Multicellular Stage: an Actual Roadmap

[Rathalos]

I think for now it is best to keep discussion on the actual design concepts of the multicellular stage over in the thread Deus linked.

So as for the purpose of this thread: I guess it would be nice to set up a living document or a page of the wiki just to list the things there is a broad consensus on. So indeed just like the release roadmap we already have, but perhaps without the “time-line” for implementation. I think that will work better and be more visible in the long run than keeping track of a thread like this.

@Thim

• Shells? Other external parts that microbes won’t have?

I did suggest some mechanics for this in the other thread, but I don’t think there is a consensus on the necessity of this. So I wouldn’t put this on a list to encourage people to produce models for yet.

As for other things to add:

TO IMPLEMENT:

• Change the multicellular stage startpoint, probably to a blob of unspecialised cells. (I put this here because Deus seemed to agree on this, and I have seen no counter-opinion)

TO DECIDE:

• Do we want non-cell elements to be available in the multicellular stage/editor?
• Progression mechanics from microbe stage, through multicellular into macroscopic.
• Symmetry mechanics (yes/no, here or only in macroscopic?)

@hhyyrylainen

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I think any multicellular roadmap should start with the items we need the most to no longer need to call multicellular a prototype. And based on latest player feedback I remember, the most important thing is to solve how multicellular feels way too slow to progress (both in how long it takes to grow your colony and how much you need to place more cells, though this second part could be alleviated by having actual stage-specific stuff to interact with so the player doesn’t feel like they just need to get past multicellular ASAP).

I haven’t settled on the exact replacement yet (still researching for inspiration), but I do think we should replace “reach X cells” as the progression requirement with something else. This should probably be much closer to Microbe Stage, where you evolve specific parts (nucleus, binding agent) in order to be able to advance.

As far as colony growth speed goes, I think it should simply just be sped up. We can multiply the passive gain of reproduction compounds by (close to) the number of cells the final organism is supposed to have. I think we can manage to make multicellular generation gameplay interesting enough to last longer than a microbe generation, but not by toooo much.