what if the different niches could have different class types. and you would have to pick one in the creature editor.
What if the AI was built so that it would fill niches the player doesn’t occupy, (an make niches where they are needed) and if the player moves into one occupied by another, the player and AI battle it out in some way shape or form. It feels less limiting than having to choose a preset niche you have to to fall into in the editor.
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Fine by me if there’s a huge variance. It should mostly affect AI and instincts, physical stuff should be in the players control.
I think that this should only limit to general things like autotroph and heterotrop, so that the auto-evo doesn’t end up making things too similiar.
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Isn’t this basically the niches discussion but hard coded? i.e. it’ll be worse because people will complain that they need to fit into a preprogrammed category?
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Yeahh that’s what I’m scared of, but I think it’d make sense to, say, force a naturalistic spread of creatures to niches (especially when rendering alien planets so that the rendering of billions of years of evolution doesn’t make my PC explode), or to reduce microscopic creatures to mathematical abstractions of whole microscopic ecosystems once the player is macroscopic. I’d say maybe a classification system, but no associated rules on auto-evo or the player, so if you stop fitting the definition of trinary consumer, you aren’t one anymore. No questions asked, maybe it’s even an invisible variable? I dunno I’m still thinking this idea over.
(I originaly wrote a whole text about niches here but instead ill sum up)
Niches arent something you can just choose in the editor. They arent something a species can really choose at all. Its just that species happen to come into a niche and then adapt to fill the niche as effectifly as possible. A forced niche for any species is stupid.
Centarians idea is a pretty good one for the problem of niches. Species would adapt around the player in this situation which makes sense. We tend to be the by far most dominant species in any Thrive playtrough. That is the benefit of beeing first and having the ability of forsight. Unlike the AI we can look several generations ahead and make plans for what adaptions we will make. Lets say the Player is the mega predator of the patch. Everything around it evolves to be smaller and faster to avoid beeing eaten(this is another annoying thing but well ignore it here).
In my experience the AI tended to just become scavengers feasting off of the remains of whatever my species killed. The things that tended to be killed where those same scavengers. The Auto-Evo already somewhat fills niches like here. Player fills the Predator role and AI fits the Scavenger/Prey Role. With the Player around there is no point in having a different niche in the region. If the species can survive and thrive via scavenging then why not fill that niche. That patch with the mega predator would completly annihallate any species that didnt become a scavenger because it wouldnt have adapted well enough to survive against that same mega predator.
to sum up the sum up:
Niches already somewhat exist, its just that the player tends to create a patch in which only 2 Types of species can exist: Scavengers and Hunters
Edit: I talked from the point of the player beeing a hunter because that was how i always play, i dont have the patience to play as something that doesent hunt
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Well I think the hunter/scavenger dynamic is actually a fine way to play, look at what humans have done, pest animals and mesocarnivores are by far the most effective creatures to live on earth, solely because humans have disbalanced every ecosystem. I’d say dynamics like that are great for highly skilled players, late stage content, and easy mode, but the AI should be way more skilled in harder difficulty modes to prevent the player from dominating everything. I think the current auto-evo is really good and just need balancing tune-ups.
The only thing that there really is for it to add extra difficulty would be to give it the ability to look into the future and make plans for the next several generations. How far it could plan would depend on the difficulty.
i just got a message about this saying i got flagged and a post removed.
I saw that a post of yours was flagged for being off topic a day or two ago but that was a day or two ago so idk. Also this is off topic please stay on topic.
I think they can see one generation into the future so they pick whatever works best instead of real time dying painful deaths due to ineffectual mutations, and that could be increased. Plus their out of editor AI isn’t that danger avoidant or aggressive sometimes and that could be avoided.