Threshold System
I was reading through our plans for Macroscopic and Multicellular stages and I wanted to share some thoughts on limbs and appendages.
So as I see it we should allow users to make whatever organism they want, while still keeping it as scientific accurate as possible. For that I suggest a system of a threshold. Let me explain how it would work.
1.Worm
First of all our player would start with a typical “worm-like” organism, functional enough to survive, simple enough to diversify into anything.
At some point player would likely want to become more complex to experience new mechanics and playstyles - that’s where a Bump comes in. Bump would have very little effect on the player, for example as a method of shifting the center of mass, increasing surface area or changing the way water floats around it.
2. The Threshold For The Appendage
Once that bump reaches a certain threshold such as overall mass distribution or % of metabolic processes done by that bump, it would be classified as an appendage. That way when player has a small organism developing new appendages won’t be a problem, but as organism gets bigger and bigger new bumps will have less and less chance to reach that threshold. Think about it as a worm having a small bump that affects its body dynamics, while the same-sized bump on a whale would have virtually no effect at all.
In our case organism’s bump would reach that threshold by having both aerodynamic and center of mass effects.
After that players can decide if they want to apply muscle tissue or not
A. Muscles
In that case the appendage becomes a limb, allowing players to use it for locomotion or interaction (think legs, arms and fins)
B. No Muscles
In that case the appendage stays as an appendage. Player would still be capable to apply muscles to it, but it might also loose its appendage status if the threshold isn’t met anymore. Appendages might still be used in a similar way as jellyfish tentacles, sexual ornaments, external gills, thermoregulation or in any other way player would come up with.
3. Conclusion
The threshold system would be a simple way to organize all appendages and limbs players would design, while making a development of completely new limbs at later stages less likely, keeping the realistic part of the game.
3.1. Random Thoughts
Players would likely find some ways to speedrun their way through reaching that threshold in unexpected ways, but what I think could be a possible way to do this is to just start pumping a lot of blood in these bumps thereby increasing their metabolic value (oxygen exchange). While it would work if player want to make external gills, might be a little counter intuitive for legs or arms.
Should limbs also be capable of loosing their limb-status? I can imagine player developing 20 limbs early in the game, using only 4 of them for locomotion for the majority of the game and then developing 16 brand new hands while they are the size of an elephant. Might still be somewhat realistic I guess since maintaining those limbs would make competition with other species harder.
While we are on the topic of elephants, with this system turning nose into a new limb should be pretty easy.
The biggest issue I see so far is how tube feed should be classified as they only can be only classified as limbs/appendages when there are a lot of them. So maybe a proximity to the next appendage or per segment could be added? That way the effect could be calculated (ΔCenterOfMass + ΔAerodynamics + ΔMetabolism) * NumberOfLimbsClose = effect