Okay i understand now.
especially for plant gameplay.
I would recommend that it is a behavior you can evolve then it’s less confusing for a new player and allowing players who want to use it to, well, use it. see for plants this system makes sense because they need as much gameplay as they can get really.
but real animal cells can’t predict that “oh I’m not going to be able eat glucose for a while better lay on the fat”, heck not even humans (bodies) do this, usually as long as we eat normally we are always growing but as soon as we starve for a while then we stop growing and when we do eat it most of it gets stored (and a minimum amount getting used for energy) until we start eating normally again, or even when we are low on something we stop using that for energy and start storing it (eg. protein)
point is maybe we should have a “starving” state where the cells stop growing and starts storing until stores are at (or slightly over) normal levels (thinking about it i am left to wonder if cells digest any organelles when they are starving (like we start to use muscle when we starve))
Though as i said before having this kind of system as a option to evolve would be a cool idea as it adds a bit of strategy to the game.
the other issue is creating UI for this and how to do it, should we make it so when the player right clicks on a compound bar they can choose what to do with it? (use for energy, store or grow) or do we want to add another panel for it? and then there is individual organelles and how we could let the player control them as every cell is different…