Monday, March 10, 2014

Proposal: They grow up so fast…

Times out and fails 3-4. Adminned by Rodney.

Adminned at 12 Mar 2014 17:10:31 UTC

If the proposal entitled “Go to Work on an Egg” is enacted, Create a new rule entitled “Hatchlings”

A Hatchling is an Infected controlled by another Infected. The controlling Infected is known as the Hatchling’s Parent. When a Hatchling is created, it is given a name by it’s Parent. The name must contain the Parent’s own name. The Parent then sets the Phenotypes of the Hatchling to values within one point of their own values. The Mutation of the Hatchling is set to the Parent’s Mutation score plus one. Each Hatchling has their own row in the GNDT.

If an Infected is Holding an Egg, as a Daily Action they may attempt to Hatch the Egg by rolling DICE4. If the result is 1, the Egg Hatches and ceases to exist. If the Egg Hatches, a new Hatchling is created whose Parent is the Infected who was Holding the Egg.

If an Infected’s race is Bacteria, Flagellate, Paramecium, Blob, or Big Blob, as a Daily Action they may attempt to Multiply by rolling DICE4. If the result is 1, they succeed and a new Hatchling is created whose Parent is the Infected who Multiplied.

All creations of new Hatchlings must be announced by the Parent of the Hatchling in a blog post whose title contains the word “Hatchling”. The post must include the Hatchling’s Phenotypes, Mutation, and name.

A Parent may cast their Hatchling’s vote for them on a proposal by making a comment on that proposal with exactly one voting icon, surrounded by arrows, and the name of exactly one of their Hatchlings. This comment does not count as a vote by the Parent. The voting icon which appears between the arrows is considered to be the Hatchling’s vote on that proposal.

A Hatchling may not submit proposals. A Parent is considered victorious if their Hatchling meets the conditions for victory. If a Hatchling is also a Parent, their Parent becomes the Parent of the Hatchling’s Hatchling.

In all other ways, a Hatchling acts as a normal Infected whose actions are carried out by it’s Parent.

posted by benzene at 10 Mar 2014 17:41:29 UTC Comments (7)

Comments

Kevan: he/him

10-03-2014 19:19:59 UTC

against Cute but alarming.

Murphy:

10-03-2014 19:36:08 UTC

for SYMBIOTE!

Larrytheturtle:

10-03-2014 20:12:54 UTC

for

Justice:

11-03-2014 09:42:00 UTC

It looks like it could go out of control rather quickly.
against

Rodney:

11-03-2014 11:41:08 UTC

against

It’s arguable that each egg leads to a separate Daily Action, allowing for infinite loops, and in Nomic, arguablity is everything. What’s more, mere Multiplying is an exponential growth: every four days on average the number of bacteria in one group double. That is incredibly powerful, and an even worse form of daily action grind* than your standard-issue “add one per 24 hours”.

We had a similar mechanic in the First Dynasty of RaichuKFM. I was only lurking, then, but reading the history I see it eventually lead to a loophole involving sub-players of sub-players, leading to a victory. Even then, there was more infrastructure behind its sub-player mechanic, such as what to do between the time that the creation of a sub-player is announced and the adding of its row to the GNDT.

In closing, I don’t think this is a inherently bad idea per se, it’s just that BlogNomic as-is can’t handle it in this form.

* A daily action grind, for the uninitiated, is a mechanic to increase some variable by some small amount through a daily action. It leads to the player who misses the least logins winning, which is terribly unfun and boring. We’ve also done more of them than I can count.

Kevan: he/him

11-03-2014 11:57:37 UTC

(The critical factor that makes something a grind is if there is never any reason for a player not to take the action, which is certainly the case for Multiplying, here.)

RaichuKFM: she/her

11-03-2014 16:45:53 UTC

against Yeah, this sounds like it would quickly get out of control.