I think you do bring up a very valid point, that diets/lifestyles can be made to be more unique and that we should try to offer a bit more options for players to specialize their organism. You also bring up very good points about risks and rewards - there aren’t really any when it comes to diets right now, just different options. This naturally inclines players towards oxygen/photosynthesis because, all things being equal, oxygen and the sun provide the best advantages.
However, I think the gameplay mechanic you suggest - of offering a “perk” every three turns with the nucleus - is a bit at odds with the underlying philosophy of Thrive. When it comes to upgrades and specialization, we try to abide by a few principles:
- There is a plus and a minus for every upgrade/specialization to a part - slim down thylakoids or chloroplasts to get faster, but reduce photosynthetic efficiency. Injectable pilus can inflict toxin damage, but inflict less physical damage. You get better at one thing, but worse at one thing. Including perks would represent “flat upgrades”, which, besides opportunity costs, don’t really have concessions attached to them.
- We try to have abilities attached to the morphology or parts in your cell, so that the importance of morphology and body plans are emphasized. If we can represent a mechanic via a part rather than a process/system, we default to the part. There is an occasional argument for a more abstract mechanic - I recently argued for such with RuBisCo - but we absolutely prefer physical parts.
If we want to enforce these specializations, it’s probably better to do such through mechanics based on parts. For example, in my concept for surface area to volume ratios, I propose that players might receive different costs or benefits depending on their ratio. High surface area organisms would have better photosynthetic capability, but will have less health, less engulfment max size, and less resistance to extremes. Other benefits or costs can be attached to balance out the game and reflect morphological complexity. I think this is a more part/body-plan derived mechanic to emphasize specialization options that more smoothly integrates with Thrive, though I obviously am biased. It also is a relevant consideration for future stages, as surface area to volume will be especially important in the early macroscopic stage, and will influence factors like size limits/costs in the later macroscopic stages. This concept, incorporated with non-linear osmoregulation/size associated costs, would provide a great cost/benefit dilemma for the player: https://forum.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/t/surface-area-volume-and-ratios/978
So I think you make very valid points, but there might be better ways of addressing them in my opinion. Besides the above mentioned, a few questions arise. For example, could the player theoretically collect all perks eventually and become this really powerful and generalized organism? Could they collect contrasting perks and become less specialized? There are a few gameplay concerns.
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I think you bring up pretty cool ideas towards different metabolisms - hydrogen sulfide potentially being toxic for example. Keep in mind however that we might eventually choose to alter the nature of hydrogen sulfide in favor of a more generic “sulfur”, acting as an environmental compound, to provide an anaerobic option once dynamic environments are integrated; but the same costs could probably be applied to that as well. We should also consider the fact that we can make diets differ by introducing different environmental patterns - for example, iron can deplenish or randomly surge based on environmental activity.
Perhaps sulfur/sulfide could be a bit toxic to organisms without the organelle as well? That brings up cool emergent gameplay - for example, implementing anaerobic photosynthesis, which naturally results in an output of sulfur, could see these cool red-tide analogous event occur where surface patches might become dangerous for organisms. We should be cautious though, as we don’t want players to be annoyed by the smallest cloud or hint of sulfur.
EDIT - notice you mentioned some costs would be attached to those specializations, so my fault for not remembering that as part of the original concept. The issue is then just how well this mechanic fits with the rest of our in-game mechanics.