2021 Darwin Game—Desert

lsusr6 Oct 2021 0:24 UTC
37 points
2 comments2 min readLW link

Our Desert is an inhospitable environment. Carrion, while nutritious, is hard to digest and there’s not a lot of it. Species must be adapted to the heat too.

Carrion Leaves Grass Seeds Detritus Coconuts Algae Lichen
100 0 1 1 1 0 0 0

The most dangerous part of the desert is the predators. Two people submitted sandworms.

Name Venom Weapons Antivenom Armor Speed Creator
Desert Carnivore 10 ✓ 0 10 Antihaas
dp511 ✓ 10 ✓ 0 10 horu
Sand Drake 6 0 10 Yull-Rete
Sandworm 10 7 8 Vanessa
Shai-Hulud[1] 10 ✓ 0 7 simon

Only 36 organisms were submitted to the Desert. 23 of them could digest Carrion. Carrion is very nutritious so all 23 were viable foragers.

Generations 1 to 10

A few apex predators did well.

Goes Extinct in Generation Species
6 Lesser Desert Rat
7 Cordova
8 Hyena
8 Desert-Ants
8 Desert-Foxes
8 Desert-Lizard
9 Yonge_Hot
10 Josep Raich

Generations 11 to 50

The apex predators did so well they wiped out all the foragers without maxed out speed or defense. Having extinguished the easy prey, the apex predators proceeded to starve.

Goes Extinct in Generation Species
11 Desert-Coyotes
11 Cockatrice
11 cg-wildcat
12 Venomous Snark
12 Desert-Snakes
14 Bitey-the-scary
14 Smok
16 Titus
19 Desertio
20 Qanon
23 Wurm
26 Sandworm
33 Shai-Hulud
35 lDha-C293
38 Sand Drake
38 slow vulture
41 Desert Carnivore
45 Chocolattos
45 Dongles
46 dp511

Generations 51+

Name Venom Weapons Antivenom Armor Speed Eats Carrion? Other Creator
Desert Viper ✓ 0 ✓ 0 10 ✓ aphyer
dsc511 0 ✓ 10 0 ✓ Eats Leaves, Grass, Seeds, Detritus, Coconuts, Algae, Lichen horu
Booyahs 2 0 10 ✓ CK
Rock Beetle 0 ✓ 10 0 ✓ Taleuntum
Desert Tortoise1 0 ✓ 10 0 ✓ Multicore
Desert Tortoise2 0 ✓ 10 0 ✓ Yull-Rete
Armadillo v2 0 ✓ 10 0 ✓ Henny
Sol Invictus 0 ✓ 10 0 ✓ simon

Most of these speccies are identical. They’re carrion foragers with maxed-out defense (including antivenom) and nothing else. Everyone who isn’t a maximally-efficient invincible forager dies by generation 61.

Goes Extinct in Generation Species
55 dsc511
60 Booyahs
61 Desert Viper

It’s a random walk among equals from here.

Winners

Species Player Social Media
Armadillo v2 Henny None
Desert Tortoise1 Multicore None
Desert Tortoise2 Yull-Rete None
Rock Beetle Taleuntum None
Sol Invictus simon None

Eratta

Simon notes that I used the wrong starting energy value of 50,000 instead of 1,000. Basically the same thing happens (except faster) when I use the correct energy value.

  1. ↩︎

    “Shai-Hulud” is what the Fremen call sandworms.

lsusr6 Oct 2021 0:24 UTC
37 points
2 comments2 min readLW link