Cool Cell Behaviors and Their Potential Integration

What are some cool cell behaviors which we witness in real life that you guys would like to see in Thrive? Do you guys have an idea as to how such a mechanism could be added?

For example, one of my suggestions, quorum sensing, would basically work via reducing total glucose consumption needed in cells which have that behavior trait if their population within a patch exceeds a certain number. The effect would scale with the population, with a cap of 75% reduced glucose cost. This is to represent the sharing of energy within a quorum sensing community.

@Deathpacitoast also had an idea regarding cannibalism. You would be able to eat other members of your species, which would basically give you their compound, at the cost of inter-species competition and a hit to your auto-evo stats.

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Filter feeding! Like how stentors beat their cilia to create a vortex and suck in food. It can be added maybe by making an option to activate vortex cilia mode by clicking the cilia. Then it spins and sucks in stuff. The downside is the twirling cost energy and needs to balance out with the food intake.

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some bacteria are known to form protective cysts when conditions aren’t favourable. Eg a lack of nutrients or oxygen, extreme temperatures etc. if a mechanic like this were to be implemented it would be quite interesting to see how it would probably effect the actual gameplay and auto evo.

Maybe when it comes to gameplay you’ll see Cysts which cannot be destroyed using toxins or a pilus, but rather a highly derived form of the pilus or maybe even enzymes that will break the cyst?

Im not sure how having your cell be capable of becoming a cyst would work. It could just be a thing where you can toggle cyst mode on or off? Seems kinda excessive when you do realise cell membranes are going to be used for essentially the same thing though.

Having a bacteria that is capable of becoming a cyst would probably be a major benefit in both auto evo and the gameplay. The only potential drawback i can foresee is the fact that it may make your cell less motile?

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Cysts are really interesting, and I can see various ways to implement it.

Since cysts are basically activated to preserve a microbe from less than favorable conditions, perhaps if you activate a cyst, it would grant you a free patch movement. You wouldn’t be able to access the cell editor however, so you would not be able to brace for any environmental change. It would need a cool down I would think: maybe once every 5 generations.

And @The_Void, that seems to be more of an organelle upgrade than a behavior, but it’s still a really cool idea. I’ll make an organelle upgrade thread immediately and mention your idea as an example.

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