With 0.8.1 just having been released with the tolerances feature, but sadly not much feedback having come in yet, we need to talk about finishing the feature.
Due to time constraints I was not able to add in organelles affecting the tolerances. So that’s something I will tackle really soon. But there’s also other stuff like auto-evo probably needs a bit of fixing in terms of the tolerances feature. And the balancing probably needs reconsidering, there’s been some comments on the community forums about that, @Deus. Then also I think the debuff thresholds should be made smoother so that like it just doesn’t immediately apply a 10% debuff when you aren’t suitable. I think instead the debuff should linearly start from 0 and go up to like 20% (as I think the system was made really lenient in this initial implementation so making it a bit harsher in the next release would be a good test to do).
Not fully related to the tolerances feature is that I think we need to refactor the MP remaining calculation system as it is very complicated and despite struggling for multiple days I couldn’t get the tolerances fully working with it. So I think a simpler approach is needed for that.
So here’s a summary (with bolded items being ones I’m going to work on, and everything else is up for grabs):
Making organelles add bonuses (and maybe negatives?) to tolerances
Making debuff conditions apply more linearly and scaling up the debuffs to 20%
Making auto-evo work better with the tolerances
General balancing of the tolerances (for example debuff values, how big adaptation ranges should be, when perfect adaptation status is granted, should max pressure tolerance range be much wider, MP costs)
Refactoring the underlying MP calculation system to make it possible to fix it for the tolerances
I guess that’s not so many items, but at least for auto-evo I don’t think I can really do much for it so I’m hoping at least someone will jump on that. I’m opening some less critical smaller things related to tolerances as issues.
I do agree with the linear penalty debuffs, as well as bumping the max up. It was harder to be so harsh when the penalty was applied flatly since there would be the concern of punishment for the most incident straying from preferences. But with this gradual debuff, we could both ensure the system isn’t too strict while ensuring that tolerances do what they are supposed to do: constraint habitable ranges.
I’ll get to work on general balance concerns. I did personally experience some gripe with the pressure tolerance, but I wasn’t sure if that was an issue with the MP at that point, so I didn’t want to comment on it. I’ll retest it, but I remember thinking it was pretty strict.
Ideally, I think the pressure range should cover two adjacent patches without letting go of too much of the benefit incurred from having a narrower tolerance range. I think temperature should generally require the most attention from the player, whereas the other conditions should require adjustment only when making considerable moves up and down the patch column.
Organelle based bonuses and negatives would be a very easy way of adding depth to the mechanic, which is a bit lacking currently (more of a “tweak and forget” thing rather than something which requires some sort of attention, therefore making environmental condition changes pretty inconsequential and easily adjustable). It could also be an easy way of simulating the fact that larger, more complex organisms tend to be more sensitive in their habitable range preference over less complex organisms, since there are more biological agents, enzymes, steroids, etc. involved which must all be held in ideal conditions rather than a few specialized one in prokaryotes and archaebacteria.
I had such a list written before on the prior thread which I will paste here. I’ll look over the organelles again, but these should be pretty sufficient:
Thylakoids and Chloroplasts - Shift environmental ranges towards sunlight strongly, and to oxygen weakly. One or two should generally cover sunlit patches for most organisms. Thylakoid-bearing organisms will weakly gain tolerance to oxygen, and organisms with chloroplasts could be able to get away with just having those as long as their patch doesn’t have a super-oxygenated condition.
Metabolosomes and Mitochondria - Both boost tolerance to oxygen, though metabolosomes to a lesser extent. Players possessing mitochondria should tolerate most oxygenic conditions. Also slightly reduces tolerance to heat, but not to a significant degree.
Thermosynthase - Strongly shifts tolerance towards extreme heat. These boosts will be relatively strong, to allow players to inhabit the very patches in which thermosynthase will be actually useful.
Hydrogenase - Shifts tolerance away from oxygen.
Nitrogen-Fixing Plastids - Shifts tolerance away from oxygen.