As we know, endosymbiosis is the act of engulfing a smaller cell and rather than consuming it, letting it live in return for other functions. It is a common idea that Thrive should include this feature, but the problem yet remains as to how exactly it should be included. Below are a couple mechanics I have proposed as methods to implementing this large feature.
Proposed mechanics regarding organelles formed via endosymbiosis:
A: Premade organelles are locked until the player consumes cells that contain the required parts. Example: Player engulfs bacteria with 3 photosynthesizing components, thus unlocking the chloroplast. This solution would likely be the easiest to implement but would come at the cost of limitations on what players can become.
B: Engulfed symbiotes are added to a saved library of organelles that could possess limited slots. These organelles would behave as a clump of parts wrapped around their own membrane that can be placed anywhere in the player’s cell to provide proccesses relating to the parts within the membrane. The player can delete symbiotes from their library if none of them are currently present inside the cell.
In the case of option B, we would need a method to determine when a player engulfs a cell for endosymbiosis instead of mere predation. A couple option preposals are listed below.
A: Randomly determined chance for engulfed cells to be added to the player’s library, or perhaps a temporary section of it to allow the player to confirm they want that cell as an organelle.
B: Seperate hotkey or toggle for engulfing for symbiosis. Simpler and could eliminate potential frustration from rng but could be seen as too many buttons for just engulfing.
One problem with endosymbiosis like this might be that many cells the players encounter will be far from simple, since they could possess flagella or parts that would lead to the symbiote being an inefficient organelle. A method to overcoming this would be allowing the player to edit saved symbiotes at the cost of the cell’s limited MP. This would let the player “trim the fat” by removing unwanted parts such as excess cytoplasm or that one rustacyin mixed with the metabolosomes.
Another option could be to automatically trim down engulfed cells to whatever organelle they possessed the most of. For example; engulfing a cell with 4 nitrogenase and 1 metabolosome would result in an organelle that consist of 4 nitrogenase.
Another problem presented by endosymbiosis would be the purpose of a nucleus in terms of gameplay, as well as to specify if symbiotes become a nucleus or a mere vaccuole.
My idea for the nucleus would be to provide the player with more slots in their library for symbiotes, and potentially allow for more complex cell behaviors in the event that we allow players to modify them. This would make it make so that the nucleus is important for complex cells, but not entirely required. As for specifiying if an engulfed cell becomes a nucleus or vaccuole, perhaps we could use the amount of cytoplasm to determine function. Symbiotes that consist majorly of cytoplasm would become a nucleus, where as symbiotes that were 1 or 2 hexes would be vaccuoles. However this solution would prevent players from having massive vaccuoles if they so desired. So Ideally we would perhaps need some form of toggle.