Alien species like ants and will they be able to reach Space stage or Industrial stage?
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I certainly hope so.
useful past discussions:
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There won’t be set-in-stone creature “types” in Thrive. If your creature has an advanced enough brain, they will be able to reach Awakening and beyond. So to answer your question, yes! Alien spacefaring ants should be possible!
Past, similar discussion -
Hm, but what if they aren’t smart enough? What if the ants aren’t that smart, just smart enough to not be pure Instinct, but not smart enough to get to space. But when they work together, as an emergent property of their cooperation, they can? How would the game factor that?
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Maybe counting a colony as a single, shape changing creature?
This could also work with an idea I had if an ant-like species had certain individuals who were smart but not sapient smart working together, each extra intelligent individual acting almost as a neuron? Or if not something so simple, as a group of neurons, with one producing an inkling of an idea, and thousands of others to refine it
This species also could have multiple queens per ‘hive’ to maximize size (similar to the billion stingers or sea shoggoths from Serina, if anyone is familiar with that project) and once a hive got large enough, or a Queen mature enough, it would separate from the hive and act as it’s own separate superorganism
No- that’s not what I want. It’d be cool, but blobby superorganisms and brain bugs arent how hives work In real life. Hives in real life build living boats and bridges and homes and they farm, enslave and wage war, the only other beings I know to do those last three are humans. Imagine what they could do with slightly better brains without insect’s stupidity. I’d say multiple queens is a must, one per settlement you know? Plenty of ants do that irl, it’s called a supercolony .
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Oh no, I wasn’t trying to say that’s how hives work at all in real life. Just that it could be a cool take on hives instead of a joined hive mind or a single queen/individual in command
A single individual is never in control irl… But yeah I like those ideas.
I was more talking about the stereotypical ‘queen of a hive’ take in that part and not irl
I think eusociality would be a cool thing to implement in the game, perhaps it would work as a slider that goes from individualistic and competitive to fully eusocial or even hive-minded (similar to the current sliders for cell behavior).
For a species that is eusocial like earth’s ants individuals would probably need to be intelligent enough individually to achieve industrialization, but perhaps not as much as humans since they would surely be more coordinated and specialized. In game this could mean bonuses to some stats depending on how social the species is and different behavior for auto-evo.
Hive mind are a whole other discussion since I don’t think there’s anything similar on Earth, but if implemented they might play just like eusocial species with some extra boons or cool abilities (think maybe like hive-minds in stellaris).
However as far as I can tell the idea is that societies as complex as these would only be possible in the society stage (except for species that are simply more cooperative in the aware stage, and not as much as ants). Would it still make sense for a creature to evolve full eusociality or a hive mind structure only after they have achieved sentience and thus reached the society (maybe just awakening) stage? Could an exception be made for these creatures to have a simple society in earlier stages, or maybe that had already been in the scope of the game?
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I agree, with two caveats, a single slider is way too simple, and why would hives be locked off to sentient creatures? Eusocial insects are plain dumb, unless you count their hive inteligence.
I know it makes no sense scientifically, but wouldn’t complex societies work only in the society or awakening stages? Now that I think about it you could maybe use swarm intelligence, as opposed to individual intelligence as an alternative prerequisite for advancing to the next stages? Maybe that wouldn’t be too time-consuming to implement after all.
By the way, when I say complex eusocial society I mean stuff like ants that farm fungi and herd aphids as livestock, you can see how that would make more sense for later stages.
Regarding the slider thing, maybe it should be topped off by stuff like communication, pheromone glands and receptors as prerequisites to move towards eusociality, and creativity/self expression (couldn’t think of anything else) as requirements to move towards individuality.
I don’t know how much brain/behavior development in the aware stage has been discussed but individualism/collectivism could be a part of a larger set of parameters that are intertwined with the structure of the brain and the rest of the creature’s biology
Hmm, I see that, but I like the idea of eusociality being an alternative prerequisite rather than it having a prerequisite. As for the slider I thing having a 2- or 3-dimentional “slider” would be better, as sociality can go many ways irl. Take humans, we’re very social, inhumanly good at communicating (try talking to an ant about an abstract concept), have a totally unique storytelling instinct- and are utter 
at working together. Contracted with ants, who couldn’t communicate for but work together better that the cells in some people’s bodies.
This Thread and the other threads like it may shine some light
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As something of an ant myself, they better be
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Well two things first lotta of o2 or the “ant” needs to breath different from how ants breath
Who says it can’t just be ant sized? Not everything has to be on a familiar scale.
humanoid ants, so strong they can lift tanks
Not how that works. Look up the square-cube law
You can create a ant-like creature that would be very different from ants in physiology (like, for instance, having bones, lungs…).