So Xenophobic empires can't benefit from genetic engineering without a huge happiness hit

[Stoßtrupp Gold]

I´m looking for the code that makes your people to a new species, but can´t find it.

Has anyone found it or an idea where to look?
Thank you!

 

[Latheloi]

Not sure if it has been suggested elsewhere in thread, but what about a tech which was explicitly about the genetic improvement of the whole race which was a follow on from the normal genetic manipulation techs.

Using that to do the whole species would avoid the xenophobia malus by replacing primary species with the newly modified species, at a premium of being a whole extra tech to get.

 

[Stoßtrupp Gold]

The techs grant only trait_points that you can spend in the genetic eng screen. But atm the mechanic makes your modified pops to a new species.
I want to take a look at the mechanic.

 

[laergor2345]

Seems like this thread started maybe pre-release, and I can report post-release, post patch 1.0.2 (5/12) the following observations after my first game 20+hrs:

I went in the game somewhat blindly, not really reading much outside information and just let the tutorials and the game itself guide and teach me. As many of you probably already experienced, the game has many surprises if played this way and quite fun in a role-playing sort of way with minimized metagaming. Until you encounter weird issues that look like ugly bugs in Stellaris, no pun intended.


One surprise is the topic of this thread. So here's a few events/facts from my game:
- I started as a modified version of the vanilla human species, custom human empire, etc.
- Ethos: Xenophile, Militant, Materialist
- At some point, during my peaceful early expansions, I believe after researching Gene Modification, a whole new "species" evolved from among my human pops. They called themselves "Post-Humans". They were adaptive, intelligent, and physically stronger. In every characteristic, better than my "original" humans. They also were xenophobic, so they hated my "original" human population as well as my leadership. They committed a wide range of terrorist acts from blowing up buildings, to destroying entire populations of "Originals".
(As horrified as I was at this and as despicable as these Post-Humans were, this was the point when I just totally fell in love with the game for the surprise and the lore and the immersion surrounding the events, consequences, and how I had to deal with them)
- needless to say, I had to quarantine this new unruly "humans" who seem to be treated by the game as a whole new species, so I granted them independence, but then vassalized them through war; they eventually eradicated every "Original" human on their planet. I set my Migration Policy to "Primary Species Only", for fear they would spread in my empire. Little did I know, this policy had other implications...

- Later, I decided to try to modify my "Original" species; fearing that I would create "another species" like the Post-Humans, I thought if I modified every single "Original" Pop in the universe, then my empire would basically inherit the new modified species as my primary species, or I rationalized it would still be the same species with different traits (I realize how that sounds now, in retrospect). So I modified every Original Pop, which kept the name "Human". Throughout the game, I assumed that's how the game mechanics worked.
- I never figured out why I had a -% happiness among my "Primary" population of modified Humans because my Leadership Policy was "Primary Species Only"
- I never figured out why my Migration Policy of "Primary Species Only" never resulted in any migration within the empire after I modified my Original Pops
- I thought the modified Human would count as my Primary Species, since there are absolutely no "Originals" left as far as I could tell from any of the in-game charts -- they've all been modified! And the modified Human species are vastly the majority of my population (like 90%)


So this thread seems to confirm the issues I noticed with the mechanics that are not intuitive and are possibly bugs:

(1) my modified "Original" humans are counted as totally new species, actually treated as Xenos: This may be working as designed, but for me this was not intuitive, and there are some serious repercussions with genetic modification and how this mechanic plays out with Policies and happiness modifiers, such that I am guessing many new players would fall into similar pitfalls. I hadn't played a Xenophobe yet, but I can see how GM might be an undesirable activity as a Xenophobe in-game. As a Xenophobe, the GM mechanic seems to imply I would always want to just keep all my "primary" populations as the unmodified "Originals", and purge or enslave all "Aliens", including genetically-modified "Originals". Is that the intention?

(2) my leaders were still coming from the pool of "Original" humans, even though technically none should exist in the universe anymore
This to me smells like a bug because if I supposedly have modified all existing "Original" populations, then my new leaders should come from the modified pop (or at least any available pop), but never more from the extinct pop.

(3) The practice of eugenics and gene-modification of humans are usually seen through the context of ethics, but in the game eugenics/gene-modification relative to an ethical posture is not well-represented by the existing axioms of Ethos choices. Someone in an earlier post mentioned the idea of "transhumanism vs. [whatever-its-opposite]": I think this makes sense for this issue specifically. A separate spectrum is needed, of "I like eugenics" vs "I hate eugenics", which is separated from Xenophilia/phobia.
Although, creating a new ethos spectrum for eugenics does not necessarily address how a xenophobe regards genetically-modified species.

 

[Lorehead]

This should probably be folded into the faction system, along with ethic drift. There’s already a system where populations different from the ruling class can demand concessions from the government. One of the goals should be: become the new ruling class. The post-Blorg might even demand to modify all Blorg larvae to post-Blorg.

It would also make sense to have a box you can check to make the new subspecies you create dominant. Or that could happen when the last pop is modified—although it’s not necessarily a terrible idea for the ruling elite of selected lineages to be a tiny aristocracy genetically different from the commoners.

 

[NicoH]

I'm currently playing as a theocratic Republic, who wants to rule the whole galaxy under one faith. For this purpose they used the gene modification to allow them to settle on every planet type to oversee the enslaved heathens. But through the current mechanic my modified pop are as also seen as xenos and not eligible to vote or becoming leaders. It somehow destroys the immersion. They volunteered to be modified, they look like my primary species, they have the same name and ethos, but are treated as foreigners.

 

[Chyll]

I'm currently playing as a theocratic Republic, who wants to rule the whole galaxy under one faith. For this purpose they used the gene modification to allow them to settle on every planet type to oversee the enslaved heathens. But through the current mechanic my modified pop are as also seen as xenos and not eligible to vote or becoming leaders. It somehow destroys the immersion. They volunteered to be modified, they look like my primary species, they have the same name and ethos, but are treated as foreigners.

Gene purity and xenophobia, as currently constituted, are not compatible. And there is some sense to that.

OTOH, there should be room for policy decisions to augment the base ethos, and allow approval of things like the scenario you indicate to minimize the social stress.

 

[Brawler]

Gene editing can now change an entire species -- forever | Jennifer Kahn

seems relevant

 

[Lord Milutin]

This is fixed now, and will go live with the next hotfix.