55: Digestion III

[wapcaplet]

I have been struggling on 55: "Digestion III" in version 91. I've tried many smart swimmer variations, and evolved some of the more successful ones to reach just over 300 cells. Here are three of my designs that can't solve the challenge yet:

wap digestion3 fails.substrate

The lumpiness of nutrients in the substrate makes it tricky to keep a stable population. It may hold steady between 200-300 cells for a good while, then die back to less than 100, sometimes all the way to 0. That is part of the challenge to overcome, I suppose.

My swimmers have been OK at picking up food and reproducing, but their swimming and steering accuracy is lacking.

I'm using long adhesin to keep the secrocyte away from its neighbors. This has the unwanted effect of swimmers getting entangled.

Any advice, from anyone who has solved it?

[Alast]

Accuracy increases the closer the sensing cell is to the cell that processes the source of the sensing cell's stimulus. For a normal Kite Swimmer that'd be the Stereocyte and the Phagocyte.

in Digestion III, however, the processing cell is not the Phagocyte because you are searching for coated food as you have to uncoat it first. That leaves the Secrocyte as the processing cell.

Hope that will put you on the right track

[Noughtypixy]

Quite like the long adhesion, I been using a keritonite to protect my organism, still not cracked this one tho.

[wapcaplet]

Accuracy increases the closer the sensing cell is to the cell that processes the source of the sensing cell's stimulus.

Thanks, I had not thought about it this way. Relocating the stereocyte closer to the digestive secrocyte definitely helped with accuracy. I think I have a fairly good design now, and have subjected it to around 30,000 hours of evolution at 0.001-0.003 radiation. The evolved swimmer can get over 400 cells in the challenge, and peaked once at 465 (!) but have not quite reached the 470 goal. Maybe with more evolution it will get just over the edge... or maybe it's back to the drawing board.

My best swimmer has one stereocyte, and seeks only coated food. Usually it'll eat the digested food right away as it swims forward, but sometimes not, and because it ignores digested (ready-to-eat) food, opportunities for free nutrients are missed. I'm trying an alternate design with 2 stereocytes - one for coated food, one for ready-to-eat food - but so far the extra cell is difficult to support, and balancing priorities without a neurocyte (yet *another* cell to feed) is always hard to do.

Quite like the long adhesion, I been using a keritonite to protect my organism

Yeah, I tried keratin in several of my other versions. But then one of them evolved away the keratin (even with point mutations on) and thrived without it, and I've decided it's not really necessary. The long adhesin helps keep the cells from touching each other, and also lets the mobile food sift through the cracks (so it doesn't get stuck and throw the sensors out of whack).

[fungus3]

I think the challenge was intentionally designed so that you MUST not let the secrocytes kill your genome, since lipase kills cells similarly to cyanide. Cells killed by the lipase can cost you the entire challenge

[wapcaplet]

The cell damage caused by lipase is hard to avoid. Even my most optimized swimmers get killed by it sometimes.

But it's not as bad as cyanide. One touch of that, and cells and their neighbors are doomed to die. Lipase only causes slight injury, only dangerous with prolonged contact. If contact stops, even very injured cells can recover.

On the other hand, keratin doesn't protect from lipase; there is no way to make an organism immune to lipase, like one can be made immune to cyanide.

[Petter]

Keratinocytes are protected from lipase, they just dont protect other cells.

[Alast]

Which means that one (very inefficient) way to protect your whole organism is to make it grow a ring of Keratinocytes with the "vital organs" inside.

[wapcaplet]

That would be quite the shell of armor!

So I have yet another well-evolved digesting swimmer that seeks coated food and avoids other swimmers (sort of). The avoidance minimizes the uh, accidental cannibalism, quite a bit. So they still don't have (or really need) keratin. They still haven't hit the elusive 470-cell goal; only 400 at most.

I haven't tried any keratin-based digesters yet. Maybe I ought to...

[Alast]

My solution only has one Stereo to seek coated food and no Keratino. So it's possible It is a tough challenge, though, and that's intended.