Cryo-Ecosystem: Subsurface Ocean Population Model (3D)

The 2D original scored mission readiness with a single weighted-sum formula over five sliders. This 3D companion replaces that with an actual spatial population: dozens of psychrophile cells drift through a cylindrical sub-ice ocean, each one evaluated every frame against four real environmental fields — thermal flux radiating from the seafloor vent, dissolved nutrients diffusing from the same source, a salinity gradient that concentrates near the ice-ocean interface (brine rejection during freezing), and ambient hydrostatic pressure. A cell's fitness is capped by whichever of those four factors is weakest at its exact position, the classical "law of the minimum" from limiting-factor ecology, so pushing one slider to its ideal value does nothing if another factor is starving the colony elsewhere in the volume. Cells that thrive glow warm cyan and eventually divide; cells that starve fade cold blue and die off, so the population you see is an emergent, moving record of habitability rather than a static score.