If this idea isnt planned, it better darn be. along with chloroplasts
It goes without saying that this should be included at some point.
upvote
So, I was thinking. It was a bit painful but I might get used to it. And I came up with a way to make the nucleus even more beneficial without really buffing it. Well. The nucleus is made out of DNA, which are basically strands of information, so by giving the organism a nucleus, it is able to store even more “construction blueprints”. This might result in several scenarios.
Higher organelle cap
It only makes sense for organisms to get bigger as soon as they can store more information. So we might want to implement a “hex cap” so that you can’t have a prokaryote of the size of ten eukaryotes. This shall be balanced so that prokaryotes are not nerfed in any way and are able to look like what the auto-evo-generated ones look like, but a player-created gargantuous abomination of a prokaryote is not possible. I would say the number of hexes would be around 20-30 and this would motivate the player to go for the nucleus sooner or later.
Specialization
In the current game we have an unpleasant feature, where NPC prokaryotes are able to have toxins, but the player cannot. Solution to this might be giving the current toxin available to the player and making a new eukaryotic alternative, that can be upgraded, specialized and improved upon, so that you don’t have to need different organelles for different toxins, you just “customize” the default one. Or perhaps, as an eukaryote you could even improve the toxin vauole you have from your prokaryotic era, dunno. This might be of course applied to other organelles as well.
Meiosis
By having a nucleus, you would be able to later unlock meiosis, which would be perhaps harder to achieve, as you need a partner for meiosis, but would give you a lot more MP, as it borrows genetic information from both parents.
There is a lot more benefits to it, but these would be in my opinion enjoyable game mechanics. If any of my biological facts are off, let me know, I am not a biologist. 
2 Likes
here are some random things I want to talk about.
First up is Patches,
Population: It would be beneficial if each patch your species is in has its own population so if you go to a new patch and die too many times then you become extinct in that patch and must choose a different one that your species is still in. there would be 2 population indicators one has your total pop and the other is the pop in your current patch (It would look like this 120/30).
Migration: To add on to my last idea the amount of starting population you get when entering a new patch should be determined by how hard it is for your species to get to. So if you have more movement organelles then youll have a larger starting pop as its easier for them to get there (what adds more pop should depend on the patch type).
Next is the water environment: I think you guys should look at how spore did theirs it has prettymuch everything you guys are thinking about adding . Take special notes on how the bubbles are on a top layer above the player, how there are objects below the player (it could be other cells or objects), how they have objects that the player has to avoid (maybe add large particles or substrate in the water like that one concept art with the hydrozoa like animal attached to it and I know there is iron now but we need more), and the water currents theres more but those are the main points although I dont like the ripples behind the cells in spore it makes it seem like they are above the water.
heres my idea for the patch map, its a 2d top down map and when you click/hover over a node more nodes pop up where you choose the depth.
2 Likes
We have been wanting to improve the water feel for awhile now.
Also, i like the idea of migration base don locomotion ability and extinction per patch.
1 Like
Funnily enough the nodes for depth showing up when you mouse over was one of the ideas we discussed on the dev forum thread about it! And some cool concepts were made.
You should be able to see RNA strands in the prokaryotic stage.
I don’t think we should. If we did, it would be very long and only about less than a pixel thick. We shouldn’t even be able to see nitrogenese. If the nucleus is seven hexes, the nucleuolisisl would be less, and if it had 10 chromosomes, a chromosome would be less than a hex, and that means DNA would already be absolutely tiny, and RNA is even smaller.
your right, I was thinking of how in pictures of bacteria you always see the chromosomes but they are much smaller then the player
So I didn’t really know where to put this, so I just put it here for now. I was bored yesterday, so I decided to draw out outlines for a scene that could be used once your creature enters the Aware Stage. This is not even needed at the moment, but I still made it for fun.
Edit: Forgot to say, those red circles would be creatures that belong to a more advanced species.
1 Like
Nice concept, however, there will probably be no cutscenes between stages, just the initial one when you start a new game.
1 Like
While that may be true, it would still be cool to have sort of transitions instead of a loading screen, but yes, you are probably right.
The devs are planning on making the transitions between every stage as subtle and smooth as possible. Also, there has been a debate about you being always the first one to go into the next stage, due to time scales constantly changing (for example during only one of your microbial evolution an entire civilization would have enough time to rise and then fall again).
2 Likes
I didn’t even think of that, thanks for the information, I was gonna remake the scene later, so this helps.
I will probably redirect you to @QuantumCrab, as he’s the “cutscene guy”, so you can consult him about do’s and dont’s. Good luck Blendering!
Thanks man 
(20 characters ouch)
1 Like
Thrive could actually have dynamic difficulty system. Basically, if the player is absolutely apex and is more or less bored, the other species might experience higher evolution rates, but when the player struggles to survive, the evolution of other species slows down a bit. Might be doable even with environmental changes - if the player is doing too well, the conditions are changing more rapidly and if the player struggles, the conditions help them out a bit. What do you say?
6 Likes
oof, I dont like that this thread was lost like this for so long.
anyways I have some suggestions for the UI.
first I think your ATP level should be shown in a way that you can watch it from the corner of your eye instead of glancing over and searching for it. this has killed me a couple of times, either I run out of ATP and dont realize it like if I can only move in short bursts and I end up hurting myself or I have to take my eyes off of what im doing to look at it and i get eaten or I run into a colony of toxic slinging bacteria.
Secondly id like a progress bar that tells me what I need in order to evolve and how much. it can get annoying not knowing how much components you need to evolve and makes it feel like im aimlessly swimming around, it also makes me feel anxious for some reason.
thirdly in the editor id like it if the organelle tool tip told me how much atp ill get for my environment or at least a key like “at 20% O2 you get 35 atp” or something instead of just saying it varies.
that is all thank you.
2 Likes
that would actualy make kind of sense.
if something is working then it doesnt need to change, so say a species is doing real good compared to the player then they wouldn’t need to change since they have the optimal strategy/build for those conditons. However, if they do bad then they evolve more often because they need to try different things to get toward the top