Sexual Dimorphism

I think it’s interesting when organisms are sexually dimorphic, and I think it’d be cool if more sexually dimorphic organisms were added.

Now, others have made similar suggestions before.

https://subnautica2.nolt.io/496

https://subnautica2.nolt.io/574

However, I think a lot more could be done with this idea than is proposed in those posts.

For one, sexual dimorphism could involv differences in observable behavior, not just morphological traits. This is already present in-game with shiver leviathans.

Also, in real life, sequential hermaphroditism is not uncommon among some lineages of aquatic organisms. Clownfish are a famous example. Other examples are snook, many wrasses a d groupers, and many gastropods.

I think it’d be really cool if there was a sequential hermaphrodite in the game that one could observe changing its sexual processes over some amount of in-game days. I think that’d make the world feel very dynamic and protean in the sense of changing.

This could, in theory, interact with some hypothetical equivalent of the alien containment from the other Subnautica games. Perhaps some organisms could only reproduce in it if individuals of different sexes are present, but sequential hermaphrodites could change their sexual processes if every individual in the tank has the same ones, allowing them to reproduce.

This, incidentally, is reminiscent of a plot point of “Jurassic Park.”

Additionally, I think it’d be cool if one could observe differences in sexual development (i.e. “intersex conditions”) in some organisms. Perhaps a few individuals of some in-game lineage could have reproductive organs associated with multiple different sexes. I love to see biological diversity.

Perhaps some of this could be associated with some exogenous factor affecting s-x-differentiation, although this would have to be handled with sensitivity. In the real world, sexual processes can be influenced by things like endocrine disruptors and, in the case of temperate-dependent s-x determination, changing temperatures, and this can be troublesome, although I think some people and discourses slip into pathologizing difference in and of itself, which can be troublesome in a different way and doesn’t suit the game’s themes particularly well.

I like all of these ideas in part because they could help teach people about real biology. This game could be a vehicle to make people interested in biology and ecology and teach them about it.

I think that would be a lot to add for not much reason.
I guess there could be random variants but it still feels unnecessary compared to bigger requests

It could just be a few variant models.

I’d like details that make Proteus feel like a believable ocean.

Yh its not a bad idea but I feel like the developers have bigger fish to fry (quite literally)

yeah i think everything that adds variation would be good for the game