anymore. Instead, the gameplay loop is centered around xenomorph bodies and performing xenobiology to produce reagents which are used in the higher-level contracts. This also adds another lategame layer for research and makes it worth pursuing corrupted xenomorphs.
The gameplay loop generally starts with the following: When you receive your first xenomorph body from the ground, you can harvest the organ inside of it. This organ can be fed into the biomass analyzer to get upgrades, or it can be planted on the floor to produce a resin node. Once the resin has expanded, these xenomorph organs can then be planted in the resin to produce chemical-producing glands, with each xenomorph organ having a variety of different glands they can be turned into.
There is a basic gland and an advanced gland which produce the entire chemical set needed to complete contracts, but they produce chemicals extremely slowly that mass production is essentially infeasible using just these glands.
Comparatively, there are specialized glands that produce a high quantity of a single chemical, but produce no other chemicals. The intended gameplay loop is to essentially first create a single basic and advanced gland to complete contracts, and then to specialize production towards a specific set of reagents based on what is needed to mass produce a stim.
Contracts have been reworked a bit so that there are 4 research contract tiers:
The simple/advanced are essentially the same as the 'easy' and 'intermediate' contracts. The Simple Xenobiology contains reagents that generate from the basic gland, and the Advanced Xenobiology contains reagents that generate from the advanced gland. They unlock when at least 1 of their relevant chems has been scanned with the XRF machine.
Live xenomorphs can have their organs harvested if they are allied with the person doing the harvesting. A xeno with no organ will regenerate it over the span of around 5 minutes (10 minutes for queens), and will have their plasma/health halfed. Organs obtained this way have double production speeds, giving a big incentive to create corrupted xenos.
The queen organ can be used to generate a contract via the bioanalyzer machine that gives 3 new properties, tagged xenomorphic, accessible only via the bioanalyzer machine. These properties can't be added to other chemicals and the underlying recipe will require royal plasma, which can only be generated using another queen organ. Essentially, you need to kill 2 queens or kill a queen and create corrupted xenos, and harvest the corrupted xeno's heart, in order to mass produce this specially generated contract.
The new properties are as follows, if anyone has any ideas on any interesting effects, let me know.
Worth mentioning that while these might sound strong, they require 2 queens to be killed before they can realistically mass produced in a round. Also, I think vibration-absorbing might be worse than neuro-stims but I'd need someone to confirm that for me.
There's also a reagent collector machine that automatically collects the reagents from the glands and puts them into the research network. These can then be directly dispensed via chem dispensers and the turing machines.
Adds 2 drone hearts to the start of research so that they can complete simple xenobiology contracts. Subject to change, this is mostly just for testing and to give research a bit of a bootstart.
Some of the plasmas have been nerfed so that their usage as an earlygame consumable is discouraged, either by causing organ damage or similar.
Explain why it's good for the game
Botany is really boring to do and it's just a knowledge check. It doesn't really offer an interesting constraint and it's hard to control how fast someone can produce chemicals using it because the underlying mechanism is confusing. This system instead binds research down to xenomorph bodies and makes the gameplay loop more focused around utilizing xenomorph bodies to facilitate in mass production of chemicals.
It's a generally more intuitive system as well compared to botany, and fits more in line with what research would be doing, which is xenobiology. It integrates greenos into the gameplay loop in a way that's interesting. It's easy to balance the numbers because we can control reagent production by decreasing or increasing the amount of reagents produced per second for each gland. There's also a real incentive to create corrupted xenomorphs instead of for the sake of it, because harvesting their organs will allow research to be self-sufficient without relying on groundside to keep supplying bodies.
Botany predrop rollout isn't possible anymore. I think this is generally fine, research should be somewhat dependent on groundside activity to hit their lategame, rather than it being immediately available before the operation has even started.
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balance: Reworked research gameplay loop to be more xeno-body focused. Hydroponic chemicals still exist but are no longer generated as part of recipes, and are not a research target anymore. Xenomorph organs can be cultivated into weed nodes and glands by placing them on the floor and then placing them on weeds. These glands produce chemicals which can then be extracted, which are necessary to research the more lategame chemicals.
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