Besides being cheaper regarding evolutionary cost, Chloroplast is worse in every other aspect for cell space/ size value.
They both generate the same amount of sugar/ hex, but thylakoids also generate some energy, making them already more efficient for osmoregulatory cost. Other than that, thylakoids also give more storage capacity, since they give 0,25, that is 0,75 for 3 of them and at the same time chloroplast only gives 0,5.
The only thing going for the chloroplast regarding scaling is the ammonia and phosphate cost; they’re cheaper.
As an environmental factor, a single thylakoid also makes the same amount of oxygen as a chloroplast (at least based on the tooltip), and that makes thylakoids 3 times better at keeping oxygen levels higher in the environment too.
So in terms of long-term benefits, thylakoids are better in practically every aspect unless you need a lot of oxygen production quickly (in a single evolution phase).
A recommended solution for this balance is to make the chloroplast values simply multiplied by 4 instead of 3 (4 times more sugar production and 4 times more oxygen production.
Naturally, everything above can be trashed if the current values are by design and intentional.
This has been brought up recently, so I think that after the last release (0.8.1.1) I buffed the chloroplast glucose output by 30% to make it more useful. I hope that wasn’t yet released so that your numbers are outdated, and that in the next release the relative efficiency of the chloroplast is increased so that it becomes a useful organelle again.
1 Like
aah31415
(The maker of SitF, Radiostrocity, The Lifenote and TGBing; The Second Ascended...; And just maybe a security warning come alive...?)
3
Were there any problems with balancing like in the chloroplasts’ case for the mitochondrion organelle?
The CO2 production has similar differences with mitochondria and its prokaryotic version; they both produce the same CO2 amount, but the mito is 2 times larger, but that front of the O2 - CO2 balance is less of a problem.
Good thing there is git log so I was able to dig up when I made that change:
commit 6c249e7b2f3a88d17bc33c13756c0b1c9542b260
Author: Henri Hyyryläinen
Date: Tue Mar 11 10:26:33 2025 +0200
Buffed chloroplasts 20% to make them a lucrative upgrade (#6000)
So that is after 0.8.1.1 which was on February 24th. Meaning that the chloroplast buff is going to be in the next release and thus not yet in your numbers.
Also I forgot that the buff I made was just 20% (as photosynthesis was recently nerfed I didn’t want to undo all of that).
p.s. please don’t double post (it’s against the forum rules) instead quote parts of the posts if you want to reply to multiple things at once.
aah31415
(The maker of SitF, Radiostrocity, The Lifenote and TGBing; The Second Ascended...; And just maybe a security warning come alive...?)
7
Hopefully this will be THE chloplast balance patch to settle the organelle once and for all.
Also I sort of see the cost of the chloroplast being a good counterweight to it’s problems.