That is true, and I acknowledged it in the post, but the point is that early on the speed at which creatures get large and different from you can make it seem like they are changing too quickly even though it’s technically realistic evolution. Having ancestors stick around helps reduce how sudden and early these evolution and migration events feel. It adds coherency to the ecosystem by ensuring there is always something familiar present, rather than every turn everything changing into a completely different size, shape and colour. it makes the evolution feel more continuous.
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I want to add on that one thing 0.5.9 did that made the start seem more natural was having other species exist along side you when the game begins. This really helps the autoevo system feel like these cells diverged instead of coming into existence all of the sudden.
But you play as LUCA, if we simulate other species, then we should be sure that they all go extinct, it is pretty hard using auto-evo system
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But other species don’t exist at the start? All other cells you might encounter are members of your own species. When you get to the editor the first time that’s when other species can appear.
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I never got a screenshot, but I ran into a purple cell before the first editor. I don’t entirely remember if I tweaked the mutation rate, so maybe that has something to do with it.
It should not be possible at all, no other species are added to the world before you get to the editor, unless you are playing in freebuild where the world is prepopulated.
that’s weird, I’ll keep an eye out in case I run into it again. Where should I send it if I find it?
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If you see it happen, make a save and upload that save somewhere I can download it from.
When I reach coastal and evolve the first Thylakoid there, my species in istant volcanic vent also do it. It is really strange.
Evolutionary diffusion should be subject to some suppression, which can depend on the degree of variation difference(gaining the new kinds of cellular structure should diffuse harder than adding or modifying existing cellular structure), different patches’s environmental similarity and distance between different patches. Perhaps plasmid should be able to improve the ability of evolutionary diffusion.
When my species gain the new kinds of cellular structure, the species that I used to be in the same patch shouldn’t vanishes completely, expecially when I gain first aggressiveness structure.
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The player species is exempt from having it split into two due to differing selection pressures in different patches. Players already complain about auto-evo wanting to kill them off, I can’t imagine how many complaints I would need to read if players could lose 80% of their population (with it splitting off) by placing one new organelle.
It is a real question. Many players pursue the thriving of species numbers. The quantity of significant losses is unacceptable for them. It may be related to the current victory conditions.
For the entire evolutionary history, many species flourished for a while, but some of they also overdraw evolutionary potential and eliminated by the changing environment.
I imagine a specie gain first aggressiveness structure, it begins to prey on the former compatriots and differentiate into new specie. But in fact my specie all turn into new specie, it don’t have any attackable objects, because there’s only itself here.
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Please do not double post, it is against the rules. Edit your previous post instead.
what about if there was an organelle that allowed you to keep that population in your species by transferring genes between populations
What would that solve? That’s exactly how the game functions currently; no matter what the player does their entire species mutates like the player edited.
they could gain back population from a patch by just moving to it as long as it has a recent relative to their current species in it
another possibility could be that you only speciate when renaming your species
I definitely think that tying success to current species population amount is a bad move. That kind of mindset only incentivizes the creation of things such as worms and nematodes. Instead success should be based on survival through time as the environment changes, emphasizing adaptability and resourcefulness.
The reason i point this out is that, as Lan describes, all of your species changing at once is such an unrealistic and strange event that it feels like a slap in the face.
It also perpetuates the myth that all organisms in a species are inherently united to some goal of success, which is instead the opposite of what actually occurs, as many species have evolved from speciation from direct competition and hunting.
i think that rather than listening to some minority or even majority of players that feel upset if improving their species resets their population numbers, you should instead tie success to whether the player is still alive as the environment changes. Let those unhappy players make the choice between upgrading their species and maximizing species numbers.
Realistically, the only thing that would happen is they hold off on changing too much, and stay the same, and then their species is outcompeted by rivals that have decided to change and then rapidly reproduce. Those who decide to make the plunge will instead find that their maximum creature amount after that change is larger than their previous one.
This also helps manage a different issue you have where players have zero incentive to stay the same if their species fits their current environment very well.
By having the species start again in population numbers every time it adapts, players would have a sort of ‘internal minigame’ of focusing on survival and population increase for multiple generations after each change, to get their population back up to the previous numbers. This would in turn give players breathing room to actually play around with their current iteration if it’s the most well adapted, rather than changing it for no reason but its own sake of ‘more upgrades’.
The reason this works well is that in the current setup, useless negative changes have no immediate repercussion for the player, so they are led to an unsatisfying outcome where multiple bad changes compound until they die “randomly” at some point, with no ability to evade that outcome since there’s no way to predict it happening (at least for those who have not spent an unsatisfying amount of time getting used to when to hold back).
Having changes reset species number count would solve this by actually giving the player the objective to carefully manage their species numbers between necessary changes, making them actually want to manage their species and make sure it’s as well adapted as possible at any one time.
In this case they would clearly understand that changing their species for absolutely no reason would be a massive drawback for no benefit, and at the same time the minigame of ‘growing species numbers’ ensures that staying the same is not boring.
I also think that even if the negative outcry is too overwhelming, having this style of adaptation be a difficulty option would mollify those who seek challenge and scientific accuracy whilst appeasing the more gamey consumers who are obsessed with species numbers alone.
Though is is also worth considering that the only reason species numbers have any real value to the player is due to how the game is currently designed, and instead, it might be possible to emphasize adaptability and survival. Long term loss of species numbers is no big deal beyond a slightly more nail biting experience after the adaptation occurs. In fact this could enhance gameplay by making those events more impactful.
To help make this less brutal during species transitions, the autosave system can allow players to return to the moment they adapted if they get unlucky and their smaller population is decimated. And alternatively, if you want to give even more help to the player, the immediate gameplay period after changing the species could have an automatic ‘respawn as previous species in patch’ mechanic where a death returns you to your old organism with your old editor and species setup.
This way it’s more like you have one life as the newly adapted organism which is a relative of your previous orgnaism. You have one chance to reproduce as that organism, in competition with and opposed to your previous organism, and if you die, you merely continue playing as one of your previous organisms. When that occurs the species number count would jump from “1” to 300 or something depending on how many there were. And it’d just be a camera transition to the old organism like in the previous system.
To make the game more realistic, the victory condition would be based only on complexity rather than species number count.
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There’s no actual ‘win condition’ related to species numbers. Currently, the ‘You have thrived’ message pops up when you reach 2 billion years after the start, but that’s unrelated to anything else. And you can get that even if you’ve got to the point that auto-evo thinks you’ve become extinct every round (despite your species continuing).
The overall goal of the game is essentially to evolve to get from one stage to the next, and that is achieved via making changes - biological and then social changes. The player is encouraged to adapt their species over time. And it can seem weird that the species all change at the same time, but bear in mind that each time you leave the editor, 100 million years have passed.
Improvements could definitely be made to the indicators for success available to the player, though. I’m still not sure what the fitness numbers in the detailed auto-evo panel are showing. This could be made much easier for the player to see (possibly with bars for different categories, which could be read at a glance). And if a mechanic was implemented for determining roles within an ecosystem, then we could perhaps have adjustments to mutation costs inverse to the fitness within our current role (as fitting a role perfectly means less evolutionary pressure to change).
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I need to correct you here by saying that there is also a requirement of having 300 population. That’s so that if auto-evo calculations say you should be extinct (i.e. 50 population each time) you can’t actually win. Your species need to be doing well enough to not be going extinct all the time.
That’s how a game over works… having high population in multiple patches is an insurance against having a game over. Which feels more secure as a player (in any game) having one life or having 10 extra lives?
Your ancestors should still not dissapear because ancestors just dissapearing not only can cause problems but is also unrealistic.
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what about the player being able to design what their species looks like in specific patches or even just parts of patches if they want to while keeping all of their population as the same species making it possible to be viable in multiple types of biome while having each specialization or caste or whatever it would be called affected differently by auto-evo from having different parts of their genome expressed differently because of environmental conditions.
it solves the problem of the player randomly loosing population after editing their species, it solves the problem of the player’s actions taking whole patches of population away, it might make things like sexual dimorphism and ant colonies easier to do, and it allows hyper generalist species to specialize while staying hyper generalists.
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