Abandon "Research"

[DaveStrider]

Quantum entanglement can't be used for communication, if you try then you break the entanglement. Besides, Rimworld lore states that there is no FTL at all.

[Galileus]

That might happen over a few generation of living on a RimWorld. But we just crashed, our knowledge should still be fresh. So sure make using the particle accelerated snow cone machine super expensive in use and operation. But even little space kids should know about it without having to "research" it.

You're hard-bent on this one, aren't ya?

But let me throw you a curve ball - they crashed from a passenger liner. They did not come from the home world. They are ordinary folk... possibly after few generations on rim-worlds themselves...

Also, the part with "re-gaining knowledge" is already in, as was stated before. It's recreation and not invention here, while wording could be better than "research" indeed.

[Nocebo]

Also, the part with "re-gaining knowledge" is already in, as was stated before. It's recreation and not invention here, while wording could be better than "research" indeed.

-This- is a curve ball that I like. Acknowledgement that "Research" is the part that is wrong here. Be it just the word or the entire process.

And if they are 3 survivors of a passenger ship, they are really messed up to have "New colony optimism" at the beginning. They should be mortified that they are the only 3 survivors. 

Either way, my point got across. Although it through a lot of hoops again.

@DaveStrider: If you are referring to the fact that quantum properties change when they are observed. Researchers used quantum entanglement to prove the existence of the first quantum computer I believe. Meaning they had to observe the entanglement. I don't know exactly how. But they seemed quite proud about it.

[Galileus]

And if they are 3 survivors of a passenger ship, they are really messed up to have "New colony optimism" at the beginning. They should be mortified that they are the only 3 survivors. 

This is actually a very good point, and we've mentioned it in discussion (alas short and unfulfilling... people prefer to discuss about new types of carpets ) With FlyingTurtles here. Well, would be more accurate to say Turtles pointed it out and I backed him, but you get the point.

Check it out, there are some nifty little ideas there.

[Nemo]

the entanglement they observed was that the quibits were entangled with each other so they would all solve the problem together increasing the processing power and to give the answer they had to drop out of entanglement (otherwise no information can be extracted).

FTL entanglement : yes you could send a bit (or a few) but any attempt at transfer (also requiring entanglement to cease to be read) information would only produce meaningless data as the state of all (home world +rim world) quibits need to known to produce information which would have to be sent at the speed of light and voila causality is preserved.

NB: data = 0110000101110100 or information = half of the binary of the word 'data' but you wouldn't know that until you have all the data

[Lothar]

While i like the idea you have presented i don't feel like it fits into the game that much even though i believe it could add some depth to the game because you could then add more to each character. Say a mid world nerd in their youth turned into corporate hacker in their adult life, and you would need some like that to decode the information. I think it would be better if research required blueprints of some kind that you could get from an industrial trader or something to that effect.

[Nocebo]

NB: data = 0110000101110100 or information = half of the binary of the word 'data' but you wouldn't know that until you have all the data

Exactly! And this is why it would still take time to download/decode the information that is being sent. So all the knowledge already exists. But you still can't access it all instantly at the beginning of the game.

[Nemo]

you can't decode it (if you put it into a decoder it would just cycle endlessly) you can only guess at what the rest of the data is. So yes you might be able 'guess' that the home world said 'hello' but due to the exponential increase in possibilities of what the data could be it quickly becomes next to impossible to guess once you get to the size a the average sentence.

you would have a 1/949 chance of getting the above right (and thats a very conservative estimate)

[Nocebo]

until you have all the data

I guess this bit threw me off then.
I'll take your word for it that it wont work as it is now. But i need to look this up sometime because i could swear quantum entanglement worked. One particle inversely affects the other particle and is thus not hard to understand at all. I can't wrap my head around why there still needs to be light speed restricted information flow outside of the particles? Are you saying without actually seeing particle A you can't read particle B's state? If that is the case the whole concept is pretty broken...

[Nemo]

Are you saying without actually seeing particle A you can't read particle B's state?

yep though to be fair a lot of people think entanglement makes FTL communication possible as the physics explaining why this measurement is needed is a little dense (meaning physicists don't talk about it much to the public).

NB: quantum computers could be made but the only ones the've made are quantum annealers like a hybrid ask them the right question and there ain't a classical computer out there that could beat them.

Also you'll probably be able to tell when a true quantum computer is made as banks will probably freak out due to there encryption being rendered completely useless

[laser50]

Sure, we live in a distant time with lots of technological advancements, but are we forgetting the fact that we just crashed down onto an unknown planet without any equipment? Perhaps one of your teammates was a Librarian, the other a Druggie.. They won't have any idea how to make solar panels out of the top of their head..

If anything, I'd say expand research greatly, whole trees of things, make the player's start absolutely basic. Let him work for his better stuff.

[Peuri]

Sure, we live in a distant time with lots of technological advancements, but are we forgetting the fact that we just crashed down onto an unknown planet without any equipment? Perhaps one of your teammates was a Librarian, the other a Druggie.. They won't have any idea how to make solar panels out of the top of their head..

If anything, I'd say expand research greatly, whole trees of things, make the player's start absolutely basic. Let him work for his better stuff.

This exactly! I don't know how to make a carpet, let alone a refridgerator or a solar panel. This game has a lot of potential and interesting concepts which I hope well be expanded upon and added complexity. (I love Dwarf Fortress for it's complexity) I think that Bumblechubs' idea of maintaining knowledge is also a good one. I would add that knowing a tech and thus constructing carpets or weaponry - or what not - should not be a colony wide on-off kind of thing, but should be tied to the individual colonists. So Jack McColonist could know how to make carpets and Bill McColonist would know how to make refridgerators. This way loosing Jack or Bill as individuals could be devastating to the colony because of the skills that went with them. While Bill and Jack were alive they could have teached other colonists their skills and knowledge. This way a crashinglanding engineer could be a godsent to the colony.* Individuals could try to learn a skill or a piece of knowledge by purchasing (e)books from traders or perhaps instant neural chips if one is rolling in cash.

There should also be some kind of cost or limit to the things a single person can know. In real life no one can be a master of all trades, so I think it should not be the case in this game either. Perhaps colonists could take different paths of specialisation in which relevant skills and knowledge could be learnt while learning skills and knowledge in other paths would be hindered. Unless there are some sort of neural enhancement augmentations.

The downside of this is that while I feel that they would add a whole lot of realism and the chance for drama, they could also - for some people atleast - add an unnecessary dimension of complexity. I love complexity in games, but I do realise that not everyone does and not every game has to be very complex.

*(This would also play with the idea of having medieval and futuristic weapons side by side. Suppose for example that your starting group of colonists consisted of medieval world peasants they would most likely know how to grow crops and make some basic tools, but an urbworld industrialist would perhaps not be able to build anything, not because he just doesn't want to, but because he does not know how. The peasants could of course try to teach him, and after a while if his personality allows he could be building with the peasants.)

[Stickle]

I guess this bit threw me off then.
I'll take your word for it that it wont work as it is now. But i need to look this up sometime because i could swear quantum entanglement worked. One particle inversely affects the other particle and is thus not hard to understand at all. I can't wrap my head around why there still needs to be light speed restricted information flow outside of the particles? Are you saying without actually seeing particle A you can't read particle B's state? If that is the case the whole concept is pretty broken...

I just figured I'd chime in and reinforce the notion that while quantum communication is a real (and existing) thing, it's only advantage over classical communication is security. To actually get meaningful information through, the sender has to send along classical information about what they did to their qubit, which the receiver can then use to make sense of the measurements he made, and finally retrieve the message. The security comes about because it's immune to man-in-the-middle attacks, someone plugging in and wiretapping the phones, for example (because there's no way to intercept the quantum half of the data). This is not a very rigorous explanation, but the theory and practice of quantum communications are rock solid, and if anyone ever discovers a way to instantly transfer useful information without the parallel classical (speed of light limited) message, then it means the universe is not a causal place and nothing makes any sense. So the 'realism' argument is not really in your favor... Information cannot be transferred faster than the speed of light.

More on topic, though, the only thing I want to see from research (besides more content, as it's obviously unfinished) is for it to be open-ended. I never want my researchers to run out of things to do, even if there are logarithmically diminishing returns (or something besides 'new' research that they can do, whether it's building certain things, maintain certain equipment, or even maintaining the 'research' you've already discovered). It would be kind of neat for a colony going through hard times for long enough start to regress technologically; in reality it'd take more than a year or something and more like generations, but I could let that slide for the sake of Fun!

[Nasikabatrachus]

What if research was replaced with trade?

Instead of being able to research pneumatic picks, they colony must buy them.

After all, the current situation in which colonists carry around replicators in their butts or wherever does seem like it has to change.

Perhaps research could stay in, but it would be secondary to and dependent on the colony's ability to fabricate materials. For instance, a 3D printer could be a mid-game item, something that a colony would have to steal or buy from a trader. But once the colony has it, someone can start researching incremental improvements on pneumatic picks, explosives, etcetera.

I mean, does a scientist really need to sit at a desk to come up with the idea of putting dead bodies in cages if the people around them can already install solar panels and geothermal energy generators at will?

[Tynan]

Research is pretty primitive as a game system right now. It's the bare minimum to serve its purpose, which is basically to avoid overwhelming players with options right at game start. It also adds another reward schedule; something else to progress towards and look forward to alongside finishing constructions, training people, and any other goal a player might set.

Fictionally, yes, I imagine it as them figuring out how to do things (that have been accomplished before elsewhere).

In the future I hope to have research focused on particular objects. For example, you acquire an assault rifle. You research it. After a while, your weaponsmith can now make similar assault rifles. With a lot more research, your weaponsmith can make better versions of that assault rifle.

Similarly, once archeology is in, research may focus on found artifacts and work a bit like the "identify" function in many RPGs. You ident an artifact and discover if it's a weapon, a tool, or just a piece of junk. Maybe it wakes up and does something surprising when you research it.

There's also the possibility of buying research. E.g. just buy a book that explains in detail how to craft a certain rifle.

I lean away from having this knowledge be colonist-specific (even though it makes more sense) just because that's a massive information burden to keep track of. Maybe I'll add specific talents needed to make specific things, but that wouldn't be a system that's used everywhere.

The quantum entanglement thing isn't really important; RimWorld follows the real-life principle that matter and information do not travel faster than light under any circumstances. As has been noted above, this applies to all methods of communication, including quantum.

It's good to have these discussions, though. When I reopen research I'll definitely be thinking about what's been said about it in these kinds of discussions.