I’ve been wanting to talk abt radiation for a while.
Radiotrophy [and my suggestions on how to fix it]:
Radiotrophy is the only secondary way of getting ATP in Thrive (aka it’s the only way of getting ATP that’s locked behind a Nucleus, which means it’s very difficult to turn it into a primary one). It’s a cool concept that falls flat due to it not really synergizing with other ways of getting ATP (because every other way of getting ATP use glucose/iron in some way).
Radiotrophy is a proccess of turning radiation into ATP. My guess is that it’s supposed to be a safety net if the player runs out of compounds. But like, there’s only three bioms that have radioactive chunks…and one of them is a rare easter egg…and the player needs to get lucky for a radioactive chunk to conveniently spawn where the player’s starving. So, it fails at being a safety net.
Also, because it’s a secondary ATP source it hurts specialization, it doesn’t really matter, but I think it was worth mentioning (And specific cells having Melanosomes in Multicellular doesn’t work because cells can’t share ATP with each other)
Suggestions!!1 [all can be implemented if needed/wanted]:
Adding a radiotrophy protein [ditches the secondary ATP source thing, turns it into an interesting challenge [only radiotrophy run]].
Making radiotrophy turn radiation into glucose [solves the synergy problem.]
Giving cell the ability to engulf radioactive chunks [The only reason I can think of that they can’t rn is programming limitations]
(I don’t know how scientifically accurate my suggestions are tho, but worst case scenario they can be a LAWK off thing)
No ability to turn off radiation completely:
Radiation can trigger OCD, which is obviously bad. Also, some players may just not want it being in the game [for some reason].
Suggestion: Adding a way to turn it off completely in world settings
From the theoretical side, it was simply an attempt to include in the game the “real life fun fact” of some rare species apparently deriving energy from ionising radiation.
From the gameplay perspective, for the reasons you listed, it indeed doesn’t work as a safety net, and I don’t think it’s intended to be. The way it can be used is as a supplemental energy source: if you happen to find a radioactive chunk, your f.e. glucose consumption will be reduced as long as you stick around it.
It should also be noted again that our real life examples do not survive exclusively off of this radiation, unlike with our other other food sources in the game.
Adding a radiotrophy protein [ditches the secondary ATP source thing, turns it into an interesting challenge [only radiotrophy run]].
I don’t think we necessarily should make radiation-only gameplay a thing, but I also don’t have anything against having a prokaryotic cell part for melanins/pigments. Having this, we could also make UV tolerance more interesting.
Making radiotrophy turn radiation into glucose [solves the synergy problem.]
The noted real-life examples don’t seem to do this, and as I mentioned before, I don’t think radiotrophy is intended to be an exclusive food source. In any case, this would be non-LAWK.
Giving cell the ability to engulf radioactive chunks [The only reason I can think of that they can’t rn is programming limitations]
I am pretty sure this was done because being that close to the radiation source is supposed to kill you.
Sorry, I don’t quite understand what you mean here? What’s the problem with radiation compared to everything else in the game?
I don’t think it’s a good strategy to dump things into the game because they’re irl “fun facts”…I think there should be more focus on how these machanics will work ingame.
Example of what I’m talking abt is Bioluminescent Vacuole, an organelle seemingly added to the game as one of the irl “fun facts”, but is rarely used in the game because the gameplay part of it was poorly thought out…
I mean, I can still eat uranium irl regardless if it kills me or not…it’ll just..kill me regardless, but what I’m saying is that it should work like consuming toxic cells or whatevrrr…
I’m just saying there should be more accessibility settings (like turning off radiation for people with OCD). And people might just want an easier time in the game overall (turning off hazards and stuff like that).
I agree with you here, some things were added into the game without sufficient thought going into the gameplay purpose. For the Bioluminescent Vacuole, we are already looking into fixing that with the recent oxygen resistance reworks.
But for radiotrophy, I still do not see the need. It has it’s niche in certain areas, and even if you can’t use it, it still acts as an environmental hazard. What we cannot do is completely ignore science just to make it more useful. That’s not what Thrive is.
So it should directly just kill your cell if you ingest the radioactive chunk. Do you think this is worth the development time and effort to implement?
I’m sorry, I still really don’t understand. What’s the deal with OCD and radiation specifically?
Some more options could be useful for some circumstances, but it all takes time to implement and maintain it in the long term, makes the settings menu more crowded, etc.
It becomes extremely easy to avoid after like the first couple of times encountering it because it’s just…a small radius around the rock…that gives a lot of ample time to swim away from…just saying that it’s not really effective at being a hazard…
I’m not saying to ignore science, I’m saying that we need to put more thought abt the gameplay before coding it into the game.
It’s just reusing chunk code, so not a lot of time is wasted.
It can work like engulfed toxin resistance where the more Melanosomes the player has, the less dmg the player takes from engulfed chunks.
[Galaxy wrote this part]:
OCD is a mental condition that makes some things a “trigger” in my case the main subject of the discussion.
I will not ask to remove or do something that will be a pressure or a pain for developers because it’s not a correct thing to do, it is not fair, it is not right to just tell someone to do something because just one person is suffering from it and I’d feel bad about this, but since the thing popped up and it got asked I’ll have to explain.
Seeing, smelling, hearing, looking at certain things causes severe psychological pain to the suffering person, which spikes up anxiety and makes the person unable to be in contact with the trigger by any means, despite the fact that the person is aware that whatever it is, it isn’t real and won’t hurt anyone. Without going into too many details this disorder can cause the person a miserable life.
In my case, to avoid this, I usually play Thrive starting in the warm pond and with geological activity dormant, as well as taking down the thing to very low.
Radiotrophy is in a weird spot because it was a really long-standing feature request - dating back to the earliest days, like 2013-ish - that was always hanging around, but has always been a tough concept to crack because radiotrophy is so rare.
It’s also different from bioluminescence in that bioluminescence is widespread. We have concepts related to the part which can add better gameplay - oxygen tolerance effects and some sort of ability boosting effect via proximity (Bioluminescence - #7 by Deus) - it’s just a matter of manpower and volunteer work.
Radiotrophy however is inherently niche, and like Rathalos mentions, cannot realistically be a safety net. It is demonstrated by very few fungi in very unique cases. Uranium and other radioactive sources usually decay pretty quickly (atleast, their ability to produce a significant amount of radiation decays quickly), are usually pretty rare in nature, and have no apparent significant food webs based on the food source.
I do like your idea of non-LAWK radiotrophy being a prokaryotic part, and you make a good point - sure radiotrophy is niche and unique, but since you only can unlock it as a eukaryote, you already are dependent on other resources by then. Which is accurate - again, radiotrophs today do not sustain themselves fully on radiation. But hey, for non-LAWK, why not provide a prokaryotic part as an option, so radiation atleast can be a goofy playstyle.
Regarding OCD: I don’t think it’s appropriate to discuss this in too much detail publicly, and more can be discussed more privately. But is it related to a specific noise/texture/visual etc.? If it’s related to a specific stimulus - perhaps the ticking noise - that can relate to accessibility options which can help reduce strong sounds/visuals and the such. I’m sure many others can experience that, and that is the whole purpose of accessibility. If it’s related to the mere presence of something, that is a bit of a tougher thing to remedy.
