My cell population is too large

[maxzh31]

In just 5 generations, the population of the species has reached a quintillion

[hhyyrylainen]

How high should the population then be? A single patch can represent up to an entire ocean surface. And for an ocean even quantillions is pretty much way too low of a microbe count to be realistic.

I made a similar comment recently in a Steam discussion where I used some actual numbers:

Everytime i start there are 100 Trillion cells. :: Thrive General Discussions

[aah31415 (The maker of SitF, Radiostrocity, The Lifenote and TGBing; The Second Ascended...; And just maybe a security warning come alive...?)]

We had issues with people thinking there’s just like a thousand of their specieslings around, now they say there’s too many of their mates in the patches…

[maxzh31]

Thanks for the explanation, it was just measured in thousands or hundreds in the previous version.

[hhyyrylainen]

Yeah, one of the changes for 0.8.2 was adding a ‘T’ suffix to the population numbers.

Here’s what was in the (quite long) patch notes about the change:

Added a ‘T’ suffix to primary displays of population to finally try to solve the confusion some players have that think that a population of 100 microbes literally means just 100 individuals, whereas in reality there has always been an abstract multiplier for the numbers as entire oceans have very high number of bacteria

[maxzh31]

Thanks for the clarification.

[aah31415 (The maker of SitF, Radiostrocity, The Lifenote and TGBing; The Second Ascended...; And just maybe a security warning come alive...?)]

I assume in macroscopic stages smaller pop count multipliers will be introduced?

[maxzh31]

And I would also like to say that mass cell deaths occur very often under the control of AI, that is, a lot of cells accumulate in one place and die, is this a bug or is this how it should be?

[aah31415 (The maker of SitF, Radiostrocity, The Lifenote and TGBing; The Second Ascended...; And just maybe a security warning come alive...?)]

Do they accumulate where chunks used to be?

[maxzh31]

Yes they accumulate where chank be used

But this particular kind of cell, well, one kind accumulated there, it appeared, it appeared that this kind of immobile absorbed everything that was there and died, then the same kind arrived there, absorbed everything and died again

[aah31415 (The maker of SitF, Radiostrocity, The Lifenote and TGBing; The Second Ascended...; And just maybe a security warning come alive...?)]

Thanks for the info, however please do not doublepost. You can edit your later post into the former one and then remove the later.

[hhyyrylainen]

The microbe AI can do many different things based on the species’ behaviour values. At the same time it shouldn’t be expected that single celled organisms could be super intelligent. Though even if that was accepted as a bug I doubt anyone would work on the microbe AI to improve it, as it is one of the hardest parts of the game to get anyone to do any tweaks to it.

[maxzh31]

I would also like to mention the error of appearance at the multicellular stage. Sometimes a multicellular organism (at the time of appearance, one cell) simply gets stuck between the cells of another multicellular organism.

[aah31415 (The maker of SitF, Radiostrocity, The Lifenote and TGBing; The Second Ascended...; And just maybe a security warning come alive...?)]

You mean it gets near the other organism and then they grow into eachother, or does it just “stick” to the other one?

[maxzh31]

I mean, when you first appear after evolution and appear between the cells of a multicellular organism (there is a space between the cells of a multicellular organism), well, you appear and get stuck between these cells, it happens at the multicellular stage.

[aah31415 (The maker of SitF, Radiostrocity, The Lifenote and TGBing; The Second Ascended...; And just maybe a security warning come alive...?)]

I see. Could you survive being stuck like this?

[maxzh31]

I mean, my cell has photosynthesis in each of the multicellular organisms, and it doesn’t absorb it, but I just get stuck between these cells and can’t get out, and when new cells appear in my multicellular organism, it pushes me out if the cell didn’t have photosynthesis, it would die.

[aah31415 (The maker of SitF, Radiostrocity, The Lifenote and TGBing; The Second Ascended...; And just maybe a security warning come alive...?)]

How often did this stucking happen?

[maxzh31]

Not very often, but it happens.

[aah31415 (The maker of SitF, Radiostrocity, The Lifenote and TGBing; The Second Ascended...; And just maybe a security warning come alive...?)]

Hm. Multicellular is still a prototype, so don’t expect this to get fixed until it’s development phase is reached.