So while I’m waiting for everybody to come back from their breaks, I decided it would be a good idea to go ahead and make a sort of rough draft of a balance plan that we can then modify and expand how everyone wants. This should hopefully be easier than building a plan from scratch after alot of feedback and discussion.
Original Rambling
Time and difficulty
The microbe stage will ideally last around 3 hours on average should the player continously aim for reaching the next stage. Overall Difficulty will generally be mild, relaxing when not in the presence of immediate danger. AI will occasionally target the player but lose interest if the player proves to be too much trouble.
Difficulty may be heightened in patches that present a hazardous environment to the player, giving players an optional challenge to surmount should they choose so.
Membrane balance
I would like for the player’s choices in membrane styles to be more impactful with larger pros and cons, and so I have listed some stats to reflect that below. (One thing in particular that bothers me about current stats is the osmoregularion differences are not impactful at all.)
Single membrane:
Quick to move, quick to eat, quick to die. Players who like to live dangerously will stick with this one.
+0.1 Mobility
+2 Osmoregulation cost
+0.3 Absorption speed
-50 HP
Double membrane:
This is the basic membrane that features no alterations, and I believe it aught to stay that way.
Cellulose wall:
A great general choice for nonpredators that would still like to move freely.
-0.1 mobility
-2 Osmoregulation cost
-0.2 Absorption speed
+10 HP
+0.4 Physical resistance
Can no longer engulf normally
Chitin wall:
An alternative to cellulose, a great choice in toxin-rich environments.
-0.1 mobility
-2 Osmoregulation cost
-0.2 Absorption speed
+10 HP
+0.4 Toxin resistance
Can no longer engulf normally
I’m honestly unsure how to make these last two unique but I tried anyhow, these stats should suffice for now, but I would really like to make a second pass at it sometime if we ever come up with better ideas or new features. Edit: I was talking with Tjwhale in discord and he mentioned that healing rates could be a potential variable to help make these more unique.
Calcium carbonate:
-0.2 mobility
-3 Osmoregulation cost
-0.3 Absorption speed
+20 HP
+0.2 Physical resistance
+0.5 Toxin resistance
Can no longer engulf normally
Silica:
-0.2 mobility
-3 Osmoregulation cost
-0.3 Absorption speed
+20 HP
+0.5 Physical resistance
+0.2 Toxin resistance
Can no longer engulf normally
Rigidity/Fluidity slider:
I’ve noticed that players generally just immediately throw this slider to the left to get to maximum speed, including myself. This is likely because players presently do not face any significant dangers so I think we should leave it unchanged for now, until we improve predator AI. If it is particularly pressing, we could try decreasing the speed change from 0.01 to 0.005.
Eukaryote and Prokaryote balance
As I mentioned before, I would like for the player to be able to successfully support a nucleus once they have around 10 hexes and are built properly with surplus energy production, I am unsure what stats would be needed between the prokaryotic parts and the nucleus to maintain this vision so I would like to see what others think. Otherwise, we could at the very least find it through a little experimentation.
As for the eukaryotic parts unlocked by the nucleus, they are undoubtedly going to be more powerful than the prokaryotic parts, but how exactly? In my own vision I see eukaryotic metabolic organelles being more efficient than their prokaryotic counterparts, while producing parts like oxytoxy vacuoles will be more powerful but costly.
I would like for prokaryotic parts to be quite limited in what they can support in size and function, so a prokaryote would struggle to support itself beyond a certain amount of hexes. It has been suggested before (By Zarki I think?) that we could make osmoregulation cost scale with size rather than being a flat increase, I would like to try that but am open to other ideas.
Below is a quick example statsheet for what I am speaking of. Note that these were quickly thrown together and the actual stats would require some more discussion and playtesting to perfect.
Metabolosome:
100% scaling with oxygen
0.15 glucose consumed
10 ATP produced
Mitochondrion:
100% scaling with oxygen
0.12 glucose consumed
24 ATP produced
Oxytoxisome:
30% scaling with oxygen
5 ATP consumed
0.10 oxytoxy produced
Toxin Vacuole:
50% scaling with oxygen
8 ATP consumed
0.24 oxytoxy produced
As you can see, the mitochondrion is a little more effective than two metabolosomes as well as less demanding, while the Toxin vacuole is more productive but more costly.
Resources and consumption
As I stated previously, I would like for compounds to vary in occurrence and distribution depending on what they are. However since reproduction makes up a large portion of the time players spend in Thrive, we don’t want it to be largely time consuming to find the compounds they need to divide. It could possibly help to introduce new ways of acquiring these compounds to make gameplay more enjoyable and varied as well.
Phosphates and Ammonia:
A nice thing about ammonia is that it’s currently accessible by both finding it in the environment, or producing it with specialized parts. This makes me wonder if there is a realistic way to give players a secondary method of obtaining phosphate. A quick google search seems to imply that phosphates can come from erosion, so perhaps we could have mineral chunks similar to iron, but I dont know about that. My only solid suggestion here is to make phosphates fairly common and accessible, with ammonia being a little less so.
Glucose:
Glucose is a little different from other compounds in that it currently reduces in concentration as time goes on. I’m content with this from a gameplay perspective, but I wonder if it would be more suitable to make glucose concentration change or scale with population. That is that higher populations would result in lower glucose, and vice versa. I am also curious as to how enjoyable the game would be if other compounds scaled in the same way.
Iron:
I am content with how common iron is at the moment, but it would be nice to see the iron chunks drifting about instead of being as stationary as they currently are. This would make it easier to get at the loose iron coming from the chunks as you currently need to push them out of the way or wait for them to decay.
Hydrogen Sulfide:
Hydrogen sulfide is a really nice compound to rely on currently, as it effectively serves as a second layer of ATP storage as opposed to just having glucose; Well built cells can run off of a good dose of sulfide for a long while so I would like to have hydrogen sulfide be somewhat less common than other compounds and be found in large but not dense “hotspots”.
So with all of that said and done, I think it would be best if we balanced things from the bottom up. That is we focus on balancing the prokaryotes around having a maximum size, then moving on to balancing the nucleus to be supportable with that, and so forth.
It has been some time now, but I have created a more structured plan for rebalancing Thrive from the ground up as displayed below. This is only part 1 however, and I will be planning out the next parts later.
- Set compound spawn rates to a balanced medium reflecting what we want to see. We need to do this first so we can balance everything else around how often these appear.
- Glucose should be very common at first, but diminish quickly as population increases.
- Hydrogen sulfide will be found uncommonly in large quantities.
- Phosphates will be found somewhat often in small patches.
- Ammonia will be found slightly less often than phosphate, but in larger patches.
- Iron will be found in chunks regularly in patches located around the ocean floor and sediments. Rarely in open oceans.
- Rebalance our prokaryotic parts to reflect the changes made to compounds. Note that these stats will likely need to be perfected through testing to align with compound rates. Photosynthesis will be excluded until part 3
- Cytoplasm: [0.012 Glucose --> 2 ATP] My intent is for glucose to be a viable energy storage medium, as predators will mostly rely on glucose stores to hunt down prey.
- Glycolysis: [0.010 Glucose --> 1 ATP] This is the subprocess that many prokaryotic parts has, It’s pretty much a slightly less efficient cytoplasm. Would like to discuss rates for this one.
- Metabolosome: [1 Oxygen, 0.15 glucose --> 10 ATP] Much more productive, but also consumes much more glucose and cannot store compounds.
- Chemosynthesis: [0.5 CO2, 0.1 H2S --> 0.05 Glucose] Chemosynthesis currently effectively doubles energy storage for cells. I believe it would now be better if we changed it to more rapidly convert to glucose instead.
- Oxytoxysome: [0.3 Oxygen, 5 ATP --> 0.10 Oxytoxy] Prokaryotic toxins will be slow and costly to reduce the amount of toxic bacterial swarms. Will likely be more beneficial as a deterrent until it’s upgraded/replaced.
- Rustycyanin: [0.5 Oxygen, 0.3 CO2, 0.015 Iron --> 4 ATP] My idea for iron is to be a slow but constant source of ATP similar to glucose. However it does not have as much potential in exchange for being readily available in most environments. Would like a theorist to fact check this though.
- Anaerobic Nitrogen Fixation: [1 Nitrogen, 3 ATP --> 0.08 Ammonia] I’m actually rather content with nitrogen fixation, though it could probably be faster. Here I increased the cost to a whole number, and products by 0.02.
- Rebalance membrane types to be more unique and viable. I mentioned my thoughts on this prior, and they havent really changed but I will still list them below.
Single membrane:
Quick to move, quick to eat, quick to die. Players who like to live dangerously will stick with this one.
+0.1 Mobility
+0.1 Osmoregulation cost
+0.3 Absorption speed
-50 HP
Double membrane:
This is the basic membrane that features no alterations, and I believe it aught to stay that way.
Cellulose wall:
A great general choice for nonpredators that would still like to move freely.
-0.1 mobility
-0.2 Osmoregulation cost
-0.2 Absorption speed
+10 HP
+0.4 Physical resistance
Can no longer engulf normally
Chitin wall:
An alternative to cellulose, a great choice in toxin-rich environments.
-0.1 mobility
-0.2 Osmoregulation cost
-0.2 Absorption speed
+10 HP
+0.4 Toxin resistance
Can no longer engulf normally
I’m honestly unsure how to make these last two unique but I tried anyhow, these stats should suffice for now, but I would really like to make a second pass at it sometime if we ever come up with better ideas or new features.
Calcium carbonate:
-0.2 mobility
-0.3 Osmoregulation cost
-0.3 Absorption speed
+20 HP
+0.2 Phsyical resistance
+0.5 Toxin resistance
Can no longer engulf normally
Silica:
-0.2 mobility
-0.3 Osmoregulation cost
-0.3 Absorption speed
+20 HP
+0.5 Phsyical resistance
+0.2 Toxin resistance
Can no longer engulf normally
Rigidity/Fluidity slider:
I’ve noticed that players generally just immediately throw this slider to the left to get to maximum speed, including myself. This is likely because players presently do not face any significant dangers so I think we should leave it unchanged for now, until we improve predator AI. If it is particularly pressing, we could try decreasing the speed change from 0.01 to 0.005.
I was original going to try to wrap up my light system rework here, but it turned out to be much more difficult than I anticipated, and so I have pushed that to a later time and instead will focus on membrane rebalance.