NESLife VIII: The Next Generation

[Daftpanzer]

Thank you guys for the new additions!

It is not my preferred route for a sea animal adapting to a brackish environment and a small land animal attempting to osmoregulate and hydroregulate through skin pores to use the same gene. I think that should be up to me as a player. In practice, I'm not disputing your logic on the habitat (that the animal must still get salt from brackish water or salt flats or whatever). But requiring one gene pathway to get to the same result is unnecessarily limiting, if an alternate pathway is biologically plausible.

Sort of how a creature that wants to navigate the deep sea floor could achieve that with pressure resistance genes, or with exoskeletal genes, or maybe some other genes I haven't considered.

This is also the 3rd generation of a clade that has been slowly and incrementally adopting to land, so I don't think I'm at odds with your wishes for a hurdle.

@Thlayli, I have two points to make: firstly, the 'water vapor' that is being absorbed is, I assume, going to be fresh water for the most part (unless you're already really close to the sea), which means the creature will likely have its salt balance messed up and it will go into shock and die. Now someone like Iggy could probably elaborate on this much more than I can. I've no hate on the idea of absorbant skin, this is a thicker atmosphere and so absorbing moisture directly from the air would be more viable than it is in our world. You could even make that a specialism, but I'm going to need it to be based off of adaptation for fresh water as input. You can take it as having absorbant skin and not drinking directly, but the gene will read as 'freshwater tolerance' because...

Secondly, I want to reduce the amount of admin regarding the stats. I want an easy way to compare species, as I can't keep a constant mental picture of the stats for all of them at this point. And I suspect so do a lot of the players. The google doc with the species stats is 37 pages long already. I am seeking a balance of 'unique' genes and ones that form a kind of shared language between species. This means sometimes you won't get your own particular wording or flavour.

Sort of how a creature that wants to navigate the deep sea floor could achieve that with pressure resistance genes, or with exoskeletal genes, or maybe some other genes I haven't considered.

I would actually want that to have 'pressure resistance' as well. I don't think exoskeletons work like that is you have any orifices at all - unlike a sealed submarine - so all the internals need to be adapted for higher pressure. Having an exoskeleton may or may not 'help' with survivng in higher pressure, I'd need to do a bit of reading on that, but I'm not going to give a free pass to exploiting another biome. Pressure resistance gene is something we can all easily read and interpret in the stats.

If you find this distasteful, nobody is stopping you building and running your own LifeNES - I'm sure there's room for another evolution game! (and just to be clear, I would join)

Tree of life looking thicc.

Flapmellesters probably dying out soon. Me sad. Poor lorg blobs.

@Angst, I can think of quite a few ways they could adapt to survive!

 

[Angst]

@Angst, I can think of quite a few ways they could adapt to survive!

We'll see if it's possible! I'm personall only sticking to +1 gene bonuses atm to limit myself among species and force myself to think creatively. So we'll see. If anything, you can always give them more poison as an arms race, lol.

 

[Thlayli]

The creature needs vapor absorption to work as intended, and I don't agree that it would die immediately from getting a tiny little incremental bit of fresh water in the form of vapor. Even animals that live in seawater will have to deal with various spikes and drops in salinity and need salt level regulation genes.

We have external digestion and stomach and plant eating and flesh eating as four separate forms of digestion gene, so I don't know why vapor absorption and lungs and gills wouldn't be considered three different forms of oxygen absorption genes. You can give it whatever genes you want, since as you stated, you're the mod, but I still want to state that I'm passionate about vapor absorption as an extremely important part of the biology and I feel it deserves its own gene.

Of course, NESLife is a great game, which I appreciate, and I don't want to fight over it too much more or cause you any anxiety over it. So I won't say anything further.

 

[Thlayli]

In order to help resolve the great freshwater tolerance debate I am writing a new background for the Revolva to specify that it cannot survive out of heavily salty areas, and that the vapor it absorbs must be equally salty or the creature will die straight off. I hope this recognizes the freshwater tolerance rule Daft has set, while also preserving the key functions of the creature.

Revolva
Evolved From: Zoupa
Genes Added: 1x Vapor Absorption, 1x Brooding Pouch
Genes Removed: 1x Barbs (I am keeping 'aquatic spores' as a gene, however the spore stage is gestated within an aqueous sac within the parent organism)
Genes: 2x Tentacles, 2x Water Retention, 1x Vapor Absorption, 1x Eyes, 1x External Digestion, 1x Stomach, 1x Aquatic Spores, 1x Brooding Pouch

Descendants of the Zoupa with thickening sheath-skins began to curl up in a ball to endure the heat of day, protecting their tentacles and core moisture while clinging to safe areas like rocky seaside peaks. They unrolled at night to creep around, dissolving young plants with acidic tentacles and absorbing moisture from highly salty sea spray. The Revolvas would notably die immediately when attempting to leave a coastal environment due to the inherent toxicity of fresh water vapor to their highly sensitive body systems, however these adaptations provided them with the interim skills to survive entire days out of water, albeit in a tidal-adjacent moist environment, providing a scaffold which would be used for their descendants later expansion into less coastal environments as soon as they gained the capacity to handle fresh water.

The breeding cycle was liberated from an aquatic stage by creating an aqueous pouch for the spore stage to begin metamorphosis within the mother organism. The juveniles are barely the size of marbles, but are capable of slowly creeping around and growing on their own. Revolvas still cluster in highly moist areas, but no longer need to immerse themselves or give birth in a daily tide pool and can survive indefinitely outside of water in the correct microclimate.