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:
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This thread is older tho
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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.
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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)
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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.
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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.
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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
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