2021 Darwin Game - Tundra

post by lsusr · 2021-10-05T05:03:04.813Z · LW · GW · 17 comments

Contents

  The Frostwing Snipper
  Winners
  Eratta
None
17 comments

Our Tundra is an inhospitable^[1] environment. The only significant food available to herbivores is Lichen, which has a tiny nutritional value of 1. The Tundra is cold too. Staying warm requires the cold tolerance adaptation, which costs +2 size.

Carrion	Leaves	Grass	Seeds	Detritus	Coconuts	Algae	Lichen
1	1	1	1	1	0	0	300

An organism must expend 20% of its energy just to survive. A herbivore foraging for lichen cannot have a size greater than 5 or else it will expend more energy in metabolism than it is possible to acquire from eating Lichen.

All organisms have base size 0.1. The cold adaptation (+2) plus the Lichen digestive tract (+1) costs a total of +3 size. A Tundra herbivore has a minimum size of 3.1. A herbivore with size 5.1 is untenable since it expends more energy (1.02) than is possible to obtain from Lichen (1.00).

Players submitted 39 species native to the Tundra. Only 4 of them were viable herbivores: Micropas, Arctic Slug, Northern Nibbler and "lichen" (not to be confused with the foragable "Lichen"). (Multicore's Arctic Fox was a carnivore.)

These species could support little in the way of weapons, armor and speed. They were defenseless. In the first 8 turns, all four of our viable foragers are eaten to extinction.

Goes Extinct in Generation	Species
5	Pristol
7	Micropas
7	Arctic Slug
8	Northern Nibbler
8	lichen

After the viable herbivores were eliminated, total ecological collapse was inevitable.

Goes Extinct in Generation	Species
9	Yonge_Cold
9	Boreakeet
9	Beck’s Penguin
10	SmolFire
10	Arctic Ambusher
10	Zlorg
10	Arctic Fox
10	Orange-Krill
10	abominable_snowman
12	Antasvara
12	Unfortunately Large Cockroach
12	cg-mouse
13	Porostozer Malutki
13	1994 Mazda RX7
14	Raburetta
14	Pittsburgh-Penguins
15	Louse-lion
15	Wolverine
16	Jtp
16	Wolves
17	Seals
19	Direwolf
24	Tsc
27	Tundrus Rex
29	Frankenstein
32	Broken Fetters
34	Alaskans
37	Dragon
37	Porostozer Mamuci
39	Rocks
41	Duckofants
43	White-Whales
50	tp511
52	Frostwing Snipper

The Frostwing Snipper

An honorable mention goes to Nem's Frostwing Snipper, a Speed 10 species that could digest both Lichen and Seeds. The maximum speed made the Frostwing Snipper immune to predation which let it survive the initial carnage. The ability to digest seeds meant that the Frostwing Snipper did consume enough energy on average to more than replace itself.

However, "on average" is not enough. The Tundra's carrying capacity of Frostwing Snippers was too small. Random fluctuations eventually knocked the Frostwing Snipper into extinction.

Winners

None

Eratta

Simon notes [LW(p) · GW(p)] that I used 50,000 instead of 1,000 for each species initial energy. Using the correct value of 1,000 doesn't really change anything except everyone dies faster and MatIsk's Porostozer Mamuci (which eats Carrion) takes the place of Frostwing Snipper.

Porostozer Mamuci
Venom?	Yes
Weapons	1
Armor	10
Speed	10
Forager	Carrion, Lichen
Temperature Adaptatations	Heat, Cold

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1. The original Tundra was even more inhospitable than this. I made it easier thanks to early feedback from aphyer. ↩︎

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