It seems there are these extremely advanced GlitterWorlds, and you can build a kind of internet connection. Doesn't that make researching stuff into merely looking it up and building a prototype?
I have a bit of a problem with the concept of "researching" in such a context.
If the closest one is eight light years away, it's faster to reinvent the wheel.
Well faster than light travel isn't a thing. I don't recall if faster than light communication is or not, but the comms station only appears to be powerful enough for stuff on-world or in-orbit, so reaching out to glitterworlds seems impossible.
It's also worth pointing out that simply because you can look up how to make something, that doesn't mean you can realistically do so yourself. For instance, try to build a CPU from scratch in your backyard. You'd likely poison, burn or explode yourself well before getting to just the pure crystalline Si and it only gets harder from there. Infrastructure and division of labor/expertise really matters in these sorts of things.
In rimworld FTL is inposible and in real life it takes about twenty minutes of latency between earth and Mars. There are methods of getting interplanetary internet but to send a message to a server on earth to ask for data might take like 2000 years.
Quote from: SymbolicFrank on November 06, 2016, 02:27:41 PM
It seems there are these extremely advanced GlitterWorlds, and you can build a kind of internet connection. Doesn't that make researching stuff into merely looking it up and building a prototype?
I have a bit of a problem with the concept of "researching" in such a context.
I kinda think that the time it requires for research in RimWorld is actually already more consistent with "looking it up on the internet" than "developing from first principles", particularly for the high tech research items.
So, shouldn't the main trade of trade ships be access to their library?
The thing is, when GlitterWorlds do exists, the knowledge is out there. And eight years isn't going to make any difference.
Unless you start with nothing and get no input whatsoever. Like it is now. Which is crazy.