Tribals should need to acquire knowledge of technology

[rungus24]

I'm new to the game and I love it, especially the tribal start, but I don't like the way that neolithic people just decide to discover electricity and sit at a desk and do it in a few days. Instead, I wonder if storyline events could allow the colony to learn enough about the existence of a technology to then sit at the research desk and research it. For example, when traders and visitors come, they could choose to give, or sell, the knowledge of electricity, or machining, etc, to the colony, and then this allows the research to be done. Or if a colonist has, say, 10 in medicine, then the event can come up that he has discussed some ideas with the colony about how to produce drugs, allowing this to be researched properly. Perhaps prisoners and new recruits can give the secrets of research, allowing the research tree to be updated. Maybe some colonists just had secrets passed down from their ancestors that allow certain things to be researched. I'm not sure if it would help or hinder the game-play, but it would smooth out the idea of this stone age people just sitting at a desk and becoming modern people so quickly. Does anyone think this is an idea worth having a look at?

[AngleWyrm]

When I play Tribal start games, it's because I want a game without electricity and the things that come from that tech tree. So I don't research it, choosing instead to develop agriculture, medicine and animal husbandry. My favorite part of your thoughts on the subject is the notion of technological secrets handed down; maybe technological knowledge could be represented in a more portable manner sort of like skills, work categories and traits, so that they could be more specific to the pawns.

Maybe a pawn has some experience working with agriculture, and so they have a type of tech tree research credit in that research. Get a group of them working together and they can share, cooperate and learn from one-another, so that the total research points of the team counts for the tech tree of the present work. And maybe factions have a contribution to the pawn's tech knowledge, so that there are plusses to the people that come from the various faction time periods.

I feel like there's just a little too much of Newer is Better going on with the tech tree, the built-in axiom that Spacer is better than Industrial is better than Neolithic. It seems like there's a missed opportunity to match a best fit to the current environment.

A cell phone is useless in medieval times, and so also would be a 9mm automatic or a gasoline powered car. But something like a hand-cranked battery storage could make sense.

[cultist]

I think the catch is that none of the tribals are indigenous to the planet. They're all descendants of space faring people of some sort and as such, once possessed the knowledge that they research (collectively, not individually) and as such are rediscovering these things rather than learn them for the first time. Also consider that it's far easier to advance technologically if you're a primitive surrounded by more advanced people than if the knowledge you possess personally is considered the height of civilization.

[Boston]

I think the catch is that none of the tribals are indigenous to the planet.

I'lll be honest, I don't exactly understand what that means.

By that logic, Native Americans were never actually indigenous to the Americas, since they came from Asia first.

[Fregrant]

Not sure if it needed. I think it could be implemented as a "blueprints"... For learning technologies, making stuff at workbenches, new features (like medical operations). But as you can see, for now, maybe for simplicity while development, all of it implemented as "technologies".

[TheMeInTeam]

It doesn't make sense, especially at the game's abstraction level.

- In contrast to less advanced populations in actual history, tribes in the game interact with advanced factions routinely.  This isn't like Shaka thinking muskets load too slowly; the utility variance is obvious.

- Populations had serious cultural barriers to advancing quickly in real history.  Assuming the Rimworld conditions are even kind-of comparable to that is absurd, and absent those limitations one human being isn't too far behind another.  If you drag 30 cognitively healthy people out of some of the most destitute/illiterate places in the world today and give them 5-10 years of extensive academic + practical application training while they perceive their survival is contingent on their learning it (a very real situation in Rimworld), you will have 30 people well above average even by 1st world standards.

- You can get colonists who join that have a spacer backstory, or are crash-landed/outlander faction.  I see no reason a colony with even 1-2 such members should remain with both a big tech% cost *and* no concept of it.

- Such a restriction is inconsistent to the game's scaling.  No matter how advanced you are, it's unlikely 10 or fewer people could pick up the requisite knowledge to build a ship within 5 years if they didn't have it already while a "tribal" couldn't even learn how to make weapons, even less likely they could source the materials and labor to build it!  Such is arguably more ridiculous than a tribal person learning about electricity from nearby colonies + implementing the knowledge on his own after some research. 

In principle someone might learn something like that quickly.  I don't think you + me + 3 friends could build a rocket to make it to the moon and back in 5 years even in principle.  Rimworld lets one person physically construct it in a single year.

Given the game's settings such a restriction on tribe would be arbitrary.  They might lack infrastructure, but it's kind of insulting to think that given the setting people couldn't learn as well as other people.  The several times higher cost for tech could just be abstracted as learning basic education stuff before advancing to the application of tech that the game has.

[VincentJ]

In my mind, the technology system is quite ridiculous. Do you think science runs that way ? A lonesome guy sits down behind a big table and stays all day long, thinking ?
And discovers electricity ?

New technologies appears by exchanges, thanks to the books, and flashs, inspirations. First you should consign knowledge in books, and as rungus24 told it, exchanges. Your tribe should acquire tribal tech points by talking whith more advanced tribes, by watching their items.
The same thing with medieval, if you have the medieval mod.

You could also have big boosts of technologies.

- you acquire an ancient book full of wisdom, on how experiments function => tech points
- a strange ermit comes to visit your settlement and reveals you great secrets, if you feed him ==> a lot of tech points, maybe an entire tribal tech
- an old warrior (I think about medieval warfare technology) comes visit your town and shows you little tricks : your best warriors improve a melee or shoot competency, and you gain a combat technology
- you find ruins of a distinguished crashed civilisation : a lot of technologies points, in irrigation techs or in water conducts, dub's mad hygiene mod is a good canalisation mod for example. It doesn't make sense that tribal refugees escaping a storm of iron and blood, sit behing a desk during few days and discover a way establish a settlement with modern canalisations, water pump, radiators, sewage outlets, etc
- most of all, when you visit a new town : by observing people, items and buildings, maybe visiting and working in a workshop
- most of most, you could learn industrial technologies only if an industrial level or space level pawn joins your settlement, like a crashed space traveller. Depending on their background

I've got other ideas I should developp in an another thread.

[sick puppy]

In my mind, the technology system is quite ridiculous. Do you think science runs that way ? A lonesome guy sits down behind a big table and stays all day long, thinking ?
And discovers electricity ?

New technologies appears by exchanges, thanks to the books, and flashs, inspirations. First you should consign knowledge in books, and as rungus24 told it, exchanges. Your tribe should acquire tribal tech points by talking whith more advanced tribes, by watching their items.
The same thing with medieval, if you have the medieval mod.

You could also have big boosts of technologies.

- you acquire an ancient book full of wisdom, on how experiments function => tech points
- a strange ermit comes to visit your settlement and reveals you great secrets, if you feed him ==> a lot of tech points, maybe an entire tribal tech
- an old warrior (I think about medieval warfare technology) comes visit your town and shows you little tricks : your best warriors improve a melee or shoot competency, and you gain a combat technology
- you find ruins of a distinguished crashed civilisation : a lot of technologies points, in irrigation techs or in water conducts, dub's mad hygiene mod is a good canalisation mod for example. It doesn't make sense that tribal refugees escaping a storm of iron and blood, sit behing a desk during few days and discover a way establish a settlement with modern canalisations, water pump, radiators, sewage outlets, etc
- most of all, when you visit a new town : by observing people, items and buildings, maybe visiting and working in a workshop
- most of most, you could learn industrial technologies only if an industrial level or space level pawn joins your settlement, like a crashed space traveller. Depending on their background

I've got other ideas I should developp in an another thread.

agreed for the most part.
while this is important for the logic/realism part, for gameplay/balance i am not sure how good it is. i say "i am not sure" because i never tried that system myself extensively and i can think of many problems from the get go:
what do ice sheet/sea ice starters do? they are royally screwed without being allowed to research whatever the hell they want.
so i just had a tribal start and after i recruited the first raider that came at me and the guy in the tiny ancient danger room the next colonist to join my ranks (second quadrum or something) was a glitterworld surgeon that fell from the sky. so not only do i have a kickass researcher and medic with her but she also unlocked the whole research tree for me...i dont think cheesing the game like that is a good idea, especially not balance wise.

what in my opinion is very important for balance is having to research way more things (everything). why have sleeping bags and sleeping spots if you can just build beds from the very beginning? why build a gladius when you can build longswords with the same research? why make t shirts if the same research gives you button down shirts?
if you ask me, you'd have to put each and every single item apart and research them all. maybe even introduce stuff like a buther spot and a research spot for tribals for their own tech and butcher tables and research tables have to both be researched seperately. i want to research shivs, then knives, then gladii, then spears and in the end only longswords. heck, plant pots should definitely be tech if you can just plant them in the soil instead anyway. and ideally, like in my wet dreams, i believe we should also have to research each and every plant or tree that we want to be able to plant and grow ourselves. no need to be able to plant 10 trees and have an oversized plant tab if you can just research one of them and be done with it in most cases. it would also make the tribal start a hunter/gatherer civ, since you can only live off the land in the beginning. unfortunately you wouldnt be able to plant potatoes from the very beginning on ice sheet/desert/extreme desert maps, but i guess you could just make the research very cheap and easy. like, research spot and 50 research points for neolithic tech.

[VincentJ]

You made a point : the whole tech tree is full of contradictions and needs to be reworked.
Obviously, rollmaps are useless, because they need cloth to be made, and it's faster to tech beds at the beginning of the game that plant coton and wait till you have cloth
There's an issue too with recurve bows. I don't know what it is, but with medieval times I can produce composite bows at the very first beginning of the game.
So recurve bow is useless, and needs to be searched, whereas longbow, which, in my mind is less effective than composite bow, seems more powerful.
I think it's the same thing for a lot of techs and items.

You misred me, I was talking about the fact you CAN research industrial or space technologies only if you have a spacer in your colony. It wouldn't give you all the technologies.
I know it's not logic, someone in your settlement would be joking everytime you try to understand how to forge a weapon, or how to make a carpet, but you also can figure that scientist couldn't know everything.

A lot of researches allow you to make to many things. Each technology should represent a real improvement, giving you a few new options : complex clothing should be after simple clothing, and should give you the ability of make socks and gloves.
I don't exactly know the differences between T-shirts and shirts, so I make shirts all the time. I think there's one which is useless. Maybe shirts in simple clothing and jackets in complex clothing ?

Concerning agriculture, the whole system is silly : refugees, tribal or from space, can make grow almost everything they want ? There's no limits ?

When you see immigrants on your TVset, do they escape their countries with all the seeds they can ?

With Vegetable Garden, at least you must tech technologies to farm every plants. But, and I believe there's a mod which allows that, you should have seeds to make grow what you want. I don't know why but I received a lot of cargo pods from the space in my games : you can imagine that some of them contain seeds, seeds I could plant.
At the beginning of the game, in my mind, you should only farm berries and wild herbs. The first caravan should come to see you quickly and sell you seeds, seeds of one or two species, like in a game named "Banished".
No farming techs.

I'm happy to see someone shares a part of my opinion concerning this subject. Thanks.
I developped my ideas in the thread "what is the most important lack in Rimword according to you ?"

[Bolgfred]

As it's for me the research tree bothers my tribal gameplay in any way.
Firstly, the standard science table doesn't fit the tribal style an destroys much of the ancient feel.
Secondish, playing tribal doesn't have to be focused around gaining modern technology.

I would really prefer tribal setting to have it's own research tree, with it's own research methods and a more balanced world around them with more focus on tribals elements themself.
As a tribal I prefer fighting wild animals and other tribes instead of mercenaries and mechanoids.
Also in clothing I'd love to see a more tribalish progress than tribalwear->BÄM!->duster 'n hat!