Multicellular Parts

Me and @Rathalos recently discussed Multicellular mechanics, and one big takeaway was some discussion on parts. I don’t think Multicellular Parts should be our crux of adding new features to the stage - making sure that specialization and adjacency are engaging and well-balanced will be like 80% of making the Multicellular Stage unique - but they do represent unique opportunities.

Rathalos will likely have their own ideas regarding this parts, but I am proposing some baseline ideas and a general framework for how they can look.

Big Takeaways

  • Multicellular Parts can represent the “roots” of larger organ system functions.
  • Placing down a multicellular part can represent a watershed moment in the evolution of multicellular lifeforms, symbolizing transitions towards structures that are conducive to macroscopic life.

Digestive Complex

Serving as the root of a digestive system, such a part will be focused on unlocking extracellular digestion.

The part to be placed is a Digestive Complex.

  • An agent is shot at other cells. If this agent hits another cell, it is a target for digestion.
  • If within a certain proximity, the target cell takes damage, and the player absorbs phosphate, ammonia, and glucose.
  • Must be placed in a cell type that has lysosomes in it.

This represents the roots of structures like internal cavities - as Rathalos pointed out, the stomach really is just a “pouch of external digestion”. It also allows organisms with a cell wall digestion capabilities.

Reproductive Complex

Placement unlocks sexual reproduction, and indicates the beginnings of more dedicated handling of genetic material that is often employed by larger, complex organisms.

  • Generic discount to MP.
  • -10% cell count cost.

“Circulatory” Complex

Put in quotation marks because a “circulatory system” isn’t really a thing in tiny multicellular organisms - atleast, as we know it in larger organisms. Rather, circulation in these smaller organisms is often focused on extremely simple transfer of fluids within a cell.

  • All adjacent cells get boosts to adjacency bonus effect strength, regardless of type.
  • Placing multiple of this cell type adjacent to each other boosts this effect.

Signalling Complex

This is a sort of stand-in for a “nervous system”, but it is a more neutral term to accommodate the fact that plants don’t really have a nervous system - just complex signalling/enzymatic capabilities.

  • +30% cell count cost.
  • All adjacency bonuses boosted by 20%.
  • Massive ATP cost, likely requiring a highly-specialized cell.

Stage Progress Condition

Having these parts can be tied to win conditions for the stage. For example:

  • Have a Reproductive Part
  • Have a Signalling Part
  • Reach 20(?) Cells.

I haven’t fully fleshed out the idea, but I atleast want to put it out there to generate some discussion on its feasibility, use, etc. More advanced capabilities might be cool with something like the signaling complex, but I’m not fully sure as of now what that could be.

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Interesting ideas, but I’m slightly worried for the roadmap as I’d estimate 1-2 weeks development time for each of these new cell archetypes (I suppose this is a fine enough name, though it is more programming inspired than biology).

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Not sure I super like the “shoot an agent” part? Would this be “aimed” by the player or automatically fired in the right direction? Would simply the area of effect requirement be enough? I do like the simplicity of that by the way. I was thinking of the digestive enzymes like another agent cloud like mucilage, but that would be a lot more complicated.

I was thinking that the damage caused by this should be quite low, so that it is really only useful against things that are already dead, or completely trapped.

After some back and forth with Hhyyrylainen I realised that IRL specific germ cells aren’t really necessary for sexual reproduction, but they are a big improvement to the process.

I am thinking switching to sexual reproduction via the editor tab would already be available, but have some downsides next to upsides, with the situation improved by having Germ Cells.

I made some suggestions in the other thread for various ways to make internal cavities work. That would also essentially fill this role. (Those were essentially what I had in mind when suggesting a transport system)

There’s also the possibility of splitting this into two things:

  • A hormone-like system that is a requirement for anyone to advance to the next stage
  • A nerve-like system that is only relevant for highly motile species

Because we probably also want to start thinking about the difference between plants and animals in the transition to Macroscopic.

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I thought about clouds too since that would be most similar to the actual biology involved in external digestion, but I just know it would be pretty difficult for the player to consistently utilize.

My thought with the projectile was it essentially being a focused of the damage and digestion effect. But on second thought, relying fully on area of effect instead of a projectile could encourage some really interesting builds. For example, pulling cilia on that part drawing prey in to be close enough, incentives for cavities so that organisms are stuck, etc.

I see the suggestion related to the placement of “empty cells”, but was there anything about impact on stats? I think there would definitely be a ton of fun soft benefits when it comes to the design of organisms, but how do we tie this to circulation stat in a way that is significant to being trackable as a progress condition? Do we conceptualize another stat proximate g how much circulation a cell gets depending on how many exposed faces there are? The editor design benefits are good by themselves, but I’d find it hard to task the players with this as a progression condition if there isn’t something tracked beyond just count of open cavities.

I actually like this distinction, and it could be a good way of distinguishing between sessile gameplay and active gameplay (atleast at the start) of the macroscopic. The motile nerve system proxy could act a lot like the previous effects of myofibril (though I’d advocate for a different model/name since myofibril is a prettt advanced structure).

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Fair point there. There are several different versions of the suggestion there: non-cell parts, cells that fill up the space they’re in with non-cell stuff or “background” cells that have a filled space above them. All three of them could be used to implement something like “mesohyl”, which is the skeleton/internal transportation system of sponges or indeed the fluid-filled body cavity of other animals.
These exactly could have the attributes you mention:

And you didn’t list “Circulatory” Complex as an advancement requirement yourself, which I think makes sense, because simple macroscopic plants/macro-algae and fungi don’t have this kind if thing I believe, instead they’re just thin. (Though complex plants definitely do have cavities!)
So cavities/transport system would be more something for if you want any thickness to your design and/or provide those bonuses.

As progression requirements what you did mention makes more sense:

And perhaps reaching 20 cells could require either a spindly shape, or require cavities to not suffocate yourself? (so a surface area for cells mechanic).

An addition we could have here: Nerve system (or primitive equivalent) if you want to be motile in Macroscopic, otherwise your large body is too uncoordinated to really move.

I would still want to have “muscle” as the thing that actually makes you move, while the “nerve” cells boost things. But for those muscle cells, we can have actomyosin fibres that are not organised into myofibrils. This is what you see in smooth muscle tissue (as opposed to skeletal muscle) and simple animals. That would require a new model though.


March 26th:

Since we’re trying to figure out a roadmap for our Multicellular stage designs, I figured I should write up a first design proposal on how our “muscle cellpart” would actually work. First things to note:

  • We can’t have flexible multicellular organisms, so we can’t really show organisms moving as they would. But we can give the cell parts mechanical effects that would be produced as if they could flex the organism, in movement, turning, etc. (I am also guessing we cannot make the cells themselves flex, but at least the cell parts themselves should be able to be animated?)
  • Some of the attributes I suggest depend on other changes to the Stage’s mechanics that may or may not happen.
  • I have tried to keep required complexity to a minimum, because Thrive can be difficult enough for people to understand already.
  • In real life for example a worm has both length-wise and lateral muscles to move. I have abstracted that out here, because of the low number of cells and the previous point. But also, that isn’t always the case, for example in C.elegans, which I based a lot of this mechanic on, moving via only longitudinal muscles.

Having said that, here it is:

Cell part - Actomyosin

  • model: a smaller/thinner/slimmer version of a myofibril. (But potentially multiple in a cross/rounded shape instead of a line).
  • Requires normal or double membranes. (Perhaps also possible in cellulose/chitin, but at reduced effectiveness)
  • On the simplest level: boosts both movement speed and turning speed. If not trying to make placement complicated, that’s it. But if we want to add more complexity:
    • Lining up more of them in the direction of movement adds more speed (beyond just adjacency)
    • Movement speed is also boosted by any adjacent cells (not just other muscle cells), because those are also “pulled along”.
    • Having them off-center from the origin is required to increase turning speed in that same direction.
  • If we make Flagella and Cilia only function when on the “outside” of the organism, the muscle cells do not have that restriction.
  • Instead of a constant force like flagella, there is an “oscillating” force application, to mimic swimming.
  • There could be some delay in muscle activation that is counteracted if you have nerve cells. IN any case, I am still thinking of a way for nerve cells to combo with muscles very well.

The objective here is to balance things so that muscles are the logical way to move large Multicellular Stage organisms, and flagella are less effective.

Bonus:

While animal muscles use contractile elements in cells to make the cells contract (and pull on things the cell is connected to), the rigidity of cell walls makes this not as feasible in plants. But plants do have an alternative solution: hydraulics.

Precisely because plants do have that semi-rigid but somewhat elastic cell wall, it allows plants to use turgor pressure: the osmotic value inside the cell draws water in, but this runs up against the compressive force of the cell wall, making the whole rigid and strong. This is how herbaceous plants can stand up at all, and why they flop down when low on water.

But beyond that as seen in some species for leaf movement of various types, and of course some carnivorous plants, this effect can be used for pressure: by increasing the osmotic pressure, plant cells can press harder on their cell walls, pushing outwards (contrasting with muscle pulling). From what I can tell, the max strength you could reach with this isn’t necessarily weaker than with muscles, just slower and less precise. The big benefit is that while changing pressure costs energy, keeping the pressure on does not which is quite unlike muscles!

Now of course IRL plants and fungi don’t make as extensive use of this as animals do with muscles, but that doesn’t mean Thrive with cell walls can’t! Which is why I think it would be nice to also have:

Cell part - Hydraulic Vacuole

This is pretty much the “plant” counterpart to the actomyosin part.

  • Model: like a vacuole, but more stretched out in a vertical direction.
  • Requires Chitin or Cellulose membrane.
  • Functions largely like actomyosin, but with key differences:
    • The given speeds per organelle are lower.
    • ATP consumption is much lower.
    • Time between movement pulses is much longer.
    • Delays are longer.
    • Any position-relative effects that actomyosin has are mirrored. For example, you need hydraulic cells on the left to push you to the right instead of muscle cells on the right to pull you to the right.

The intention here is to:

  • Put realistic constraints on the type of cells muscles work in in real life while still allowing good motility in 4/6 membrane types.
  • Make cell-wall having species and wall-less species significantly different in the long-run, even in Macroscopic and beyond. For example, macroscopic motile creatures with cell walls would be like fantasy walking plants: slow, but powerful and tireless.
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In the interest of creating a “minimally viable” proposal, here are some suggestions for two different multicellular parts. There’s been a lot written before and if anyone feels strongly to implement things a certain way or a more “complex” proposal isn’t actually that much work, we can discuss. Just want to create concepts that are straight-forward so that if things get too saucy, we have something agreed upon that is simple.

I think we should prioritize these functions, just since they transition pretty clearly to a macroscopic stage;

  • Circulatory – Discussed below.

  • Digestive – Discussed below.

  • Nervous – Should basically be the “stage-progress” condition for motile life.

  • Reproductive – Already implemented, just needs refinement.

  • Musculature – Not discussed below, as Rathalos has good points that warrant a bigger discussion.

Minimally-Viable Multicellular Part Proposals

“Circulatory” Complex

  • Universal 2% boost to all adjacency bonus effects in all cells.

  • If adjacent to the same cell type, bonus becomes 5% for all connected cells instead. So if two signaling/circulatory cells are connected, instead of the total being 4% (2 x 2) total, it would be 10% (2 x 5).

I think this does a good job of both being a viable strategy, and having an affect of gradually encouraging the playerto change the way they structure their organism as stage progress goes on. This will gradually make it so that adjacency is more important.

Digestive Complex

  • All vacuoles in cell type gain +10% storage. All digestive enzymes in cell type gain +10% efficiency. Pulling cilia gain strength.

  • Regular adjacency bonuses of these parts isamplified, stacking with each adjacency.

The goal here is to encourage diversity of use with this item. A player could use this to make a cell part that is incredibly efficient at filter feeding, has great storage capacity, or great digestive efficiency. They can try to go with all three parts, but the adjacency bonus stacking effect is to be utilized.

Development Direction

The majority of players will want a macroscopic organism that is motile, or atleast capable of movement. There will be some weird sessile-esque playstyles that I think would be cool to represent atleast shortly with the “traditional” macroscopic experience – but in general, sessile life will likely need its own sessile gameplay mode that we’ve discussed previously.

Because of that, and in the interest of managing workload – should we accept moving on from the Multicellular Stage with accommodations for more sessile life delayed until we are ready for that? And then when that is ready, go back in the Multicellular Stage, add that progression, then flesh it out more once we’re more sure of that direction?

I take it then this assumes we will not have time for the optional (non-cell parts and background cells) features? I would say both of these general functions would be pretty well encapsulated in there.

“Circulatory” Complex

My concern with this is “what biological structure does this represent?” I recently discussed with MirrorMonkey2 that in these kinds of very small animals, “improved circulation” is really just answered by having some type of body cavity versus not having one. (cavities would be easily down via the optional features)

I guess for actual in-cell parts, we’re basically looking at cell-to-cell connections like plasmodesma. Though I figured we assume all Multicellular Species may already have something like this.

  • Universal 2% boost to all adjacency bonus effects in all cells.

So if I am understanding correctly, one cell in one place boosts all cell’s adjacency effects everywhere?

  • If adjacent to the same cell type, bonus becomes 5% for all connected cells instead. So if two signaling/circulatory cells are connected, instead of the total being 4% (2 x 2) total, it would be 10% (2 x 5).

…Or just for the cells adjacent to one with the circulatory complex?

For the bonus described, would it be more cohesive if the “bonus to adjacency bonus for connected cells” is itself affected by the specialization bonus and adjacency bonus for the cell with this cell part, rather than crafting this different system?

I think this does a good job of both being a viable strategy, and having an affect of gradually encouraging the playerto change the way they structure their organism as stage progress goes on.

I do think that this general objective is good, and could be achieved by this cell part, or other adjacency-boosting effects.

Digestive Complex

Here I have to admit I am a bit more stumped at how to represent this in a cell type. For digestive systems in the Multicellular Stage I was really hoping we could use the optional features to make a simple gut. So that would be an actual multicellular structure, rather than parts within cells.

The majority of players will want a macroscopic organism that is motile, or atleast capable of movement. There will be some weird sessile-esque playstyles that I think would be cool to represent atleast shortly with the “traditional” macroscopic experience – but in general, sessile life will likely need its own sessile gameplay mode that we’ve discussed previously.

I’ve discussed this in a few different places, but I will repeat here.

I think it’s worth saying that in Microbe/Multicellular we already have the possibility of creating almost completely sessile life, without having any special accommodations for that in place (other than the speed up button?). I think that’s ultimately fine, since it’s a deliberate player choice to do so, and we can assume people that do this just like watching plants grow for now. So generally, I think we don’t need to hold up other development for getting sessile mechanics caught up.

However, I think that ultimately what might work best in the future is, rather than a specific “sessile gamemode”, a generally available method to skip time when there is nothing interesting happening. This is inspired by CRPG “rest” mechanics but you could also compare it to minecraft’s “you can’t sleep when there are enemies nearby” idea. The reason to make it generalised is that while for plants you would be skipping most of the time, we would also want it available for animals to skip rest/sleeping time.

Because of that, and in the interest of managing workload – should we accept moving on from the Multicellular Stage with accommodations for more sessile life delayed until we are ready for that? And then when that is ready, go back in the Multicellular Stage, add that progression, then flesh it out more once we’re more sure of that direction?

I think you’re actually talking about the transition to Macroscopic and how that might be different for sessile versus motile species? I think right now I am actually leaning towards not having the progression between those two be fundamentally different.

The requirements for moving to Macroscopic could be the same, but that could then result in your starting Macroscopic species being immobile if you don’t have the right Multicellular design. We could give a warning about that, then giving you the choice of staying in Multicellular to do further edits, or go to Macroscopic and evolve ways to become mobile again later on (or perhaps even in the first editor session before really playing).

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This is kind of a complex mechanic, but doable as a major feature.

We kind of accidentally already got sexual reproduction…

This would be easy to make, but the players still, I think, quite rarely use the specialization feature. So it would be quite niche, I think.

Can the axon organelle do this? Because that’s on the almost next up on the list of stuff to do: allow placing axon in the multicellular stage already.

I think this is maybe a bit old list, but I’m now thinking that we should have some multipart condition like:

  • Use a more advanced reproduction method (we probably want sporulation also to be allowed for macroscopic?) than just budding
  • Have at least 3 different cell types in your body plan
  • Have a total of 20 cells
  • And maybe some minimum specialization bonus amount so that the cell placement is sensible?

One quite common complaint is that all engulfed stuff just stays in the cell that ate it. So one interesting thing would be to have an organelle that allows moving ingested stuff to like the “stomach” of the player. So like placing an organelle in a mouth cell and a stomach cell could mark it like as a some kind of “digestive tract” that moves the food from other cell to the stomach cell.

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Would simply affecting targets in a close range be much easier than also including the agent mechanic? Deus did seem to think that would also be worth trying:

In any case, I do think this mechanic/cell part would be a major boon, since it solves both “animal stomach” and “fungi” in one step. If I could get one thing from the “non-hard” roadmap, this would be it.

Yes, and while I do think there is some scientific accuracy/educational value in adding specialised reproductive organs, I think it is very much optional.

I think this is one of those concept going around that get crossed sometimes. Indeed axons=neuron/nerve cells. Deus here was referring to a more general signalling cell that can represent what happens in plants and possibly more proto-animals.

Though I have to point out that from my research so far, the earliest macroscopic animals probably had nerve cells with axons already?

I think part of Deus’ idea was that size-related costs become harsh enough that you can’t reach 20 cells and survive without properly utilizing specialization?

Overall I do agree with the specialization bonus minimum and advanced reproduction type.

3 different cell types I think is also okay. I was doubting for the sake of green macroalgae for a second, since IRL those have… 5. But I think luckily enough Thrive does actually produce enough gameplay incentive for photosynthesizers to have 3 types.

I do have to point out that IRL even the smallest animals (like rotifers) have something akin to a stomach using digestion outside cells, like the first point in this comment. (what you describe does kind of happen in other ways though, like moving compounds into your bloodstream that are too large to get moved out of your gut otherwise.)

But yeah, the idea of a “mouth cell” and “stomach cell” is pretty much non-LAWK. I also have to wonder exactly how much of a gameplay point this would have. You want whatever is engulfing to be both large enough to engulf and have the lysomes to digest things, right? So I think the optimal is to simply have several of those.

Slightly but it still has some difficulties related to it (mostly detecting what is actually close enough).

I have a hunch that that’s going to be a common complaint from the players then that they cannot reach 20 cells and live (because they don’t understand specialization well enough).

Besides getting stuck on terrain, I feel like this is almost the most requested multicellular feature in recent times.

Again, it seems like this is something the players do not realize naturally and thus run into the problem… Or maybe they do and they just want to eat even more stuff at once by having it move to other cells.

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Another reason against this is that unspecialized macroscopic organisms exists (like slime modes during their „feeding stage“ and certain kinds of macroscopic extremely simple algae) if I‘m not mistaken.

If we take the kinds of organisms I mentioned earlier as a precedent even this shouldn‘t be a requirement to become macroscopic. Or would you suggest we just forgo these kinds of organisms in favour of some sort of required progression and introduction to important mechanics in multicellular mode? I‘d understand that from a gameplay perspective, I‘m just trying to figure out how much realism we‘d sacrifice for it. In my very limited understanding having a colony of 20 indentical cells is very very far off from being unviable due to size limitations irl.

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There’s also macroscopic single cells, as well as prokaryote colonies that are macroscopic in total, but some things just fall outside our scope.

The gameplay reason here is that only acquiring 20 cells is very easily done, so if we don’t enforce it, people don’t actually play around with the stage’s mechanics. So that would require other transition demands, or make growing your number of cells much slower.

By necessity we have a jump from 20 cells to a 1 cm organism. So our Multicellular Stage has to represent in that 20 cell frame things that are necessary to get to that 1 cm scale. So a Multicellular Species of 20 cells represents something much larger IRL.

Looking back at this again, the axon actually cannot be designed to do what Deus describes here (a “general” signalling mechanic), because an axon represents real nervous cells. Like we talk about frequently, we want nervous systems and Aware status mechanically mostly restricted to motile heterotrophic species. So the axon is something that should be something that’s only useful for motile species, not every species.

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Regarding the macroscopic single-celled organisms you mentioned as a comparison, I very much agree that these should be rationalized away as a very niche and dificult to represent/integrate aberration within evolutionary history. By comparison, simple macroscopic algae and small macroscopic blobs of undifferentiated cells like slime molds seem a bit less fringe to me. Also their implementation itself wouldn‘t be an issue in contrast to the single-celled macroscopics. Rather, forgoing them would be an unfortunate but bearable consequence of the envisioned progression which has to take precedence for gameplay reasons.

I never thought about it this way… This makes so much sense and alleviates prior concerns of mine I‘ve talked with you and others about in other threads. Maybe this abstracted/representative nature of the multicellular stage was obvious to all of you and it just went over my head?

Anyways, I fully support this! One question I‘d like to ask then is if this is at any point communicated to the player? Biology nerds could be frustrated by not understanding why their 20 cell organism can‘t rely on diffusion/doesn‘t work as an undifferentiated blob when that wouldn‘t be a problem at this size irl.

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I will also note alternatives to the initial ideas suggested in the thread in this post, which serve as more stripped down and fundamental versions of these parts which I think would still result in fun gameplay.

Particular parts of interest:

“Circulatory” Complex

  • Universal 2% boost to all adjacency bonus effects in all cells.

  • If adjacent to the same cell type, bonus becomes 5% for all connected cells instead. So if two signaling/circulatory cells are connected, instead of the total being 4% (2 x 2) total, it would be 10% (2 x 5).

Digestive Complex

  • All vacuoles in cell type gain +10% storage. All digestive enzymes in cell type gain +10% efficiency. Pulling cilia gain strength.

  • Regular adjacency bonuses of these parts isamplified, stacking with each adjacency.

I don’t necessarily think one is better than the other, and both can be good. Though I think it would be cool to have atleast one “wow I click a button and a unique ability happened” feature for the Multicellular Stage, so the more extravagant digestive complex might be useful. Or maybe they can be combined?

Absolutely - putting too many parts or mechanics that do the same function would be confusing to the player anyways.

I think this is a good list, but I do think that having some sort of requirement for the nervous system/axon part root is a good idea. As Rathalos mentions, we would probably want to represent the “origin” of the physiology which allows movement and function at larger scales.

Though even then - an axon isn’t necessary, and could just be a requirement for some sort of starting movement in the next stage as Rathalos suggests.

I think the ideal is to have the size penalty (or atleast, overall energy balancing) be more harsh on higher difficulties. So on easy difficulty, you can get away with a pretty weakly specialized organism and progress. On normal difficulty, you will have to use some specialization to proceed especially towards the later end of the stage, but it doesn’t have to be min-max optimized. And for Hard difficulty, specialization will be pretty heavily utilized.

And also, if the benefit of specialization is explained enough, I do think players experimenting to find out what gives them stronger bonuses would lead to a solid learning curve. If the bonus of specialization is emphasized in the GUI, then engagement with the mechanic is encouraged through simple:

Rathalos does bring up theory that we should consider. But if this feature is feasible, I do think it would be pretty convenient and would solve a pretty fundamental problem to heterotrophic gameplay in Thrive.

“Circulatory” can be a bit loaded of a term for this, but I do think we can benefit from representing the general phenomenon of “as things get bigger, they get a bit better at cohesion across different cell types and the body plan as a whole”. That probably is represented best by the nervous system analogues, but dividing this aspect into different parts could be engaging.

Good catch to clarify - the effect would be applied to all cell types, and the idea is that putting circulatory complex cells next to each other would magnify this universal bonus, to the extent that the circulatory complex cells are specialized.

Though having some sort of coelom structure would be very cool, I do worry about the complexity of the mechanic and just how easy it would be for the player to deal with. If a part of their multicellular organism that is skinny gets destroyed, they could easily lose multiple cells and be set back a while in progress.

Another way of introducing this gut system would be through non-cellular parts, but that’s its own separate conversation as well.

Rathalos mentions this, but one difficult thing with the multicellular stage is we are trying to represent a very awkward, long, and diverse period of evolution within 20 cells. We aren’t just telling the story of up-to 20 celled organisms, but are using this stage as a stand in for organisms larger and more complex than this. Larger, complex multicellular phenomenon are simplified in an abstract way for the purpose of scope.

So is this incredibly accurate? Probably not. But if we were perfectly accurate, there’d be a lot of ground uncovered in that time jump between stages, and sacrificing a bit of exactness for the sake of including a more cohesive narrative - which does address larger evolutionary phenomena within this time - I think is worth it.

We could do better to communicate this in the Thriveopedia or something perhaps.

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