Proposal: Biggest Biomass on the Block [Trivial]

Edit rule 15 - Classifications to read:

Strains are classified by their Biomass:

* 0-1 - Critical
* 2-10 - Declining
* 11-100 - Stable
* 101-1000 - Healthy
* 1001 - 10000 - Growing
* 10001-100000 - Flourishing
* >100001 - Rampant

Also change any references to classification in other rules to match this meaning. In Enzymes, for example, change "Any Strain whose Size is 'critical'..." to "Any Strain whose Biomass is 'critical'..." and so on.

3 - 4 - Time-Out - Failed By Chronos

Proposal: Overabsorbtion [Trivial]

In the Enzymes rule, imediatly before the paragraph that starts with "The Elements a Strain emits or absorbs shall be different.", add the following paragraph:

Once a day, if a Strain emits the same element that all the other Strains absorb, that Strain must be forced to loose Biomass equal to the combined Biomass of all the other Strains. Any Strain may enforce this lost and the enforcing Strain may choose to reduce the affected Strain's Size and/or Population as necessary to reach the target Biomass. Only Strains with Biomass different than zero must be considered for this paragraph's purpose.

That's intended to create a competitive environment.

3 - 1 - Time-Out - Enacted By Chronos

Notice: Vacationing

I'll be back next wednesday. See ya..

Proposal: Experiment: "Re-seed Petri Dish"

Sticky note on outside of Incubator:"There is a petri dish leaking all over the place in here! Could whomever it belongs to please clean it up? There are other people who use this incubator too, you know. Thanks."

Add a Scheduled Experiment, Re-seed Petri Dish

On September 22nd, if the total Biomass of all Strains exceeds the available Free Space (or 100000 Biomass, if Free Space is undefined), the petri dish will be Re-seeded.

Add a rule Re-Seeding,

When the rules call for a Re-seeding, all Strains lose Population to bring their Biomass to as close as possible to, but not exceeding, 1000.

2 - 7 - Reached Quorum - Failed By Chronos

Proposal: Positive, Negative

Change the sentence in Rule 11 reading

Upon doing so, its Size is increased by one tenth of the Biomass of the Strains that emit the Element it absorbs, and then decreased by the one tenth of the Biomass of the Strain that absorb the Element it emits.

so that it reads

Upon doing so, its Size is increased by one tenth of the Biomass of the Strains that emit the Element it absorbs minus one tenth of the Biomass of the Strains that absorb the Element it emits.

[Right now you lose Size after hitting the limit when you breathe. Changing the "and then" ought to do the trick so we can hit the limit after emitting. Also fixed a minor typo.]

6 - 2 - Timed Out - Enacted By Chronos

Proposal : All You Can Eat [Trivial]

[ Adjusting Element Sizes is seeming expensive, in terms of effort (and danger of miscalculating) for interesting game effect. Orson's overcrowding seems a simpler way to get a similar finite-resource limit. ]

Repeal Rule 16 (Balanced Ecosystem) and remove the Element pseudo-strains from the GNDT.

7 - 2 - Reached Quorum - Enacted By Chronos

Enacting

I've enacted the following proposals:

Heavy Breath [Trivial] - Passed 6-3 Timed Out
Clarified Proposal Limits [Trivial] - Passed 9-0 Quorum reached
Self-Failed Proposal Limits [Trivial] - Failed 1-9 Quorum reached
Flexible Enome [Trivial] - Passed 8-0 Quorum reached

All size benefits have been award in the GNDT.

I've also enacted this Call for Judgement:

Virus Inversion - Passed 7-2 Quorum reached

I've done it here because I'm still unable to edit other strains' posts.

Proposal: Elbow Room

Add a new rule called Overcrowding,

The Free Space in the petri dish is equivalent to 100000 Biomass.

If the sum total of all Strains Biomass exceeds Free Space, then the game is Overcrowded and any Strain may administer Overcrowding, if it has not yet been done during that day.

Overcrowding reduces every Strain's Population and Size by 10%.

Also add to the end of rule 12 - Population:

If at any time a fractional value would occur for Population that value is rounded down to the nearest whole number.

If the Proposal Heavy Breathing does not pass, then define Biomass as in that Proposal.

7 - 2 - Reached Quorum - Enacted By Chronos

Bad Strain! Slap on the er... Pseudopod!

The GNDT errors lately are making me cranky. They can compound rapidly: enter a Population for the wrong Strain, and before you know it several Strains Breathe and things get messy quickly. Does anyone else think this is a problem? Any ideas for encouraging GNDT accuracy? A penalty or incentive system? Discuss.

Call for Judgement: Virus inversion

The original Virus rule read:

Every day, every Specimen that absorbs the same element as the Virus emits looses x Size, where x is the Size of the Virus divided by 5. If the Specimen also emits the same element as the Virus absorbs, it is imune to this effect.

When the Control Strain edited it, in conformity with CfJ: Vote of Confidence, it came out as:

When the Virus Pollutes, every Strain that absorbs the same element as the Virus, and which emits a different element, loses x Size, where x is the Size of the Virus divided by 5.

In my opinion, the corrected version does exactly the opposite of what the original one was meant to do.

To correct that, should this CfJ pass, the relevant portion shall be worded:

When the Virus Pollutes, every Strain that absorbs the same element as the Virus emits, and which emits an element different from which the Virus absorbs, loses x Size, where x is the Size of the Virus divided by 5.

Besides that, I congratulate Kevan for the expedite and very good work done.

Pollution Incoming...

This is a notice that the Virus is likely to Pollute sometime today.

I want to warn Strains who might be grievously harmed, since the Virus is so huge. Mutate while you still can!

Vote of Confidence : Effects

The Vote of Confidence CfJ has been enacted, and I've exercised my emergency powers. By submitting this post, these powers now end.

Changes to the ruleset have mostly been to tidy up how the Virus refers and relates to Strains, although I've made a couple of other tweaks (the final one just being a typo, actually): a precise comparison of the ruleset changes can be seen here, handily.

I've not made any changes to the GNDT because, combing lightly through the history, I can't see that anything illegal has taken place - some clever exploitation from Truman, but nothing that breaks any rules. If anyone has an issue with anything, though, please raise a more specific CfJ.

Notice: Clocks

I don't know if it's significant, but the clock in the right margin of the Blog main page and the clock in the GNDT log are not synchronyzed. When I tested, the Blog clok was showing 20:10 and the GNDT's gave 21:10.

Proposal: Flexible Enome [Trivial]

In the Enome rule change

The Enome is represented by a string of uppercase characters, separated by dashes.

to

The Enome is represented by a string of uppercase or lowercase characters, separated by dashes.

This is intended to allow recessive and dominant genes to be represented with the usual notation.

In the same rule change

"X" is a reserved Base starting value. A Base cannot be changed to an "X".

to

An "X" value means that position of the Enome is innocuous and has no effect in the game.

This is intended to allow resetting a base to its initial value, e.g. loosing a characteristic.

I have some ideas about how to put the Enome to use, and these 2 modifications will allow a more elegant wording to those ideas.

Clarification

I want to clear up an ongoing issue that I was horribly confused about for a while. Way, way back when Chronos CfJ'd the Enzyme rule, I thought that the issue was with the first part of the rule, where it said "number of individual Specimens." But looking at the corrected rule, it was actually the second part that was incorrect, which now says "number of individual Specimens." Still with me?

So, my only real mistake (besides thinking that I'd done something horribly wrong and unethical) was to not fork over an extra 3 Size for what Combustable's Population should've sucked out of me. I've gone back and fixed that, and I think everything's in the clear now. If not, then this post can stand as some kind of discussion of what's really supposed to be going on; I still have a lingering doubt in the back of my mind that I've screwed up.

Despite the confusion, I'm enjoying as much of the game as I've participated in so far, and I hope everyone's getting some satisfaction out of it too.

Proposal: Self-Failed Proposal Limits [Trivial]

In rule 4, change

The legal maximum is, therefore, 2 non-Trivials, 4 Trivials, or 1 non-Trivial and 2 Trivials.

to

Pending Proposals where the Strain who proposed it has voted AGAINST it or have been VETOED are worth half their original value under this rule.

This creates some margin to self-fail proposals, or get then vetoed, and put forth some more Proposals, without creating a spam loophole.

Proposal: Clarified Proposal Limits [Trivial]

Change the following Paragraph:

No ostensible Proposal shall be legal if its posting leads to its poster having more than 4 Trivial Proposals' worth of Proposals pending. The legal maximum is, therefore, 2 non-Trivials, 4 Trivials, or 1 non-Trivial and 2 Trivials.

to

No ostensible Proposal shall be legal if its posting leads to its poster having more than 4 Trivial Proposals' worth of Proposals pending. For the purpose of this rule, 1 non-Trivial Proposal is worth 2 Trivial ones. The legal maximum is, therefore, 2 non-Trivials, 4 Trivials, or 1 non-Trivial and 2 Trivials.

This is intended to clarify the 2 non-Trivial/4 Trivial maximum. I confess I had some dificulties in understanding the "therefore" clause.

Notice: Wrong link in the GNDT

Just to say the "Current Ruleset" link in the GNDT is still pointing to the BrilliantCorners Wiki.

Call for Judgement: Vote of Confidence

Considering the errors in the GNDT introduced by the wrong wording of the Enzyme ruling;

Considering the potential misinterpretations of the Specimen/Strain wording introduced by Proposal: Population Control;

Considering Proposal: Population Control was approved and so it’s the will of our collective that a Specimen/Strain differentiation is good;

Considering our Control Strain is one of the most ancient players of this Nomic and has proved his good faith time and time again;

Considering all that, I present for judgement the following proposition:

That our Control Strain be empowered to make any modification, in the Ruleset and in the GNDT, he deems fit for correcting the problems pointed above, in the spirit of the current Dinasty's approved proposals and good faith.

After that, the Control Strain will make a post in the official BlogNomic Blog, delineating all modifications he made.

The special powers conferred to the Control Strain by this CfJ shall terminate after 3 days of its enactment or when the Control Strain makes the post mentioned in the previous paragraph, what comes first.

While the Control Strain retains these special powers, no modification shall be made in the GNDT by any Strain other than the Control Strain, and no Proposal shall be enacted by any Admin other than the Control Strain.

Should any Strain disagree with a modification done by the Control Strain while in use of these special powers, that Strain shall put forth a Call for Judgement over that disagreement.

CfJ passed by Kevan, and effects enacted immediately. Explanatory post to follow momentarily.

Proposal : Heavy Breathing [Trivial]

[ Toning down breathing, so that 256 Size-1 blobs affect the environment as much as a single 256-Size blob. Rather than 256 times as much. ]

To Rule 12 (Population), add:-

A Strain's Biomass is calculated by multiplying its Size by its Population.

In Rule 11 (Enzymes), replace the sentence beginning "Upon doing so, its Size is increased by the number of individual Specimens that emit the Element it absorbs..." with:-

Upon doing so, its Size is increased by one tenth of the Biomass of the Strains that emit the Element it absorbs, and then decreased by the one tenth of the Biomass of the Strain that absorb the Element it emits.

Call For Judgement: Reset GNDT

Gamestate Reset:

I think it is easier to reset our information in the GNDT, rather than figuring out what the values should be. I have a simple plan that should put things in a playable state and be pretty even handed, and it will force Element choices, which I think some people were frustrated about.

First when this CfJ is Enacted, clear all values from the GNDT.

No GNDT changes are permitted except to initialize your Strain's information:

- You must set your Size and Population so that Size x Population equals exactly 100.

- You must select an Element to absorb and another one to emit. There are 6 combinations available:

Oxygen Nitrogen
Oxygen Carbon
Nitrogen Oxygen
Nitrogen Carbon
Carbon Oxygen
Carbon Nitrogen

There are 12 Strains and 1 Control Strain not idle. Leaving the Control Strain out, we can equally spread out the Element choices so exactly 2 Strains have each combination.

So as part of their initialization, a Strain must choose a pair of elements from the list above that no more than one other Strain has already chosen.

Kevan, as the control strain, you get a privileged position. You must initialize after all the other Strains, and you may choose any Element pair above and break the symmetry.

When Kevan initializes his information he also sets the Virus and Resources to their starting values, and then the GNDT gets unfrozen and play continues.

CFJ fails 1 - 7

Call for Judgement: Holy Crap

My question has been answered. This CFJ is now useless.

My question involves Orson: How in the world did you get to Pop 256 and still have size 9 without Breathing at some point? Not that I'm accusing you of cheating I just see no way this was at all feasible even though Size Matters and Quantum Reap weren't passed. If you started at 100 size and 1 pop and split seven times, your size would be 0 and your population would be 128. Why is your size 9 and your population 256?

I'm going to edit this CFJ later on so we can actually fix, or not fix things, depending on what the hell is going on.

We also need to fix the things people did because of the error in Rule 11. Just because it was enacted wrong doesn't mean you can ignore a Rule that was passed. (Did Simon do this? I'm confused is all I know.)

I'll go curl into a very confused ball and die now.

Woah! Strain & Specimen Confusion

All kinds of activity has been happening to the GNDT based on mistakes, exploits, and confusion over the terms Strain versus Specimen and their erratic use in the ruleset. Here are two things that bugged me:

1. Rules 14 and 15 make no sense using the new definition of Specimen instead of Strain. The Virus cannot be a new Specimen because Specimen belong to a Strain, so it cannot have an entry in the GNDT, have Size, etc. I think Knightking was making changes to the Virus based on Specimen count not Strain count, but actually the Virus could not change its Size at all because Specimen do not emit or absorb any Elements, Strains do. It's totally meaningless. Likewise the classifications of rule 15 are for Specimens, not Strains, so actions based on those classifications shouldn't work. A quick call for judgement for the rewording is needed here and a plan to fix all the GNDT changes arising from this mess.

2. Any player's exploit of the mistaken Enactment of rule 11. I think since we had a CfJ on this already, we should also retroactively address any exploit of the error. I think the player should revert their Size to what it should have been, following the spirit of the rule and maybe they should take the Breath back, too. Don't force another CfJ.

I think a Specimen is a Single population count worth of a Strain, right? It's unnecessary and confusing! We should drop the word Specimen entirely in my opinion.

Notice: Wrong Rule

This proposal by Kevan requests a change to a sentence in Rule 11. Unfortunately the sentence is question appears in Rule 12. I have enacted the rule as per it's spirit rather than its literal wording; this is here simply to notify, if someone should wish to CfJ.

Proposal: Parting the viel of mists

If Proposal: Competition for Space fails, this fails automatically.

Change all incidences of the term 'Strain' in rules 1, 2, 4, 7, 9 and 10, excluding where part of the term 'Control Strain', to 'Player', the last paragraph of Rule 2 (while also fixing the obvious loophole contained therein), and the third paragfraph of Rule 10; and also including the second paragraph of Rule 3. Add the following to Rule 2:

Players may or may not control Strains, which are tracked in the GNDT. This paragraph may be deleted by a new Control Specimen at his or her Ascension.

Add the following to Rule 5:

The final vote from the first player controlling a Strain must be considered to be the valid vote for that Strain. This paragraph may be deleted by a new Control Specimen at his or her Ascension.

To the first sentence of the fourth paragraph of Rule 10, add the term "Player" to the list of terms that a new Control Strain may change.

Add the following

A Strain that is the victim of an absorbtion or smothering may choose to cede control of itself. In this case, the player who controls the Strain has two choices:

1. Be absorbed into the hostile strain. The attacking strain gains all of the target strain's Size and Population, and the target strain is deleted from the GNDT. However, the player in control of the defending Strain now has equal control over the attacking strain; the name of the Strain is changed in the GNDT to reflect this, as is the password, which both players will have access to.

2. Self-destruct the defending Strain. The attacking Strain gains any Size of Population they would under the terms of this rule; they then gain half of the remainder of the defending Strain’s Size and Population. The Player may then create a new Strain with 65 Size and 1 Population. If two or more players control a Strain, then any of them may elect to create a new Strain as outlines in this option at any time; however, they cede any rights they may have had over the old Strain.

Failed as follows from stipulation in first paragraph. -3 to Josh, +2 to Truman

Proposal: Competition for Space

Add a new rule, Absorbtion and Smothering:

If one Strain has a larger size than another, then it may attempt to absorb that Strain, provided that both Strains absorb the same element. To do this, it must expend Size equal to its targets Population multiplied by its Size. The absorbing strain thus gains Population equal to that of the Strain it has just absorbed from minus y, where y is the result of a GNDT entry of DICE. Meanwhile, the absorbee has their Population reduced to y, but their Size increased by x/2, where x is the Size expended by the absorbing Strain to complete the operation. A Strain may not absorb from another Strain if it is currently being smothered.

A group of Strains may elect to Smother another Strain. All smothering Strains must have lower Size than their intended target, must emit a different element from the one that the target absorbs, and their combined population must exceed their target's Size for the smother to succeed. If these criteria are met (all participating smothering units must post a comment to the GNDT within 24 hours of each other confirming their involvement before the smother can go ahead) then the victim has their Size reduced to 1, but their population doubles as some cells make a bid for freedom. The smotherers population is halved as a result, but they then gain Size equal to their amended population.

A Strain may only absorb or smother once in a 24 hour period. It may not absorb or smother within 24 hours of having doubled its population under rule 11, nor may it double its population under rule 11 within 24 hours of having absorbed or smothered.

As you might imagine, more to follow.

Failed 6 -2, parting the viel of mist automatically also fails, -3 to Josh + 2 to Truman

Call for Judgement (Enzyme rule wording)

Proposal Proposal: Population Control said:

In the reworded Rule 11 (Enzymes), replace "number of Strains" with "number of invidual Specimens".

But Kevan, when enacting it, left the second paragraph of the rule reading:

A Strain may Breathe, no more than once per day. Upon doing so, its Size is increased by the number of individual Specimens that emit the Element it absorbs, and then decreased by the number of Strains that absorb the Element it emits.

He failed to substitute the second occurrence of "number of Strains", thus creating an effect different from the intended by the Proposal.

Therefore, should this CfJ pass, the said phrase shall be changed, as mandated by the original Proposal.

CFJ has reached quorum, proposed changes enacted - Truman

Call for Judgement

(I make mine TrumanCapote's words: I make this a CFJ because I also cannot make any proposals due to the queue being slow.)

If you agree with this Call for Judgement then you're voting for myself, Chronos, to become an Admin. Vote against it and you're voting against that outcome.

CfJ passed. Chronos is now an Admin Strain.