Quick Question Thread

Current Game
2118

This is entirely untrue. It was suggested that if the AI progressed to multicellular before you, they would either:
A: Transcend the next generation (which, with the current plan of locking galactic stage until the player researches FTL cannot happen), or
B: Would pollute/acidify the ocean in Space Stage (which is being used as an argument for not letting them move on, though I personally believe they should be allowed to move on and pollute the ocean)

It was also mentioned that the current Dev team believes that they can’t handle programing the AI to react to the player being an earlier stage than them. I personally believe they are mistaken, but also don’t believe it’s worth arguing with them over at this time.

If your Microbe can survive the oceans being polluted/acidified, you should be able to stay a Microbe until your sun dies, possibly longer.

3 Likes
2119

Hhyyrylainen did say a word or two about what happens if AI advances before you could:

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2120

Define “Gameover”. In a game about life, being alive is being in the game. Consider the following:
Humans are Space Stage Creatures . . . and Earth still has:

  • Single Celled Organisms
  • Microscopic Multicelled Organisms
  • Primitive Macroscopic Organisms
  • Aware but Unawakened Organisms

They are all still doing well, and WE would be extinct if they were not.

Additionally, as has been said before, not every player is a “Winning is the ONLY thing that matters” player. I, for example, when playing Elder Scrolls Oblivion or Skyrim, take the time to READ the books (NOTE: not Open/Close and get reward, but READ). In World of Warcraft, in addition to also reading the books, I took the time to Explore and Experience the Story (which, on a PVP server, made me unpopular).

Going Extinct because the AI is one generation ahead of you is nonsense and I will avidly post against it as long as I have access to this forum.

NOTE: Being in the Galactic Stage and the AI Ascending before you can be counted differently. That is fine as a lose condition. Also, being harder to survive being left behind makes sense, and the AI trying to stop you from becoming a Social species makes sense. I would think your newly Awakened creature would likely lose the war with the Space Stage AI, but you should have the chance to fight that war, if you survive the Pollution/Acidification of the Oceans and Destruction of the Forests to get that far.

4 Likes
2121

Think about the timescale differences between the stages. If the AI reaches awakening stage, within a few million years they can reach society. If they get to society stage, they are a mere few thousand years from reaching the stars, and game simply cannot simulate hundreds of thousands of years of galactic civilization, and possibly ascending, between two instances of you reproducing, because that is what would happen if the AI starts exponentially growing and you aren’t at least neck in neck with them. I’d say that if the AI reaches society stage and you aren’t also in society stage, at that point game over makes sense. You could say that this should be generalized to the AI ever being ahead of you, or your could say there’s no reason you can’t catch up from single cell to multicellular, or multicellular to aware, and I tend toward the latter, but both make sense.

4 Likes
2122

This is from the Wiki: What is Thrive
"Progression through the stages is not necessarily an objective of the game. We do not want to compel the players towards progressing past a stage of gameplay they may be enjoying at the time, thus there will generally be no penalizations to the player for remaining in the same stage for an extensive period of time. "

6 Likes
2123

Well looks like gameover “AI ahead of you” condition stuff might be bound for getting clearer in the future if it’s rather unclear as of the present.

4 Likes
2124

I realize this would be VERY difficult to program, but, perhaps, to meet in the middle, there could, eventually, when Thrive has the funding, manpower, and popularity to attempt this, be 3 settings:

  1. As Wiki Says: or the AI never passes you up to the next stage, as I am not sure how else to not penalize the player for taking there time.
  2. Realistic/Competitive: Getting passed by the AI is a Loss. I never have and never will understand why so many people want this. Or perhaps they are just the more vocal ones.
  3. Letting the AI pass you, but have it slow down afterwards, making the game more difficult, while still giving you a chance to catch up.
4 Likes
2125

It should be noted that besides gameplay factors, there are also science factors at play in this game’s development. You wouldn’t expect a microbe which just started forming multicellular colonies to outcompete a biota of cambrian explosion level creatures before they manage to reach sentience, would you?

1 Like
2126

Microbe creatures are still around today, clearly they are competing just fine.

2 Likes
2127

This is why time limits, I think, need to be tied to the difficulty mode. The AI being in danger of advancing past you should be a fun condition to try to combat against (and probably should be disabled entirely in easy mode).

The reason why I’m very against even trying to make the game work is exactly this:

It would be an absolute nightmare to design the game simulation, performance, and program being able to make this work in any other way than just declaring the game to be over.

If we put this into the game plans we are going to make each stage so much slower than if we just make the game an experience with a start and a finish and constrain the AI to playing the same stage as the player. BTW this is exactly the massive problem that a full multiplayer mode for Thrive would have (and there’s no easy solutions there either).

However a pretty key question is that could a new multicellular life branch evolve after many multicellular species already exist? If not then being a single cell when multicellular creatures are already prevalent would be a permanently locked to the microbe stage scenario, which at least needs a big popup telling the player that they can no longer ever beat the current save.

5 Likes
2128

It would certainly be a challenge, trying to evolve when there are no niches to evolve into could be what finally kills them, but they should at least be able to try, though a warning that the difficulty level has significantly jumped higher is a good idea.

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2129

Someone should check but I have a slight recollection that the jump from single celled to multicell might be so big that it only happened once on Earth, which would kind of imply it might be biologically impossible to do the jump if there is already a multicellular species.

3 Likes
2130

You might be thinking of the nucleus or neuron or something because multicellularity is kinda famously convergent. Here’s some sources I found:

According to this it has evolved over 20 times. I believe they’re counting colonial organisms, but multicellular eukaryotes with specified structure has happened several times in fungi alone, and all the kingdoms did it separately.

In fact, I went to check how many times it had achieved complexity and wikipedia had me covered!

However, complex multicellular organisms evolved only in six eukaryotic groups: animals, symbiomycotan fungi, brown algae, red algae, green algae, and land plants.[9] It evolved repeatedly for Chloroplastida (green algae and land plants), once for animals, once for brown algae, three times in the fungi (chytrids, ascomycetes, and basidiomycetes)[10] and perhaps several times for slime molds and red algae.[11]

Multicellularity is in fact something you can catch up on. I think evolving a nucleous is far too easy by comparison, and if we’re letting the player keep going when the AI gets one of those first (Which is often the case when I get distracted migrating somewhere specific or going really fast before i get one), we should let them keep going if the AI becomes multicellular.

7 Likes
2131

In real world there is only 1 agreed-on nucleous acquiration event

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2132

Yeah that’s my point. I kinda feel like they way we handle the nucleus makes rather little sense. I quite enjoy it but it’s always confusing.

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2133

I guess the reason why we handle the nucleus that way is because otherwise we’d have 2 stages for microbes.

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2134

I am sorry if this was answered before, but I just wanted to clarify if pausing an organelle only affects me (the Player), or does it affect all the Player’s same species organisms, including those located in different patches?

1 Like
2135

Pretty sure it only affects the player cell… No reason why it’d impact other cells of their species too.

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2136

Not specifically about the game, but why does the Thrive Forum use Tribal ranking instead of Awakening ranking?

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2137

I think “awakening” is split into “sapient” and “tribal” but this could very well be incorrect…

1 Like