Player migration

[Deus]

@hhyyrylainen

One slight complication though with the player migration is that I’ve been holding onto the idea that eventually we’d allow some kind of command for the player to tell other members of their species to move around without the player so the player could on the map command individuals of their species to move.

I think this is a smart thing to do and I don’t really see any contradictions in this with any other concept/mechanic. We would be reinforcing the strategy of migration when environmental tolerances start to become a factor, so it would make sense to give the player more unique and defined tools to manipulate their population.

@hhyyrylainen

I’d go as far as to say that this mechanic would basically remove game over completely, as the only way to lose the game would be in the first 20 minutes when there aren’t that many species yet.

In the original concept as MirrorMonkey said, it seems that the player would have some sort of credit/respawn point system which grants them the ability to switch species after death. The more closely related a species is, the less points it would cost to play as them. So it could cost a point to play as your closely related ancestor and several to play a rather distantly related organism. The player could then earn more points through an action, perhaps by surviving a certain number of generations.

Though of course, a unique game mode where there is no lose condition is very possible, and would be a strong reinforcer to the idea that there isn’t necessarily an absolute win in evolutionary-terms. It could also be a nice way for newer players to experiment with Thrive.

But again, that discussion is a decent bit ahead of us for now.