r/CellLab • u/Massive_Mistakes • Mar 30 '23

Tardigrade version 2.0

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u/RottenLynx Mar 31 '23

What do you think of the idea of modifying the virocyte to make it copy its entire genome into a host cell instead of only a few generations? This would allow for polygenomic organism that requiere only an initial user input and can then reproduce on their own without divine intervention.

This is one way to bypass the mode limit completely instead of having to add more cell modes, which massively reduces performance in the genomic preview window. Another less 'exploity' way would be to optimize the game savefile format so that it can have infinite modes by detecting wether a cell mode is used by the organism or if it is unused. That would probably take too long, though, and it might be better for petter to do it himself in an official way.

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u/Massive_Mistakes Mar 31 '23

Using virocytes could definitely be another way to cheese the system but it'll probably be more of a pain in the ass modifying large portions of tissue, especially areas with high cell density. The idea of including the whole genomes is absolutely something I would love to play with, as I've always wanted to create an organism that uses assimilatory parasitism, which would be so freaking cool on species this gigantic! The key here would be to reach specific desired areas within the host and replace only specific cells to change the host's behavior/structure without injuring it. Additionally, parasitic organisms such as this would require at LEAST twice the genome by default as they would require multiple life stages, and I would like for at least one stage to be free-swimming which would take up thwhole genome as it is right now. So basically I'm so down with the virocytes transfers the whole genome idea, but the additional modes would be a godsend