A home is founded wherever a homeless citizen happens to be standing when it finishes hauling material (homes.ts and materials.ts), a byproduct of foraging momentum, not an evaluated decision. Unlike vision and speed, site quality has no metabolic cost or benefit wired to it, so there is no selection pressure on placement at all.
Why it matters: vision and speed evolve because they are priced into metabolismRate (see traits.ts). Home placement sits entirely outside that system. A home founded in a resource desert costs exactly as much as one founded next to a rich blob. Nothing can improve site choice generation over generation because nothing about it is heritable or costed.
Direction: either let home placement be influenced by a heritable trait with a real tradeoff, or tie a founded home's location to a measurable downstream fitness effect (for example, via the existing agriculture-radius regrowth bonus) so bad placement is quietly punished and good placement rewarded, the same way bad vision or speed already are.
Related files: src/sim/homes.ts, src/sim/systems/materials.ts
A home is founded wherever a homeless citizen happens to be standing when it finishes hauling material (homes.ts and materials.ts), a byproduct of foraging momentum, not an evaluated decision. Unlike vision and speed, site quality has no metabolic cost or benefit wired to it, so there is no selection pressure on placement at all.
Why it matters: vision and speed evolve because they are priced into metabolismRate (see traits.ts). Home placement sits entirely outside that system. A home founded in a resource desert costs exactly as much as one founded next to a rich blob. Nothing can improve site choice generation over generation because nothing about it is heritable or costed.
Direction: either let home placement be influenced by a heritable trait with a real tradeoff, or tie a founded home's location to a measurable downstream fitness effect (for example, via the existing agriculture-radius regrowth bonus) so bad placement is quietly punished and good placement rewarded, the same way bad vision or speed already are.
Related files: src/sim/homes.ts, src/sim/systems/materials.ts