Fish disease

[person111]

To expand on the idea of Miky, There could be more variants of fish diseases, including textures, physical diseases like not swimming properly (even though it is practically impossible to differentiate them from normal fish), and fungus which could grow out and hang around on the fish’s body. And maybe the same thing could be applied to fish with genetic disease as well? But I feel like just instantly dying when you have a genetic disease makes more sense.

 

[The vegetarian ant]

To expand on the idea of Miky, There could be more variants of fish diseases, including textures, physical diseases like not swimming properly (even though it is practically impossible to differentiate them from normal fish), and fungus which could grow out and hang around on the fish’s body. And maybe the same thing could be applied to fish with genetic disease as well? But I feel like just instantly dying when you have a genetic disease makes more sense.

for the "not swimming properly" I think it would be possible to differentiate them from other fish, even though they seem weird, something activating muscles at random if that's what was used to represent the physical disease would stil be recognisable, I also think the genetic disease isn't really needed, some fish will be born with bad mutations that make them unable to live, that's what genetic disease are irl, though it could be a recessive gene and only have consequences 1/4th of the time someone has that gene, that'd make it more possible for genetic diseases to spread

 

[person111]

Or maybe more specifically when the fish can’t swim properly they turn upside down or use their muscles in a strange pattern? Or they might just float and jerk their fins there and there.

 

[Tom Johnson]

To expand on the idea of Miky, There could be more variants of fish diseases, including textures, physical diseases like not swimming properly (even though it is practically impossible to differentiate them from normal fish), and fungus which could grow out and hang around on the fish’s body. And maybe the same thing could be applied to fish with genetic disease as well? But I feel like just instantly dying when you have a genetic disease makes more sense.

for the "not swimming properly" I think it would be possible to differentiate them from other fish, even though they seem weird, something activating muscles at random if that's what was used to represent the physical disease would stil be recognisable,

I really like these suggestions for different ways of indicating disease, thanks for posting them. I'll have to experiment with variants that involve not swimming properly just in case it throws off evolution too much but there is a lot here to work with.

I also think the genetic disease isn't really needed, some fish will be born with bad mutations that make them unable to live, that's what genetic disease are irl, though it could be a recessive gene and only have consequences 1/4th of the time someone has that gene, that'd make it more possible for genetic diseases to spread

Genetic disease is actually a workaround for an issue in the physics engine. Most physics engines can get into bad states as a result of tradeoffs they implement in order to not run too slowly - if you've ever seen a ragdoll in a game get launched into the stratosphere or whip around on the ground, this is what happened. When this happens to a creature in Ecosystem, the game detects that and instantly kills the creature, marking it as having genetic disease. In some ways this is actually a little like a real genetic disease, just for a different reason, and creatures whose DNA is particularly prone to breaking physics will gradually be removed from the gene pool.