A Comprehensive Concept for the Macroscopic Editor

[Rathalos]

@Deus

I still think that higher SA:V should generally reduce tolerance to cold just based off the fact that structurally, thinner objects are much more likely to freeze thoroughly and snap in colder environments.

Keep in mind that as I said before, SA:V will be at its maximum overall at the start of the Macroscopic Stage and it will generally go down from there. And we can’t have those dying from the cold in a temperature that their Multicellular Stage precursor was fine in. That’s the whole reason I was thinking of only going in a singular direction with that: lowering SA:V improves cold resistance.

But I think that’s compatible with what you’re saying? And I agree that moving from low SA:V to higher should generally result in lower cold tolerance and improve heat tolerance.

@Deus

But that does present an interesting divergence. Perhaps some sort of adaptation can incline SA:V to being better for heat tolerance, maybe related to a skin attribute? Not sure on the specifics, but I think that can be represented through a sort of unique adaptation, and by default, SA:V counteracts heat.

I think there’s indeed a number of ways we could implement it. The sail structure to begin with would be either an attribute of a meatball or an added appendage, right? So we would have either a slider or a check box mutation for “high vascularization”. That would then make it affect your tolerances more (so more improvement to heat tolerance and more reduction to cold tolerance), but it would also have some ability to improve your cold tolerance based on light intensity. So with the right balancing it would be helpful in some places for warming up, but terrible for arctic regions.

@Deus

I think I understand what you’re getting at, though we would want to make sure this is clear to the player and provide a clear indicator of what is causing a greater effect of SA:V on temperature tolerance.

I agree that it would be a challenge clear to the player what happens when they move to a “warm-blooded” animal, but I think it makes sense. Even without implementing that though, I think the scaling I laid out works as the default if we don’t make a distinction between endotherms and ectotherms.

@Deus

Related to SA:V being more important for gigantotherms - perhaps the SA:V effect on temperature is tempered by mass, so that a lower mass provides a weaker coefficient, whereas a higher mass provides a stronger coefficient? That way, the extremely low mass progenitor has almost no temperature effect from SA:V, while more progressed organisms will have to worry about it a bit more.

I do again think bringing mass into it is not super useful, as (unless we’re bringing in things like minerals which shouldn’t be producing heat anyway) greater mass = lower SA:V and shape can only mitigate this pattern. So adding mass in explicitly is I think not necessary.

With the gigantotherms comment I was really just saying that realistically at the size of a worm or frog, the SA/V is really not helping keep an animal warm. You really need to get to the scale of a great white shark or leatherback turtle before it matters. In other words, the effect of SA/V on temperature tolerance is just small by default. I suspect it would work out naturally, but we could also look at non-linear scaling if necessary.

@Deus

think instead of the sliders setting your tolerance, any sort of slider should nudge your tolerance. So instead of your tolerance slider being “I want to set my tolerance at 5 Degrees C”, it’s more “I’m adjusting my slider to have 5 Degrees C more tolerance towards the cold at the cost of 5 Degrees less tolerance to heat”.

Not sure I fully follow what is the difference compare to changing the “center point” as now?