My mind keeps coming back to this concept every time I think of the nucleus - specifically, the placing parts on already existing cytoplasm for a discount component.
Whenever I play through Thrive, and in some of the playthroughs I see, I think a big awkward point in the Microbe Stage involves placing down the nucleus - specifically, the intense jump in energy demands that you must plan and anticipate, completely altering your organism. The nucleus should represent a huge change in the stage of course, giving you the benefit of advanced organelle function along with representing the additional work going on in a eukaryotic cell.
However, the result of us relying on a huge energy demand to gatekeep the nucleus leads to gameplay that is kind of abstract…
Issues
- Players have to evolve a large number of parts and excess energy, resulting in very bloated organisms. That results in adaptation behavior that isn’t very realistic, reducing the strength of our simulation.
- Instead of spending MP on abilities, such as toxins and flagella, and engaging with other mechanics, players who replay Thrive just spend multiple editor cycles creating this bloated cell. This ultimately reduces replayability to an extent - you know you gotta slap on this energy sink anyways, so why focus on other things?
- Your gameplay the generation immediately after placing on the nucleus really differs due to the mobility limitations and, oftentimes, the concession you have to make in other abilities to make the nucleus affordable. This can result in a death loop, turning an otherwise successful playthrough into a doom cycle.
- It’s also an unsteady measure of progression; players can beeline it and place the nucleus within a couple of generations if they wish. Having variation from player-to-player, and playthrough to playthrough, isn’t inherently a bad thing at all, as that introduces a measure of skill and replayability. It’s just that progression can swing too wildly, resulting in a stage that is paced too quickly or too slowly.
- Auto-Evo doesn’t like the nucleus because of how energy intensive it is, reducing the likelihood of eukaryotic organisms to evolve.
Benefits of Buckly’s Proposal
The nucleus is one of the larger parts in the Microbe Stage, currently taking up 10 hex spaces. By adjusting the cost of the nucleus, we can make it so that the nucleus is impossible to afford unless you are placing it in enough cytoplasm. So that, for example, atleast 7 out out of the 10 hexes must be placed within a cytoplasm for the part to be discounted enough to be affordable.
Combining this with concepts for size-related costs, in which the nucleus mitigates how quickly size costs scale up (The Nucleus Paradox), could result in the nucleus being unlocked in a way that is interesting while having benefits in itself.
How Much Should We Consider This?
This is an alternative proposal to the nucleus which can be an interesting side effect of implementing the discounting mechanic described by Buckly. After the completion of the road map or towards the end of 0.9.0, if we determine that progression operates oddly in Thrive, we should investigate this concept.
I do think the nucleus creates a sort of “jank” that we should address regardless in order to provide a more even player experience. But this isn’t the only way to remedy balancing issues. It may also lead to its own issues - how do we display when the nucleus might be affordable, and couldn’t that lead to an unrealistic gaining of size just for the sake of size, thereby displacing the issue instead of fixing it?
A combination of balancing tweaks to the nucleus can include…
- Placing an unlock condition for the nucleus, requiring a certain size (15? 20?) before it can be placed.
- Reducing the nucleus cost by half or so, so that it remains a high demand on your metabolism but becomes much more manageable (goes from effectively 20 to 10 additional ATP when factoring in movement costs).
- Reducing the impact of the nucleus on your organism’s mobility, so that you don’t suddenly become extremely slow.
If size-related costs are implemented, having the nucleus be reduced in energy efficiency can remain a cool little moment in Thrive where discretion is still viable - can you efficiently scale up in a way that doesn’t wreck your organism while still allowing you to snatch the nucleus?
That also presents the unique layer of progression that discounting parts provides, in a way that is a bit more easy to control. So this isn’t the only way forward - it’s just an additional idea to consider should we more strongly move towards this concept in the future.