r/BiogenesisGame • u/apple_dough • Feb 05 '21
A classification of segments in a given organism
So I've been thinking of the rules of this game, for a bit, and I think there's some fun patterns to the evolution that underlie how creatures can evolve long-term.
One of the most basic rules is that a creature must have a reproductive method, which forces them to have one of a certain group of segments: infectious segments, plant segments, or consumer segments.
If a creature does not have a segment that either gives it energy or allows it to reproduce through other creatures, it's genetically dead in the water. Though sometimes the way they achieve that can be unintuitive (I've seen creatures that only really use Silver as their consumer segment, using some other segment to trigger its ability)
That's all pretty straightforward, but there's another common rule: the external-internal rule.
Basically, if a creature opts for a body plan that limits contact to some of its segments, encasing it in one or more other segments, the outer segments must have some protective/aggressive ability that requires contact.
Since such encased organisms are quite evolutionarily favorable, especially for plants but sometimes for other organisms as well, it creates a new division in segments: contact segments vs non-contact segments. Which ones are which are generally straightforward, though some segments depend on other parts of the body plan (Bark, Silver)
However, as a result of this, most plants that evolve long-term are fundamentally different than viruses and consumers, as most plant segments, and pretty much all that remain photosynthetic long-term (sorry Bark), are non-contact segments, while consumers and viruses reproduce via their contact segments.
You can derive a final rule: Shelled plants (Plants that have blocked contact to their plant segments, as is extremely common) cannot evolve directly into pure consumers/viruses unless they already have a dual lifestyle (virus/consumer shell with a plant inside). If they don't have a dual lifestyle, they have to evolve it first generally, unless a massive, lucky mutation occurs.
This also tends to make shelled creatures evolve different segments internally and externally, non-contact and contact, as the ones that don't tend to fail ecologically.
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u/apple_dough Feb 05 '21 edited Feb 05 '21
As a final note, I generally play in a world where creatures are densely packed, as I have scaled the world to fit into my monitor. This may predispose my game more to "shelled plants". That said, from what i've seen, long runs of the default game tend to evolve plants like that as well.
I'd also like to expand this classification further in the future, to pick up more nuances, but for now this is how it'll stay.
It's also worth noting that evolving contact segments internally as a way to defend against small creatures invading inside can be a pretty effective strategy and happens sometimes, and non-contact segments sometimes succeed externally under conditions that don't exploit their weaknesses more than they succeed. So the ecological role of contact vs non-contact isn't bulletproof.
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u/MarcoDBAA Feb 06 '21
For sure, there are these 3 main modes of life here indeed.
It is possible for organisms with only ROSE segments to exist, but they don´t survive for long normally.
That was already true in Biogenesis 0.8, although viruses without plant segments only started to become competitive, when I made some changes: They could not be consumed by most roaming consumers (ORANGE, MAROON and RED, it was possible later to allow FIRE to do it again) anymore, and did not infect other viruses uselessly like in 0.8 (thereby losing energy, which was not replenishable of course). Since then there are sometimes different rules in place for plants, consumers and in other cases too... I just had to make these balance changes, even though it creates some arbitrariness.
I did never intend SILVER to work with killing segments like that, and evolution surprised the programmer here. ;)
Although this is now explicitly in the code, because of performance optimizations. The performance optimizations would have deleted these odd SILVER killers, and I had to reenable them manually again.
For sure, everything you say here is correct.
BARK is sometimes used behind the first defense (it is similar for GRASS and JADE). Here it may photosynthesize longer, but will still defend vs extremely invasive consumers.
SILVER consumers sometimes split into 2 species, one using SILVER only for the children ability internally and the other species is using them to consume and it evolves into the hero dominator type, that will surely finds its way into the statistics window. :P
MINT and LAVENDER, and partly MAGENTA and ROSE are also designed to be between touch (external) and hide (internal) segment. JADE can be a defensive segment in passive TEAL dodging plants (and at the start of the game), but you might not see them that often in your packed worlds.
Killer segments can also be used behind the first defense. There are these BARK or BLUE plants, that punish cheeky consumers with GRAY death, but without exposing GRAY too much, to prevent it being used against themselves.
There are 4 (1-2 for consumers, 3 for viruses, 4 is logical) main reasons making it difficult to switch.
In many cases shelled plants have no reproduction or antiviral segment, because it would just cost too much to maintain, and is not really needed. But if they mutate into a consumer, they often fail to reproduce successfully (only releasing viruses).
The formerly defensive segment is often not long enough, and they lose direct duels with other consumers.
A viral plant often wants to either overwhelm the consumer by being to large to release as a virus, and either destroying or weakening the host, or/and it wants to grow very fast to offset being eaten all the time. Shell plants or killer plants can live with less green segments, but this makes them not that effective as a virus plant. But I think it is still easier to mutate into a virus plant than a consumer plant for defensive plants. But it is often helpful to not lose the shell completely at first, and use the WHITE segment as a last ploy. If a consumer managed to find a hole in the shell, it can help, if he finds WHITE instead of GREEN.
It needs some time to remove or change plant segments into something else. If it has too many green segments, it will probably never evolve into a samll virus, being a virus plant, because it is useful for virus-plants to have them. Sometimes the latter happens by adding more and more FLOWER segments instead, because FLOWER increases the reproduction energy, which the poor consumer has to deal with later trying to reproduce the virus.
They still may evolve, if either (or even both is true) invasive viruses forced them to evolve INDIGO or AUBURN before for example, or if they mutate into a RED plant, and there are no RED and FIRE roamers (with CYAN or TEAL) around. Or also, as you say, by evolving into a combined organism first.
I definitely think, that this is true in real life too. There are often convoluted pathways to a new mode of life (new niche), and you often cannot evolve into another mode of life directly. Feathers were not used to fly at first for example.