Resource absorption is already scaled with surface area in 0.4.0, it wasnt in 0.3.4 though.
I know this thread is old but I have an idea to stop organelle gluttony. My idea is to make it where the more you invest into a organelle/reserch tree, the more the other unrelated organelles cost.
1 Like
And what we might also do is that the more distinct kinds of organelles you have, the less effective they are. Let’s say you have just mitochondria - then they are 100% effective and the production is going smoothly. But if you add for example chloroplast, the efficiency drops a bit - not that much, just ever so slightly, but if you were to add for example a chemoplast, the effectiveness of all organelles would drop even more, thus communicating to the player that it’s better to be specialized.
Example for clarification:
Your cell always has “180 %” efficiency to divide between the kinds of productive organelles
If you have only one kind of productive organelles, they all work with 100 % efficiency (in other words they are maxed out). But if you added a second kind of a productive organelle, you’d have to divide the 180 efficiency by 2 (as you have 2 kinds of productive organelles now). So every organelle would be 180/2, or in other words 90 % effective. That still seems reasonable, but if you were to add a 3rd one, you would get only 60 % efficiency out of all of them, which is something you’d like to avoid.
The logical reasoning behind this might be something along the lines of specialization, perhaps. What do you think?
(Even more clarification - it is not based on the number of organelles, but on the number of kinds, so 10 mitochondrie still work with 100% efficiency, but 1 mitochondria and 1 chloroplast work only with 90% efficiency. Also, the number might need tweaking, I’m not sure.)
Edit: This would only apply to organelles producing ATP
1 Like
Wouldn’t that just result in the player getting 50 of the same organelle instead of multiple ones? It doesn’t really solve the issue of spending all your MP.
1 Like
This would make more sense in the multicellular stage I think, because large colonies tend to have specialised cells, but microbes tend to diversify a little with their organelles. Protists for example have mostly mitochondria, but some also have chloroplasts. Sort of torn between plants and animals, and they seem to survive perfectly.
Thinking about it, you are both right
1 Like
I do like questkitty’s idea. Perhaps the game should punish organelle redundancy, so at a certain point, more of the same organelles will become too taxing to properly sustain.
1 Like
I think the game should make people aim for their cell to be perfect for its environment no more no less so if only having 2 organelles is best for it at that moment do to lack of food or other reasons than that is what the player will stop at instead of going overboard. Imo the best way to do this is like I said to make a point dump or an advantage to not useing all their points before they go a good way of doing this is to make things more expensive and let points stack with each editing session so people don’t feel the need to use them all in one go.
1 Like
It’s necro time! The problem I’m going to focus on today is not “I will just pick every single organelle in the game”, but rather “I will have 789645 organelles creating a cell the size of Manhattan”. As we know, cells are three-dimensional objects. But the calculation of mass of the cell right now is two-dimensional, taking just the hexes you are placing into account. What if the math fot the cells was done as if they were 3D? Meaning the volume of the cells would be increasing rapidly the more “area” (regarding mass of the cells are 2D as of now) they have? If I’m not mistaken, the result would be that the initial growth would be really easy, but with every hex added the cost per hex goes a bit up, making it easy to grow your cell regularly, but near impossible to make a monumental behemoth of a cell. This might require making the “weigh per hex” smaller, as there would be much more hexes taken into account now.
Btw, this change wouldn’t be visual, just the math behind the cell mass would be different.
6 Likes
IIRC there was discussion at some point about giving microbes behavior settings beyond the addition of physical changes like organelles. I think if a behavior evolution is made dynamic enough in the game, perhaps this would be a good MP dump for the game.
2 Likes
There already is behavior and behavior evolution, the player just cant change their species behavior values yet.
Is organelle gluttony really a problem?
In the current state of the game being big is rewarded. First of all, it is heavily encouraged, since after getting a nucleus you have to put some ATP producing organelles, then, ideally, some glucose production (and lysosome if they are already implemented). Only after that you will feel relatively fine, and that’s already around 20 hexes in size. Second thing is that being big means that you can engulf stuff and other cells can’t engulf you. And, as it was said earlier, MP system encourages player to put extra organelles, even if the player doesnt need them.
But is this a problem? Well, it definitely is, if we are looking only at a cell stage. However, lets not forget that there is also multicellular stage. And no matter how you balance it, being big should be rewarded until eyes and shells become a thing.
The only way I can see “solution to organelle gluttony” work is addition of organelle upgrades and other stuff, which costs a lot while not increasing cell size. It is the “nerf by buffing everything else” approach. Obvious problem with this solution is that everyone will spam upgraded organelles since they are better.
Having that in mind, I think that cell-stage specific organelles, like pilus, flagella and membrane should get big, costly upgrade trees. That way, player would have a choise - either spend MP on upgrades to have better chances of survival (being smaller but more adapted), or make some steps towards multicellularity (being bigger but less adapted).
So yeah, I dont think that organelle gluttony is a problem worth considering, since it would be solved indirectly as the game develops.
Probably belongs here:
1 Like
This thread is older tho
1 Like
What if the not used MPs were added into the next editor session instead of every session would be 100 MPs? That would be an incentive for the players spend less and save the points.
1 Like
Then you’d just spend way more MP the next round. I don’t really see a reason to keep MP for longer than a single generation. (Also, this is like the idea of being able to choose how long you’re in the editor, which was stopped for the reason that it allowed players to make massive changes that wouldn’t be supported by evolutionary theories)
2 Likes
The MP is a percentage of how much changes you can make during the time leap the editor represents. So it doesn’t make much sense that you can somehow do more changes than what is possible within a single time leap.
Though we have discussed a bit about being able to use the left over ATP to give you a boost for the next swimming around sessions, with increased HP more damage output or something like that.
Once we get upgradable organelles those will act as a good MP sink.
1 Like
However, as Earth life developed, it developed more quickly. Despite the Phanerozoic eon being “only” approximately 500 million years, it saw an enormous diversification of life that had not occurred in the billions of years of life’s existence before then. So I think more MP being available later in the microbial stage actually make sense. After the Boring Billion, things can change relatively rapidly.
1 Like
The editor will gradually represent shorter periods of time. So while you get to do 100% of possible changes (mutation points is basically a percentage), you get more editor sessions in shorter time. So initially the editor will be something like 100 million years, but once the time lowers to for example 20 million years, you get to do 5 times more changes in the same timespam (of course the amount of gameplay time will be same as before).
I like a lot of this. For proper organelles, it would make sense to haft to have the proto versions or get lucky and unlock it when engulfing the full organelle from another cell. It would also be nice to have it where you could combine proto organelles into proper organelles when they are adjacent and in the right shape for half price (even full price would be fine as it still gets around deleting). Cheaper, less hassle, and makes sense.
As for the extra MP, investing it into a cytoplasm/vacuole for a 1/4-1/2 payback and reducing the storage of said part could work.
My own thoughts:
- It would be nice to be able to shape the cell instead of just blobs. Adding a cytoskeleton organelle could enable this allowing some rigid and some flexible sections
- If flagellum are stacked (I would make it a small cost to merge them), it should make a larger flagellum. You could even apply this to other organelles that not only make the cell look pretty, but can also help with game performance as now the game is not rendering 100 parts if you have been playing a while
1 Like