Code center > Suggestions
Veggie waste feeding
PurpleYouko:
In the real world one creature's waste is another's lunch buffet. Even more so when you include plants into the equation.
What we need to do is have various different nutrient --> energy + waste pathways that are possible and to some degree mutually exclusive so that no creature can eat its own waste.
The enzyme specialization methods discussed way back will take care of this by only allowing a small number of the total available enzymes to co-exist within any given bot.
Greven:
But how do you think something up, so a bot dont use its own waste from producing energy to produce new energy. Do you know what I mean? How are you sure on that only specific enzymes can co-exist?
Numsgil:
I'm thinking along the lines of PY. You can digest your own waste, but by doing so you'll be less efficient at digesting real food.
I'm thinking something like:
Every nrg used up produces 1 waste. 10 waste can be digested into 1 nrg. Permanent waste (remember that, right?) cant be digested or transmitted (as it is now) and is generated by waste that isn't expelled (which would be different.)
Like every 10 cycles 1% of the total waste in the bot becomes permanent waste. This would mean that bots that eat waste would generate permanent waste faster, which might not be a good thing...
PurpleYouko:
--- Quote ---But how do you think something up, so a bot dont use its own waste from producing energy to produce new energy. Do you know what I mean? How are you sure on that only specific enzymes can co-exist?
--- End quote ---
I don't want to go into too much of this again but just imagine the following. (this is a very simplified model)
There are two types of food X and Y
A bot eats some food of type X
The bot has 10 possible slots for enzymes to exist in.
Each type of enzyme has a specific efficiency factor for converting either X or Y into energy with a small percentage being converted to waste.
Each enzyme has a maximum efficiency rating of 9.9% food --> energy and 0.1% food --> a different nutrient (waste).
If a bot has 5 enzymes for X and 5 for Y then it will convert 49.5% of its X type food to energy. The rest will be stored as Waste, this waste being a different type of food according to some rule (ie. X becomes energy +Y).
Waste is able to contain both X and Y type food but while stored in the robot as Waste, it is not usable by the bot's metabolism.
When the bot shoots waste out, it is proportionally split between type X and Y (so it is actually a kind of food really) depending on what is contained in the robot's "waste tank" or "intestines" if you like.
I figure it will be inefficient for any given bot to only have 5 enzymes for a particular type of food so from an evolutionary standpoint they will prefer to have 10 of one type so if he has 10 X enymes then Y type food is inedible.
Now to complicate things add another half dozen types of food source (including photosynthesis) and a bunch more enzyme slots.
Every bot will eat one thing and poop out another. Efficiencies will be different depending on the number of enzymes present. Enzme types are controlled by mutations.
Should make a pretty diverse ecosystem.
Greven:
But if waste is a kind of food, it will always be possible for a bot to reuse its own waste as food, and thereby having a unlimited energy source, unless you make the pathways of the metabolism extremely complex and long
Something like this: (?)
With CAPITAL letters being food, and lower case enzymes:
A + a --> B
B + b --> C
C + c --> D
D + d --> E
E + e --> F
F + f --> G
G + g --> H
H + h --> J
J + j --> A
So it is: A <=> J
If a bot has 10 enzyme slots, with 10 food types, the bot will have a unlimited energy supply. Therefore there must be more food types than the bot has enzyme slots, or else it is possible for the bot to do the above.
I HAVE read every little bit in the sub Forum about metabolism etc., and I still have a hard time understanding the basic's of the system, and for me this you state here about enzyme slots contradicts what it says in the other threads!
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