It is my understanding that, IRL, anaerobic iron breathing is best form of anaerobic breathing, but they are also oxygen intolerant, meaning in an environment without oxygen, anaerobic iron breathers could do pretty well. But earth’s anaerobic organisms are restricted to small, deep corners where oxygen cannot find them. Perhaps on a different planet they could have become macroscopic. I am not as familiar with the aerobic ones.
I am not an experiment on iron bacteria, either. From my limited readings, there are Zetaproteobacteria that can tolerate some levels of oxygen, and they are found in hydrothermal vents and estuaries.
From my knowledge in the next release there’ll be a feature added for organelles impacting tolerances. We’ll see how will the iron-based parts react with the oxygen tolerance slider…
Since Carbon Dioxide will no longer affect Rusticyanin and Ferroplasts in the next update, I am curious as to how these tolerances will affect the iron organelles.
I think it’s about the cellparts impacting tolerances, not the other way around.
So automatically putting Iron-based organelles will lower oxygen tolerances, but the player can still increase the oxygen tolerance? Is this correct?
Maybe? Or perhaps that’d lower the maximum tolerance cap too?
If iron organelles affect oxygen tolerance, then yes.
Looks like I didn’t add that. So if no one else programs it either, then in the next release the iron organelles don’t impact tolerances.
For example the nitrogen fixing plastid negatively impacts oxygen resistance:
How many organelles are planned to have tolerances impact so far?
Only the ones I already added. I don’t see anyone on the dev team talking about it anymore, so it seems only people on the forums are super excited to have a bunch of effects. Which won’t happen unless someone who really wants to add them makes a PR.
It’s already in the opening post of this thread, but: Don’t confuse “iron breathing/respiration” and “Iron oxidation” (in Thrive). They are opposites!
There are aerobic and anaerobic iron-oxidisers. If there’s not going to be a separate aerobic variant of the organelle (the likely outcome), it’s probably not a good idea to let the only iron-oxidising organelles reduce oxygen resistance. That could just be left to the normal slider.
Hm. I wonder if iron-eaters will find it difficult not to eat their tools (or the resources used to make them) when they reach society stage…
Wouldn’t it be awful to get an iron eater all the way to social stage only to realize your need to eat iron makes using it for other things a problem. It could even potentially keep you from becoming industrial. Or, you could possibly eat your worlds supply.
Can’t wait until ironeater industrial civs get banned. /s
Now on a more serious note, are we sure these ironeaters could even reach society without their homeworld’s surface iron supply running out?
I mean the planet could be very rich in iron
Assuming a similar process of iron being oxidized in the ancient oceans occurs on most alien worlds with life in Thrive, that is a lot of mining needed for iron deposits (food).
And I don’t think that’d be very sustainable long-term…
What if the iron was on the surface of the planet?
We’ve assumed that all this time… And if you mean it covered the surface, then it would most likely all have been eaten away before society stage would be reached.
Well, I guess they would have to convert iron oxides back into “edible” iron the same way we do: smelting ore. That does not seem entirely likely though.
You could maybe have a functional iron cycle if there was also a lot of life using other energy sources in combination with iron respiration, thus also producing “edible” iron.