@rastro yes that is largely what we are thinking. A lot of thought has gone into the evolution system already (as it’s one of the main parts of the game). I’ll try to describe where we are at a bit, feel free to ask questions. I’ll only talk about the microbe stage for now.
Currently there is a process system. This governs, inside a cell, how compounds are processed. For example a mitochondria takes sugar and oxygen and turns it into co2 and ATP, there are lots of different processes. @crodnu has been working on this. This is the metabolic pathway we came up with.
When this is done it can also be applied at a species level. So not asking how much sugar does your cell process but how much sugar does your species as a whole process. With the compound constraints in the patch where you live this is enough to have basic population dynamics (different species process different amounts of compounds and use some of those compounds to make more of themselves).
Then we’re thinking of adding a combat function, which basically determines how much predation takes place between two species. So basically the output is a flow of compounds from species A to species B with some wastage to the environment.
Then finally we have auto-evo, which does the evolution itself. It copies the patch five times and in four of them makes a little change to one of the species. The simulation is then run forward some time and whichever patch the chosen species is doing best in is kept and the others are thrown away. This means over time the species will evolve.
We’re going to have multiple patches which are of different biomes (shallow sea, coastal, ocean vent, abyss etc) with some ability for species to move between them. This will mean speciation will occur when part of a species moves to a new patch and evolves in a different direction there.
The whole thing is called the CPA system because it’s about Compounds, Population Dynamics and Auto-evo. Hope this is a helpful primer on where we are at with it.