Changing the Technology Naming and Strcutcture?

Started by SetArk, September 19, 2021, 05:39:11 PM

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SetArk

Ohhhh boyo.
I fear of posting this for the hate it may bring up but let's get courage and go on it.

Thinking on the modding community and thinking on the game overall structure, i wanted to propose a re-stableshing of the tech-levels.
Like, more and more, with  the Ideology update, we see that the Rim Worlds have remnants of ancient Archnotech societies.
Even freaking pieces of mechas? Walkers? cars and the like.
And, more and more, it feel strange to think of a tribe, of humans (going for vanilla here), so tribal start for exemple, that live in those worlds to be Neolithic or Medieval. They have acess to technology. Even if scrapped and scavenged doen't?
They would probably be more like, Scrappers and Survivers don't they?
There's clearly tech all around. And yeah,  they have to survive and try keep away from the Mechanoids but, still, there are scavangeable tech all around, in theory. (yeah, vanilla desconstructing those things don't give nothing, buuut i'm thinking less mechanic and lore perspective).
So, i can't stop to think.
Why Neolithic? It bears a really have conotation. Same with Medieval.
So.. Why not the first stage be named "Survivers" and the second tech level be "Scavengers". Could even open the possibility to do research on other ways instead of a bench and some other events events.
Studying old tech, hacking terminals (seriously, Neolithic people that can't even know how to build a bed.. can hack in a ancient advanced terminal?) could also be ways to advance in the research and give Intelect more use. And even more, Construction or Crafting a way to help in advance of certain researchs projects related to those skills! Heck, all skills could help research if the research is applicable.
Aaaaand here we enter some aspects of modding. RimAtomics already have this! A lot of researchs of the mods need Crafters and Constructors to help advancing and realizing research upgrades.
This is a seriously good idea to be thinked about. 
Maybe, mix the two, oh you can research the crafting of bows with a research bench, of course.
But if you have a high shooting skill pawn, able to assit this research, maybe with an small (1x1) crafting table linkeable to the research bench it could give a boost to the speed of researching weapon-like stuff?
And again, this is looking for the idea that, they are not neolithic people going from caveman style living into spacer glittertech in the spam of 5 years. It would be more in the tone of survivers reconecting dots of lots tech and not only discovering, but recovering tech.
And, i see a lot of cool mods (here we enter modding territory again), that wants to implement things like, steampunky aesthetic stuff.
They are forced to cram it between Medieval and Industrial.
Why not have a slot to be inserted in between? Maybe Pré-Industrial? Or call it Steampunk and run with it (or if copyright issues, invent a name for it on the setting of Rimworld!)

So to put on a more clear vision, i would firstly suggest a change in the nomeclature to go to something like this.
Survivalists > Scavengers > Pré-Industrialist > Industrial > Spacer > Ultra > Archotech. ( i would even throw a Glittertech in betwen Ultra and Archotech to be honest. Even more Archotech seems like to be lore-wise, some almost god-like machine  thingy. Considering the new ending that came with Ideology)

And a last idea, that could help with modders, but i really don't know if this would be, well viable at all, and i'm certain it would break a looooot of mods and would need some time for adaptations, would be to have the ability for modders to ADD new tech levels? Or even, give modders a way to create an separate tech-tree.
An exemple would be giving, A Rimworld of Magic, it's own research tab, similar to how, again, RimAtomics did.
I know that Dubs did some dark magic to create it's own research tab inside RimAtomics, but, if the base game, had a easier way to allow for modders to create research trees of their own, that may not fit into the "mainline" this would give so much more flexibility.


And just preemptly saying, yes i imagine this would be hard. Like hard as heck. Maybe something that could be a overhaul preparing for another DLC?
I don't know, just wanted to throw some of those ideas out there.
And to the start of the topic, because, it's still silly, at least to me and some friends of mine that a tribal society that barely understand the basics of carpentry, would go from that into spacefaring in the spam of what, 5 to 10 years?
It may be the nomeclature that bothers us, but it's strange. 
It even may be just a relic of old design  times and no one else is thinking about it but, welp, i had to try and give this opinion.

Sorry for the random divergences into modding and stuff and for any grammar mistakes.
And please, again, just throwing this here, it's beeing on my head for some weeks, not meant to brig hate of purists.
Lastly, english isn't my native so, yeah some grammar erros may be found.
Tried my best here >_>

Anyway, now gonna hide under a rock and come back in a day or so?
Thanks for reading ;Z

ExampleHat

#1
I agree on a lot of things that you wrote, especially the "tribals hack terminals but cannot fire a gun" stuff is inconsistent. But also since the beginning it never made much sense that tribals never use guns they would surely find on the Rim. I think a rework in the way you proposed would be way to much work for a system that im principle works and is fun, I'd rather see Ludeons time spend on something else.

That said: Ideology has missed an opportunity to make the gameplay of the tribals more consistent with the lore in a rather easy way.

You could have a core meme called "Tribal mindset", that makes pawns dislike all modern weapons/technology and give it to every NPC-Tribe. Problem solved, suddenly you have an ingame reason for them to not scavenge better tech and stay in their tribal ways indefinitely.

It could also be fun to start the tribal start with this meme and see if you can escape your old ways somehow and get a new Ideo from recruits or prisoners.