So this is a minor change, but one that's important to a few folks.
Currently because you only play as a human, the 'genome' select is just a gender selector. However...having gender tied to genome sends rather a poor message to the trans members of our community (of which there are a few that I know of and certainly more I do not). It's pretty well settled by this point (let alone centuries into a hypothetical future) that those two things are quite different.
In the long term, the ideal solution would be to split species and gender selection, include non-binary options, and allow for custom entries in either to be modded in. However in the short term I'd like to request a renaming of the existing selector to match what it actually does. The current system sends a completely unintentional message that would be better avoided, given that it's a tad hostile.
Agreed, pretty much from top to bottom. There isn’t really much I can add but “+1” to it, so… yeah.
+1
I have thought of this feature as unfinished, with non-humans or aliens added eventually. (I had the idea of having an NPC of ignoring or killing the player if he was not human.)
Yeah, I agree with megas. With part II coming up, we're almost certainly going to see modders(and possibly George) integrating non - human characters, and potentially making them playable. Even before this happens, 'human male' and 'human female' are pretty intriguing to new players, especially if they're only playing part I so far. It shows that there's more to be seen, and that a bigger world exists beyond what they've seen so far.
Let's not let the perfect be the enemy of the good here. If an easy fix makes the game less hostile to trans/non-binary players, then the easy fix should be made. In a hypothetical future where the player has a lot more options for who they are, the new-game screen (as well as all dialog that refers to the player) will likely need to be substantially enhanced anyway.
In other words, +1 to the original request.
I agree with this. Short term we should just rename to "gender". In the future, it should be an orthogonal choice (with ability to choose alien races, maybe even zoanthropes).
It would also be an excellent time to add a nonbinary gender option. ;)
Why not separate out gender from species? And then let modders go wild (since I've been desiring to add additional genomes already and that was just in part 1)
In 1.8 Beta 2, I've renamed genome to gender in the new game screen and in the stats.
A good first step. :)