NeuraQuarium
Preview: Autosave, Plus More
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Here I have three simulations running in parallel. Two sims based on the same original critter stock, but with different values for fruit, lead to either carnivores or herbivores as the dominant strategy.
Both of these simulations are regularly autosaving into their own subdirectory folder.
A third simulation is set up with a fruit value in the middle of the other two. It is told to "point" to the directory that contains those two sub-folders, and regularly import a small batch of critters from the latest autosave in a random subfolder.
Effectively, we have a "mixing tank" where we can keep our root stocks evolving in their own ideal environments, but automatically stir them together by scooping up just a few at a regular interval.
Comments
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Does having a high nutrition value for fruit really breed more carnivores, or just ensure that they survive because they have more fat herbivores to eat?
I can see that some of the other settings are different between the first two tanks: does this end up generating say carnivores that don't succeed in the third tank because the reproduction settings are different there?
While I am commenting, thanks for being part of one of the abortion rights bundles...
The high nutrition value for fruit basically frees herbivores to start sliding down the omnivore track without really "losing" any of the nutrition.
The way the Diet stat works is that herbivores get 100% of the nutrition from fruit, carnivores get 0%, omnivores 50%, and so on with all the in-betweens.
So, if you're an herbivore who is really good at finding fruit (i.e. you evolved where fruit was very rare and not very nutritious, and could only survive by evolving to actively seek out fruits) and suddenly every fruit you find is more calories than your body can even contain, you lose nothing by letting your diet ratio slip down toward omnivory, but you DO suddenly gain energy from eating other critters (say, when you bump into each other and you either bite them or let them bite you; or when you encounter a dead body just sitting there for free.)
This is something I've observed many times -- you want to see the Diet graph shift away from all yellow herbivores? Make fruit MORE nutritious, so critters don't need to invest in plant digestion to use it. Instead they can invest in meat digestion and still supplement their diet with fruit, and get a decent return.