Well we all follow the pheromone trail
5 Likes
I saw someone post here about sexual reproduction. It made me think about what sexual-reproduction based mechanics would be fun to add.
What if, every game turn, rare organisms from your species that are born into the world have slight mutations that make them different to the blueprint that you went with during the previous editor session. Then, if you reproduce with one of these rare cells, you gain half of the ‘extra hexes’ that have been added to the blueprint, and then can add your own changes to the cell on top of those.
This way, the hex layout of both cells becomes important when designing the offspring organism. it also creates sexual selection where the player will either reproduce with cells that are available, if they need to reproduce quickly, or if they can afford to they will only reproduce with cells which are more impressive. It could also add a behavior slider where cells either prefer to mate with more impressive cells, or instead will mate with whatever’s available.
The thing that isn’t in 0.5.9 that I want most is a dynamic atmosphere that starts similar to the prebiotic atmosphere, ie no o2, and fills up with o2 when photosynthetic microbes evolve
2 Likes
That’s coming eventually. I don’t know when that’s planned though.
My idea is about the organism stages (Microbe, Multicellular, Aware) in general rather than just the Microbe Stage, but it doesn’t deserve a topic of it’s own, so I hope it’s okay if I post it here instead.
I think it would be nice if we had a “nickname” system in Thrive of sorts. At the moment you have to name your species by the standard naming convention, and I like this system, but I think it would be nice if you could give your species a nickname alongside it’s official name. You could make the nickname whatever you wanted (within a reasonable character limit) and when your species name was used anywhere, it would show the nickname instead. Perhaps you could do this with other species as well, giving them nicknames if the Thrivepedia is implemented.
What do you think about my idea?
6 Likes
So there is talk in the Dev forms to create a way for microbes to get energy from heat, Thermosynthesis.
If thats the case, why not have Radiosynthesis. Fungi do it via melanin at Chernobyl.
Pretty sure thats also planned, as there have been models and concept art made for radioactive rocks.
Besides that, do we have any other ways for microbes to get energy? Cause I think its covered. The only thing I can add is maybe to have variants of existing processes.
Currently chemosynthesis only uses hydrogen sulfide. But other alternatives include elemental sulfur, nitrogen compounds, methane and ammonia. Possibly allowing for symbiotic microbes if we include waste gases.
Photosynthesis also has a verity of differences like the purple sulfur bacteria, which use hydrogen sulfide instead of water. The different colors are a result of pigments, which can be added in via a secondary option I think. Which could probably help deal with plant builds by having photosynthetic microbes fight for a specific spectrum of light.
These alternate pathways would help developers with the Like Earth issue. I don’t understand a lot of this, i’m not a chemist or a programmer. But I try to keep my ear to the ground as the saying goes. I’m heavily reliant on google and wiki.
There could be a few things that could get added.
Hydrodynamics and water currents. That could make the survival and enviroment bit more intresting and fun.
The whole senses and stuff, the senses presenation in that nearly one or two years weekly update was intresting.
Also some questions:
Are the new iron chunks gonna be added soon?
Are the new uranium and ice chunks planned?
I’d love to see that, currently only the glacier has any environmental hazards. Maybe having heat be used as a hazard could be cool. Water currents could be used as a way to travel into random biomes at a fast pace.
Hey guys, is there a planned eukaryotic version of the rusticyanin? I hope so because I would love to play an iron focused species in the long term.
I think that was made so because eukaryotes on Earth haven’t displayed the capacity to utilize iron respiration, so no eukaryotic version of the organelle was implemented. Perhaps it can serve as a non-LAWK organelle candidate.
3 Likes
It was more like to give interesting prokaryotic gameplay a chance by not introducing a pair of organelles for it. I don’t think there’s a scientific reason to not have it, only really like a game design choice @tjwhale made back in the day.
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This is a very small idea, but I think it would be cool if you played as the very first organism on your planet, rather than the last universal common ancestor. Maybe the tutorial could save you from dying on the first round, to avoid frustrating new players. Could be fun to add an achievement for going extinct before even evolving, as well.
2 Likes
I have a couple ideas involving color to give it a bit more meaning in the game. They’re kind of simple but I haven’t seen them mentioned anywhere else so I thought I’d put them out there.
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The first idea is to make the color of a plant cell important for photosynthesis. Every star type has 2 corresponding colors that work best at absorbing light, our suns being green and purple. So, what if a value was generated during world generation that determined the type of sun your planet orbits, and that then determines the colors that absorb the maximum amount of light (I’d recommend doing a small range of color to allow slight color deviation without penalty). From their the further the color deviates from those 2 colors the less light the cell absorbs, the color equidistant from both colors receiving only 50% of calculated glucose or something like that. (Also if a form of light radiation was added you could make it so that darker pigments are more effected, but have more light absorption, and lighter pigments are more resistant, but have less light absorption)
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My second idea is for camouflage to have an impact in the game. It already sort of does since the player is more likely to miss a cell that’s color blends in to the background, but having AI cells at least slightly more likely to not notice a cell the closer its color is to the background color could make the color predator’s and prey choose a bit more important.
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Lastly I’d like to recommend that changing color costs MP determined by how much it changes from the color you have if either of my earlier ideas are implemented. Free color changing makes sense when the colors mean nothing, but if color becomes important it should become more difficult to swap colors randomly.
7 Likes
Sorry for the necropost, but I had a little idea for the Microbe Stage that I think would be nice. I think it would be good to implement a eukaryotic eyespot organelle. Having an eyespot on your microbe would allow you to see areas around you that had a higher concentration of light. Swimming into one of these “light-spots” would give you a temporary boost to photosynthesis. This could be fun for more motile photosynthesising cells, as you could make a cell that could not sustain itself when under normal light conditions, but can create excess glucose in a light-spot.
Here’s a post I made on the suggestions board if you’re interested! -
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Oh I didn’t know that was an actual thing cells can have, neat
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What about when the population drops too low, you play in a “survival mode”, playing as the last cells of a species that is going extinct and you have to survive and increase your numbers for a few generations before you are allowed to evolve?
If your species is performing that poorly, it will already be a challenge to claw yourself back out. I don’t really see any point in punishing you further at that time. How are you supposed to increase your numbers when you are stuck with a maladapted species that you can’t improve for several generations while the rest of the ecosystem keeps evolving?
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The rest of the ecosystem isn’t evolving either. This is just a final chance to show that the cell isn’t that bad.