I notice that most early stage creatures evolve towards big blimpy shapes. My guess is that the children produced at that stage is based on the total volume of water that a creature's hitbox passes through, although to me it seems as if small creatures gather energy at a similar rate to the large ones when they have the same speed.
I guess this is probably already the plan, but penalizing large shapes by setting a cost for movement that is attached to number of motions and hitbox size might prevent everyone from becoming as giant as possible at the start.
I guess this is probably already the plan, but penalizing large shapes by setting a cost for movement that is attached to number of motions and hitbox size might prevent everyone from becoming as giant as possible at the start.