Definitely agree with not using certain behaviour setting thresholds as hard requirements, but rather as modifier on when to use certain commands.
So on those combat responses I was talking about previously, my suggestion would be:
Organism is attacked by Other:
- Organism decides to flee (determined by fear and the Other’s stats):
- Organism has no pili or toxins: Flee from me
- Organism has pili or toxins:
- It’s not (practically) possible to gather enough friendlies to reach a (fear and the Other’s stats-controlled) threshold: Flee from me
- It is possible to reach that threshold:
- There are enough friendlies nearby that it crosses the threshold: Become Aggressive
- There are not enough friendlies nearby: Follow me
- Organism decides to fight back:
- Organism has no pili or toxins (just trying to engulf): No Command
- Organism has pili or toxins:
- Other is trivially weak: No Command
- Else: Follow me (if that does not work, Become Aggressive) Note 1
Does that look okay? I can write the same from the perspective of a potential predator deciding what commands to send.
Note 1: Not sure how Follow Me interacts with other situations. Do they just ignore everything?