Herbivore/carnivore decided too early? Skeleton instead?

[Optimizer]

At the very beginning of the Cell phase, you choose to be herbivore or carnivore. You could always change the mouth during the cell phase, or even use a double mouth (at the cost of valuable DNA points).

But when the Cell phase is over, you will get stuck with the same diet throughout the Creature and Tribe phases.

Omnivore is of course more interesting. Carnivore or herbivore makes for narrow gameplay during the Creature phase.

So, in an expansion pack or Spore 2, the Creature phase would be more exciting if you could switch between herbivore, omnivore and carnivore mouths throughout the Creature Phase, and have diet finally decided when entering the Tribal phase.

Of course, the Cell phase (which should be interpreted as "invertebrate water animal phase") should still be decisive for later phases. But how?

Maybe it could be about skeleton form: Exoskeletal (arthropods etc), endoskeletal (vertebrates etc) or hydrostatic (mollusks etc).

* Exoskeletal creatures would have a lot of hit points, however be limited in size.
* Hydrostatic creatures would be rather slow, but able to re-generate, and to reproduce asexually. They would do best under water.
* Endoskeletal creatures would be a middle way, much like the default Spore creatures.

All of these would of course have unique bonuses for the late game stages.

[warpstorm]

Hmmm, I found omnivore the least interesting, then herbivore, then carnivore. Omnivores have no issues with food at all. Herbivores have very little. Carnivores have to attack to eat. Playing a friendly carnivore is a bit of a challenge (especially if you want it to register that way at the end of the era).

[Dom Pedro II]

Originally Posted by warpstorm

Hmmm, I found omnivore the least interesting, then herbivore, then carnivore. Omnivores have no issues with food at all. Herbivores have very little. Carnivores have to attack to eat. Playing a friendly carnivore is a bit of a challenge (especially if you want it to register that way at the end of the era).

I found omnivore to be unimpressive also. I found that they had to either hunt or make friends, but they weren't particularly good at either unless you switched your parts to one or the other. If you used the middle-ground omnivore parts, you could charm the lower-level creatures or kill the lower-level creatures, but you couldn't do either particularly well against the higher-level creatures.

[Optimizer]

Actually, it does not matter much what diet is most fun to play in original Spore. It probably differs between players.

I want to allow the player to switch between herbivore, omnivore and carnivore during the creature phase.

The skeleton should remain the same throughout the phase, though. And available body parts would differ a lot between the three skeleton types.

Exoskeletals would have access to strong claws and cobweb glands.

Hydrostatics would have access to tentacles, camouflage skin and slimy venom.

[GoodGame]

Really the diet decision is minimally important. The only nice thing about omnivore is that it makes it easier to pick up the 'Adaptable' trait since the omnivores let you combine meat eating with singing, where as it's harder to get a carnivore mouth with good singing ability.

It would still be nice to have the 'aquatic / multi-Cellular' phase to develop the eating traits though. 'Evolution' as depicted in Spore is a bit too abrupt.

[Onionsoilder]

I like the exoskeleton/endoskeleton idea, though I don't think hydrostatic would work unless an entirely new underwater part of the Creature phase was introduced(which I wouldn't be against, though I belive some things take priotiry over adding something like this in).

Endoskeletons could also evolve wombs, but could keep playing eggs if they wanted to. Exoskeletons could not, due to their restrictive shell. Exoskeletons would also have stronger attacks and higher HP, but would take more DNA points to evolve(due to the extra bones needing to be produced).

EDIT: Back on the diet topic, I would like it to play a larger part in Spore. In the late Tribal phase, or early Civilization phase, Agriculture should be developed for Herbivores and Omnivores, and Ranching should be developed for Omnivores and Carnivores. Ranching would be more expensive, but produce more food. Agriculture would be cheaper, but take up slightly more land. Omnivores that produce both types of food would recive bonuses for having a healthy diet.

[Optimizer]

Well, personally I feel disgusted by hydrostatic animals, and I believe they would be boring to play (since they would not develop real legs or wings), but it makes sense to have three options.

[Lord_Iggy]

These all sound like good ideas to me- anything to shake up the creature phase a bit.