Spore Needs FOOD CHAIN!

[conor4thepeople]

Spore Needs a food chain button that lets you view the food chain to see wats gonna kill them and wats they can eat

[HainLeKes]

that would be a cool idea, it would be better if the food chain started out empty, and every species you encountered was added to their right place in the food chain.

[flixern]

How fun will it be to know which monsters you can fight, and which monsters you can't? And you got different lvls in each phase. So you know if you are close to the next phase or not. Then you also know if you are high on the food chain

[SuperAndy]

in sporepedia, if u select a planet i think it shows u a list of creatures that live on tht planet, but its not organised in any way. this is agreat idea tho!

[orifice]

A food chain? Like McDonalds for instance?

[Cyberfrog]

Don't know about this one... Sometimes less is more. I think encountering strange creatures not quite sure how to handle them (try to socialize, run away screaming, try to kill and eat them, etc.) will be a significant portion of the fun.


Edit: In the space phase there probably is something like this.

[RedGiant]

There is such a button. This has been known for a while; apparantely, planets are made up of chains that consist of 3 plants, 2 herbivores that eat them and one carnivore that eats them. I'm not sure how many chains are allowed per planet but I think it was three.

[JohnConnor101]

It's also noted that NPC creatures can attack each other, commonly known as 'hunting' / 'predation'. There was another thread discussing possibilities if extinction for useless NPC creatures, but I think people concluded any 'evolution' was down to levelling when you upgrade your own creature, rather than externals. Which is odd, in a way, In the Tribal and Civ phases, if you don't evolve (societally), the rival tribes and cities will leave you behind.

[Kris015]

Originally Posted by flixern

How fun will it be to know which monsters you can fight, and which monsters you can't? And you got different lvls in each phase. So you know if you are close to the next phase or not. Then you also know if you are high on the food chain

I think you are right Flix

[SpectralColt]

but didnt they say that theres always somthing better than you? and if your a carnivore couldnt you be at the top of the food chain and thus be the best of the planet? for the creature stage anyway...

[RedGiant]

Originally Posted by SpectralColt

but didnt they say that theres always somthing better than you? and if your a carnivore couldnt you be at the top of the food chain and thus be the best of the planet? for the creature stage anyway...

The tier system has been shown only on space stage, I'm guessing that creature will be different. Or possibly you are exempt from the chain.

[JohnConnor101]

Predators can eat each other too. Your's just won't be the apex predator.

[Kris015]

There is always Epic Creatures... I guess they are MUCH stronger than you...

[Wishbone77]

Originally Posted by HainLeKes

that would be a cool idea, it would be better if the food chain started out empty, and every species you encountered was added to their right place in the food chain.

I like this idea, but it should be filled out according to "how it went down" as it were. Meaning if you killed and ate the other creature, it'd be added directly below you in the chain, and vice versa if it killed and ate you.

I'm assuming you can be killed and eaten, without the game ending? You're supposed to be controlling a whole species, even if you only control one member at a time, so dying should not end the game for you, only extinction should.

[Wishbone77]

Originally Posted by RedGiant

apparantely, planets are made up of chains that consist of 3 plants, 2 herbivores that eat them and one carnivore that eats them. I'm not sure how many chains are allowed per planet but I think it was three.

Hmm, that's disappointing. I was hoping for more elaborate food chains. It also sounds like that's a maximum of 9 different creatures per planet? That's not a lot, considering the diversity of species on Earth. Of course, Spore planets are much smaller, but still, 9 creatures...

[RedGiant]

[Spoilers, I guess]

From the text dump:

"The Food Web has three levels, each consisting of three plants (in ascending size), two plant-eaters, and a predator. Add new plants and animals, in the right order, to stabilize or increase the T-score of a planet.."

Looks like 9 creatures and nine plants from here. Sorry buddy.

EDIT: Additional confirmation, check the top-right corner of this screenshot (View picture if it's too small):

[Watashiii]

They are very small planets

[RedGiant]

Originally Posted by Watashiii

They are very small planets

Indeed. I do not really mind the microcosmic view of the food webs, seeing as everything else is similarly scaled down (Small planets, super-speed global warming) especially since there is a practically limitless amount of said planets.

[Wishbone77]

Sure, but wouldn't it be cool to have a few large planets too? Like, say, 10 times the size of the "standard" planets?

[SpectralColt]

there could be, we just havnt seen any

[VertMorta]

Do you realise it would be vvv hard to colonise planets 10x your homeworld.

if Gravity is anything like real world a x10 world would have a spore G rating of 10g so a microbe weighing 1gramme on homeworld weighs 10grammes on a x10 world.

I would say a species suposed to siomulate terran norms would likely have a range for long term exposure of .75g to 1.25g maybe .5 to 1.5g.

no species would be able to survive a world SO huge to it, if i understand the effects correctly the same scale aplies to atmospheric pressure so pressure at sea level on a x10 scaled world would be 10 bar pressure

[SuperAndy]

since in space stage you can abduct creatures and put them on another planet... what happens if you exceed the 9 creature limit? surely they wont do sumthin as unrealistic as simply killing off any spare creatures, whether there suitable for the planet or not?

[JohnConnor101]

I doubt 'Spore' models planetary gravity, though no reason when if you're genetically engineering colonising animals, they can't be so engineered to resist the extra gravity.

[Wishbone77]

Originally Posted by VertMorta

if Gravity is anything like real world a x10 world would have a spore G rating of 10g so a microbe weighing 1gramme on homeworld weighs 10grammes on a x10 world.

But gravity in Spore is nothing like the real world. The planets are very small. From appearances they seem to be on the order of a few square miles of surface area at most. Any "planet" that size would be an asteroid in the real world. Its gravity would be negligible.

Still, I see your point. If we assume that gravity is multiplied by some factor in the Spore universe (which is likely exactly what they've done), then it should scale like gravity does in the real world.

However, first of all, this is a game. They don't have to follow the real laws of physics. Secondly, not all planets are necessarily equally dense. The various elements vary enormously in their mass, and a planet comprised entirely of, say, gold, would have a much higher gravity than a planet of the same size comprised entirely of carbon. Of course, those are extremes, and no such planets could ever exist (except possibly in a game ), but the distribution of elements do vary a lot between planets. As such, gravity is not only a question of volume (or radius, if you will), but also of density.

Originally Posted by VertMorta

I would say a species suposed to siomulate terran norms would likely have a range for long term exposure of .75g to 1.25g maybe .5 to 1.5g.

Indeed. But since Spore does take evolution into account, a species could conceivably, over time, adapt to much higher gravities than that of the planet they originated on.

Actually, that would be pretty cool. Imagine evolving a race for immense strength, by moving them to a planet with higher gravity, letting them evolve there for a while, then moving them again to a planet with still higher gravity, and so on.

Originally Posted by VertMorta

no species would be able to survive a world SO huge to it, if i understand the effects correctly the same scale aplies to atmospheric pressure so pressure at sea level on a x10 scaled world would be 10 bar pressure

Again, only assuming that the amount of atmosphere is the same. It needn't be.

Look at Venus. It has a surface gravity of 0.904g. However, its surface pressure is around 90 bar. The explanation is simple: Venus has a lot more atmosphere than Earth does, and it weighs considerably more (the atmosphere, not the planet).

[TheAesthete]

Thank you wishbone and vertmorta, nice little lesson there. However, going back to the topic of a food chain for the creature phase. Nice idea, but would have to be filled in as you met new creatures, and putting them in order determined by outcome of battle would be good. (assuming a player will be more skilled than the AI, defeating AI creatures with slightly higher stats than themselves.)
of course, given stats are displayed to you when you meet the creature, just putting them into a stat orientated tree wouldn't ruin any of the exploration magic ;-) and might be useful when your starving and wondering where a good meal is.

Also on the subject of the difficulty of creatures, in the creature phase creatures near your nest are pretty weak, the further away from your nest you get, harder creatures arrive. and also in the creature phase there appear to be more than the 9 creatures that there will be on other planets once your in the space phase.

And finally, on the subject of extinction, you can extinct a creature in the creature phase by killing them. (you get dna bonuses etc for doing so) however it seems like you only need to kill 3 of them to do this. (presumably in a reletivly short amount of time,) this seems a little too easy to me, but we'll see once the game is out.