Will Natural Disasters be including in the multi cellular stage and onward? Will we deal with hurricanes washing our sea-creatures onto land? Will our organisms biome be destroyed by volcanoes? Will our villages get destroyed by earthquakes?
Natural disasters are definitely something that is planned. My opinion is that they shouldn’t be too punishing instead they should just spice up the gameplay a bit.
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If I remember correctly, in a previous thread on the earlier forums , the final conclusion was you’ll be able to toggle most disasters on or off (So the people that want immediate game-ending disasters can do so, but the ones that just want a fair experience can also have that)
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Will it be possible to play during natural diasters or will those only happen off screen and effect population numbers?
wow that was really a necropost
Thing is that many natural disasters with broad ecological impact would essentially be death sentences that organisms in the immediate vicinity would have basically no chance of avoiding. Things like a catastrophic asteroid impact or a humongous volcanic eruption would essentially be a giant explosion and a giant wall or flash of death. The more interesting evolutionary aspects of a disaster event is how the environment is effected and how organisms react to this new environment, which we ideally will simulate pretty robustly; extinction events and the such are very important in any evolutionary story.
Now, there are concepts for earthquakes in the Microbe stage for example, where currents will randomly switch up, and potentially for things like the flow of magma and such. So I won’t say a player wont ever play through an environmental event, but I will say that from a gameplay design perspective, the more important thing is to represent the aftermath of a disaster event rather than the event itself in creating a dynamic evolution simulator.
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a list of natural disasters (all should include a sound cue a bit before the disaster hits, to give the player time to prepare) (this is assuming you will be able to play during a disaster)
-wildfire- would start during a dry season and after a lightning strike. way to avoid the fire would be to either get underground or to run far away from it. ominous and fast paced music should accompany the fire, as well as a new redish tint to the screen.
-earthquake- most likely to happen on faults, probably the least dangerous of the disasters(as long as you dont have buildings) as the only risk would be falling rocks(if near a mountain or hill) or collapsing trees (if in a forest) this disaster would last for a few seconds, no music would accompany this disaster, only a low droning noise and a mild screen shake.
landslide/avalanch- basically the same thing, just one is with snow, the other with rocks or mud. would need to be in mountainous or hilly areas, both could happen after an earth quake or heavy rain or snow. see earthquake for audio
tornado- would happen most commonly in large open biomes like plains or grassland, you would be safest underground, the tornado could pick up creatures and plants and hurl them outwards. the player would need to avoid incoming objects and being picked up my the tornado. music should include siren like sounds and be medium paced. it will be extremely dangerous to attempt to fly during this event.
tsunami- would occur only near coasts, easiest way to avoid it would be to get to high ground or to fly. like the earth quake no music would accompany the tsunami, only a mild screen shake and a low droning sound. right after the tsunami hits, lower altitude areas will be flooded for a few minutes.( this could serve to allow aquatic creatures cross into other bodies of water)
flood- happens after a tsunami or after heavy rain (see tsunami)
blizzard- only occurs in cold biomes or a biome with snowy winters. temperature would drop a bit, it will be hard to fly, and there is a risk of being buried if your creature is small, weak, or otherwise lacks the traits to survive in snowy areas. visibility would be verry limited for the storms duration, ominous wintery music would play for as long as the storm lasts.
hurricane- lots of rain, lots of wind, a bit of flooding, not a great time to be a flying creature. prety much just have to wait it out, as long as you avoid flooding and high wind it should be fine. the longest natural disaster, made up of two 3 minute segments. vision would be a bit obscured but not as much as blizard, music similer to the tornado would play, when in the stormy part of the hurricane, the eye would not have storm music.
sink hole (kinda unfair, random, and just really stupid)- warning sign would be a dent or cracking in the ground if you fall in you either die of fall damage or just get stuck their, unless your creature is good at climbing or can fly.
heat wave/drought- more common in warmer areas or in summer, last for 2-10 min, water is scarcer, and the day is really hot, best to find shade durring mid day.
volcano- you get ample time to prepare for the eruption, there is a chance for an earth quake to happen before the eruption, in any case a minute of drumming will happen before the volcano erupts. depending on the kind of eruption the drumming will be a bit different.
(variant 1, just lava) can start a wild fire, but otherwise really easy to avoid.
(variant 2, just ash in the sky) clouds of ash are not good to fly through, might decrease sunlight for a bit.
(variant 3, pyroclastic flow) if you get caught, you die unless you have some adaptation that allow you to survive sudden changes to the environment, like a tun state.
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Honetsly i would find it nice if the disasters would cause as much damage as those “disasters” or events in the creature stage of spore. It wont kill you, but just slightly slow you down. Fun to witness, slightly annoying, slightly slows you down. RNG dependant things like that are really frustrating if they can actually cause severe progress loss.
yeah, lots of progress loss would be annoying, which is why i think sound cues are really important, it would tell the player something bad is about to happen.
- which region a certain event/disaster is likely to happen in is also important, if a player lives in a tundra like environment they will know to expect snow storms, so they can evolve to deal with it, like wise creatures that live in hot areas would already have some way to better manage water and other reasorces, so as long as the player evolves to the environment disaters should be less of a threat, flying and burrowing creature can essentially cheat some of the disasters, like flood or wildfire.
- I also picture some kind of system where depending on the area the player is in, in addition to how long its been since they’ve last delt with a disaster would determine when they actually play when one is active, as well as what defficulty the game is on. so like playing on easy you might never encounter disasters, medium would be defalt, and hard would be the most frequent.
- i actually think that many of the disasters could be a fun yet threatening event that can help spice up the gameplay(not sinkholes, those just sound flat out unfair to me), Shelter 2 (the game where you play as a mother lynx) has a wild fire event that can be prety stressful (but in a fun way) and it feel verry rewarding to not loose any cubs to the fire. I think disasters should be somewhat stressful or scary, as they are dangerous events largely outside of the players controll(minus the settings menu). i think there should be a corelation between how much time the player has to prepare for a disaster with how dangerous it is.
The problem with this is though that disasters are sporatic events that can suddenly occur for a short period. A natural disaster wont continuously occur for the millions of years you would need to evolve to combat it. espescially it would need to be considered that these events would also not cause severe progress loss in later stages of the game which run on way shorter timescales than the aware stage. You can evolve a tolerance to an enviroment, but you wont be able to evolve to an area unless you are warned before, and you spend ages evolving to combat that one specific disaster first.
The Idea of extreme weather conditions is an ok one, as it could just require you to just hide in shelter or cover for an ingame day or two, but occurances like wildfires would be devestating later on in the game. How would you like it if your dry forest tribe all of a sudden looses half its members because a fire burnt down 70% of the forest.
The reasons why i brought up the spore events, is because they dont cause any actual harm or pose any threat. Its just a fun, if slightly annoying event that makes you wait a minute before you can charm those other creatures. Theres a difference between casual players who just want to enjoy playing the game and people who want a full hardcore realism experience involving them running from wildfires and volcano erruptions. I personally hate it in games when i have to do a bunch of work just because i got belgiumed by RNG, or that my playtrough is ten times more challenging because i keep getting hurricanes spawning right next to me. I think that thing will move faster than i´ll be able to, even with a sound clue.
Your suggestion sounds like its all RNG dependant, even if you just had an event occur and are playing on easier difficulties. Either events should be warned ahead of time, removing most of the RNG factor, which however lessens immersion, or you weaken Disasters to avoid them causing actual problems for a player.
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in my first post here i was was specifically talking about during the multicellular and aware, i should have specified that, i wasnt thinking about later stages.
in regards to adapting to disasters, take cammels for example, they have large eyelashes that serve to protect their eyes in a sandstorm, i was try to say traits like those or being able to dig quickly would be ways to evolve to counteract a disaster, disaster may not occur constantly for melenia, but they happen often enough for life to adapt.
i actually picture that the chance of a natural disaster would go up the longer you went without dealing with one, capping out af 50%, then every set amount of time, like every 15 min, the game would check if a disater would happen, if it didnt happen then the % chance goes up by…say about 5%. then after an event happens it resets to 0%, when an event happens the game would next choose an appropriate disaster for the area the player is in. this would make it so the player could see its been quite a while since a disaster has happened, so they could anticipate one happening soon.
in regards to later stages, the cap for the chance should be lowered, say about 20% and the %chance increase is closer to 1%, the time span for checking if a disaster happened would be increased to say (for the sake of example) 20 min, as those stages happen on a shorter time span. Japan has sky scrapers specifically designed to withstand earthquakes and tsunamis more efficiently, or you could simply build out of tsunami reach, with the case of wildfires, i think it would be possible to build some kind of barrier, fire cant burn everything, so you might be able to build a stone or dirt path which the fire cant burn, in addition to making homes out of mud or other non-flame able material. for later stages its more about building materials and where you build. you could also have techs(sirens)and people that tell the weather an warn the population, even further decreasing how many die.
Later stage solutions
-Wild fire- make less flameable structure/ create barriers of stone or dirt, make it so that the fire cant get close to populated areas.
-tsunami- build in high altitude, or make structues resistant to the forces of the tsunami.
tornado- build underground or at least have cellers.
volcano- build far away from volcanoes, or have a good warning and evacuation system.
hurricane- similer to tornado and tsunami.
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Theres a difference in Enviromental hazards such as sandstorms, heatwaves, snowstorms, etc. And actual natural disasters. Hurricanes, Earthquakes, Wildfires, Tsunamis, etc. One you can adapt to deal with, the other you can only run from and hope to avoid.
The thing is, i dont think it should be very reliant on rng. If a player nows somewhat when and how often events in the area occur, they can atleast learn to avoid them themselves, instead of evolving for it. Similar to an Instinct or internal rythm.
The problem is, any early, but settled civilizations will be extremely hindered by events such as this again. if its an event that happens once, or maybe twice within your entire early civilzation, then its manageable, but annoying. If it happens to happen every two or so odd years, it will really frustrate anyone actually trying to develop in a good area, where it just happens that disasters are frequent. Modern civilization will take tens of thousands of years to develop after your species starts gaining proper intelligence. Humanity took 12000 years after developing agriculture to get to where we are now. And how many disasters have happened in that time. Countless, devastating and horrifying disasters. If you want full realism that is fine, but if you want to have fun in a game and not do the same thing repeatedly because you keep loosing large amounts of stuff to a disaster. The option should not be: Build somewhere else till then or else you cant develop proper civilization.
Later Stage solutions? I assume you will be spending a lot more time developing from agriculture to the modern age, then from the modern age to the space age. It took us nearly 12000 years to not have nearly everyone die everytime a tsunami shows up, or a tornado or hurricane just happens to pop up out of the middle of nowhere. As a bronze age civilization you cant do much to avoid dying .
Tldr: I think disasters should be incredibly infrequent to the point of only interacting with them a few times in an entire time going up to space stage. It is less realistic, but far less tedious.
may i bring you back to a settings menu, if you think disasters should be very rare, then just lower the frequency. in a settings menu for disasters (part of the difficulty settings) i would expect to be able to adjust how often specific disasters happen(actually changing how long it take for the game to check if one happens), dont want a certain disaster to occur, make it so they either wont happen or the chance for them to happen is so low you would only encounter them a few times. being able to change how often events happen (if they happen) in the difficulty setting would solve your problem with them maybe being to frequent. if people want to play casually let them change the difficulty, if they want to to really challenge themselves let them turn the difficulty up.
people have dealt with natural disasters pretty much forever, they just have to find a way to deal with them in a way that will minimalise damage and death, the way they deal with a disaster will change as technology advances. when i say “later stage solutions” i was mostely talking about whenever the player gets structures or settles down into one area, not so much the rest of the stages. bringing the topic back to japan for a sec, the old people of japan had placed stones with messages carving in them to tell people not to build in certain areas prone to having tsunamis. placing a town/tribe in a good area can render certain disasters almost negligible. scared of tornado, build in caves or have safe structures underground. some speices might even need a wild fire or some other disaster to reproduce, Sequoias have seeds encased in a verry hard cone, and fires can help to weaken the cone, helping to release the seeds, flash floods in deserts provide much needed water, ash is nutrient rich, for a civilzation near a volcano(same with wildfire prone areas) it would be a high risk high reward situation, sure you could be wiped out, but the soil is so great you could expand your nation before the volcano even has a particularly bad eruption
in a strange way, i think natural disasters promote growth, as having more towns makes it much less likely for everything to be wiped out, the tricky thing is, disasters would have to be frequent enough to be to be a threat, but not so frequent that their annoying. i think RNG is fine actually, i find its more exiting, in spore, you know when the “disasters” are going to happen, they always happen at a set progress point, there is no threat, and its JUST annoying.
(multicellular,aware,awakening)i think by default the game should check if a disaster as happened every 15 to 20 min of out of editer gameplay, then increase the %chance by 5% to a max of 25%, as that doesnt seem to frequent to me, it seems this would only be a problem if you play a speices that reproduces slowly and cant deal with say a wildfire by either flying or diging or if your creature is sick or elderly.
(society and industrial)- this should happen much more rarely, game checks every 30-45 min( or 45 to 60min) if a disaster will happen, if not then adds 1% to the chance of it happening next time( max of 10%). regardless it needs to be rare enough for the player to either spread across a larger area or to build a kind of defense, like a storm cellar, or whats basically the reverse of a firepit(instead of keeping fire in to keep fire out)
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This is assuming the player always goes right through it. Hurricanes shouldn’t aim for the player, who can also move in any direction.
There is no way to know when a volcano will erupt exactly. The duration of the drumming should be random or it shouldn’t happen at all.
Also, drums? Sound effects can do the job. About to be hit by a lightning? Sounds of static electricity and an enlarged fur. Earthquake? You hear the p waves. Stormy weather? You feel a drop in pressure, a deep wind sound. Or this can be shown in text. Fire? It starts small anyways, you’d notice the fleeing animals. Volcano? Well there are a few signs for it*. An experienced player or one who reads the Thrive wiki can look out for those signs. Hey, this is another way for Thrive to be educational.
It takes a longer amount of time for a larger asteroid to fall, but there isn’t a way to prepare for them?
The most dangerous ones that kill everything equally can happen offscreen[1] Easy and middle diffuculty disasters shouldn’t be given different early warning signs just because of their difficulty. A larger avalanche doesn’t fall slower. How would having a proportional amount of time to prepare spice up the game anyway? If this is about making the disasters easier to survive, just weaken the disasters at the game settings.
There is no progress loss here because all the species experience the same event (I am assuming the world doesn’t end). Disasters are a part of the environment, just like everything else, and they have to be adapted to. Not having cues and getting caught by suprise can be a part of that.
Whats wrong with a forest that tends to have fires? A war can cause losses as well.
This is about migrations, not something unique to disasters
I support this. It would fix the “occational too many hurricanes” issue caused by RNGs and the law of the small numbers.
The situation in aware stage wouldn’t be different than awakening. Also, genetic drift does happen in evolution.
Running is an adaptation.
Uhh. Why use a constant number generator instead of a modified random number generator? The thing about disasters is that they tend to be unpredictable.
“don’t put all your eggs in one basket” isn’t the only reason to send settlers. Overpopulation is another one.
i am not sure about the tardigrade in pyroclastic flow. the water would change into ash at a random time and turn back into water? ↩︎
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