I think that multicellular stage should end by you earning or clustering a brain of some sorts.
( If its not already the idea)
that’s kinda the idea, you have to get smarter to enter aware.
Or rather get smart in fact.
Maybe not smarter, but more complex and successful.
I said “get smart” because the organism does not have a brain yet.
Who says they need a brain? They could still be “smart” without one theoretically. Also what about the multicellular organism itself forming a colony that can be called a brain? Like smart moss?
The transition to the next stage says that the player has to develop a neural system.
I didn’t know. But a neural system seems either too broad, or too specific, but I can’t choose which one…
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“When tackling problems of this kind, it often helps to simplify things, so you can better understand their dynamics.” - Edwin F. Meyer
Let’s imagine that this game had a character level, so it’s more RPG-like, and thus simpler. You gain exp for successfully reproducing, interacting with other species (but not like Spore), creating new buildings, etc; and the gain becomes automated and faster with large evolutionary jumps. But to reach each stage, you need to be above a certain level; 100 for this scene. Once the player reaches this level, s/he can move to the Aware stage, but s/he doesn’t know why the game scientifically allows him/her to be an animal (No plant sapience discussions) after LvL 100. Through natural history, there has been a trend of simpler beings evolving into more complex ones, instead of just growing whatever is needed for the environment, and our human brain is the most complex thing in the universe. Although evolution does not really work that way, it seems that complexity is naturally selected for, which is what led to to the idea of orthogenesis, or goal-oriented evolution. So the level system is not of strength, smarts, or skill; rather it is of maximum complexity.
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I disagree with you. Here’s why.
By using a level system to determine unlocks, capabilities, parts, etc., Thrive is implying that evolution has an end goal to achieve, especially if we make a part which is unlocked at level 50 inherently better than a part that is unlocked at level 2; how else would we motivate a player to engage in acts which increases your level if we don’t reward them with increased capabilities as each level passes by? Under this system, the burden to innovate is shifted away from the player and onto the game, as instead of cleverly attuning your creature with the parts you have via upgrades, replication, or placement, the player would instead mostly focus on getting more parts, reducing the fun in the moment and the diversity of ways through which a player could tackle the same problem. By emphasizing level-based progress, we de-emphasize natural selection.
On Earth, the most complex creatures definitely are not the most successful ones in terms of pure population and sustainability, as microscopic life outnumbers macroscopic life to an absolutely astounding extent. The reason these less complex creatures continue to exist today is not because they haven’t crossed some barrier or “level”; it’s because they’re so damn good at surviving that there is no pressure to complicate their biological functions. Natural selection in general does not favor complexity, otherwise we would have a lot less of these minuscule organisms floating in our oceans, in our soil, in our oceans, etc. It is because of this that orthogenesis as a concept has been heavily discredited with the advent and articulation of Darwinian evolution; take a snake or a whale’s lack of legs, for example.
Biological complexity in general did not arise due to a selective pressure that inherently favors the mere state of being complex; rather, complexity could better be seen as a side-effect of a selective pressure that inherently favors an increase capacity to consume and generate energy (although the leap from prokaryotic to eukaryotic life can also be seen as being a result of a selective pressure to better organize genetic information). Cells did not begin to develop complex organelle functions and processes because of a selective pressure in favor of complexity, but rather because the selective pressure in favor of increased energy efficiency had allowed the cell to successfully develop and maintain said complex organelle functions in order to better gather energy from the environment. Cells did not make the leap from unicellularity to multicellularity because of the complexity inherent in such organizing, but because of the energy yield which came from being multicellular. Organisms did not develop a nervous system because it was more complex and was the next step above, but because said organisms had the energy capacity to be able to develop and maintain said nervous system. Practically all adaptations could be interpreted through this energy-productive perspective; the energy production was there, so x was developed, and x happened to be successful, so x turned into a more complex trait x2, because it used energy better, or there was enough energy to make it more complex, or etc. Reverting of a complex trait, such as the loss of legs in whales, can also be interpreted through this lense; the legs were not an efficient use of energy and it was more energy efficient to become more streamline within the environment.
So I think progression in Thrive through out stages up to society (although I can make an argument for the idea that most progressions in society are also made in a desire to efficiently manage energy in the most productive ways possible) should essentially function the same as Thrive does now; increase energy capacity by tinkering with your creature’s energy-production line, add parts, repeat, and all of a sudden you have 20 organelles. Get enough energy, upgrade your cell enough, and eventually you get bonding agents; combine with another cell, and look at that, you’ve just witnessed the most important moment in the history of complex life happen right in front of you, the first multicellular organism. Then you notice that these two cells make a lot more energy then your one cell, so you can now get those organelle upgrades that would have previously bankrupted your single cell’s ATP bank.
When other cells begin to figure out the secret sauce in the recipe for multicellularity, the arms race begins again; so, you start adding more cells to your organism to get more energy to jack up your adaptations even more. Other cells start doing the same, so you add more cells and repeat the complexity process, mess around and end up with 20 cells. You get enough energy to develop a cell-differentiation system, which then allows you to begin specializing certain cells to be toxin producing, or energy producing, or storage units, or etc.
You begin upgrading your energy producing cells, get so much energy that you don’t exactly know what to do with it but hey I can add more cells so why not - and all of a sudden, your organism has 1000 cells in it and it’s beginning to jiggle a bit. You’ve finetuned your energy production system so much - “wait, have I made a primitive digestive system?” you ask yourself as you consider the blur of an hour that has just past which was spent editing your energy producing cells and replicating them to increase your energy capacity - and as a result added enough cells to the point that you could now call them tissues. This process continues until you have enough energy to upgrade one of your cell type’s membranes in order to decrease the energy cost of maintaining inter-cellular interactions by allowing said cells to dynamically shift sodium and other nutrients to help generate an action potential; then, you stop and realize that you’ve created the first neuron. And then, you stop and try to recollect the blur of a night spent playing Thrive, only to realize that all of this started with a single tile of cytoplasm in some remote tectonic crack of the planet you’re on.
So basically, I think energy should be what deems your progress.
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This is an excellent post. I agree that the concept of levels (or even individual placeable multicellular parts) are against the core concepts of what thrive tries to be.
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Glad I could help solve this problem
Protein editor to make the binding agent and toxins, and everything in between, and depending on the compounds in the material determines how the material behaves:
Glucose - increases cohesion/adhesion, increases elasticity, edible, dissolves in water
Iron - increases conductivity (thermal and electric), rusts in water and oxygen, magnetic
Ammonia - Can purify water with oxygen through bio-oxidation (removing oxygen?), has strong smell (cells that use chemo-reception will shrivel at too much intake?)
Phosphate - Waxy and waterproof, decreases friction
Oxygen - Toxic in some cases, reactive
etc.
And maybe we can have a whole network of sorts to make different combinations of proteins for different uses (also, sorry if a similar idea was already taken)
In multicellular there should be a way to bind with your species to increase growth and energy production.
But that’s (almost) exactly the plan for early multicellular.
The binding part and getting some benefit is the plan, but what the actual benefits are hasn’t been discussed. At least I don’t remember talking about it. I was thinking of just adding a reduction to osmoregulation when you are attached to other cells and sharing compound storage with them.
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No i mean like if all of your species is multicellular u can just bind with them but it will take glucose and atp and ammonia which you can make in microbial stage.
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Instead of double posting, instead edit your post. Also welcome to the forums FatHeadGaming!
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There’s modding for that.
What? I’m not sure what you are suggesting. The player always goes first in advancements for their species. So there won’t be multicellular members of the player “species” to bind to.
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I don’t believe Deus mentioned the word Pangonian in his post.
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When is multicellular coming out 5.2 5.3 5.4 etc