What are these like? (Never played that series)
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Even though they weren’t cannibals, they had a predilection (I need to use this word more often) for sacrificing their own people and other life as a solution to problems.
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I suppose that would describe what I meant.
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If tutorials are off, the “Volatile Beginnings” option is enabled by default, providing greater diversity in the beginning of the game. By enabling “Volatile Beginnings”, compounds and resources vary - besides oxygen, and the natural behavior of glucose - making players not stick to the same script on their first steps, and making them mix things up depending on what is available to them nearby. Within a couple of generations, iron, sulfur, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, ammonia and phosphate, etc. can go from abundant to gone in a patch. Environmental events, such as volcanic eruptions and meteor impacts, can also be much more abundant in those first few turns.
This sounds like a great idea! Also, it appears that a version of the experimental settings dynamic compounds would be used for the first few turns in a game, correct?
Beyond that, if there’s something easy to implement which can make sulfur more engaging, that could be very worthwhile for a volunteer to pursue. Photosynthesis is unique because it has a schedule, iron is unique because it is intertwined by chunks, and glucose will always be prioritized because it’s the most important resource in Thrive; what’s so special about hydrogen sulfide? It doesn’t have to be purely a unique mechanic as well - we can make it behave uniquely as a dynamic compound for example.
Aren’t Iron-Sulfur clusters important for the ETC? Also, Sulfur is important for Disulfide bonds in proteins, and Sulfate can be used as an electron acceptor for Hydrogen Oxidation in Hydrogenase.
So that is something that I think we should atleast playtest. Instead of there being an oxygen slider, just display your oxygen tolerance value, based on your part selection, and make players tweak their organism that way.
How about instead increasing the MP cost for the Oxygen slider, so it is much more difficult to suddenly get large changes in Oxygen Tolerance?
Size-Related Costs
This is probably the one completely new mechanic on here that I strongly argue we should implement. There’s a reason later down this post, but for the nucleus, we can tie some sort of benefit to size-related costs, thus making it an interesting decision to make; after a certain size as a prokaryote, adding the nucleus just makes sense in minimizing the marginal energy loss on size.
I like the idea of a size-related costs, which could tie into minimizing Surface Area-to-Volume ratio that was discussed in another topic.
Auto-Evo Variety for Abilities and Membranes
Making it more likely for auto-evo to evolve different membranes and abilities would do great things for interactions with AI.
I like this idea, but the mutation rate would have be sure not to change too many things at once. Traits do need to be passed on and kept because their are beneficial. When playing with highest mutation rates, organisms can gain and then lose/change their membrane type after one turn. In real life, we have not seen a Fungi suddenly lose their characteristic Chitin membrane.
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For the first point, I can suspect it will be difficult to have the patches behave like how proposed, possibly this will be as hard to implement as the snowball event.
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I think getting rid of the Oxygen Slider is a good idea. That or speeding up how quickly oxygen builds up, and also greatly limiting the max slider tolerance and increasing the cost of it.
I also think the size-related costs could be interesting. However, I think the game should encourage a species or two to be big enough to engulf the player. I think the last time I saw something bigger than myself was in 6.7. Grant it, I have had several occasions when I had just divided and something else was close to dividing and ate me, but have seen nothing that could regularly eat me in some time. I hope size-related costs, which would certainly make the players choices more meaningful, don’t discourage cells from even reaching the players size.
This is a good point.
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Wouldn’t that encourage the players to go above the size where such species can engulf the player? Or is the “player engulfer” niche always available?
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The idea is a niche for a very large size the player is unlikely to reach, more so if there were size-related costs, the question being how those two might work together. From a perspective of “the player gets too big” I think size-related costs could help. But from the perspective of “the AI doesn’t get big enough” they might hurt. What if AI ends up staying smaller than they already do, and there are even less situations when they eat the player? For the player, size-related costs could be a good thought provoking/balancing mechanic, and giving such a limit ONLY to the player and not the AI would be unfair, but if it ends up making the AI less likely to reach a dangerous size . . . I am just not sure. Though it is certainly worth thought/discussion.
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Also when exactly would this size-related cost be implemented considering we’re in the last few months of microbe stage development?
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A combination of balancing tweaks to the nucleus can include…
- Placing an unlock condition for the nucleus, requiring a certain size (15? 20?) before it can be placed.
- Reducing the nucleus cost by half or so, so that it remains a high demand on your metabolism but becomes much more manageable (goes from effectively 20 to 10 additional ATP when factoring in movement costs).
- Reducing the impact of the nucleus on your organism’s mobility, so that you don’t suddenly become extremely slow.
I like this idea, but I wonder why the size requirement for nucleus is very large, 15-20, (30-40 hexes)? Unless this the Prokaryote hex sizes, which makes more sense.
Regardless, I feel like this would limit the size of Eukaryotes to be very large, which is not always the case. The smallest Eukaryotes on Earth are Ostreococcus, measuring 800 nm (0.00080 mm) across!
And with the extremely high Oxygen concentrations possible in Thrive (up to 70%), very small Eukaryotes do evolve in the game (albeit, unrealistically).
Of course, there are very large Prokaryotes on Earth, like Thiomargarita magnifica, which can grow large enough to be seen with the unaided eye.
Perhaps there can be two size categories for unlocking the Nucleus, small and large? While there could be more size categories, I understand from a programing work standpoint that it would be better to have less number of categories. Or maybe this could go hand-in-hand with size niches, should they be implemented. Or the size unlock could scale based on osmoregulation cost settings under custom/difficulty settings, so the size unlock is not a huge barrier at lower difficulties?
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Do we even have an actual estimate for how large LUCA is?
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There was a couple of discussions, like this one.
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Wasn’t it said this discussion’s estimates were most likely wrong?
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Did it? I remember them disagreeing with something else suggested in that post, but I don’t see where it says the measurement is wrong. I could be mistaken.
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I think it was said the size of luca was estimated to be too large.
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The Thrive devs need to use these as titles for Multicellular updates!
Embrace the Goofiness
Making a Monster
Gimme Gimme Gimme
A Microscopic Crescendo
Under Concept Proposals…
Body Plan Statistics Revamp
We’ll have to treat statistics differently to emphasize different capabilities offered by becoming Multicellular. Multicellular organism stat mechanics will have to emphasize the capability of energy sharing between cells in a way that reflects an emphasis on holistic performance overcoming individual shortcomings on cells.
Does this mean symmetry will become important for Multicellular? Also, I assume the bug with cells being constantly repositioned in the Multicellular editor will be a priority for the Multicellular stage. I could see the Multicellular repositioning bug being an inspiration for how Auto-Evo could generate diversity with Multicellular organisms.
Holistic Energy Balance:
…Things like surface area compared to volume, a streamline measure, mass, etc. affecting certain stats.
I wonder how these things would be affected by custom difficulty sliders. Also, I assume there is a planned volume to be implemented for a single hex size. There is already a difference in weight for some different organelles. Maybe the weights for all organelles in the Microbe stage will be changed in the future to accommodate plans for mass in Multicellular?
Adjacency Bonus
…An adjacency bonus mechanic, where certain stats are boosted depending on how cells are linked together, would be a solid baseline concept to look at.
Could this tie into the idea of Slime Jets to eject Toxic Mucilage from the Suggest a Feature page?
But such a mechanic would be great for replayability, giving a new dimension of building your perfect organism to more experienced players.
I agree. It would increase replayability, and increase the number of “challenge runs” and builds by potential Thrive players.
Combat Abilities
…We can make it so that if your initial cell dies, your entire colony dies.
I am not sure if having the initial cell suddenly die making the whole multicelullar organism die sense biologically. It would make more sense for the death of whole organism be dependent on anatomy and biology of the organism. What if a species has a very distributed energy system, so that destroying one energy cell is not enough? Perhaps the idea of the initial cell dying killing the whole Multicellular organism could be for Hard Mode, or even a togglable option.
Life Cycles?
…I think at the very least, making it so that your initial, starting cell (your core cell, perhaps) has some ability to lose parts that are more important at the early stages of life, like flagellum/cilia, as its role in your organism’s body changes.
I like the concept. I assume Players will be able to change the order of life cycles similar to Microbe Stage’s Organelle Reproduction Turn Order?
Concluding Questions
- How many cells do we expect players to place down at the most?
…but we can introduce mechanics to make scaling up inefficiently harder, like a binding cost that increases non-linearly the most cells you have on you. Do we make it so that players generally work with around 10 cells at the “climax” of the Multicellular Stage? More? Less?
I like the idea of making the scaling up hard by increasing the cost of bind non-linearly. I wonder if this concept of making scaling up harder will apply for other possible mechanics in the Multicellular Stage?
- How long will an average life take?
…But we also want to include those other parts of a simple Multicellular organism’s life. Perhaps around 3 minutes for the smallest/most simple multicellular organisms, to around 5 minutes for the larger ones?
Would this depend on the number of hexes, like in the Microbe Stage? I am not sure, but it seems to indicate that the life cycle would shorter for a similar sized organism in Multicellualar stage compared to the Microbe Stage. On one hand, this makes sense from a gameplay standpoint, as the game would take too long to simulate larger and larger multicellular organisms. On the other hand, would this also mean Prokaryotes reproduce even faster to scale with Multicellular organisms. Unless I am misunderstanding something.
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Also will the ability to stay one cell in “multicellular” be removed?
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I’ve seen several suggestions about cells specialized for a specific function and/or getting bonuses for having a lot of the same part right next to each other, but I think this is the first time I’ve seen bonuses for how different parts work together. I LOVE IT.
I think this is a really cool idea.
One of my biggest gripes about multicellular outside of the official issues and the turning math, as your old outside becomes your new inside/middle layer, several parts become uselessly placed. This sounds like an excellent fix to that problem. One suggestion. It’s my understanding that in later stages, Life Stages and Gender Differences are going to be grouped together in the “Caste” system, and that it is also the teams intent to have “to start, 2 asexual and 2 sexual” reproduction methods in multicellular. If both Life Stages and Reproduction are going to be in multicellular, perhaps there should be a Caste Tab for them both?
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Also about organelle-location bonuses, would putting multiple vacuoles being next to eachother giving a storage bonus be a good idea?
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Depends on how deeply we take any sort of disease system. But there will surely be detriments to any cannibalism feature implemented.
I’m not too sure, could let to some interest statistics on child mortality!
Sulfur is definitely a very fundamental element for life as a whole, though it’s a bit difficult to apply all these different uses to the Microbe Stage as currently constructed. One thing about Sulfur (and Nitrogen) is that their corresponding biogeochemical cycles were fundamentally transformed by the introduction of oxygen, and were actually important in keeping the world anaerobic until enough of the oxygen cycle could mature. So that could be a way we limit oxygen a bit if that is do desired.
I think that still makes things a bit too easy, as, again, the player could hypothetically just crank that slider up and not have to go through any meaningful changes in morphology. If keeping the slider is needed, I think it would be better to just restrict its max effect to something smaller, maybe +5 or so tolerance at the most. That way, you can still manage short-term shocks, but must meaningfully alter your organism or strategy in the long-term.
Nice to hear; it’s something that definitely has its place.
As the czar of the surface-area concept, I’m beginning to think that a SA:V mechanic would be better served in the Multicellular Stage constructing your organism as opposed to the Microbe Stage. Managing the amount of information thrown at the player is one aspect, but also, smaller microbes just fundamentally have a very high SA:V ratio, so balancing is kind of off. With sizes more standardized in the Multicellular Editor - one hex is one cell, no matter the size of said existing cell - it gets a lot easier to attach and balance interesting game mechanics to such a system.
Interesting; do you think oxygen builds up too slowly right now? I’ve gotten the impression that it might be too quick, though I’m coming in with a different perspective.
Fun fact, I’m pretty sure that size-related costs are already a thing that auto-evo applies on other cells to limit their size, so creating such a dynamic for the player wouldn’t really effect auto-evo (if I remember correctly). We could tweak that factor if we decide that engulfment isn’t that big of a threat. I think it naturally becomes less of a threat when eukaryotes combat other eukaryotes just for the fact that sizes are a bit more similar, and it encourages diversity of combat strategy - but you’re right in saying that it is beneficial for there to be atleast a few microbes that make you wary of being close to them.
I do think bumping up the auto-evo speed would preserve that aspect, but good point regardless. To be a bit pedantic, membranes right now don’t really evolve and exhibit much diversity - this is a bit better in my membrane tweak pull request, so we’ll better see how membranes evolve soon hopefully.
I’ve been informed it is actually a (relatively) simple thing to implement. There’s just a bit of a balancing question, but hey, that’s what I’m here for.
We can tweak the unlock condition based on feedback and pacing somewhat easily if it gets implemented. But once you do reach that size, nothing stops you from “de-evolving” that size once you unlock the nucleus. That actually adds a bit of evolutionary flair I think, where we might see players who intentionally downsize after reaching that unlock condition.
Also, AI actually don’t have unlock conditions on them since it would be pretty difficult to pace. So nothing stops the possibility of smaller eukaryotic AI evolving - in fact, we might need to make sure there is a measure in place to prevent AI from evolving the nucleus too soon if a nucleus tweak is implemented.
That is a good point, yes; it could be easier to place a mechanic around symmetry in the Multicellular Stage. And yes, bugs like that would surely have to be priorities once we get into developing our upcoming stage.
Yeah, the difficulty sliders are a question I think about a good amount in Thrive when designing concepts. I think designing the difficulty presets well will help ensure that players don’t feel the need to wildly tweak the sliders to the point of the game not functioning as intended (unless that is the aim of said player). But regardless, said sliders can be modified to exhibit ranges that don’t result in the destruction of all life as we know it past a certain stage.
And that is a good point. Thim’s prototype on surface area to volume that he kindly made for me a while back actually focused on approximating the shape of your cell rather than depending on mass calculations, so we don’t have to go that way. But again, it depends on what we see could potentially arise as problems in balancing.
That is a good idea, but it does depend on how easy such an ability would be to implement. And also, how adjacency bonuses function.
There could be room for allowing both - certain multicellular reproduction strategies relying on that centralized cell, while others are more distributed - but regardless, your point on anatomy is very interesting. That already is implicitly a feature in the prototypes right now, since destroying certain cells results in altered movement and capabilities for the organism. And with more centralized organism statistics, destroying, for example, energy producing cells in an organism, can result in there not being enough ATP production for the “expensive” parts of your colony to survive/function properly.
I think that could be a good direction to look at. It’s a bit more involved with that because it could involve genuine alterations to the cells themselves rather than duplication of parts - for example, the disappearing of flagellum in a stem cell as an organism becomes colonial. We’d need to pay pretty close intention to allowing the player to specify whether or not they want something to stay or go, and when exactly in their life that happens - but overall, the baseline is there.
Perhaps, but it could be difficult to track multiple non-linear variables like that - especially if we involve Microbe-Level Size-Related Costs too. If nothing else, starting at one such parameter and seeing how adding more could work is a good plan of action, and is easy to step off of at any moment.
I think a combination of the size of the microbes in your colony, as well a flat increase depending on how many cells you have in your body plan, would be a good baseline.
You can remain unicellular for as long as you want if you don’t progress binding agents enough, you just won’t progress. For AI, we do want there to be smaller microbes that aren’t multicellular to represent a larger food web.
Appreciate the feedback!
About castes, I’m not sure if such social behavior has been observed in multicellular organisms. Dealing with sex as a whole is definitely going to be one of the more complicated things to discuss in the Multicellular Stage, so adding a caste system on top of that could also be confusing. It might be better to introduce such social strategies in the Macroscopic Stage, where sexual reproduction is more established. We’ll see, however, what actually happens when development starts.
Perhaps, but having organelles react to the same organelles might just result in a huge amount of stat bloat and doesn’t really encourage specialization; why specialize when you can just doom-stack a specific type of cell and get those bonuses?
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