It’s been sometime since I last approached this topic, and I have decided to go ahead and take a second pass over it.
I am actually content with the main idea, as well as the actions in the above post. However; I feel like I should not be so hasty about rebalancing endeavors, especially when it would involve total reworks of a well-established system. So I’ve decided to reassess how to handle ATP consumption.
ATP Consumption Redux:
To put things simply; I believe we shouldn’t really touch it at all, and instead just focus on how actions will drain it in a meaningful way.
My current idea is to introduce a sort of “strain level” to cells. That is, a scaling ATP cost that gradually increases as the creature performs associated actions. The longer a creature performs actions like “sprinting” without resting, the more strained they become and the more their ATP is drained until they eventually cannot keep up with the cost, forcing them to rest. When not being used, this strain level will gradually diminish to allow strenuous actions once again.
Concerns:
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Strain Induced Starvation: One concern from this strain system is the potential for players to perhaps over-strain themselves and end up starving because they can no longer produce ATP due to building up too much strain. Perhaps this would be preferable, but in the event we want to avoid players carelessly overworking their poor creatures, we can either force-stop strenuous actions upon hitting a certain ATP threshold, or penalize players with an “Exhausted” state where strain will be set to a safe value, but the player won’t be able to utilize strenuouse actions for a set duration.
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Strain Visualization: ATP count on it’s own is relatively straightforward, but how will we communicate to players their level of strain? Without visualization, players would not be able to determine how strained they are until it begins to visibly effect their ATP storage.
Should we desire visualization for this feature, my only current idea is that the ATP bar gradually shifts to a yellow color the more strained the player becomes. However this bears it’s own complications when you consider player accessibility and understanding.
Edit: Alternatively we could just cap ATP production to slightly less than the current consumption, resulting in the ATP bar slowly draining when performing actions. In order to prevent rapid regeneration of ATP, regeneration would similarly be capped in relation to consumption.