To try and round out the discussion on this thread into some conclusions, I’ll write up a full picture of how I see the Microbial Biomes System working in Thrive. These are just my thoughts so please feel free to suggest different ideas if you have them. I just want to move towards a final and complete concept that we can put into the wiki and then implement in a future update.
Here are the relevant threads I could find:
A thread where we discussed the membrane’s role in protection from the environment: Membranes characteristics
A thread about the penalties a cell will incur if out of their tolerable environment range: Environmental Tolerance Adaptations
The Microbe Stage Appendices where we had taken some notes on differences between biomes: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1OTEzsEAKld5V8NBBOvXvsIix_tIgzsyB8-zZAW6T3B8/edit?usp=sharing
And of course this thread where we talked about how to differentiate between Microbial Biomes.
There’s also the Compound toxicity thread where we discussed the possible toxic effects of some compounds. This, alongside the Biogeochemistry (Carbon Cycle) thread, I think strays more into compounds territory which we can address in a future discussion. For now let’s not overwhelm ourselves and just focus on environmental variables.
Default Tolerance Ranges
Here’s a list of the starting, default environmental tolerances for the first living species on any planet/playthrough.
Temperature: 15-45 °C
Pressure: 0-100 atm
Light: 0-5%
pH: 5-9
Salinity: 0-50,000 ppm
From what I could find online, these are the living conditions of normal (non-extremophile) organisms.
Biome Ranges
Here’s a list of all the biomes and their typical environmental values.
Hydrothermal Vents (Starting Biome)
Temperature: 60-400 °C at the vents, 0-4 °C nearby
Pressure: 100-400, or 400+ atm
Light: 0%
pH: 4-10
Salinity: 35,000 ppm
Notes: Since Hydrothermal Vents are typically found at diverging plates, they have the pressure and light stats of the Bathypelagic biome. This does raise a question though. Notice that the Temperature and pressure conditions of Hydrothermal Vents are outside of the default living conditions of normal life on Earth. Should we make the starting cell species be adapted to the Hydrothermal Vents, instead of starting with the Default List? Scientists believe that life started on the edges of the hydrothermal vents where the water was not extremely hot. Eventually, some of those cells evolved to live directly in the hot waters, while the rest spread over the rest of the world and led to life as we know it. So do we model the hydrothermal vents as the hot waters at the center of the smokestacks? Or as the warm waters nearby? Or both? Or do we create an intermediary biome?
Abyssopelagic (Ocean Floor)
Temperature: 0-4 °C
Pressure: 400+ atm
Light: 0%
pH: ph 7
Salinity: 35,000 ppm
Notes: None.
Bathypelagic (Deep Ocean)
Temperature: 4 °C
Pressure: 100-400 atm
Light: 0%
pH: 7
Salinity: 35,000 ppm
Notes: None.
Mesopelagic (Mid Ocean)
Temperature: 4-20 °C
Pressure: 20-100 atm
Light: 0-1%
pH: 7
Salinity: 35,000 ppm
Notes: None.
Epipelagic (Ocean Surface)
Temperature: 11-20 °C
Pressure: 0-20 atm
Light: 1-100%
pH: 7
Salinity: 35,000 ppm
Notes:
Underwater Cavern
What stats should we use? I don’t know what biomes to research online.
Tidepool
Temperature: 11-20 °C
Pressure: 0 atm
Light: 100%
pH: 7
Salinity: 35,000 ppm
Notes:
Coastal
Temperature: 11-20 °C
Pressure: 0-20 atm
Light: 1-100%
pH: 7
Salinity: 35,000 ppm
Notes: Is there any reason for this to have different stats to Epipelagic?
Ice Shelf
What stats should we use? I don’t know what biomes to research online.
Estuary
Temperature: 11-20 °C
Pressure: 0-20 atm
Light: 100%
pH: 7
Salinity: 34,000 ppm
Notes: From what I can find this is just Epipelagic with reduced salinity.
Adaptations
A list of all the adaptations that can be evolved to change environmental tolerance. These are based off of adaptations currently in the Microbe Stage Appendices, as well as discussions on the forums and what I could find online. Note that cell walls supposedly offer resistance to many environmental variables.
Also note that some variables only have fewer adaptations. This is since there is only one direction of hazard for those variables, such as light where increasing intensity means increasing radiation, but reduced intensity is not a risk. However, other variables have bidirectional hazards like temperature, where both high temperatures and low temperatures can be hazardous. These have more possible adaptations.
Temperature
- Heat Resistant Proteins
- Antifreeze Proteins
- Cell Wall (Cellulose, chitin, silicate, etc.)
Pressure
- Higher/Lower Internal Osmotic Pressure
- Contractile Vacuole
- Cell Wall (Cellulose, chitin, silicate, etc.)
Light
- Pigment Proteins
- Cell Wall (Cellulose, chitin, silicate, etc.)
pH
- Acid Neutralizing Proteins
- Alkaline Neutralizing Proteins
- Cell Wall (Cellulose, chitin, silicate, etc.)
Salinity
- Halophilic Proteins
- Cell Wall