Thank you theorists for some great notes.
That’s good to know about the origins of the nucleus. To be clear, I wasn’t proposing an entirely new system of “genetic parasites”; I was just providing what I heard previously about the origins of the nucleus. This information, however, definitely makes it easier to “gamify” the origins and benefits of the nucleus. Feel free to provide any ideas too, either on this thread or in Discord.
Currently, the only thing the nucleus is planned to relate to endosymbiosis is by increasing the number of times a player can unlock an advanced organelle. The endosymbiosis concept right now allows prokaryotes to perform endosymbiosis and unlock one specialized organelle of their choosing; but after that, the players will need a nucleus to unlock more advanced organelles. The nucleus will also allow for alternative unlock conditions for said organelles in the case that there are no suitable candidates for endosymbiosis.
This connection to endosymbiosis is meant to represent the benefits of more localized genetic information, and overall more specialized mechanisms surrounding the maintenance of genetic information.
Currently we aren’t planning to represent that much of a “tech tree” sort of upgrade strategy, where organelles have many iterative improvements. If we connect the nucleus to certain benefits for larger cells however, perhaps we can utilize this information to exaggerate one benefit in place of another. For example, if we decide that the nucleus will help manage osmoregulation costs and also help boost organelle processes, perhaps we can allow the player to choose whether or not they want to exaggerate one benefit in place of the other.
That is planned, but we still need to think through the balancing and benefits behind cellular colonies for eukaryotes in the first place, as well as the criteria for progressing from the Early Multicellular Stage to the Late Multicellular Stage. Then we will consider the balancing of benefits of colonial living for prokaryotic cells.