Pacing and Combat

[Oliveriver]

Sorry for not replying to this thread, I kind of forgot.

@tjwhale

I think pilli will just stab anything they touch, friend or foe, without needing to be activated or anything

Straight away I’m thinking that would hamper any attempts at forming colonies if any cells have pili. Then again, the player might eventually have to make a choice between easy survival (pili) and progressing to the next stage (colonies) so it might work. I think the player should still be able to control their “spike” attack in some way though (perhaps by shooting agents out of them like the example @TheCreator mentioned). Maybe the player can extend their pili slightly by pressing an attack key, so they can attack more effectively manually but will always stab anything that comes within the normal range anyway.

@tjwhale

The thing with photosynthesizer gameplay is that it’s going to have to be radically different.

I agree that managing processes should be possible, and probably the focus for photosynthesizing players. It’s been planned for a while now that the game can be paused and the player can change compound priorities for certain organelles to optimise their metabolism given variation in environmental compounds.

However, I’m wary of slowing down the game pace. For instance, what determines whether the player cell is a photosynthesizer and whether the game should slow down? Do they just have to add a chloroplast or evolve a full cell wall? The former definitely wouldn’t work because there’s a chance for the player to assimilate free living cyanobacteria to gain free chloroplasts, so the game would have to slow and change mechanics in the middle of a gameplay session.

Really I don’t think there should be radical changes in game mechanics, just a different way of using them. Both photosynthesizing and non-photosynthesizing cells could have access to metabolic management, but it should be balanced so that photosynthesizers find it the most useful. In my opinion they should still be able to use agents in the same way as other cells (even if that is slightly scientifically inaccurate) but they’ll be more inclined to use symbiosis-type agent signals like warning others about a predator.

@TheCreator

In Thrive we planned on having agents that we could shoot at other cells; nature went one step further and developed a gun that could be used to launch these agents quickly at other organisms.

Nice find! I think that’s basically the equivalent of what we have already - it would only take a few semantic and visual changes for it to work like that.

@TheCreator

I suggest the first one will work in the game by simply trying to swim over a smaller organism than you.

I believe the plan is to add a specialised engulfing edge to some areas of your membrane, allowing you to engulf smaller cells from that area of your membrane only. Like pili, we might want manual control over this, or we might not. Accidentally engulfing a friendly microbe is a bad thing, but I guess good players will realise this and won’t do it.

@TheCreator

On the other hand I did find a cell using a lure that attracted smaller cells to it and I think this should hands down be an unlockable organelle later on.

Good idea. It might be difficult to prevent this becoming completely overpowered though. Perhaps NPC AI could evolve to be aware of this and not fall for the trap, giving the player the upper hand for a while but eventually making it useless.