Heterozygous (carrier) females for hemophilia never have hemophilic sons (v 1.2.4)

[Robb Plat]

It’s possible that there is a bigger glitch with the hemophilia gene in Niche - a genetics survival game.

When crossing females that are carriers for the hemophilia gene (they only have one copy of the gene) with males with normal blood clotting, I was surprised to find that I never seemed to get sons with hemophilia. To determine if there was probably an issue with this, and to determine that it was not just due to RNG, I carried out three simultaneous crosses in a game file. Those three crosses yielded: #1, 16 males and 16 females; #2, 14 males and 16 females; and #3, 11 males and 6 females. Of those crosses, I obtained: #1, only 9 females carriers; #2, only 4 female carriers; and #3, only 4 female carriers.

Based on Mendelian genetics, and because the male has normal blood clotting and the female is a carrier, there should be a 1:1:1:1 ratio of all four genotypes among their offspring, i.e., 1/4 hemophilic males, 1/4 normal males, 1/4 carrier females, and 1/4 normal females.

In this experiment, we have 79 young Nichelings; 38 females and 41 males. Half of the offspring should be either male or female, so a ratio of 41 to 38 is reasonable, even without statistical testing. We do, however, have only 17 carrier females of hemophilia, and 0 hemophilic males. Compared to the total female count of 38, 17 carrier females is approximately 44.7% of that amount. A Chi-squared test may determine whether 44.7% is statistically different from 50% (the expected value), but because the sample size is only 79 the statistics don’t carry enough weight. To have a more accurate statistical measure, a sample size of 1000 would be best, but this is not reasonable for a single save file in Niche.

What I can say is that there should be around 20 hemophilic males across my three crosses, i.e., half of the 41 males, and yet they are missing. My theories are that: 1) there is a glitch where sons only inherent the father’s blood clotting and no gene (Y gene); or 2) there is a glitch that converts the mother’s hemophilia gene to a normal-blood-clotting gene. Either way, in the current version of the game, it is seemly impossible to obtain a pure-breeding hemophilia Nicheling population due to this.

If you cross a hemophilic male with a hemophilic female or a hemophilic male with a heterozygous female then you do get all four genotypes (General Feedback/Bug post, Robb Plat), which seems to indicate a glitch with inheriting the father’s genetics.

What does that mean for the typical Niche player? Hemophilic males are impossible to breed via either a carrier female or hemophilic female (General Feedback/Bug post, Robb Plat), so it’s impossible to get males and females with hemophilia in your games now, unless you put it in your mutation menu. At least you can outbreed with wandering Nichelings that have hemophilia without too much concern that it will proliferate in your population, assuming your population doesn’t already have hemophilia. (Image below shows my test population. Note that no individuals express hemophilia due to this glitch, except for Komiana who is a wandering female.)

Robb Plat

Diploma in “Biolology”

[Chiyanna]

This is certainly a puzzling glitch! While I guess the difficulty getting hemophilia is a good thing, it would be more realistic and give hemophilia more of a purpose if it wasn't so difficult to pass it on!