Third Droner: Queen Droner ('Alate' Ant/Praetorian)

[Nayus]

Tomorrow I have an exam, so obviously the best way to spend the time is in Cell Lab! (?

Unnecesary backstory: I was having a personal issue with this design, because the idea was there, the methods were there, everything looked possible but while making it, it surged problem after problem. It looked like it needed just one, just one tiny extra mode and I could make it work. And when the Mode Limitations were solved, it emerged some problem with a Senseocyte, then a problem with nutrient priority, then back to Mode Limitation, then...
This design was fighting back and I couldn't just let it win that easy, It was personal But now it works (like at 91%... but that's something I'm sure will be solved the second I post it here cause I'll notice the obvious better route)

Well -The Organism:

I'll put the substrates before the long explanation for the ones that are going to get bored with the description and prefer to see the organism directly:

Substrate with just 1 Initial Cell
Substrate with Medium Age (540h)
Substrate Aged (1170h)

Overlook:
Is a Droner with Ant-Queen-ish behavior that has a stronger early life compared to previous Droners. Also there's a new Praetorian Concept applied here (not with garantized effectivity yet)

Description:

Is a Queen Droner that has 2 forms in her lifespan (I don't know if in english, the Queens from the animal kingdom are refered as "she" but I'll do that. Pardon if I'm wrong). In her early life develops from an egg to a fully fleshed smart swimmer with two extra Lipocytes to gather a huge amount of nutrients.


>Early Life Queen<

I know its not the most symetric, appealing design but it works . There's also that extra red Secrocyte I didn't mention but it will play an important role in the adult form. So, When those Lipocytes get filled, the Queen transforms into her adult form. In this form it loses (absorbs, really) the movility cells as well as the two Lipocytes and uses those nutrients to form her Adult body and the first batch of drones as well (at least 5 are form with this amount).


>Adult Queen<

Now fully formed and with a few drones in the wild, the Queen will get nutrients to produce more. The Queen has a high Nutrient Priority, a Glueocyte to catch the Drones, a Secrocyte that secretes Food Smell to attract the drones, a Lipocyte that works as Storage and produces drones, and a little system I'm fond of: A Stemocyte that produces a new Queen Egg when the current Adult Queen is aproaching the end of her life-span (this sometimes won't work but it gives an extra chance to reset the reproductive cycle than it already has).

The drones are a simple smart swimmer with all its cells with the stay alive box unmarked and with a lowered nutrient priority. I couldn't fit in the modes a Storage Lipocyte as I'd want to but it gets the job done anyways.

>Drone<

Note: CandyYAHFT's second suggestion: Because my system of Stemocyte replacing the Older Queen with a new egg didn't seem that reliable and also with so much space taken by Drones that wander off and never get to come back to their original Queen, I applied the second suggestion. The Drones that spend enough time without giving its nutrients and with enough food will transform into a Early Life Queen. But, because the Queen produces Food smell, if a Pre-Queen gets near a Adult Queen, it will likely give its nutrients to her. So Adult Queens have priority over Pre-Queens. This a nice side effect that fits nicely with the design. It's also another way to apply the Praetorian Concept.


>A Queen obtaining a huge amount of nutrients from 5 Drones and 3 Early Queens<

The design is very tightly Moded, and uses every one of the 20.

Pros:
-Is a very well shaped, fully funtional Droner
-It renders (not exactly) the behavior of some ants as very well explained CandyYAHFT
-The Early Life gave the Droner a more solid way to jump ahead of the curve of growth [drones/nutrients] that (well... at least my) previous droners didn't have
-Tested up to 2500h without dying out
-Drones doesnt produce more drones.
-Queen now has more complexity in her life cycle
-That Stemocyte concept I'm trying to apply.

Cons:
-The Stemocyte thing can produce some annoying cluster of Drones that desperately want to give their nutrients to a pair of Gluocyte-Secrocyte that didn't die yet. That is because the Secrocyte that triggers the New Queen should be born a bit later... but not as late as the Adult Queen... I can't get to that point yet. -Side note... Just Writing this I thought a way to solve it... but I've written and upload and saved everything already... It will be on the Update -
-The Early Queen has an uneven shape
-Sometimes a Drone isn't able to produce a full Early Queen Egg and it dies in the process.. leaving Lipocytes dropped there with no use.
-Isn't as clean and effective as your bwisialo average design (yes, that's a huge con)
-Needs high salinity (at this point that's like a standard for my organisms)

Huge thanks to Reaper Elite and bwisialo for the suggestions, but mainly to CandyYAHFT for the general input and explanations about ants.

I had so much f-rustation-un while working on this one.

[CandyYAHFT]

That is sooooooooo cooooooool!

I'm now thinking that there it could be a lifespan multiplier for big organisms.

Any cell can have up to 5 adhesin connections, so what if every additional adhesin connection gives 100h extra(just an example) so that we can either control the lifespan of cells actively but also increase advantages of huge predators and ... Anything that is huge and wants to live longer...

This in contrast with my ant suggestion doesn't have any biological accuracy, but as Petter said in the game description, we sacrifice biological accuracy in order to make an interesting game... And!!! This seems like a really good feature that will greatly improve gameplay!!

Also make your prequeens more viable, and get me back to design genomes instead of what I'm doing right now that is just running thousands of hours in simulations to see if there's any bugs

[Reaper Elite]

I'v tried this genome and it's really good so good job as you've made a organism that could last forever and with more modes could even infect other cells and turn them into Xenomorphs too.

[bwisialo]

I like the idea of a queen having a swimming stage. But I also like the idea of a queen that doesn't get any nutrients on her own. It would be interesting to have a queen that swims simply to avoid other queen cells, for good distrubution on the plate, and then "dies" and deposits the adult stage.

I really like the use of the Stemocyte. That's not a mechanism I've worked with much, but I definitely will.

I don't think high salinity is a Con at all. With respect to settings that lower efficiency demands, I'd say high nutrients is a Con. If you have low nutrients and high salinity, it's still a challenge to get swimmers to find nutrients and get back to a queen. I realize your drones detect the queen by food smell, but with nutrients so high, you can practically have a smart swimmer that only detects the queen and not food: it can practically swim straight to get enough nutrients and then go to queen. And the drones lose their Stereocyte and it doesn't matter.

Actually, I just did a little test. I ticked Snap values, set Stereocyte output to 0, changed the M6 Split mass to 1.53, inserted a drone, and the species thruves just fine with no apparent end in sight.

Still, very cool concepts, mechanisms, and species construction. I'll need to check out CANDYyahft's description of ants.

[Nayus]

Update!
I could fix the Stemocyte problem . Now the system works in a more effective way. The Lipocyte of the Praetorian when is just about to reach the amount of nutrients needed for a full Queen it spawns the Secrocyte that triggers the whole system; then it needs maybe just two pieces of food and it becomes a Queen.
Also the egg of the Praetorian Heir takes less mass to form, cause now the Praetorian has an actual grow cycle, something I don't usually apply in my organisms (because I thought it taked more modes) but thanks to bwisialo I finally understand that they don't and are very easy to apply.

Also, since the Stereocyte that triggers the born of the new egg is created just a bit before the new Queen is born, it lowers the chances of some stereocyte to get attached to the Glueocyte of another Queen which usually tempers with the process of the Heir. So two problems with one solution!

Anyway: Everything else works pretty much the same. Maybe some tweaking with the slide bars and nutrients and some minimal stuff...
I think... I think this is the best I can do for now with the Ant/Alate Queen Droner.

Here the substrates. As before there's a substrate with just 1 initial cell and then the other is the same one but like 600h later.

One Cell
Aged Substrate

With so much time... can I say "studying"? the behavior of this Organism or species I've found some interesting behaviors it manifests:

-Praetorians tend to become Queens the farther away they are of an fully formed Queen, otherwhise they work as basically a very beneficial Drone, since the Two Lipocytes it has store a huge amount of energy. That means that the Praetorian is really a better Drone that has the chance of becoming a Queen.
-Queens tend to end in the Edges of the substrate, because (an obvious observation) more Drones will be pushing the Queen from the center to the edges than the other way around. That actually hurts a bit to the Queen because it loses one Adesin conection and one entire side where it can't get nutrients from. But in the substrate general sense, it helps the species because that leaves more space for more Queens. Also the 'Middle Queens' (the ones that wander always in the center) become very productive.
-Sometimes the period between the born of the Secrocyte and the one of the whole Queen takes longer than usual, and in first sight it would counter the Heir process.. (and sometimes... it does for a bit, altough this update makes the problem last just a little while) sometimes that Glueocyte-FoodSecrocyte pair gets to another Queen and by that the Queen gets a considerable increase of Food signal and Eating hability. Here are two examples I could see:



>Here a formation that kinda looks like a rectangle. It forms a slight codependent bond between the two Queens<
-There're usually about 9 Adult-Queens active at every moment.

I thought I had more little things that I found but I dont remember right now... Well... its better since my post are long enough as they are.

[Alast]

Wow, you've put a lot of work into this and everything comes together great I like how the queen has this sort of safety net when the S4 Secrocyte dies. Very cool and elaborate organism!

[Reaper Elite]

Made me happy to see the Xenomorphs come back from the games/movies/books to CL so thx nayus ... Yes there are 3 books + the official novelization of the movies.

[michaelhichau]

let me take on this

[EliteMacro_37]

Good job lol, now good luck for that exam