Genes need to get buffed. You have to spend time and money to research them and then when you apply them to a dinosaur they increase its value at a higher cost than if you just made more of that dinosaur. The attack trait is worse than useless because the attack value is what decides how many hits it takes to destroy a fence. Defence does nothing. For both of these genes the only possible purpose would be to raise a specific dinosaurs combat infamy, but you can do this more cost effectively by just rearing weaker fodder for them to kill instead of raising their own stats. I wish I knew what resilience does, the game never explains anything and all I know for certain is that it increases health gain at an extremely low rate per second.
Lifespan is more complicated to explain. Some dinosaurs won't survive the entire duration of challenge mode, (struthiomimus for example), but in the early game money is worth more and you would still generate a higher rate of return by incubating 10 struthiomimus with 61 lifespan and total of 90 rating, costing 300k to produce, than it would by incubating 6 struthiomimus with 124 lifespan and a total of 72 rating, costing 321k to produce, because the first group of struthiomimus are giving you 18 extra rating in the 4-8 hours it takes them to die, earning their worth many times over and actually still proving to be a cheaper alternative in longer running games because that 18 extra rating would earn you more than enough $$$ to produce dozens of more struthiomimus. And anyways, by the time they die it's usually not worth reproducing new ones because of the risks associated with each dinosaur for just 9 or 12 rating, and that's only if you're willing to make 75 small pens and micromanage the heck out of your game in the first place. Imagine trying to control a disease outbreak among 1,000 tightly packed struthiomimus.
And finally, cosmetic genes are also pointless because on dinosaurs with completed genomes they only increase rating by 16.67% while increasing the cost by 25%. Even in the beginning of the game, when your genomes at are 50%, they're still useless because you should save your money to make several different species, and then you should have completed genomes for whatever species you want to splurge on.
This game has two aspects, design and management, and gene mods make up most of the "design" part since dinosaurs are the soul of the game.
Lifespan is more complicated to explain. Some dinosaurs won't survive the entire duration of challenge mode, (struthiomimus for example), but in the early game money is worth more and you would still generate a higher rate of return by incubating 10 struthiomimus with 61 lifespan and total of 90 rating, costing 300k to produce, than it would by incubating 6 struthiomimus with 124 lifespan and a total of 72 rating, costing 321k to produce, because the first group of struthiomimus are giving you 18 extra rating in the 4-8 hours it takes them to die, earning their worth many times over and actually still proving to be a cheaper alternative in longer running games because that 18 extra rating would earn you more than enough $$$ to produce dozens of more struthiomimus. And anyways, by the time they die it's usually not worth reproducing new ones because of the risks associated with each dinosaur for just 9 or 12 rating, and that's only if you're willing to make 75 small pens and micromanage the heck out of your game in the first place. Imagine trying to control a disease outbreak among 1,000 tightly packed struthiomimus.
And finally, cosmetic genes are also pointless because on dinosaurs with completed genomes they only increase rating by 16.67% while increasing the cost by 25%. Even in the beginning of the game, when your genomes at are 50%, they're still useless because you should save your money to make several different species, and then you should have completed genomes for whatever species you want to splurge on.
This game has two aspects, design and management, and gene mods make up most of the "design" part since dinosaurs are the soul of the game.