So there’s the idea of making the nucleus energetically useful for big cells. The simplest way to try that out is to make it so the nucleus reduces osmoregulation costs by attaching a multiplier to them. @Buckly made this PR to test that.
Now, how powerful we want the nucleus to be is a design question. Do we want it to be energetically net positive for medium sized cells or just very big cells? And how do we avoid making it OP for giant cells?
Focusing on the former first, there’s a certain size a cell needs to reach before the nucleus becomes net positive. With the current system, this can be calculated with the formula
required hexes = 10 * multiplier / (1 – multiplier)
If the multiplier is:
- 90%, then the cell needs 90 hexes before the nucleus to break even
- 70%, then the cell needs 24 hexes
- 50%, then the cell needs 10 hexes
Currently the PR has the multiplier at 90%. It makes getting the nucleus slightly nicer but is pretty far from making the nucleus net positive for normal cells.
As for the latter part, making giant cells OP, I can think of two options. We can either keep the cost reduction low enough that it’s not a problem, or we can implement some kind of scaling cost to size. The scaling cost could be osmoregulation or something else like slower processes. This ties itself well to the surface area to volume ratio that has been discussed here: Surface Area, Volume, and Ratios. I think I’ll make a more detailed post about my thoughts there later.