Beginning Concepts on The Multicellular Stage

[Deus]

@hhyyrylainen

How would this actually work? What if the player already is so big that they get immediately wrecked once they go multicellular?

I think either two ways:

1. A flat cost that gets added per additional cell, starting in the Multicellular Stage
2. Have size-related costs occur since the beginning of the Microbe Stage.

We definitely don’t want costs to suddenly be sprung on players, so having it either be something that starts adding up within the stage or have it be a universal thing would be ideal. I think it would benefit the microscopic stage gameplay as a whole, so imo, option 2 would be ideal. Plus, if we have the starting Multicellular Stage organism be multiple cells, that could be complicated to make compatible with option 1.

@hhyyrylainen

So we want adjacency bonuses for organelles? And that would also apply to the microbe stage?

Commented this already in the above post, but this would be cell-to-cell adjacency, not part-to-part. If you would like more detail on this, I can expand - I think it’s somewhere above though.

@hhyyrylainen

Thinking about the actual implementation of adjacency bonuses on the hex editor screen, where would be put them? And more importantly if we have these many overlaid effects how are we going to get the players to understand them?

That is a good question - I think Civilization could be a good reference for UI:

• Picture of the impacted compound/process with a % change next to it - green is good, red is bad (if we add negative effects, which I’m not sure if we will/should).
• Rigidity slider makes these numbers increase or decrease.

@hhyyrylainen

I’d even argue that we shouldn’t have any immediate push mechanics, because like I said before it’ll suck if you get to multicellular all excited and then get hit with so many penalties that you cannot even survive and need to load an older save to tweak your cell before it is “safe” to go multicellular.

Yeah, any effect in this regard should only be applied as the Multicellular Stage goes on, or should be based on mechanics which are unchanged in going between the Microbe/Multicellular. So for size-related costs option 2, it would be a carry over from the Microbe Stage applied at a cellular level which doesn’t jump going from one stage to the next. Or for SA:V, it’s a largely negligible effect at first.

Though I will say that I think we should have atleast a bit of a push mechanic - especially if we go with the “you are supercharging a freaky organism” interpretation with balancing and such, having too much benefit can harm the minus side in the plus/minuses of strategy.

@hhyyrylainen

I think @Rathalos said something about wanting to change the “20 cells to proceed” criteria to be something else. Maybe it could be reworded like you need at least 3 cell types (that are placed) and that you have at least 5 cells with a +10% modifier from adjacencies. Or something like that that you need to actually design stuff to advance?

Huh, that is an interesting interpretation. One other interpretation I got was reproducing a certain number of times with some late-multicellular part, representing your organism getting ready for seriously upscaling. But this could work too.

@hhyyrylainen

n terms of the first features I suppose that hex placement adjacency bonuses, both for organelles and cell types as a whole (and maybe this needs the cell specialization bonus to be done as well to know what cell types want to be next to each other) could be a good first set of features to do as it’ll upgrade the body plan editor to have more significant effects.

Agreed here, except for the part-focused adjacency

@Rathalos

As for push factors in general:

I think the most important thing is what it should be in all of Thrive: If you don’t take advantage of the mechanics, others still will and they should be able to outcompete you as a result.

While I do agree to a certain extent, I do think that fully relying on auto-evo/AI to present a push can lead to some very inconsistent design. You’ve done some great work with auto-evo balancing so far, but it ultimately is an algorithm juggling a bunch of things at once - there will likely be a good number of playthroughs where the push isn’t fully there from other organisms. So having a push that is inherent to the editor forces the player to grapple with something. Challenging organisms would be a bonus.

Now, I do think that auto-evo in the Multicellular Stage should be really pushed towards making Multicellular organisms that are a threat to you. But again, and especially in a sandbox/editor game, the actual creation process of your organism should present itself with some puzzles.

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So ultimately, I see the immediate mechanics to implement as a base are:

1. As Rathalos says - specializing your cells more provides more of a bonus to that process.
2. Adjacent cells of the same type receive a bonus to this effect, amplified by the extent of your specialization.

I also agree that speed and growth balancing are good immediate things to focus on.

Two points I have:

1. Should there be some sort of debuff applied in combination with the adjacency buffing? Not fully sure on this, and we can introduce some sort of “debuff” to other mechanics, like SA:V.
2. I think we should start a separate thread listing potential adjacency and specialization bonus effects.