Person-dependent research & teaching system

[Snowpig]

Many, if not most games have a quite simple research system:
- one or several people are locked in a place for some time
- when the research is done, wham!, everybody has an epiphany

How about the idea to tie the researched receipes to the colonist who did the research?
Every colonist should have a sort of copy of the whole possible research receipes and using a research table would add the points to the researched technology, but only for this particular colonist. As soon as the researching colonist has developed a new technology, he can then start to teach it to his fellow colonists.
Combined with the actual skill-system of Rimworld this would lead to some neat side-effects:
- losing your researcher/teacher would hurt you a lot more.
- adding a skill "teaching" would lead into different kinds of personalities, e.g. a guy who can research fast, but is very bad at teaching - or - he knows how to build the fertilizer-thrower, but refuses to do it himself

further along the road: you could add skills to your colony by a lucky drop or a lucky trade with the slaver.

even further: one could restrict certain colonists from researching stuff. Or would you ask the Farm Oaf to invent a Fusion Engine?

[Johnny Masters]

I think tying research to each person is one of those cases where detail doesn't bring much to the table, specially if abstracting is still (more) reasonably plausible. I.e., in a game with such a loose passage of time, it's easy to infer there's some kind of "off screen" exchange.

BUT i do like placing more importance on the research skill and pawns who have it, and i certainly like the thought of a teaching system or knowledge/research as some kind of catchable/interchangeable "disease".

What you can research should indeed be tied to the research skill level, i don't know why it isn't already. Yeah, it doesn't make sense a farm oaf inventing fusion engines or whatever. Also there's a profit to be made here that is not only in flavor/reality scratch, such as the tactical assessment of "should i draft my top researcher into war or spare him (and the colony), the chance of losing vital technology?"

also further along: me thinks a system where your technology is somewhat stored (probably in the research console), is taught and not universally granted would be (arguably) neat.

Also it *could* be nice if all skills, in general, would be tied to what each pawn could produce/achieve: construction 3 could build wood walls but not lamps, medicine 3 could allow first aids, but not surgeries, etc.
although perhaps that system would need a knowledge and aptitude skill differentiation. Construction 15/3 means he/she can build pretty much anything, though not efficiently, 3/15 means it knows only the basics, but knows it very well. So teaching gives knowledge skill but perhaps not practical skill? Dunno, just dropping a thought.