both ideas dont really sound that fun
the first one, you have to play and reproduce multiple times in order to keep your species population the same, seems like its too much
the second one, you get one chance at life, and if you fail you go extinct, sounds pretty unfair
the way it currently works in the game is much better imo
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Speaking of life cycles during aware stage, hereâs something to think about:
Do you play as a parent or as a child? If you go to the editor every time you reproduce, just like currently, you only get to see your speciesâ life cycle from the moment you get born to the moment you reproduce. This isnât an issue in the cell stage, because the mother and daughter cell are exactly identical. But once you deal with stuff like maternal instinct people may want to play as parents instead (building the nest, caring for bebes, etc.)
On the other hand, I agree that Rhinobots scenarios sound overly harsh/long. Maybe the game could alternate between spawning you as a parent and as a child?
maybe the game could give the player the option of not entering the editor.
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If itâs optional that would be very easy to exploit. If you never choose to not enter the editor you could make a species that completely sacrifices the parents for the sake of the child and make the game super easy for you that way.
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I meant not entering the editor and remaining the parent.
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how is that supposed to be an exploit or bad thing.
Yes I know thatâs what you meant.
Itâs an exploit because makes the game way easier in an unrealistic way. In real
life species the parents usually want to live to reproduce again another day. Under these circumstances the ideal species would be one that willingly lets its children eat it once itâs done teaching them, because the parents life would be irrelevant.
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There are a lot of species that die after reproducing in real life.
Do you die after reproducing?
Well clearly itâs not the only viable strategy then, and the game shouldnât encourage you to only do that at the cost of everything else.
except the game wonât encourage the player to use that strategy, also, you could perfectly use this strategy if you enter the editor too, not entering the editor doesnât change anything, the player could use this strategy anyways.
That is exactly the problem with your idea. If not entering the editor is optional than it doesnât influence the winning strategy at all. The player has to be forced to be a parent occasionally.
It will. Just allowing the players to use their parents as a complete get-out-of-jail-free-card encourages all but the dumbest players to do it. Just like how the game currently encourages you to stay as a single hex, so thatâs what everyone who wants to win is doing
I donât see how entering the editor would change that, in fact entering always the editor only makes it so that the player will never be the parent, with my idea the player has to be the parent if he decides that he wonât enter the editor, also if the player decides to create a species wich dies after reproducing then how is he supposed to play as the parent?
Give me an example of this strategy used outside of speedrunning. The game doesnât encourage to stay single hexed, the only thing is that staying single hexed makes you reproduce faster and reach generation 20 faster, but if you want to create a species that is able to survive long-term you will not remain single hexed. Also people sometimes use ways that are not optimal just because they want to.
You could, for instance, spawn the player in as a parent after exiting the editor. With your idea the player would only have to be the parent if he doesnât want to go to the editor. Except itâs always better to go to the editor, so with a good player that will never happen.
If the player decides to play a species that dies after reproducing, he should die, and suffer the full penalties for that. That way it isnât OP.
Which is the entire goal of the game currently. Even ignoring that one-hex is perfectly fine for surviving long-term, surviving long-term doesnât matter. You canât just make up a win-condition that isnât even in the game and then go âlook, itâs balanced!â
The fact that people are playing suboptimally out of pure boredom with winning is a testament to how incredibly badly balanced the game is. It doesnât mean the game isnât trying its very best to punish you for not being one hex.
Come on dude. You know thatâs not an excuse for making the optimal path boring and poorly balanced. Thatâs like the first rule of game design: Always assume that the player wants to win.
A game where playing suboptimally is more fun is just a bad game.
Leaving not entering the editor as an option is cool, but it should not be the sole reason not to bypass half of the gameplay.
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Actually not, because entering the editor makes million of years pass, that means that if you enter the editor enough times, you will go extinct because the star would die, so always entering the editor is not optimal.
Except the game is not trying to punish you for not being one hex, and as you said, the current winning condition is only temporary.
So every game is played suboptimally, because pratically every game has a speedrunning strategy that is the most optimal.
What do you propose is optimal instead then? Just waiting around? Yes you have a limited amount of editor sessions, but you canât make progress without them. Playing through six life-cycles and then entering the editor isnât any better than entering it immediately.
Yes it is. If you donât play as one hex, the game will give you worse stats than if you did. This punishes you for playing something suboptimal and encourages you to become one hex.
Yes. Because players do not have infinite skill, attention, or learning ability. Just because most players arenât playing completely optimally doesnât mean we should make a game for idiots.
So the most optimal way of playing the aware stage wonât be using your parents as get-out-of-jail-free-card, but to get to sapience with the least editor sessions possible, and making your parents a get-out-of-jail-free-card would become suboptimal because it consumes mutation points uselessly.
Only if making your parents a get-out-of-jail-free-card gives you so little benefits when it comes to reaching the next editor session that spending mutation points on such a thing is wasteful.
Ahem. The sun isnât going to make the earth uninhabitable, let alone explode, for so 
ing long life on earth could be reduced to worms being the only multicellular organisms and rise to inteligence again twice before that became an issue, and the thing is on earth our ancestors wasted a ton of time to let the dinosaurs do their own thing (and farther back the placoderms and cephalopods and protoarthropods) and werenât going for inteligence at all for most of existence, and yet here we stand (or lie in bed depressed, or like me, sit in random place to argue with people on the internet). And the thing about a Speedrun is that you arenât trying to use the least game time, but the least IRL time. It may use up less turns to get to intelligence as fast as possible, but youâll wind up being slower in other areas, like for example literally being slower. For an example of what that does to a person, look at humans. For the past 8 or so million years weâve been growing our brains and standing up strait incredibly fast while gaining throwing arms and sweat and better oposible thumbs and more altricial babies. Doing all this so fast has left us with bad hips, backs, teeth that donât fit in out mouths, babies that kill their mothers upon existing for the first time while being utterly defenseless, bad ankles and headaches, not to mention inbuilt fear of snakes and our blind spot doesnât count cause that was to long ago. These problems slowed us down. If we had started on the right path earlier at a slower pace we would have none of those issues. Imagine a species that went from pathetic worm to sentient in 50 million years. Our human problems would be just the start! As you can see taking your time has a point, doing basic things like eat and reproducing. Not being able to do things like that would slow down your thrive playthrough, so why not take a few turns so that you will succeed on the rest.
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this is caused because humans need to chew less coocked food than not-coocked food, in 2 millions years that human species had fire (and 1.9 million years since human species started coocking) those teeth didnât even go vestigial.
This isnât even a problem only humans have, A lot of other species have this problem.
ehm⌠What? Not every human is scared of snakes, and Iâm pretty sure that the instinctual fear of a possible predator was advantageous in the wild.
We already had them from our arboreal ancestorsâŚ
no, we either wouldnât have evolved sapience, or we would have evolved sapience at the same pace we already did because thatâs one of the few things homo sapiens ancestors had to defend themselves.
Also, I donât see how this is related to the player, real life evolution is based on random mutations, RANDOM mutations, instead the player is able to plan and use his mutations in an intelligent way.
Also most of the problems you listed make their presence only when humans start to pass a certain extensive age, thing wich evolution doesnât care about, since if the individual was able to reach such an extensive age in the wild it would mean that he would had a lot of offspring already.
Well I mean the random point is super valid, I guess I just meant some examples of traits going to fast could get you, and yeah IRL my ideas would have failed, but in a game you can plan for cooked food and more importantly, spend more than 10 minutes getting upright. If you put all your points into intelligence then youâll be stuck as a pathetic worm with back problems. Itâs a better idea to make it so you can get to the reproduction stage and easily, then to spend 10 million less in-game years and twice as many out of game minutes. Iâm just saying why not play at a pace thatâs not built for people whose legs can handle the pressure of holding a few pickup trucks on top of them and optimize until you can go that fast.
Edit: and what I meant about snakes is that the reaction to them is different to our reaction to anything else, if I saw eyes in a bush I would be scared sure but Iâd be rational, if I saw a harmless snake on the ground Iâd inhale, jump back, and get some adrenaline, then be rational, and I have seen quite a few snakes in my time so this is from experience.
Ok. I understand.
What if we keep they population and extinction mechanics of the cell stage, but have a complete gameplay loop be a single entire life cycle. Dying only being penalized with population reduction when you didnât reproduce (Maybe also if the offspring didnât survive long enough). After a life cycle you enter the editor. You only need to reproduce once bearing one offspring. Along with being the success indicator, each offspring gives you adaptation/mutation points.
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