Multicellular Stage - Ciliates and Flagellates

hhyyrylainen · April 22, 2025, 6:50am

You mean like the stats shown in the editor? It is extremely likely that the stats just don’t take the entire bodyplan into account whatsoever.

The math for colony movement and rotation speed is something that was written a really long time ago and not really updated. The main focus was to not make cell colonies just totally overpowered and infinitely be able to stack movement speed. But that also means that the balancing is kind of off. There’s a TODO comment in the code about redoing the math:

github.com/Revolutionary-Games/Thrive

src/multicellular_stage/CellBodyPlanInternalCalculations.cs

c821fde73


      
              return ((int)ammoniaCostTotal, (int)phosphatesCostTotal);
          }
          
          public static void ModifyCellSpeedWithColony(ref float speed, int cellCount)
          {
              // Multiplies the movement factor as if the colony has the normal microbe speed
              // Then it subtracts movement speed from 100% up to 75%(soft cap),
              // using a series that converges to 1 , value = (1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 +.....) = 1 - 1/2^n
              // when specialized cells become a reality the cap could be lowered to encourage cell specialization
              // Note that the multiplier below was added as a workaround for colonies being faster than individual cells
              // TODO: a proper rebalance of the algorithm would be excellent to do
          
              speed *= cellCount * Constants.CELL_COLONY_MOVEMENT_FORCE_MULTIPLIER;
              var seriesValue = 1 - 1 / (float)Math.Pow(2, cellCount - 1);
              speed -= speed * 0.15f * seriesValue;
          }
          
          /// <summary>
          ///   Calculates a colony's rotation speed. The code here should be based on the algorithm in
          ///   <see cref="MicrobeColonyHelpers.CalculateRotationSpeed"/>
          /// </summary>

And that code is used from here where the colony impact on the movement is calculated:

github.com/Revolutionary-Games/Thrive

src/microbe_stage/systems/MicrobeMovementSystem.cs

3f597a23b


      
          
              return movementVector;
          }
          
          private void CalculateColonyImpactOnMovementForce(ref MicrobeColony microbeColony, Vector3 movementDirection,
              bool isBacteria, float delta, ref float force)
          {
              // If this method is updated, the CalculateSpeed() method in CellBodyPlanInternalCalculations.cs
              // also has to be changed
          
              CellBodyPlanInternalCalculations.ModifyCellSpeedWithColony(ref force, microbeColony.ColonyMembers.Length);
          
              // Colony members have their movement update before organelle update, so that the movement organelles
              // see the direction
              // The colony master should be already updated as the movement direction is either set by the
              // player input or microbe AI, neither of which will happen concurrently, so this should always get the
              // up to date value
          
              foreach (var colonyMember in microbeColony.ColonyMembers)
              {
                  // Colony leader processes the normal movement logic so it isn't taken into account here

The situation has not been perfect but good enough for years so that’s likely why no one has done anything. If someone wants to rebalance the math, I’m open to looking at such pull requests.