CFF vs TWB Bloom Norns
So the CFF Chichis ended up establishing an entirely ground-based (I have no idea why they ignore all those tempting elevators and platforms but they do) but quite stable little ecosystem. I'm pretty impressed, to be honest. I expected them to be the sort that either dies out eventually, or breeds too much and ends up in an elk-in-Yellowstone situation, with not enough food to feed the teeming hordes of Norns, resulting in huge die-offs, and I come back to huge piles of both eggs and corpses. Usually there are some survivors in the latter case, but it's hardly a balanced situation and often the ecology of the metaroom is devastated. The only remaining food sources tend to be whatever vendors may exist and plants that the Norns (or Grendels, when I'm working with them) can't graze into extinction, like the big tree that makes apples (and pears, with the Shee Pears agent) in the Norn Terrarium.
Whereas the Chichis maxed out the population meter, but did it at a low enough level that there were still two grendels alive in the game after 24 hours, meaning Norn populations were low enough that new Grendels were getting a chance to hatch often enough to maintain two Grendels at a time. (Amusingly, Ettins were extinct, even though they're usually the quicker hatchers compared to Grendels when both come from the Egg Mothers.) And there were sufficient eggs to keep the population going, but there weren't just huge numbers of them all over. There was a wide age range of Norns, from babies to senile, and I left them running long enough this evening to determine that the vast majority of deaths in the population are due to old age rather than starvation or poisoning from browsing on detritus - in fact I noticed no such deaths at all while watching them. (I have the Roamer released but I don't know if it can get to Veridia - I've never seen it there - but even if it can't, disease did not seem to be much of an issue for them.)
I am rather interested in these Chichis for their own sake now, which is very unexpected. I exported all of the ones showing any pigment or bleed mutations for a separate project later on, leaving all the 128s, and allowed the world to run for a while longer. They had wolflinged totally unattended for at least 12-14 hours, while I slept and did other things, and they ran mostly feral/wolf while I was at or near the keyboard for several more hours. Eventually, when the world had been going for over 24 hours of real time, I decided it was time to give the Blooms another try and the TWBs a fairer trial. So I closed the Chichis' world and made a new one, intending to use the Norn Terrarium and Veridia this time, though I injected Norngarden 1 as well just in case I wanted it later.
This time I equipped the Veridia room with a less barren, more realistic and functional ecology. I used far more Golden Mushroom packets to get them started in hopes they wouldn't go extinct, put in the Glowflowers, Rainbow Bamboo, and Watercup Mushrooms again. But I also stole those little rock-plants from the Norn Meso this time, and the Bramboo things, successfully getting both to grow. I was unable to get the mushrooms or other plants from the Jungle to transplant, alas, and the same with the Starseed and Justanut trees from the agents, though I guess they might randomly spread there later since they seem to just pop up in metarooms over time despite always starting in the Meso. (In fact, that's just what happened - I just noticed a Starseed tree in Veridia where there wasn't one an hour ago.) I have trouble keeping the Fantazy and Ordin Trees to stay alive so I didn't bother with them, but I did thoroughly seed both kinds of grass. I tried Cana Aubergine again but like usual it overran everything even when being heavily grazed so I removed it.
Once all those plants were established, I took the extra step of moving in butterflies and other critters. The ants, unfortunately, failed to nest, and the birds did not survive. Not sure why. The butterflies seemed to be doing fine at first, but at this point almost all have died except the Feuerlings, and those seem unable to get any benefit from anything but the grass, as if the Rainbow Bamboo and Glowlillies aren't registering as flowers to them, which sucks. There's huge numbers of Feuerlings - I could probably keep Draconians comfortable in there, assuming they didn't eat them all - but they constantly hover right above the grass in this weird carpet of burning bugs. I'm thinking of just removing them, although I didn't want to. I think the other little critters I moved in, the hedgehog things, are also dead. So yeah, critters didn't work out well. Oops. Oh well then.
The actual Norns are doing fine, though. Once I had the ecosystems, vendors, and toys all placed the way I wanted, I hatched eight Bloom Norns. Four were TWB and four were CFF. Since the CFF Chichis were so happy in Veridia - and in much poorer conditions there - I decided to put the CFF Blooms there, which left the Norn Terrarium for the TWBs. Later on, I was educated about the wonders of pigment bleed by the fine folks at CreaturesCaves.com's forum, and made some altered Grendels to play with it, putting them in the Norn Meso and locking them in. So the world now has three colonies, or will hopefully if the Grendels get established. I might move them to the Jungle if they don't do well in the Meso/Norngarden (since they can open that door, although they can't get out of the Meso.)
So far, the TWBs are doing much better this time. I think for some reason that they didn't like the Norngarden room much, or just didn't do as well there. Not sure why that would be as I use NG all the time successfully with Grendeltails and others. But they're doing just fine in the Norn Terrarium. This time the TWBs were the first to lay an egg, but the CFFs were not far behind, and both groups have now grown significantly. All four original members of each group are still alive and over an hour old. So far, so good, although the vast majority of the offspring are male. I thought I had that no-seasonal-bias thing working, but I guess it had just been summer. Sigh. Not sure what I'll do about that... but if the colonies fail because of it I won't blame the Norns, that's for sure. At the moment they're both looking quite good, which I guess doesn't surprise me really since TWB is based on CFF anyway.
I think in the end I will be using the TWB Blooms as my basis for work, but the CFFs also have a lot to recommend them and I've enjoyed both a lot. We'll see what happens with those Grendels - I'm trying to get them to mate in cross-type pairs but the same types keep wanting to kisspop, so we'll see. Also it irks me that 0 and 8 on EasyGMS are not 0 and 255 like I expected, but something like 16 and 233. Oh well. I'll just have to do the true extremes with Genetics Kit.
Whereas the Chichis maxed out the population meter, but did it at a low enough level that there were still two grendels alive in the game after 24 hours, meaning Norn populations were low enough that new Grendels were getting a chance to hatch often enough to maintain two Grendels at a time. (Amusingly, Ettins were extinct, even though they're usually the quicker hatchers compared to Grendels when both come from the Egg Mothers.) And there were sufficient eggs to keep the population going, but there weren't just huge numbers of them all over. There was a wide age range of Norns, from babies to senile, and I left them running long enough this evening to determine that the vast majority of deaths in the population are due to old age rather than starvation or poisoning from browsing on detritus - in fact I noticed no such deaths at all while watching them. (I have the Roamer released but I don't know if it can get to Veridia - I've never seen it there - but even if it can't, disease did not seem to be much of an issue for them.)
I am rather interested in these Chichis for their own sake now, which is very unexpected. I exported all of the ones showing any pigment or bleed mutations for a separate project later on, leaving all the 128s, and allowed the world to run for a while longer. They had wolflinged totally unattended for at least 12-14 hours, while I slept and did other things, and they ran mostly feral/wolf while I was at or near the keyboard for several more hours. Eventually, when the world had been going for over 24 hours of real time, I decided it was time to give the Blooms another try and the TWBs a fairer trial. So I closed the Chichis' world and made a new one, intending to use the Norn Terrarium and Veridia this time, though I injected Norngarden 1 as well just in case I wanted it later.
This time I equipped the Veridia room with a less barren, more realistic and functional ecology. I used far more Golden Mushroom packets to get them started in hopes they wouldn't go extinct, put in the Glowflowers, Rainbow Bamboo, and Watercup Mushrooms again. But I also stole those little rock-plants from the Norn Meso this time, and the Bramboo things, successfully getting both to grow. I was unable to get the mushrooms or other plants from the Jungle to transplant, alas, and the same with the Starseed and Justanut trees from the agents, though I guess they might randomly spread there later since they seem to just pop up in metarooms over time despite always starting in the Meso. (In fact, that's just what happened - I just noticed a Starseed tree in Veridia where there wasn't one an hour ago.) I have trouble keeping the Fantazy and Ordin Trees to stay alive so I didn't bother with them, but I did thoroughly seed both kinds of grass. I tried Cana Aubergine again but like usual it overran everything even when being heavily grazed so I removed it.
Once all those plants were established, I took the extra step of moving in butterflies and other critters. The ants, unfortunately, failed to nest, and the birds did not survive. Not sure why. The butterflies seemed to be doing fine at first, but at this point almost all have died except the Feuerlings, and those seem unable to get any benefit from anything but the grass, as if the Rainbow Bamboo and Glowlillies aren't registering as flowers to them, which sucks. There's huge numbers of Feuerlings - I could probably keep Draconians comfortable in there, assuming they didn't eat them all - but they constantly hover right above the grass in this weird carpet of burning bugs. I'm thinking of just removing them, although I didn't want to. I think the other little critters I moved in, the hedgehog things, are also dead. So yeah, critters didn't work out well. Oops. Oh well then.
The actual Norns are doing fine, though. Once I had the ecosystems, vendors, and toys all placed the way I wanted, I hatched eight Bloom Norns. Four were TWB and four were CFF. Since the CFF Chichis were so happy in Veridia - and in much poorer conditions there - I decided to put the CFF Blooms there, which left the Norn Terrarium for the TWBs. Later on, I was educated about the wonders of pigment bleed by the fine folks at CreaturesCaves.com's forum, and made some altered Grendels to play with it, putting them in the Norn Meso and locking them in. So the world now has three colonies, or will hopefully if the Grendels get established. I might move them to the Jungle if they don't do well in the Meso/Norngarden (since they can open that door, although they can't get out of the Meso.)
So far, the TWBs are doing much better this time. I think for some reason that they didn't like the Norngarden room much, or just didn't do as well there. Not sure why that would be as I use NG all the time successfully with Grendeltails and others. But they're doing just fine in the Norn Terrarium. This time the TWBs were the first to lay an egg, but the CFFs were not far behind, and both groups have now grown significantly. All four original members of each group are still alive and over an hour old. So far, so good, although the vast majority of the offspring are male. I thought I had that no-seasonal-bias thing working, but I guess it had just been summer. Sigh. Not sure what I'll do about that... but if the colonies fail because of it I won't blame the Norns, that's for sure. At the moment they're both looking quite good, which I guess doesn't surprise me really since TWB is based on CFF anyway.
I think in the end I will be using the TWB Blooms as my basis for work, but the CFFs also have a lot to recommend them and I've enjoyed both a lot. We'll see what happens with those Grendels - I'm trying to get them to mate in cross-type pairs but the same types keep wanting to kisspop, so we'll see. Also it irks me that 0 and 8 on EasyGMS are not 0 and 255 like I expected, but something like 16 and 233. Oh well. I'll just have to do the true extremes with Genetics Kit.
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