I think sexual reproduction should give more mutation points than asexual reproduction. That way, it encourages putting in the effort to find a mate, why still allowing the option that, if you are unable to, you can use asexual.
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It’s a deal inside the game. And a good one for that…
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It could also be such that you attempt to create more children. The limit isn’t one, otherwise you get a sort of unhinged K-seletion where you try are hard as possible to create a single offspring than give up. Perhaps the mutation points are via how many children you sire multiplied by how many survive on average and weather they were made asexually or not. Perhaps it’s a threshold and sexually produced offspring count more, etc. Or you could play the entire lifespan. I like that last one because it makes sense IMO. In cell stage, you enter the editor when you split in half, you kinda can’t continue after than. However, you also exit the editor by splitting in half, reproduction and death kinda stop being the same thing after cell stage, even budding usually has a clear child and parent. We have to decide weather to prioritize starting a round the same way you end it or getting to play the whole lifespan of a creature.
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As real life shows, many primitive organisms (sponges, coelenterates, plants, etc.) use both asexual and sexual reproduction, and asexual reproduction is very often used in environments where there are few individuals of a species in order to colonize the environment as quickly as possible. Therefore, I think asexual reproduction should also give a LARGER population increase than sexual reproduction. Therefore, asexual reproduction is most effective when colonizing new habitats, and sexual reproduction in already densely populated habitats with high competition. In addition, primitive organisms rely on currents/wind when releasing gametes into the environment, which makes obligate sexual reproduction quite risky for them.
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I mean, in cell stage reproduction doesn’t equate death, as you can too “die” without leaving offspring behind.
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- Intense Blood and Gore. I personally think that a hard T level of blood should be enough for what Thrive is going too do. I don’t know much about game development but in order to add in massive blood splash and gore that would stain the world the devs have to do more work than it would be worth.
I think we can show wounds and some amount of blood, even the original spore beta had it, but not the intense gore or over the top bloodbath.
- Sex Scenes. I don’t know if everyone agrees with me but adding sex scenes into this game would probably be uncomfortable. I personally would be uncomfortable with clicking a button that starts a Walking with Dinosaurs style sex scene and I know what your saying I’ve gone too far but avoiding this might actually be the best choice. You could make a version similar too spore’s mating mechanic but it has more innuendo and instead of the creature laying an egg it goes up to the mate and the camera cuts out before they begin. This could possibly be easier to animate because the game would have too figure out how the creatures would do it before running the animation.
- Private Parts. I don’t think I have to point out it would be uncomfortable to see your creature’s parts blowing in the wind as it walks around. I know some of you are saying this makes it less realistic but Walking with Dinosaurs, Beasts, and Monsters never included the private parts and they where all hyper realistic. I think this is an aspect I shouldn’t have to argue about.
I support your idea that the developers can just put a fade screen when your creature is about to do the deed, but I’m not sure about the other things. Given the concept of the stage that players can edit every distinct orrgan by themselves, they will definetly spend some time in Redactor precisely editing these “special parts”, and censoring here won’t help. And about the censoring: how would the game define what should be censored or not? And would it even be needed if alien genetalia won’t look like ours and thus wouldn’t be considered a material for adults?
Over all I think this game should at least have a +12 rating
And how does one define “gore”? Is chopping down a living tree “gory”? Or what about screwing a tap into to get sap? Or what about a lizard shedding its tail? Can the AI be programed to tell the difference between what life forms we would consider doing extreme injury to “gory”.
I feel like this is similar situation to this:
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I think at this point everyone agrees a soft line like “nudity is bad” and “No reproductive organs that looks like human ones” work at all, so we can stop arguing about it. Anyone who is for keeping some specific content out of the game should be (and they do seem to be trying) giving us specific, hard, enforceable lines.
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And such enforcable lines aren’t easy to find in the realm of the prototypal Thrive stages…
I think for the main version of the game we’ll need to only allow blood based on compounds that aren’t red (Hemocyanin - Wikipedia), that’ll make depicting blood in the game more acceptable, mainly because I think age rating rules are written in a silly way that if blood is blue it doesn’t technically count as showing blood.
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I mean, it’s again not like Thrive will be rated by the services, right? Putting hemoglobin behind an 18+ mod seems somewhat weird…
We still should use the age rating guidelines to keep in mind how Thrive would be rated if it ever got a rating.
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Besides violence and reproduction stuff, are there any more noteworthy things which could push our rating to a mature one?
What about excrements?
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Right, those might need to have their quality lowered in aware…
There is no actual reason to simulate excrements like feces or urine in any graphic way, plus, excrements would really only matter starting from the society stage, and at that point they wouldn’t be shown graphically.
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Yeah, I’d guess so…
I’d also guess that then there isn’t really anything besides reproduction stuff and wound stuff which could push the game into 18+ category will it ever be rated.
genociding entire star systems and using weapons of mass destruction in space and industrial stage, but that’s not blood so it should be okay 
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