Are redundant neural pathways retained? And other things I'm pondering.

accident

Larva
I played the demo months ago and found it enthralling, so I was happy to buy the game when it became available on Steam. I'm loving it so far! I've had it running in the background as I work for the past few days and have a couple of questions now that I've sunk (ha!) a few hours into it.

1. From what I've read, the creatures' neural nets essentially translate sensory information into motor action, with each pathway ending in a muscle action. What happens to those pathways when the corresponding muscle is lost due to mutation? Are they also removed? Are they retained but left redundant and inactive? Are they repurposed for another muscle? Etc.

2. I have a question relating to creature behaviour. I've noticed that one of my creatures often travels in schools when migrating, which is not a behaviour I've observed in my other fish. Is this an organic phenomenon arising from risk mitigation calculations in their neural net, or is schooling behaviour a pre-programmed activity?
 

Rox4me

Larva
Ecosystem Beta Tester
I'm not a dev so I don't know anything for sure. But from my knowledge:
1. There doesn't seem to be nutrient requirements from neural activity so most dead neurons are probably just left in there net as trash.
2. Pretty sure all behaviours except needs are from evolution not preprogrammed. So schooling is really cool :D
The only schooling isch creature I have are a pack of predators who swim around with two blocks on either side of their flat body. They look really menacing... They also only school in some regions of the map so not sure if accidental or purposefull :p
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