Each patch runs it’s own population model. Each species interacts with the environment (takes up compounds and spits them out) and processes compounds internally. Then there is a food web where different species take compounds off others by predation.
We haven’t talked that much about how this information will be displayed. IMO there should be a separate screen where you see a map of all the patches your species is in, how well they are doing there, who their predators and prey are (but not the full food web - though maybe it’s cool to let the player see it it’ll probably be super confusing, especially if there are 300 species there). I guess you could see what weapons the species that kills you most has however the only two weapons are pilus and agents, though I guess you could evolve specific resistance to different agents.
Moreover we have talked about allowing different patches to evolve the same species in different ways. Until, finally, they are so different they split into two different species and are considered as such. This is all a bit of a pipe dream at the moment.
If you want to work on it the thing we haven’t really started on is How do you create a formula to tell you the outcome of hunting attempts between two species? So we want a Lotka-Volterra style model so we know
number of members of species A and B in this patch
organelles of species A and B
compounds stored in A and B as a whole (each species is considered to be made of N identical members who have identical compound stores)
How much of A’s compounds do we transfer to B (and how many to the environment as spillage) as a function of the above inputs. (As you can see a pretty hard problem).
We have formulas (CPA master list) for the chemical reactions inside the species.