tjwhale suggested a nitrogen fixing plastid, it would generate about 0.5 ammonia a second
Do we do it?
Lately I have been thinking about ways we could implement thermosynthesis while making it a unique and interesting method of gameplay.
As you might assume, thermosynthesis seems to be slightly similar to photosynthesis in concept and function. The nature of this relation is most obviously reflected in how thermotrophs in Thrive will more than likely produce scaling amounts of energy based on the ambient temperature of the inhabited patch. I do not want thermoplasts to strictly be a chloroplast that uses heat however, and so the rudamentary proposed stats below will reflect these desires.
Thermoplast:
75C --> 20 ATP, or 0.8 glucose
This is a rather simple exchange, where the cell produces a small amount of energy at optimal temperature. My idea here is that the further your cell is away from this temperature, the less efficient the organelle becomes. Too little heat means not enough energy to work with, too much and it overwhelms and denatures the necessary proteins. Note that these provided numbers are not final, they are intended as a starting point that we can work with to find the optimal values.
I am rather conflicted about what kind of product should be produced by this part. My first choice was ATP as it would create a dynamically different playstyle than photosynthesis, but I fear that it might be unsuitable since unlike iron you wont have any means of storing the energy at all. On the other hand; Glucose is an excellent choice as it will allow the player to survive in cooler areas thanks to their ability to store the excess energy. Glucose would likely require more than just heat to produces however. My only complaint here, and it is rather silly, is that it makes thermosynthesis much too similar to photosynthesis. My instinct is to attempt to make each playstyle as varied as possible, but I shouldn’t let that get in the way so ultimately I will leave this choice to the theorists to decide. I dont believe it is determined what exact products would arise from this process, but I feel they aught to have the final say.
Thermosynthase(?):
75C --> 8 ATP or 0.02 glucose
From what little literature I found in my brief skimming online, a few referenced that thermosynthesis could have potentially been one of the earliest methods of sustenance for early cells. From that I can deduce that prokaryotes would potentially be able to utilize heat much in the same way as eukaryotes, and so I am proposing this prokaryotic variant as a result.
Not much else to say about it really, other that I am rather poor at naming things.
A common idea that has been brought up alongside thermoplasts has been the concept of “hotspots”. Localized zones of higher temperature that could prove suitable for thermosynthesis.
The long standing problem with these however is the difficulty of properly visualizing heat.
My proposal here is that we create models for hydrothermal vents that emerge from the background of the map. These spires would serve as a billowing visual indicator for heated regions, acting as both a hazard, and an energy source depending on your adaptations. These vents would naturally be found in decent quantity within the vents patch, but I believe allowing them to spawn (albeit less often) within the seafloor and abyssopelagic biomes as well would provide for suitable variety. Each vent would radiate a gradient increase in temperature that rises the closer you get to the center, where it would likely be too dangerous for anything to survive. I’m not sure how realistic it would be for there to be vents so tiny, but I feel it would make for an appealing and viable visual.
I would like to hear what others would like to add to these concepts!
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This sounds really nice. I think there is an issue that if thermoplasts work everywhere then there’s no incentive to use anything else.
In terms of “go near a thing to get energy” there’s this radiotrophy concept we worked on for a while. Not sure if it’s the right thing but it’s there if it’s at all useful to you.
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My intention was for the thermoplasts to only really work best in sufficiently heated biomes. That is, in the vents you would passively get some (very meager) energy no matter where you are because of the high ambient temperature, but in other biomes you would have to solely rely on finding small vents to get your energy, as otherwise the overall temp is too low. These environmental vents would only appear in a couple other patches on the sea floor as well, and not too often.
Ah I had forgotten about radiotrophy, thank you for reminding me! I’m afraid it hasn’t sparked any new ideas for thermosynthesis in me, but I do have ideas on how the two organelles can be differentiated in gameplay. I suppose I know what I am going to be looking into next!
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Did you see the point that was brought up last time thermoplasts were discussed, that they physically should work only in a temperature gradient. Based on that the idea was floated around that the player microbe needs to be between hot and cold water for it to efficiently do something. Related to that a basic implementation was suggested: the thermoplast efficiency is determined based on the temperature difference between the current patch and a nearby cooler patch.
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Oh my I must have missed that while scouring the forums for posts about the thermoplast, that certainly complicates things! I suppose I’ll have to step back and rethink this for now, as I dont know much about the details on how that mechanic would work.
Do you know where this point was made? I didn’t see anything on the forums so I assume it was in discord.
It must have been on discord as I can’t find anything related to that on the forums (just that higher temperature is better for thermoplast and that LAWK needs to be off).
Edit: it was confirmed to me that it was on discord.
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Alright so I am back at it again with thermosynthesis, and have a new idea on how it could work.
Basically, the thermoplast will include it’s own “compound bar”. This bar represents the player’s current temperature gradient (I dont actually know anything about temperature gradients) which they have to fill to as close to the indicator line as they can to obtain optimal energy generation. The scaling for this will work similar to photosynthesis in that the bar represents 100%, and the further away from it you are the less you get.
Being in locations under 75C will not fill this bar and will instead slowly drain it, while locations above 75C will slowly fill the bar. As a result, the player must seek out both hot and cold waters whenever needed in order to maintain their gradient and produce energy.
I would like to know what everyone thinks of this!
Edit: To continue with this, the rate of losing/gaining heat in your gradient will be relatively steady and slow (Something like a 0.01 increase/decrease), hopefully so that balancing the gradient is not a tedious act of traveling back and forward between temperatures. I also went ahead and settled with thermoplasts producing glucose as that seems more likely.
Thermoplast:
0.09 CO2 & 1 gradient = 0.12 Glucose
Thermosynthase:
0.09 CO2 & 1 gradient = 0.04 Glucose
Note that the 1 here means 100% which is the value tied to the position of the indicator line. Being below the line means you have less than 100%, going past the line will inverse the increase and again reduce the percentage of glucose you produce.
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Simply placing this updated proposal here so it does not get lost in our developer chatroom.
Bracket is based on a percentage of gradient storage.
First bracket at 30% mark. Second bracket at 60% mark.
Goal of the player is to possess a gradient level confined within this bracket. Too much or too little will result in no ATP production.
The brackets will shift in position based on the player’s local temperature. Residing in a temperature lower than the patch’s median will push the brackets higher, while higher temperatures will push the brackets down.
Since the gradient is mechanically a compound, it shares it’s storage value with everything else. Larger cells have more storage, so they will need more thermosynthesizing parts to maintain their gradient within the brackets which are based on percentage.
Gradient production and consumption will need to be carefully balanced to ensure a general lack of frustration. This will need to be done experimentally.
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.
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If the goal is to make iron gameplay more complex I think this sounds like a realistic design to do so. Still this would be a lot of extensions and tweaking to the game systems to make this happen, even without the chunks breaking apart function.
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This would improve iron-metabolism related gameplay and add a cool twist to that metabolic strategy, but I will say that I think we should be very purposeful if we add any new organelles. We are desperately in need for a LAWK anaerobic metabolism which can breakdown glucose into ATP. @hhyyrylainen has previously mentioned the system has limited room for expansion before another check has to be done (if I am remembering that verbiage correctly lol) so if we need to make hard choices I think we should prioritize an anaerobic process that can breakdown glucose. Otherwise, in the early anoxygenic environment, glucose would be essentially useless.
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Indeed, perhaps I was a bit overzealous about this. There’s a fair bit of new logic this would require for full implementation. so it’s certainly not an easy feature to implement. Worse still, logic such as making chunks drop more compound in response to stimuli might not have too many other use cases…
At it’s simplest, the feature could simply act as a “digestion enzyme” for iron, but I would rather that just remain a function of rustycyanin at that point…
I’ll see if I can come up with something then. When I devised this concept, it wasn’t really out of necessity, more so that I saw a potential feature and decided to chart it out a bit. So in the event that we do feel the desire to expand on the iron diet, we’ll have material to work with in the future at least. Sometimes when motivation is low, you just gotta work on what catches your interest, ya know?
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Yeah, I think we need to prioritise these bigger reworks to cell metabolism. The most impactful / important design should be added first. That way we can then evaluate the overall complexity of the game and if the further more complex features are actually needed and would make the game better.