I wanted to create a thread for volunteers who would like to reform parts of the Microbe Stage. Our stage is feature complete, but that doesn’t mean things can’t be tweaked towards becoming more polished. The trick is to make small tweaks that are maximally beneficial and alter existing mechanics, as opposed to completely changing up how systems work in game currently.
As such, the below is a good framework for us to understand the Microbe Stage, what it means to the entirety of Thrive, and what would be beneficial for volunteers to work on retrospectively.
Microbe Stage Breakdown
This young alien planet is immature and volatile, experiencing rapid fluctuations as life - limitless, yet vulnerable - takes hold. Resources are unpredictable, and organisms must figure out how to find energy in the middle of this flux. As the long story of life begins and your planet swings, can you find something that will work?
Competencies the Player Must Demonstrate
- Can they find a metabolic strategy that is successful in this world?
- Are they able to survive the dramatic conditions of a forming planet?
- Can they defend themselves sufficiently against other lifeforms?
Facets of Challenge
- The Environment - The planet’s environment is experiencing the most flux it will ever experience. Atmospheric compounds like oxygen and carbon dioxide dramatically swing, and numerous events, such as impacts, eruptions, and glaciations, are much more frequent and extreme.
- Resources - Because biogeochemical processes are not established, resources are incredibly unpredictable at first.
- Metabolisms - Each form of metabolism, though high potential, has challenges and constraints that the player must build around.
- Other Life-Forms - Other microbes evolve alongside the player. Though not as threatening at first, they present the first element of competition in a playthrough.
This will feed well into the Multicellular Stage. Because the Multicellular Stage will necessarily have more of a focus on optimizing internal systems and your organism’s body plan, just having the two stages be completely similar except in the number of cells you edit would be a drag, and wasted potential.
So any tweaks to the Microbe Stage going forward should focus on areas which exemplify what makes the Microbe Stage unique - features which reinforce that this is life’s first moments of making things work on a surprisingly inhospitable world.
The Environment
Goal: The World Itself is a Threat
Early life must contend with an atmosphere and a planet that is unaware of the fact that life intends to continue living.
Hindrances
- Environmental Tolerance is Very Shallow. If even one tolerance requires active maintenance by the player beyond just an MP point dump, players are more strongly reminded of their environment.
- Environmental Events Might be a Bit Underwhelming. Snowball Earth looks like it will become much more of a concern with photosynthesis balance tweaks, but meteors and volcanic activity might be underwhelming. Also, more frequent events that are smaller but impactful, like glaciation of individual regions, could be missing.
- Some Variety in Patches is Underwhelming. The recent current tweak helps distinguish patches, but we have some under-utilized value from terrain we can benefit from.
Resources
Goal: Resources are Unpredictable and Volatile
In a game focused on evolution, shifting strategies necessarily create impetus for strategy, change, and fun. Ensuring that the resources present in game are sufficiently volatile in the beginning mixes up every playthrough.
Hindrances
- Continuous Focus Needed for Compound Events - Compound events seem to be balanced solidly and are very beneficial to gameplay already. We need to ensure that they are balanced in a way that permits moments of scarcity, and impetus for change.
Metabolisms
Goal: Each Metabolism Has a Design Challenge
No matter what metabolism the player chooses, they will always be dealing with some sort of overarching concern. We need to make sure that all metabolic strategies have distinct “engineering problems” for the players to design against.
- Aerobic Respiration - The most energetic metabolism, but heavily dependent on the transition to an oxygenated environment.
- Photosynthesis - The day and night cycle completely binds all photosynthetic activity.
- Iron Respiration - Though energetic, the compound is very short-lived in your storage, necessitating active management of storage.
- Chemosynthesis - Relatively low energy, but sulfur also damages organisms who do not have tolerance.
- Thermosynthesis - Can be a very powerful source of glucose, but very environmentally dependent and mechanically demanding.
- Radiosynthesis - It is very difficult to make radiation a consistent strategy.
Hindrances
I think this part of the game is pretty solid overall, and that work would be more beneficial if put into other areas. Perhaps some more tweaking of hydrogen sulfide could be cool, but not particularly relevant.
Other Microbes
Goal: Microbes Present some Competition
Recent auto-evo work has done a good job of hooking multiple different parts and behaviors into the game. I expect that continued work here should do a solid job.
Hindrances
- Cells Are Infrequently Aggressive to the Player - Cells are often either trying to avoid the player, do not often use pilus or toxins/agents against the players, or, in general, are not very aggressive to the player. As such, other cells are often either something to eat, or are somewhat of a bother.
Most Beneficial Tweaks
- Expansion of Environmental Events - Making volcanic events and meteors more impactful would be beneficial. Introducing other events - like local glaciations, oxygen reduction events, etc. - will likely be beneficial.
- Refactoring Oxygen Tolerance - Since oxygen universally starts at 0%, this is a good factor to make more engaging. Reducing the max oxygen tolerance you can receive from the sliders (or perhaps seriously strengthening the total impact of anaerobic parts on oxygen tolerance) would make the transformation of the atmosphere much more significant to build strategy.
- Continued Resource Volatility Balancing - These seem to have a solid impact on gameplay, and could be sufficient as is. But ensuring that moments of scarcity do actually occur from time to time at the beginning of the game would be very rewarding.
- Encouraging Aggression in Auto-Evo - More enemies in Thrive would be very beneficial to mixing up what a player has to deal with from generation to generation.
- Continued Work on Terrain - Patryk’s work on terrain was very beneficial to hydrothermal vents. Continuing on this would be similarly beneficial for other patches, especially if unique attributes are present for each patch.