Scientific disscussion
sayerulz
oregon Join Date: 2015-04-15 Member: 203493Members
oregon Join Date: 2015-04-15 Member: 203493Members
I thought that I might create a thread where any scientifically-minded people could discuss various questions and theories regarding the planet, its geology, the biology of various lifeforms, their evolution, and anything else like that. This game has a variety of unusual creatures and landforms that is rarely seen, and I thought it might be worth talking about how they may have come about.
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That still leaves the question of: why do they create these floating islands? My theory is that they share a mutually benificial relationship of some sort with vegitation that grows on them. By bringing it closer to the surface, they get more light, fueling more rapid growth. Thus, floaters will continue to grow until their islands have reached the surface, at which point plants will be able to photosythisize as effectively as possible. So eventually the floating island biome will become a cluster of floater islands similar to the one in the grand reef.
They likely build floating islands accidentally, as some may attach themselves to loose pieces of surface and lift them upwards. The larger they grow, the higher they lift, and the higher they lift the more microscopic life that would sweep around them. As a floating piece of land is a great place for a micro ecosystem, they would simply keep growing as more and more life swarms around the floating mass.
You are right about starting out as some sort of grub or other more mobile form- they would have to to reach a favorable position for creating a floating structure.
I'm also wondering if anything preys on the Floaters. I suppose that will be answered later on in development.
Thats what I suspect. I image that they grow extremely slowly under normal conditions, but will grow as fast as the food they have allows them to. They probably have no fixed lifespan, simple creatures like that tend not to.
I don't think that those are floaters, they seem like some unrelated species to me. While I don't think that the islands are made out of mushroom tree coral, that does give me a thought. What if the floating islands are in fact composed of some sort of coral that is mutually dependent on the floaters? Note that the underwater islands appear to be made of some sort of porous organic matter. I assumed that that was simply some sort of sponge or similar thing taking advantage of the conditions that the floaters created, but what if it was in fact coral that composed the islands? The floaters initially raise up a small chunk of rock, at which point the coral colonizes the rock they have raised and gradually builds up around it. The floaters grow, filter feeding off of the organic matter and small creatures that the coral attracts, gradually raising up the island and allowing the coral to get more sunlight. Eventually the island breaks the surface and most of the coral dies, but the floaters can continue filtering out the small creatures that the island attracts, and potentially gaining some sort of sustenance from the flora on the island.
To me at least, the things on the mushroom trees look like they have a much rougher skin texture, although that could be because of lower resolution. there are also no floating objects in the mushroom forest.
And why we don't sea any reaper calf? and what do the eat? are reapers breastfeeding their offsprings until they grow up, or do they prey on small fish?
Maybe because it looks cool, bling and swag is very important to these sea creatures.
One of the main things I find odd about the reapers is that they live in very barren biomes. One would expect a superpredator to live where there is lots of prey, but the only large thing that the reapers normally live with is sand sharks. Perhaps the claws on their heads allow them to grab sandsharks out of the sand?
The process of a rock rising from the ocean bottom to the surface is long, so coral life starts to shape the island too. Finally the island breaks apart repeatedly until the floaters without food start to reduce in size, sink back to the ocean bottom to get new rock food again and the cycle restarts.
It's unknown what the floaters extract from rocks, but we pray they don't eat the metal ore out of rocks, because this would mean that a cyclops driving through a floater swarm would get eaten up by those floaters that attach to the sub hull and melting through it, getting bigger and bigger until the sub is no more.
Leviathan sized predators should roam the sea to find enough food, unless there's plenty of it locally. That means the reaper must live from sandsharks or the devs must implement a roaming pathfinding. Because the reaper is only seen near two greater food sources locally - the sandshark and the reefback. All other creatures are too far away from non roaming reapers.
If the reefback is the reaper food, than the reefback can't flee and is forced to roam the sea, thus forcing the reaper to roam and seek for reefbacks.
If the sandshark is the target, the reaper only needs a trick or an organ to detect the sandshark, which is also not fast enough to flee, but can hide. I have always found sandsharks not far from reapers so far. So it would work.
For a simple reason I would prefer roaming leviathans though:
It's thrilling and makes it dangerous to travel through the open sea carelessly. Leviathans are heard from afar, making it frightening, but allows the player to react. Leviathans are also much rarer than the other creatures, thus roaming would not draw much processing power and should be programmable. I remember that once I realized I would be safe in most open sea parts, the game has lost a lot of its fear from predator concepts.
Now predators are more annoying than feared, because after some time you can calculate their pathfinding exactly. Most of them simply swim around needed resources. And that's the difference between fear and annoyance. For example, I don't have to fear biters, but they annoy me, as I have to get rid of them before harvesting resources. Or crabsnakes only hide in jellyshrooms.
Please, devs, remember that fear needs surprise - the inability to predict the enemy. The predators of the game must be able to roam more and use more random actions and pathfinding. The sandshark must not move when other creatures are near and then strike suddenly. The biters must suddenly aggregate to biter swarms and then hunt the prey. The crabsnake also hide in some dark tunnels, ...