I could find anything like this anywhere else. When I think of aliens I usually go “what isn’t on Earth that could happen biologically”, biology isn’t my strongest point but I wanted to see different things in cells on alien worlds. While organelles are something I can’t tamper with the ways cells kill each other is a different story. I came up with the idea of a small pilus that the cell shoots out and impales other cells with. These spikes could maybe be fill with acids so they make the cell rupture from within.
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How about a kind of mosquito type thing, where it drains the innards of another cell with a proboscis-like structure
@Steve interestingly basically exactly this exists on Earth. There arebacteria which can shoot poison tipped spears at other cells.
So yeah that is really cool and we’ve thought about having that sort of thing in game.
Also yeah a straw pilus would be really cool.Here’s the ones we’ve talked about so far.
If anyone has other ideas feel free to post them as we’re always looking for cool, plausible, stuff.
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There could be a secondary wall, like how the nucleus of a cell have a wall on the outside, but there is another wall which contains the organelles. I am not talking about a cell wall, this would be inside the cell membrane and have some cytoplasm so it doesn’t touch the outside. This would make the cell less flexible like a plant cell while still providing it places for movement and combat parts (I even have an idea on a cell weapons designed to break this interior wall.).
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Another geat idea. Funny thing, in code we have a cell material that is in fact called a double membrane, and it is in 0.4.0 it is just visual though but it being like armor was exactly the idea.
Let’s bring this back. So maybe there could be harpoon structures that a cell could shoot out to hook onto another cell. These harpoons would begin to retract and you could absorb the target cell. If you have pila or toxins the harpoons could be used to keep the cell in place as you kill it. To balance this and to give the player a chance against another cell using this it could require a huge amount of ATP to use so you could only hold a cell for a short time.
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I dont really know how this could possibly work in real life with how simple cells are already, but it’s something to talk about at least.
It would work like this
Yeah I love the idea of harpoons. Especially harpooning big cells as if they were whales and being dragged around by them.
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Cells are a lot more complex than you might think. Even I didn’t know about the harpoons before that video.
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The mindset that “cells just aren’t that interesting” and “cells are just too simple” is a very flawed one. They do a TON of cool things and tehy can be extremely complex and have very complex behaviors, the harpoons are only a small example, some even use them as Grappling hooks , there are 5 differnet kinds of pilus and each type is used for several things,there are single celled organisms that are basically mini priahna plants called stentors, they attach to a stick or something have a mouth and stretch out and grab food and pull in super fast, there are ciliates that build their own little shelters by exerting carbonate and stuff. There are bacteria that move via slime jets, there are so many different variations, there are so many cool things microbes do, there is a whole world of content we could add in the microbe stage. This is why i think, when people talk only about stuff beyond the microbe stage that harms the game. We have a microbe stage, at the very least we should make it the most fun possible microbe stage. You bring up some unique feature multicellular organisms do i bet i can find at least one microbe that does something similar.
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This might be a thing or it might not be. Could a cell evolve partial cell walls? I have an idea, you can select what cytoplasma block you want to be walled or you place a cell wall block. Unlike normal cell walls if you don’t evolve a cell wall all around the cell then the cell wall wont have any openings for toxins to enter. These walls are meant to cover your weakest sides (a shield).
Oh yeah, i dont see why that wouldn’t be possible. In fact weve discussed that idea and will probably be adding it.
When I was thinking of cool cell stage things I thought up of compound chunks which are solid crystallized forms of the compounds, they would be surrounded by clouds of the compound they are made up. I came up with a grinder-type “mouth” (not really). This mouth could harvest the compound crystal for a large amount of that compound at the expense of high ATP cost. This grinder could also be used on cells. This would be extremely close range, nearly touching before it is in range and it would do low amounts of hp damage but the attack rate is very high (shredding).
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Ahh man steve, thats basically the exact plan i had for adding decomospsers, when cells die, instead of just exploding into compounds they would break into chunks and compounds would excrete from them as they decomposed, and you could pop in ther ewith your decomposer or scavenger and take advantage. Also, about compound crystals, thats basically the exact plan i had for sulfur and iron respiration, you would eat those in crystal form. (might make it in in 0.4.1)
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I’m pretty sure only plant cells have cell walls, but the main website does say that the current idea is that you could play as a plant, but not be able to reach sapience. Maybe this could be possible, but only in that type of a route?
Yes on earth plants have cell walls, you know what else has cell walls, fungi, Prokaryotes, and a bunch of other weirder microbes (theres some with iron reinforced cell walls), and diatoms, which have a silica cell wall, in other words i don’t think we are limited by what specific kingdoms happened to evolve on earth, just the things that evolved on earth .
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Maybe there could be a form of toxin organelle (that is how it is made right?) where if the cell is damaged it releases a cloud of toxin around the cell and disables all bacteria / cells that come into contact with it for a short time. The area should not be huge but should be large enough to hit something ranged.
Or adding that feature via the organelle upgrade system to the toxin organelle. So start with the proto-toxin organelle, and say for example there is a defensive portion of the upgrade branch and an offensive portion. That strikes me as a defensive adaptation, so it could be the starting defensive upgrade or a more advanced level upgrade. More upgrade ideas would be needed.
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Could there be a cell that can produce electricity? Maybe if you play as a cell that can shock other cells and stun them. This would have a build up time where you build up electric charge. This would cost a large amount of ATP to do and only happens to any cell that approaches you.
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This is really cool and I would love it if it were possible.
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electric eels have exactly this sort of attack, so it’s plausible at some level
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It seems there quite a lot of electricity generating bacteria, but I can’t find any evidence that they use it as a weapon. So if anyone could find any info on that it would be great. This is the closest I got.
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