Compounds

A compound is a substance the lab holds by mass and sprays into a dish to change conditions there. Every one is a roster row, which sets what it does, and a pH band, which sets how acidic it is; there are sixteen rows and five bands. Both are in the name, and an acidic and a basic sample of one row are different compounds that never add together. Spraying spends the compound’s own held mass, at a price that rises with the square of the spray radius.

Roster rows

Every row drives pH toward its own band as well as the effect above. Saponin and Caustin drive nothing else: their acidity is the whole effect.

A push is a mutagen dose. A cell standing in the spray banks hits, several hits buy one extra mutation pass, and that pass rolls the named gene’s spontaneous-addition entry at a raised chance at the cell’s next division or bud. The dose is spent there and does not carry over.

The dose carries one gene only, so Saponin and Oxalate deliver the flagellum modifier and never the cilia modifier.

The numeral does not mean the same thing on every row. Zymogen-I and Zymogen-II are two different pushes; the four Mutagens are one push at four strengths.

Names and bands

A name is the band’s root joined to the row’s word, and the band is also the pH the compound drives the ground toward.

Those targets are on the dish’s 0-to-1 pH scale, so the two strong bands aim past both ends of the range a dish can hold. Sulfonoxalate is acidic Oxalate; Hydroxyglobulin is strongly basic Globulin; a neutral sample carries the bare row word. Caustin is the one row that respells: it reads Alkalin on the two base bands, and is still a single row with a single gene target.

The drawn mark carries both facts, a lobe tinted for the band and a body shaped for the row. Rows driving the same channel to the same target share a tint and are told apart by that shape alone: the four substrate rows, the two toxins, the four Mutagen tiers, and Saponin with Caustin.

Sources

• Scrapping a cell (G) pays one dose of every compound whose gene the cell carries, scaled by biomass fullness and never split between them. Genes pick the row; the cell’s pH-tolerance gene picks the band, counting its optimum’s distance from neutral in the cell’s own tolerance widths: within one is Neutral, within two Acid or Base, beyond that Strong. Two colonies of one ancestry bred on different ground therefore scrap different compounds. Trophin and the four Mutagens name no gene and never pay.
• Absorbed cargo pays on the same press. A crystal of a roster compound is a solid deposit of it, and a touching cell drains it into cargo, faster the more collectors it carries. Nothing banks before the scrap, so a cell that dies takes its cargo with it. Trophin, legacy and creative-composed crystals cannot be absorbed.
• Held ground pays where the map’s author said so. Most zones pay growth media alone; a marked zone also pays its compound, at the same rate and as a bonus rather than a diversion. The food it drips is plain untagged nutrient either way, so an authored zone banks mass and doses nobody.
• The vacuum (right mouse) pays one unit per sprayed mote picked back up. The credit matches on band and naming channel alone, so a Sulfonozymogen-I mote credits a held Sulfonozymogen-II row. A mote with no row to land in pays nothing; the untagged motes cells emit pay trophin.

All four need a row to land in. At the cap a row is evicted only if it holds no mass and no held zone is still banking into it; otherwise the new compound is refused and its mass is not banked.

Placement and cost

Every row is metered, trophin included. One gesture deposits a concentration across the disc it covers and is charged that amount at a flat unit price. Intensity sets the concentration and the disc is an area, so cost rises with the square of the radius. Contracts are the other spend, deducting held mass when one is claimed.

Banked mass is lab-scoped and survives the dish it was earned on. Trophin is the exception: it is a property of the dish and does not travel to the next culture.

A career loadout is trophin plus three zone rows, and the three are earned. Row 2 comes from the tutorial beat that fires when the player’s cells reach an acid or alkaline zone; rows 3 and 4 are milestones on nodes claimed. Earning a row never gates earning the compound, and the milestone only ever hides an empty row. A second gate can hide all three, full or empty, but only in a contest whose rung can still teach the zone-chemistry lesson; that lesson can no longer fire, so where the gate closes it reopens when row 2 is granted or when lessons stop running.

In career every row delivers as particles; brush and crystal are creative only.

Creative keeps the form keys instead: Q particle, C crystal, X brush.

Mutagen rows

The four Mutagen rows name no gene. They buy extra mutation passes across the whole genome, and the tier scales two things: a tier-N dose banks N hits per contact instead of one, and the passes it buys are spent at mutation settings scaled by N. Tier I is the identity on both, so only II and above escalate.

Those four are also the only rows that put their band into the dose. A banded Mutagen aims the cell’s pH-tolerance optimum at a fixed point: acid bands below the 0.5 midpoint, base bands above, offset by 0.4 scaled by the tier over four. Mutagen-IV aims at pH 0.1 or 0.9, Mutagen-I at 0.4 or 0.6. Tier sets the distance and band sets only the side, so both acid bands aim at the same place and both base bands do too; the strong and mild bands still differ in the name and in the pH their particles press into the ground.

The aim is not a jump. Each dosed division closes between roughly a fifth and two fifths of the remaining gap, so arriving takes several dosed divisions. It is read before the ground under the cell is sampled, so it overrides the local pH gradient.

An unbanded mutagen cloud leaves an aim already given alone. A neutral-band Mutagen carries a band, and a neutral band aims at nothing, so spraying a plain Mutagen-II over a lineage being steered acid cancels the steering.