[1.0] Gen-spliced Xenohumans

[Albion]

Gen-spliced Xenohumans

After reading though this post I decided to make a Xenohuman mod for Rimworld.

Content

Soldiermorphs
Engineered soldiers to maximize combat effectivness. Backgrounds will be limited to violent one like vat-grown soldier, assassins, other soldiers...
Pain factor x0.8
Does not get negative mood from pain
Hungerrate x0.8
Health scale x1.2
Life expectancy 25 years
ShootingAccuracyPawn +2
ResearchSpeed -0.5
GlobalLearningFactor x0.7
ImmunityGainSpeed x1.2

Designermates
Engineered to be perfect mates. Also includes their descendants. Backgrounds will be limited to various civil and slave backgrounds like pop idol, prostitute, recruiter...
Always has the trait Beautiful, 50% chance for trait Kind
Pain factor x1.4
RecruitPrisonerChance +0.2
SocialImpact +0.2
DiplomacyPower +0.2
PsychicSensitivity +0.2

Wolfman
Adapted to cold biomes this human has a thick fur as well as impressive teeth and claws. Backgrounds limited to various violent tribal and raider backgrounds.
50% has trait bloodlust, 25% chance for Abrasive
light natural armor against blunt and sharp
min comfortable temp -24°C (compared to 16°C for normal humans)
Increased damage with natural weapons (in between normal humans and wargs)
Hunger rate x1.2
TameAnimalChance -0.05
TrainAnimalChance +0.15
MentalBreakThreshold -0.08

Scaleman
Adapted to hot biomes with a leathery thick skin and lower food consumption.
Max comfortable temp 46°C (26°C normal)
Hunger rate x0.8
Natural armor
Tiredness x1.3
ToxicSensitivity x1.5
MoveSpeed 4.2 (down from 4.6)
LeatherAmount 60 (up from 50)


Next steps
I'm currently waiting on some additional head sprites made by Rebelrot and still need to create the backstories for the soldiermorph.

I expect to release by the end of January.

[AileTheAlien]

Bears and Wolves seem to overlap a lot. Maybe just make a single cold-weather race? Soldiers seem pretty cool, but also have a lot of bonuses and only a shorter lifespan and consciousness debuff. Would definitely watch the balance on that one.

Sounds cool; I'm looking forward to this!

[Albion]

I gave it a second pass today and changed some minor things.
I'm still not exactly sure about the soldiermorph but I think the -20% Consciousness is a decently heavy drawback because it translates to -20% Manipultaion, Moving, Sight and some others too. This is why I buffed Sight with +40% to compensate for the loss in sight and make them shooting as accurately as before.

I also removed the bearman and changed the wolfman a bit to make him more comfortable with low temperatures but also gave him the bloodlust traits which will lead to deadly social fights combined with the higher natural damage compared to normal humans.

Small update: I had a chat with erdelf yesterday because the Alien framework doesn't support selective vanilla backstories so far but he'll look into it and get back to me with a solution to that.
I started work on the mod and might be able to present a work-in-progress version some time next week. Maybe sooner...

[Canute]

What do you think to give them a higher chance for special mental states ?
Like then they genetic comes from predator they should have more berserk states.

And maybe some of the other be natural cowards with flee/panic states.

[Albion]

A higher mental break risk sounds interesting but is not easily achieveable. I think I'll not do that for now.

Do any of you guys have an interesting idea for a drawback for the Scaleman? Just limiting movementspeed ist not that interesting unfortunately.

[SpaceDorf]

A Drawback for Scaleman could be a bad cold resistence and a bigger need for sleep.

[mcduff]

Soldiermorphs
Engineered soldiers to maximize combat effectivness. Backgrounds will be limited to violent one like vat-grown soldier, assassins, other soldiers...
Always incapable of intellectual
Pain factor x0.6
Does not get negative mood from pain
Hungerrate x0.8
Sight +40%
Health scale x1.2 (meaning they have 20% more hitpoints compared to normal humans)
Life expectancy 40 years
Consciousness -20%

Designermates
Engineered to be perfect mates. Also includes their descendants. Backgrounds will be limited to various civil and slave backgrounds like pop idol, prostitute, recruiter...
Always has the trait Beautiful, chance for trait Kind
Always incapable of violence
Talking +20%
Pain factor x1.4

I think these two are the weakest because you limit the backgrounds and skills, turning them from geno-modded "races" like the others.

Think about the lore a bit. Yes these races would have started off being modified for specific jobs, but who is to say it always worked? What happened 3, 10, 25 generations later?

Consider the Super Mutants in fallout. They were engineered to be soldiers, but you still get super mutant artists, super mutant doctors, super mutant scientists and gardeners. The interesting stories come when they go against type.

Who says you couldn't have people whose ancestors were bred to be soldiers but who now work as accountants? Who says these "designer mates" would always be passive, pliant, non violent? The story of someone literally bred to be a trophy wife for a rich oligarch who schemed her way out of her situation and went on to be a gang leader on a perhiphery world is a *good*, *interesting* story, much better than someone who gets traded around as a hack for recruiting prisoners imo.

Here's an idea. What if the "soldiermorphs" were physically capable but lifespan limited. Give the buffs: make them stronger, quicker, more able, and leave intellectual enabled - soldiers need to be smart - but set the life expectancy to 35. They're great - but they're mayflies. What kind of interesting stories would that produce?

[SpaceDorf]

Naaaaaah .. that won't work ..

[Call me Arty]

 I'm glad to see that a forum post of mine actually led to something!

I think you're absolutely heading in the right direction, though there's a bit of an oddity with the stats for the xenos. I think that rather than +40% to one system or -20% to that one, there should be some more focus put into backstories and racial traits. It makes sense that all of the soldiermorphs would be vat-grown soldiers, for example. It may not lead to variety, but it would make sense. If you'd like, I'd be willing to write them and come-up with stats so I could contribute something to this beyond inspiration. As somebody who has little-to-no-knowledge of modding, I think you can affect certain inherent talents of pawns, like mining speed (wonder which that could possibly apply to?) and movement speed (could be a good thing to boost for wolfmen and soldiermorphs, but drop for shortmen and bearmen, maybe). Otherwise, you run the risk of having the equivalence of a bunch of standard humans on certain kinds of drugs or diseases (cutting soldiermorph's consciousness is dangerous, but boosting combat skills while penalizing things like crafting speed or surgery success chance would set their roles pretty clearly).

While originality is ideal, there's nothing wrong with inspiration. There are some great features of other mods I'd recommend mirroring.

Wolf Men - Leeani. Not the latest version of the mod, but it's the best description of the race.

Soldiermorphs - Orcs. A more extreme example of the transition from colonist to warrior, still brings cool examples of culture, race-specific opinions and gear, and some tweaks to more obscure stats. By the way, I really hope that the soldiermorphs get a diet restriction to only nutrient paste (and maybe packaged survival meals), to more reflect their original description and change a colony's structure from basic human-meta.

No significant issues with any of the rest of the races, but listen to Space Dorf. He's got good ideas, and the scaleman one is one of them.

[mcduff]

Naaaaaah .. that won't work ..

I mean that's sarcasm right?

[SpaceDorf]

Yeap

Why else would I choose pictures of prime examples for your story suggestions 

Mr Incredible working in the complaints department at an insurance company.

And the little princess who has been sold to pay for an army.

[mcduff]

I mean, right? I personally love the idea of getting a hulking gene modded soldier with a burning passion for art and gardening.

[SpaceDorf]

I would love me a super farmer 

[AileTheAlien]

+1 on the cold-temp and increased sleep for lizard-dudes.
I think both of those might be do-able just with XML too; I thought I saw those stats when I was messing with drugs and implants on the weekend...

[Albion]

I added the reduces cold resistance and increased tiredness factor to the scaleman.
Unfortunately it's not just pure xml since adding a health modification to a generated pawn is not super trivial. However I found a way to do it with some c# code and was planning to do that anyway.

Regarding the soldiermorphs and designermates:
I want to restrict their backstories simply for the reason that pawn with exactly that race have their race traits rather dominant and are within 1-5 generations. Sure there could be the insurance worker soldiermorph or a corporate CEO designermate but those should be rather rare. Breeding with normal humans or other races also dialutes the gene pool and therefore the genetic modifications which turns their offspring into normal humans after a few generations.
A person might be the grand-grand-grand-grand-child of a designermate but it's only visible because of their weird eye colour or that constantly changing hair.
Let's agree on this: I'll limit the backstories but I won't be super restrictive.

@Call me Arty: I'm not sure if I can directly affect things like shooting skill and crafting speed. I'll look into it though and will rework some of the stats. That way would be better than simply buffing or nerfing things like sight or manipulation.
Also I would be very interested in your custom backstories. Feel free to write some. However please try to stay canon.
You could also save me some work and directly write them in a xml file. If you already know the basics here is a guide on how to do custom backstories using the humanoid alien framework: Guide to backstories