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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If it is plausible it’s possible on another planet in my eyes.
If it isn’t possible maybe it could be a repulsion field where it slowly hurts cells and/or bacteria within a certain radius and makes them move away from you. This could go under defense instead of weapons since the damage would be minimal. Maybe if two cells both have this they negate each other and can attack each other or cells could evolve a way to ignore the electricity.
I don’t have anything to back this up but I would guess that a single cell has no way to generate enough current to actually affect anything. Electric eels have pretty large electric organs.
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This cell organelle would only need to be powerful enough to have an effect on cells and bacteria. Even minor stimuli might scare off a cell.
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There could be an enzyme or small organelle that could be attached to the side of the cell wall/membrane. This would detach and collect compounds (maybe used as a fighter by attacking other cells). It would then return and the compounds it collects would be transferred to the cell.
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Maybe there could be a tentacle-like weapon that would inject toxins into the target cell. If there is an evolution tree for cell parts, this could be evolved from a cilia or flagella.
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Alright let’s bring this back, I have the idea for a water jet like structure. There would be 2 openings, one sucks in and the other projects the water. This would be used to either push hostile cells away or as a way to propel the cell.
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AKA the Jet part that you can get in Spore’s Cell Stage.
Actually no, there is no outside attachments only the 2 openings in the cell. It’s a long tube that runs through the cell.
If fluid physics are added I don’t see why you couldn’t Macgyver it and just make a hole through your cell and fill it with cilia, like the stentor in the TOTW from a while back
I think some paramecium actually use cilia to help get food in their mouth, so thats a neat idea.
Having a bunch of smaller tubes instead of one long tube makes a lot of sense, you can fire the water at higher pressures. I’m also thinking that the cell has an organelle that converts chemical energy into thermal energy and heat the water as it travels through. This would weaponize the stream.
I bet that no matter what anyone says, it will have already existed in some way or another XD
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Really, a lot of my good natural weapon and defense ideas will come when we get to multicellular and aware stage.
Now, I don’t know if these organelles are planned or are possible in nature although I think they are. I have the idea for 2 new organelles which I have mentioned in previous posts.
1. A chemical energy to thermal energy organelle. This would be used to warm the cell and allow it to exist in colder environments. Another use if for that water jet stream that I other earlier.
2. A chemical energy to electricity organelle. This would be used to stimulate other cells into leaving the area around you or provoking them to attack (depending on how they have evolved).
These organelles could be used for a lot when designing cells for multicellular and creature structure in aware. The chemical to thermal organelle could be used to make extremely hot points for various reasons (ice worm from subnautica popped in mind). The chemical to electricity is for more obvious reasons; making a creature that uses electricity like our electric eels.
Of course all of these require large amounts of your creatures’ energy to use so making creature with lethal electric shocks or heat that would cook a creature alive would most likely kill itself due to using all of it’s energy. But that’s just my overview of how I see these working.
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Maybe we could have an organelle editor, where we can create our own organelles. The game would calculate the MP based on how many processes it does, and how effecient it is. If the MP exceeds 100, then the game would nerf it until it costed 100 or less MP.
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Something that is in the long term plans is that you would have to engulf bacteria in order to turn them into organelles. So there would be only some of the prokaryotic structures available and all the other organelles would then be captured bacteria species.
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