Beginning and Ending of the Multicellular Stage

Gameplay
1

Some scatterings of this discussion have occurred in multiple locations (Beginning Concepts on The Multicellular Stage, Theoretical background on the multicellular stage). Considering how important this is to the stage, I think it’s worthy to have a dedicated thread here. How will we refine the entry condition to the Multicellular Stage, and the win condition?

Defining the entry condition to the Multicellular Stage will help us define our starting point, and will create great harmony between our two stages. Meanwhile, defining our ending criteria will be useful in understanding what the player is building towards, and thus, what challenges and bonuses we can provide the player on this quest.

Some General Notes About Stage Transitions

When I think of each stage, I think of a question, or challenge, we are asking the player to answer. For example, in the Microbe Stage, I think the question is:

  • This is a young, immature planet going through some growing pains. Can you carve out a niche in this brave new world, and survive all the swings that get thrown out at you?

The entire Microbe Stage is thus balanced around this question. Resources can be fickle and challenging at first, each with their own difficulties, requiring mastery over your metabolic strategy. Environmental events should be rather harsh and challenging, forcing ingenuity and resilience. You have to upscale dramatically in capabilities as an organism, taking on massive new costs, like unlocking the nucleus.

Ultimately, progressing past the Microbe Stage and all of its challenges should be a firm answer: “yes, my organism CAN survive this planet, and I have found a strategy that works here”. This isn’t to say that said strategy or organism is set, but rather, the player has “mastery” over the planet to the point that their immediate success isn’t a question mark.

So, the Multicellular Stage cannot ask the same question or present exactly the same challenge - the player has proved they are proficient in that base competency of survival. We need to present a new question for the player to answer.

The beginning and ending stages of the Multicellular Stage should reflect the starting point of the player in answering the question the stage asks, and the winning condition should represent mastery of the question.

The Multicellular Stage Question

It could be worthwhile to enunciate what question we are asking the player to answer in the Multicellular Stage. My interpretation is:

  • You’ve proved that you deserve a seat on your planet; so did the lifeforms surrounding you. In the face of new threats, are you able to scale up your organism, in size and capability, without your foundations crumbling?

So I think the challenges we throw at the player include…

  • Inhibitions on scaling up.
  • Strong abilities with high energy demands, requiring optimization.
  • AI cells that are difficult to compete against - capable of hunting you, or extremely difficult to take down.

Entry/exit conditions, as well as the challenges we throw at the player in the pursuit of these challenges, should benefit these design ideas.

Ideas

Two ideas (that I am aware of) have popped up:

  • Placing and Upgrading Parts to Grant Multicellular Abilities

@Rathalos suggested a potential upgrade path for binding agents which grants stronger and stronger colonial benefits, and/or the placement of parts which confer Multicellular-required abilities/processes.

This is pretty intuitive for the player, and is pretty easy to conceptualize and balance. However, we don’t have a traditional upgrade system “path” mechanic in the game, and we need to be wary of providing too much clutter within a cell, the editor, or having too much of a “collect-all-parts” meta towards the end of the Microbe Stage.

  • Reach a Certain Number of Bound Organisms, But Cost of Binding is Expensive

We keep a number goal of sort, like how it is now, where the player must bind with a certain number of cells. However, we alter the binding agent to levy an additional ATP cost which grows with the number of bound cells. So binding with 1 cell costs 5 ATP, binding with 2 costs 10 ATP, binding with 3 costs 15, binding with 4 costs 20, etc.

This could be beneficial of representing the actual action of cells binding together, where the player seeks out . However, it has strong implications on balancing for the Multicellular Stage - this would imply that costs scale up the more cells are added, which would mean some serious balancing for adjacency bonuses and more. It also could make binding a bit of a hassle if not balanced properly, which is kind of presenting the same sort of issues we see with the nucleus grind (maybe not necessarily a bad thing, but something to definitely consider). The energy generation of a late-stage unicellular organism can be pretty all-over the place as well, so consistency and pacing is definitely a major question mark.

Progression Into the Macroscopic Stage

Three ideas have popped up so far.

  • Placing Down Specific Parts that are ATP Expensive

Kind of like placing down a nucleus, placing down certain parts in the late-multicellular. Pretty uniform to the Microbe Stage, but kind of repetitive and maybe not the most realistic.

  • Adjacency Bonus Goal

A pretty cool idea from Hh, where meeting certain criteria and reaching an editor goal surrounding the adjacency bonus mechanic are important. I quite like it, though I think we should think it out more fully. A lot of interesting implications here.

  • Size-Criteria

You progress once you reach a certain size, similar to how it is now. Pretty on the nose for becoming “macroscopic” and simple, but could be rather bland. Current implementation would definitely have to be altered a bit as well.

1 Like
2

These sound suspiciously like modifying the end of the microbe stage to me.

I personally think that the end of the microbe stage is fine, I don’t see a major need to modify the condition of the player demonstrating they know how to use the binding agent to go to the next stage.

This is the opposite of many planned benefits where more cells in a colony are purely good so to me it would be super weird to first punish the player for a big colony and once they get through the penalty then they unlock a bunch of benefits that just help when making a bigger colony.

The reason why I made my suggestion is that some team members were complaining that the end condition was too simple and easy to rush for the player. Which I do agree with and so I made that suggestion about needing to make different tissue types and place them intelligently before being able to move on. That would prove that the player has mastered the new system of specializing their cells which is the new feature of the multicellular stage compared to the microbe stage.

1 Like
3

On the Microbe to Multicellular transition:

I am afraid I do disagree. The transition right now is barebones enough that I always assumed it was a placeholder.

My main issue is that “colony gameplay” essentially is not a thing. You unlock the binding agents, place them, and the only reason you use the binding mechanic is to grab 4 other cells and transition. Seems like a bit of a waste of a mechanic, might as well have made placing the binding agent immediately put you in the multicellular editor and spared the effort.

I do recognise we declared the microbe stage finished and we don’t want to open that can again. But I always considered colonies to be multicellular-adjacent and figured they were a bit of an exception here, since quite some of the currently discussed plans also affect colonies. But I agree that any changes here should be carefully considered “minimal effort changes for high impact”, if that makes sense.

Our options are a bit limited because we don’t have unlock conditions on upgrades (otherwise creating a chain on binding agents would actually be quite simple).

I think if we do go this route, we don’t have to go overboard with it. You could for example have one upgrade on the binding agent (too expensive in ATP to buy in the same editor session), and an organelle that is unlocked after several editor sessions of having that binding agent upgrade. (or even skip that upgrade and just have one organelle unlocked by having the binding agents)

Like I said before: just give some reason for colonial gameplay to actually be an evolutionary step, rather than it lasting less than one generation.

I have to agree with Hhnyyrylainen here that it would be weird to add additional costs onto binding/making colonies when we are already struggling to make it look beneficial at all.

Only exception would be if the costs start off as very small/essentially negligible and only become prohibitive at the size “we don’t want players to get this large before macroscopic”.

In case we want minimal work/really don’t want to get into Microbe Stage-exclusive mechanics again, but can also agree that the transition should still be smoothed out a bit, maybe we can look at changing the condition just a little bit without adding whole new mechanics?

Examples:

  • The “transition to multicellular: x/5 cells” button only appears Y generations after you add the binding agent.
  • As above but after you bind something for the first time.
  • You need to reach the colony size requirement for Y generations before you can click the button.

(Currently you need to have the nucleus for 5 turns before you unlock the binding agents. That could be cut down a bit if overall Microbe Stage length becomes too long)

On the Multicellular to Macroscopic transition:

To expand a bit on this, rather than only having specific organelles that need to be placed down, you need to have whole specific cell types. Those would of course be decided by specific placed organelles, but ones that are mutually exclusive with other functions. It distinguishes from Microbe Stage in some way because you need different cell types to complete this objective.

An example I gave before is specialised reproductive cells, which as far as I am aware basically all complex multicellular organisms have (even if they don’t all have a germline like animals). I’m still looking for a good candidate for cell part to designate a cell as reproductive. It’s complicated a bit because IRL these are all about gametes for sexual reproduction. Which we don’t necessarily have in Thrive yet (and might not require), but IRL even single-celled eukaryotes do.

I am afraid that completely ignoring any “function-based” requirements during the Multicellular Stage could have some weird effects going into the Macroscopic Stage, with starting organisms not having the things we would expect them to have. In this case, reproductive organs.

We’re also still telling a story of biology, so I think making sure we include some critical IRL phenomena is a good goal, just like with the nucleus in the Microbe Stage.

I think this could be quite interesting if specified a bit more. At least it fully guarantees players are using the mechanics. It could even be used in combination with other requirements.

A potential pitfall would be that if not implemented carefully, players could be designing their organism purely to hit the requirement, rather than to make it actually perform well.

I think the size criteria can be salvageable if two requirements are met:

  • Blocking you from growing in size too fast. For example, having placing additional cells be more expensive compared to all the other options: editing cells, moving cells, replacing one type of cell with another type, etc.
  • There are some size related costs that are harsh enough that growing that large is impossible without engaging in the mechanics to compensate for it with increased efficiency.

But in a criteria that does not involve special functions, I probably still prefer the “adjacency bonus goal” idea. (which also implicitly has some size requirements anyway)

1 Like
4

Totally agree. And if anyone suggests anything else, I’ll personally force that person to program the change themselves.

I’m not sure if this is viable because it kind of seems like the binding “stage” is a bit of a chore for players. Though I suppose at the same time this is likely the case because it is so short and just a stepping stone to getting multicellular, but I’m not sure how much this part can be lengthened as there isn’t really that much special in the microbe stage binding mechanic.

This would at least definitely make the signalling agent basically mandatory for preserving sanity in the binding (hunting down members of your own species).

Isn’t this every single casual player in the microbe stage right now? The non-hardcore Thrive players just slap whatever organelles on their cell and hope to survive to the next generation when they can then take corrective action. (at least based on the let’s plays so far)

Though I guess the second stage would be the right place to start requiring the player to think more in the editor.

1 Like
5

Fair enough, I considered that one the least likely option anyway. Would the simpler condition of simply delaying the availability by a few generations (say, 3), be feasible? It leaves players with at least an opportunity to swim around a while with colonies as a tool in their pocket, rather than being immediately prompted to move on. (again, we can reduce the unlock timer on the binding agents themselves to compensate).

That would leave the opportunity to rebalance colonies to be a bit more useful. There’s not much point to that if it’s going to be immediately skipped.

I guess what I was trying to say is players should “do what they want to do” rather than “following the listed requirement”.

You’re right that typical player editing is not exactly optimised, but from what I’ve seen they do slap organelles on because they think it’s a good idea (in order to survive), a cool idea, or just something they want to try. If you’re playing the game like that, seeing “ah, I need to place a nucleus/binding agents to progress”, is not a major disruption, just an add-on to what they want to do. Very specific numerical requirements could end up with “instead of what seems like a good idea to me, I need to redesign my species to match these statistics”.

Perhaps I am overestimating the risk though. Players can still decide which types of cells they want, and how they differ, so there’s probably not too much of a straight-jacket.

6

Having an upgrade that costs 80 MP (? or so, it needs to be low enough that hard mode doesn’t lock it completely) to unlock colonies of size 4 or above, could be an easy way to limit it. If we need this kind of somewhat arbitrary slow down.

1 Like
7

Something slightly different that I mentioned in the Macroscopic Editor concept thread:

Somewhere in the Multicellular to early Macroscopic period we will probably make a transition from a blob with an arbitrary structure to organisms with symmetry or some other kind of structure, like the semi-fractal branching we see in plants. (something I have taken to calling “repetition patterns” in general) The idea would be that instead of the current effect, symmetry would be a semi-permanent choice that locks in that general shape, but in return the “extra” additions modifications done due to symmetry do not cost MP.

Relevantly to the topic here, there is a choice:

  1. Symmetry happens somewhere later in Macroscopic (so it’s irrelevant here).
  2. Macroscopic starts with you being already symmetrical, and either:
    • A: Symmetry (including any choice in types) is set at the moment of stage transition (so it’s irrelevant here)
    • B: Symmetry is inherited from what you had selected in Multicellular
  3. Symmetry is a choice you can make throughout either Multicellular or Macroscopic.

So, in the very specific case that we choose option 2B, having a symmetry type selected would be a requirement for going from Multicellular to Macroscopic.

I mention this because with the current Macroscopic editor concept, 2A (which seems the easiest?) would probably result in your Macroscopic starting organism not looking very much like you end of Multicellular design. (Probably only the cell types would carry over). All three other options do leave more possibility for that.

Well, that would delay it by one turn I suppose, which is better than nothing. Personally I was thinking of a simple turn delay on the Stage Transition button itself showing up, so that we don’t even need to add an upgrade. But I guess from the behaviour in the other stage prototypes, we might actually not have a standard infrastructure for that set up?

8

Well not really + we would need to explain to the player somehow that they just need to now wait a few generations and then they can advance (which might not be the best gameplay as the player can’t actively do anything) and so it’s also an UX problem.

1 Like
9

Good point on the UX, without that this would be a detrimental change, and making that UX would take valuable time. Though the waiting gameplay part is the same as with the unlock timer for the Binding Agent for example.

10

I support this, but I think having the upgrade increase the max cap by one instead of such a big jump would be smoother for progression. We can reduce the number of needed bound cells from, I don’t know, 5 to 4 if it’s too grindy. But we really do need to limit the pace of progression here. There needs to be a hurdle that the player jumps through for two reasons:

  1. Proving proficiency in beating the Microbe Stage’s challenges. You’ve adequately solved the challenge without skipping over too much of the first stage’s experiences.
  2. Normalizing pace. If players can just progress through the stage with no real limitation except for 30 seconds of trying to collect other organisms, it will be really hard for us to balance for playthroughs where the player could jump to the Multicellular Stage either within 5 minutes of placing the eukaryote or an hour after.

And, one other little thing - I think it would be ideal for the transition to Multicellularity happen once you reproduce successfully with your organism after clicking that button instead of how it works now, where clicking the button just jettisons you to the editor even 20 seconds after exiting the Microbe Stage editor for the last time.

The condition of progressing through something as significant as a stage shouldn’t be understanding how to use individual parts, but instead demonstrating competency and success against the primary challenges of the stage imo (similar to your point immediately after where you mention proving mastery over tissue differentiation). We can have a really shallow sense of progression and progress for the player if we go with the former.

I think you bring up a good point. I’ve also heard that one important measure for more complex macroscopic organisms is to eliminate the chance for “free-loaders” who don’t do much for the colony as a whole, and that macroscopic organisms solve this by having some sort of bottleneck. This is one really important reason for something like a zygote - the body-plan knows it has something like a “control” cell it can trust, so that more “selfish” cells can’t just reproduce throughout the body plan for their own success.

Making the player complete some broad goals with their body structure could be a good means of pacing progression.

1 Like
11

So I think we have something to work with when it comes to entering the Multicellular Stage. Though exact details depend on what Hh or other programmers are comfortable implementing, the baseline idea of there being a cap to the number of max binds you can have which you need to upgrade is solid.

The question then goes to exiting the Multicellular Stage. Looking at the overarching challenge of the Multicellular Stage, the player is answering a question of proving that their foundations are solid in the face of dramatically enhanced competition and scaling up. So I think we can break this down into two “sub-questions”

  1. Can you compete against other life-forms?
  2. Are you able to build the infrastructure needed for an organism to really scale up?

The first element represents a chaotic threat that will always be there. I think the second element will be key to our “win condition” of the Multicellular Stage. We should make the player reach objectives before they can proceed to the Macroscopic Stage.

  • Minimum size reached (15? 20? Whatever is best).
  • Rathalos’ suggestion of a Reproductive Structure being present is sounding better and better to me.

Hh brought up an idea related to a minimum adjacency bonus amount. I think that is an interesting idea that we should keep in our minds, but I think the adjacency bonus should be something the player uses in the pursuit of a goal rather than a goal by itself.

What is clear is that there needs to be a challenge to scaling up that the player has to overcome (this is realistic anyways).

SA:V Ratio

I’m talking about a broader overview of the stage in this post, but I think diving into this even briefly will be beneficial.

A higher SA:V Ratio…

  • Buffs process efficiency or rate
  • Decreases health

There are also inherent risks to an organism with a high SA:V - if one critical binding cell is killed, cells stemming from that one are cut off from the main body.

A lower SA:V ratio…

  • Weakens process efficiency
  • Increases health

There are two ways I’m thinking of SA:V…

  • A stat on an individual cell, based not on morphology of the cell but on how many sides it is surrounded. Cells can be surrounded by a maximum of 6 cells, and a minimum of 1 (0 as an individual stem cell perhaps).
  • An overall stat for the multicellular body plan as a whole.

If one is dramatically easier for programmers, I think either are solid. They just need changes to gameplay concepts. I am currently conceptualizing with the first in mind, but no strict requirements here.

Scaling Up

  • Adding more cells should present a challenge to overcome. If the player doesn’t properly manage their growth, their costs will be overwhelming.
  • Using adjacency bonuses and SA:V to fight against this effect are good facets of this challenge.

These effects can be separate from the Microbe Stage binding agent effects itself - something something “being a true multicellular organism adds many processes which are difficult to scale” - but within the stage itself, scaling up should be a challenge in itself.

The obvious mechanism to use is cost, but the question is: how?

  • Does it just manifest itself as a consequence of SA:V, since SA:V will naturally reduce as the organism grows in size?
  • Do we add a flat cost? This can overlap with the size costs of individual cells however.

But regardless, scaling up should absolutely add a very strong cost for the player to combat against.

Cellular Infrastructure & Complexes

Rathalos’ idea about placing down a reproductive structure opens up a lot of implications. If we use that as an end condition, then I think we shift focus of the player on ensuring that their organism is capable of implementing the root of systems needed to become Macroscopic.

I think combining this with Rathalos’ idea related to extra-cellular structures - though a bit tweaked - could result in some very interesting gameplay.

Complexes

I’m using “complex” here as an abstract name for a general structure or other facet of physiology in a multicellular organism which allows it to coordinate activities across numerous cells. But the basic idea is:

  • Players can place down very expensive (to an individual cell) parts which levy an effect on adjacent cells.
  • These complexes might require the presence of parts, but when placed, boost powerful bonuses on other cells without cost to neighboring cells.

Gap Junctions

Cells must be linked however, via gap junctions. Broken down very simply, gap junctions are channels which enable cells to share cytoplasm, enabling better transmission of signals and nutrients.

In Thrive, gap junctions…

  • Link ups complexes to neighboring cells, enabling strong effects.
  • Strengthens effects of adjacency bonuses.
  • Decreases negative process effect of having less surface area.

With the disadvantage being:

  • If one cell takes damage, all junctioned cells also take damage.
  • Increases damage taken.

Examples of complexes I can think of off the top of my head are:

  • Motor Complex - Dramatically boosts sprint speed of linked flagellum.
  • Anti-Toxin Complex - Dramatically weakens effect of engulfing an organism with a toxin of linked cells.
  • Signalling Agent Complex - When next to another complex, extends effects to all adjacent cells without need for gap junctions. Adjacent cells also are penalized less for less surface area exposure.

A reproductive complex, akin to Rathalos’ suggestion, would be an example of such a part. Placing such a part can dramatically increase the pace at which linked cells grow, and once placed, confers a MP mutation discount to all changes in the cell.

Regardless - we need to see the effect of adjacency bonuses, and see how impactful such a stat will be to gameplay. Once that is in, we need to find a way to make adding more cells have some sort of constraint. After that, we can think of more elaborate concepts.

PS - as a general note, having size be an important thing to overcome is also good because it legitimizes the ending goal being reaching a certain size. Since the multicellular to macroscopic jump is our biggest cut off, we’re basically implying that the organism just kept doing what the player did from cells 1-20 instead of “brushing off the magic” or whatever of getting bigger.

2 Likes