Wrapping Up The Microbe Stage

Gameplay
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Wanted to comment that I’ve been very impressed with the volunteer contributions these past few weeks when it comes to some polishing features identified here. Things that most immediately come to mind are the sulfur toxicity PU and environmental volatility WIP branch, as well as the environmental tolerance tab visual overhaul.

Here are a few things I wanted to note:

  • I think even a brute force tweak with auto-evo to encourage more frequent evolution of external parts, like cilia, toxins, flagellum, and mucilage-related parts, along with size being a factor for predation would do wonders.
  • I would like to direct attention to this discussion here related to difficulty, and a potential lives system attached to species switching or emergency trips to the editor. It can have really sizable effects on balancing for complexity, so it could be something worthwhile to discuss: How Difficult Should Thrive Be? - #5 by Deus
  • This post by @iosononeon also is worthy of discussion related to polishing the Microbe Stage, and I encourage other developers to have similar reflection over our budding stage: My vision of Thrive

Beyond that, I will also reiterate that I am available for questions if any volunteer would like to attack any potential polishing items identified on this thread, or their own personal ideas. But overall, I think we’re much closer to making Thrive a solidly in-depth game with replayability value than I thought we were three weeks ago.

2 Likes
22

Coming in very late here, but I did want to comment two things:

If we’re talking about diversity of species, the fact that we essentially only have one miche per food source (slightly split for those that have sub-types, like clouds and chunks) by definition limits how many species can exist per patch in a stable state (not transient, like with incoming migrants or new species before someone goes extinct next generation), apart from predators which have a miche per prey species. Until the system is expanded, we’re not going to consistently see for example numerous cyanobacteria alongside formidable algae (and later ponderous multicellular algae).

Though while saying this, I am also well aware that the current performance of the auto-evo system means expanding the number of species might not be the best idea.

Finally, if there is anything I would want to add to a “Microbe Stage wrap-up”, it’s a last push to make sure the various available cell parts and options are actually hooked into auto-evo and AI cells. I will see if and how much I can contribute to that myself in time.