As far as I have seen (partly from the wiki page about the Organism Editor, though I don’t know how valid that is) the game is planned to be able to express a wide range of different Planetary conditions, while giving the player the ability to set quite a few of them to his liking. My question would be, could for example low gravity and high air density be pushed to their limits far enough to allow the existence of creatures like a sky whale, which is, while undoubtedly awesome, painfully impossible in any reasonable atmosphere. Does Thrive strive to allow such extreme conditions leading to the emergence of an ecosystem mostly located in the skies, or is a scenario such as this considered to strange and scientifically unreasonable to be included in the game?
Sky whales aren’t impossible, look up “Aurelia and Blue Moon”
They have some very realistic depictions of animals in thick atmospheres and such. And they were created by very competent scientists.
Also I’ve always wanted to do a atmospheric version of the microbe stage. (Eg you float in the atmosphere) This stuff won’t make it In initially but we may add that possibility later.
We do however have plans for extreme planets/moons like Europa and titan and such.
You just may not be able to finish the game as aquatic civs won’t be getting to the space stage.
Yeah, from what I have seen, you guys seem to be quite adamant about this. Admittedly, rightfully so, since lack of metallurgy is a pretty crippling flaw. Although this makes one think … what about a species akin to eusocial eurypterids, with castes (let’s call them scouts) specifically designed to also roam the land for expended periods of time, let’s say to to scavenge there, while most of the normal labourers, soldiers and the queen remain on the sea floor. Admittedly, this would make the species itself technically amphibian, but since the only means of reproduction would be located in the ocean, it couldn’t just migrate on land and be done with it. Could the scouts by themselves now figure out metallurgy, share the knowledge with the rest of the hive, build up the necessary structures for refining iron on land and transporting the final products back to their kin below the sea? Or is this a stupid idea and I shall be banned for the crime of speaking about the dreaded Underwater civilization? ^^
That’s seems perfectly legitimate, it’s not that we “just hate underwater civs” if they have a way of getting around it that is grounded in possibility, your caste example, being amphibious etc. it’s perfectly fine. But yes that counts an amphibious. (Assuming that metallurgy in that extreme case wouldn’t just straight up instantly dry out the scouts and kill them)
There is a difference between “fully aquatic” and “some can get on land”.
I didn’t want to imply that you are biased against uncerwater civs, I just had the impression that the constant discussions about them and the annoyance about that have become a running gag around here. Although you mentioning the possibility of heat death from furnaces begs another question: How exactly will be decided if a technology is locked for a species or not? A set of specific requirements for each and every technology, for example “medium or high heat-resistence”, “no cutaneous respiration”, “reasonyble dextrous gripping limb(s)” and “organism is not currently located underwater” for metallurgy or some other mechanism? Since the amount of different technologies should not be too unbelievably expensive (relatively speaking), I could actually see this manual approach working out quite well.