Specialization and Unique Gameplay

Gameplay
12

With @HexapodPhilosopher ’s work on the iron depletion animation and recent discussions on Discord, I think it’s worth looking at an iron revamp.

Siderophores may present a unique and interesting dynamic in the lithotrophic organisms of Thrive, but I worry about three things…

  1. I think that players and AI might just essentially evolve both rather than specializing in one, rendering the complex relationship null.
  2. think representing such a dynamic is inherently difficult in a sandbox game, unless we hard code certain things or balance things differently.
  3. I think players might see lithotrophy as being too complicated to be worth it, considering the use of two different parts for the same amount of reward.

I think C09’s suggestion on Discord towards making lithotrophy similar to mining in space exploration games, where cells have to interact with iron chunks to get at a limited supply of resources, is a good way of revamping iron. It is detailed here in this post (Specialization and Unique Gameplay - #7 by Deus) but the basic gist is:

  1. Iron will be purely represented by chunks. Each chunk, depending on the size, will have a limited amount of iron to extract. Small engulfable iron chunks are still digestible.
  2. Players and AI will have to attach to iron chunks to extract iron. The larger the chunk, the more iron the chunk has. The more rusticyanin a player has, the quicker they can extract resources.

I think this will have several benefits…

  • provides unique gameplay for iron that forces behavior change from the player and AI. Specializing and investing more in iron further encourages this behavior.
  • I think it’s more likely we’ll see cool behavior and interactions from this system, as it can pretty intuitively lead to competition; it’s much more simple for AI and players to act territorial over a chunk vs a more contrived system including mutualism.
  • Iron could become purely represented through chunks, reducing the number of clouds on screen. This can allow us to include another compound if needed, since we would free up a slot for the compound cloud system.
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