The results from the player feedback polls are in and there were some interesting results:
Only 11% of people wanted to keep prokaryotic parts as placeable hexes. Other than the people who chose “Other”, the remainder were narrowly split between the Genome Space system and the Membrane Proteins system. In the interests of reaching a conclusion on the subject, here are the thoughts I have on choosing from between the two systems.
Genome Space System
As I mentioned before, I think it gives cool functionality to the nucleus and other DNA storage structures. It also makes it easy to balance proteins by changing how much gene space they take. A nice side effect is that we don’t have to create 3D models of every protein under the sun (and find ways to make all of them look distinct), because will not be visually represented as hexes in the game. Which means we can implement a whole bunch of them soon. Cells will also look more realistic because proteins are invisible at this scale, so you’ll only see the membrane type, nucleus, and organelles.
Membrane Proteins System
It’s a cool idea, but I see several problems with it:
- Many of these proteins do not exist in the membrane (sorry DonGoro forgot to reply to your post earlier, so the next sentence is my reply). For example, thylakoids, nitrogenase, lysosomes, and antifreeze proteins.
- How would you represent this visually in the game? Would there be protein models floating slightly above each cell to represent being embedded in the membrane? I don’t think we have the ability at the moment to actually make them visually embedded in the membrane. Plus, proteins would not be remotely visible on the membrane at this scale.
- It kind of overlaps with Organelle Upgrades. Organelle upgrades already allow for organelles and proteins to be improved beyond their base efficiency, and then this would further allow efficiency to scale up or down, so organelles would have to be balanced for two different dimensions of possible efficiencies.
Some Extra Points
The question to consider is what to do about the proteins currently in the game as placeable hexes. I think for the sake of both realism and internal consistency, these should be removed as placeable hexes and added to the Protein Slots sytem.
Summary
So to conclude please leave your feedback and which system you prefer. The sooner we settle on a system, the sooner we can start implementing more of these Proteins into the game. @Buckly also let us know what you think of the alternatives.