In the world of Thrive, Iron exists in a constantly usable form, whether that be in easily engulfable chunks or in expansive brown clouds of compound for lithotrophs to enjoy. But in reality… Iron is not as readily available as one might anticipate. A majority of all iron exists within a mostly insoluble ferric formation of Fe^3 compounds which are often protected from ionization via oxidation in aerobic environments. So how do species actually go about getting their iron?
Not so long ago, a community member introduced me to the wonderful world… of Siderophores. In short; These diverse proteins all share a common purpose of dissolving ferric iron into a more creature-friendly soluble form ready for ingestion. After some reading, I’ve become quite excited about the possibilities they could provide to Thrive’s gameplay. So without further adue, I would like to introduce…
The Siderophore Complex(?):
In Thrive, siderophores will be introduced as a new external agent very much like the oxytoxy NT. The siderophore complex will consume ATP (Potentially scaling in rate with available CO2 and N2) to produce the siderophore agent as well as provide the cell with the ability to fire it. Additionally, each siderophore complex will increase the rate and efficiency of iron chunk digestion.
A potential initial process is as follows:
4 ATP @ 100% CO2 & 50% N2 = 0.02 Siderophores
With part unlocking, the siderophore might unlock after the player survives a generation with rustycyanin.
Life without Siderophores:
With the addition of siderophores, life for lithotrophs might be a little different. Most notably, rustycyanin will no longer provide digestion related stats, and will not allow digestion of iron chunks by themselves. This means that a cell with only rustycyanin must rely on freely available iron compounds to survive, and cannot make direct use of chunks. The upside is they don’t require as much energy, and could potentially mooch off of competitors that do possess the siderophores! It might be more difficult to become a eukaryote on iron alone this way though.
New Iron Chunk Behavior
With the introduction of siderophores, large iron chunks might not release iron compounds quite as fast as they used to, potentially necessitating the use of agents for larger cells. Being struck by a siderophore “bullet” will cause iron chunks to substantially accelerate compound release, potentially to the point of causing them to disappear entirely after a time. Perhaps we could even make large iron chunks break up into small chunks at a certain threshold, but this would not be a vital feature.
Other Potential Features:
Siderophores are a diverse set of agents, each with different mechanisms and function. I have not yet fully investigated individual types, but there may be some neat upgrades we could devise from such material.
Of note, there is also a hypothetical function of releasing phosphate from iron chunks, which would give siderophores a potential use for even non-iron reliant species. There is not yet substantial evidence of this function though, only hypothesis.
With the introduction of this new part, chemolithoautotrophy would become much more interesting and engaging to play with. This could also provide fascinating dynamics in autoevo, where species with and without siderophores would constantly battle against one another as iron availability fluctuates from the biological actions.
Please let me know what you think about this concept, and if you have any ideas for the part name, as I’m rather at a loss for a proper name at the moment.