Post by mitobox on Sept 26, 2015 21:52:51 GMT
At first, I was going to post in the Space Stage ideas subboard on the idea of terraforming after reading this page of the Transformers wiki. I was thinking about how high-cost tools could completely change an area of a planet into whatever the intelligent race wants. Then I started thinking about how even non-intelligent life profoundly impacts the environment, and my plans derailed.
Basically, it'd make sense for species in the Organism Mode stages to effect the environment, especially the herbivores. Take desertification. When it's animals causing it, such as lifestock, vegetation that usually keeps the soil stable is eaten and overgrazed, allowing the topsoil to be blown or washed away, and the rest to bake and crack in the sun. Trampling the soil would have a similar effect. On a more positive note, animals like elephants uproot trees and maintain the savanna.
It'd stand to reason that, while the player's doing his or her thing, the game would keep track of how many large herbivores doing this sort of thing are in an area, and, in a way a bit like Auto-Evo, modify the area to compliment. Grazing plants would be rendered less often, the soil would look more bare, etc. As this goes on, the game might change the area's biome entirely. This would mean that herbivores would have to refrain from staying in the same area forever (heck, someone playing as a herd species might have to draw migration routes in the Behavior Sub-Editor). From then, a sort of counterpart to this, with ecological succession instead of regression, could play out.
Carnivores could work as a balancing factor to slow down or prevent changes like this.
If anyone's seen Walking With Monsters, the scene in the Late Permian Period with the Scutosauruses drinking the phallic water hole to the last drop (as if the heat and evaporation weren't doing a good enough job) would be a good inspiration. Alternatively, think of the self-regulating Daisy World model, with the black daisies surviving in the cold and keeping the world warm, and the white daisies surviving in the heat and keeping the world cool.
Basically, it'd make sense for species in the Organism Mode stages to effect the environment, especially the herbivores. Take desertification. When it's animals causing it, such as lifestock, vegetation that usually keeps the soil stable is eaten and overgrazed, allowing the topsoil to be blown or washed away, and the rest to bake and crack in the sun. Trampling the soil would have a similar effect. On a more positive note, animals like elephants uproot trees and maintain the savanna.
It'd stand to reason that, while the player's doing his or her thing, the game would keep track of how many large herbivores doing this sort of thing are in an area, and, in a way a bit like Auto-Evo, modify the area to compliment. Grazing plants would be rendered less often, the soil would look more bare, etc. As this goes on, the game might change the area's biome entirely. This would mean that herbivores would have to refrain from staying in the same area forever (heck, someone playing as a herd species might have to draw migration routes in the Behavior Sub-Editor). From then, a sort of counterpart to this, with ecological succession instead of regression, could play out.
Carnivores could work as a balancing factor to slow down or prevent changes like this.
If anyone's seen Walking With Monsters, the scene in the Late Permian Period with the Scutosauruses drinking the phallic water hole to the last drop (as if the heat and evaporation weren't doing a good enough job) would be a good inspiration. Alternatively, think of the self-regulating Daisy World model, with the black daisies surviving in the cold and keeping the world warm, and the white daisies surviving in the heat and keeping the world cool.