Different Sizes for Organisms

This was a thing that always kinda bugged me when I played Spore; unless it was an epic, rogue, or baby creature, the sizes really didn’t differ too much between creatures. I think it would be cool to see that change in Thrive, where the organisms have visible differences in size.

That makes me wonder…just how big/small could you make your organism? Would you be able to make an insect not even the size of your finger? Or maybe an herbivorous animal the size of some of the giant Sauropods that were around back in the age of the dinosaurs?

It would be cool if this had some sort of gameplay aspect as well, like for example maybe if you’re a really small animal you would be able to access smaller places that bigger creatures couldn’t normally reach, like a little burrow. Or maybe if you were a really big animal, predators would be less inclined to hunt your species unless they were around a similar size as them.

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As one of the goals of thrive is to be scientifically accurate size will play a role in metabolism and movement. I’d say that thrive has got it right when similar aspects affect the size of creature here on earth. Some of these might be what kind of food is available, how well can the organs keep up when the creature is scaled up.

As to your specific example of huge mammals as that doesn’t happen on earth it should only happen in thrive if the planet you play in is different in some critical way to allow it.

Maximum size will probably be determined by things like: Atmospheric Pressure, concentration of oxidizers in the atmosphere and gravity.
A high atmospheric pressure helps reduce an animals effective weight in a number of ways, which is why whales can get so big.
The higher the oxidizer (Not necessarily oxygen) concentration in the atmosphere is, the more oxidizer there is in each lungful (or equivalent). This allows for assorted organs, especially muscles, to operate on a higher efficiency. And is the reason why cretaceous and earlier animals of various types could get so much bigger than modern ones do.
Gravity should be obvious, the lower the gravity the less an animals weight the bigger it can get without needing to get proportionally stronger.

At least, I’m pretty sure all this is true. I could be completely wrong. And even if it is true, I don’t know how much of it the devs will implement.

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I think I have a good way for a size system to work.
You see, I imagine that, in the “Creature Editor,” there will be a panel at the bottom with multiple tabs. These tabs allow you to control aspects of the creature not based on the appearance (Sound, behavior, etc.) Size would be one of these tabs.
There will be a sliding scale where you can spend Mutation Points to get bigger or smaller. There would be 2 buttons for scaling up and down by spending mutation points. Above the buttons will be a chart comparing your creature to various things. (An ant :ant: , A Human :man: , An Argentinosaurus :sauropod: , etc.)
Now, to keep this in the realm of reality, there may be some restrictions once you reach certain sizes. For example, if you have a two legged creature about the size of an elephant, it cannot get bigger unless it evolves to have pillar-like legs or walking on all fours. Once at that size, they cannot be removed without shrinking the creature.

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This would allow you to tweak the size of your species easier. But obviously you can only somewhat alter your size before you need to edit the relative size of your organs. So this might be pretty limited and to actually change your size you need to gradually alter each of your organs.

So, aside from the organ thing, not a bad idea?

Another thing to add would be that the bigger your species and its organs get the more you have to eat, drink, and breath to keep your animal alive and moving. An example of this is in the movie Ant Man, when he press the button and groww to a huge size, but gets tired quickly.

Is it just me, or are you intentionally replying to all of the threads that are more than 12 months old?

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yeah lol I’ve seen this dude necroposting a lot. not just ones that are over a year old though.

I think he just finds these topics interesting and would like to contribute his ideas there instead of creating another thread. He just joined very recently, so he’s missed out on a lot of opportunities.

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I’m only taking quick glances at the dates and so far these are the ones that are springing ideas from my search. I didnt know it would it become a problem if i added on to older threads. Sorry, I’ll try to find more recent threads that I think I may have an idea or two with.

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It’s alright, at least you’re replying to topics with actual information and new ideas. Never mind what I said, you just happened to be doing this in the middle of a whole bunch of other users necroposting.

Uh oh, busted! I’ll try to contribute more to the topics from now on.

2 posts were merged into an existing topic: THE NEW Miscellaneous Talk That Doesn’t Deserve A New Thread Thread Thread