I would divide the technologies in the tech tree into several types:
regular - unremarkable technologies
Great discoveries - great discoveries that can radically change the gameplay, example: agriculture, steam engine, animal husbandry
Dangerous technologies - technologies that pose a danger to the player, but if used correctly, the player can benefit from this, example: nuclear weapons, strong artificial intelligence
Change “Great” for “Revolutionary” and “Dangerous” for “Double-Edged.”
After re-reading (that is why this is edited), I think those labels could actually describe the type of discovery, but not actual tree splits.
My suggestion which differs a bit:
Wouldn’t it be more interesting to divide discoveries into scientific fields and then each would have an identificator like shape or color which explicits those classes you said above?
Obviously, by following a branch, we would see how discoveries were dependent on previous discoveries from different fields. However, in order to make trees somewhat simple, only key and high impact discoveries should be included.
Sorry. This was unrelated.
Imagine a country researching the dark forest theory and releasing that info hazard to another country in order to win a space race but the second country goes anarcho primitivist accelerationist and invents an artificial general intelligence and uses it to send their planet back to the pre agricultural age except it is still industrial and robots are gods but they don’t tolerate technological progress but a space battle on the orbit releases an emp blast which knocks out the robot overlords and a secret society speed rushes technology but the winner of the alien space war in the orbit sees this progression and decides to colonise the planet and experiment on the suddenly advancing species but in the meanwhile the AI fixes itself and copies itself to the galactic internet, deactivating all the technology on the galaxy, and the species that was being experimented on launches a slave rebellion, someone can write a triology about that
…How is this relevant to Thrive?
allow me to be a bit more cruel and blunt then normal (apologies, I don’t actually mean any maliciousness you see here):
First: You have made perhaps a dozen new threads for random ideas or questions you had just the last two days. Do you of all people really want to start criticizing ideas made in lighthearted enthusiasm/interest for their “relevancy”? I don’t think that idea serves you.
Secondly: The term necroposting might not have made it’s way into your head writing this, but I think it should. 3 months isn’t very long, short enough you might want to post something random just to restart attention in a favorite topic, but it is long enough you should consider if your post adds anything to the discussion (if you aren’t asking that whenever you post, but I get it, who has the time?). Restarting an old conversation adds something, questioning a thread’s entire purpose is kinda weird.
If anyone actually wants to have an interesting discussion of how relevant this random little idea from august is, I guess I stand corrected.
I’d rather name them “stepping stones”, since multiple of those techs you mentioned are pretty much required for advancing to a following stage.
That would most likely require a setup to happen, otherwise the “other country” would likely just lose some stability (assuming it’s that suspectible to infohazards)
Yeah, that’s fair.
Here is a more developed take:
Fair. I think the original idea isn’t bad, it’s not really solving any problems, but I see no problem in telling you how important your research is (it is kinda prescriptivist, but i think it’s on the objective side to say upgrading muzzle loaded cannons to breach loaded might kill a lot of people, but can’t end the world, and nuclear weapons can and may doom your playthrough.). 50gens was indeed kinda off the wall but your original post wasn’t very clear that it was mostly responding to him.
It’s like that each technology has a certain “chance” to wipe out it’s creators, and the more destructive it’s potential gets, the higher this chance gets too. Perhaps eventually you could develop technologies and plant them inside other civilizations, with the tech in question having a 100% chance of wiping out that species…?
Like a sabbotage tactic?
Seems pretty interesting! (And the overall concept is pretty realistic too)
But then, it could also be considered that as any species evolve or make advances towards those technologies, those technologies become safer.
For example, right after discovering nuclear technology, the species has no good tests and practices to ensure a safe usage of nuclear energy, tools, radiation, … So, in the beggining, that self-hurt probability would be higher. Then, as you advance in Nuclear Research (or something like that), the probability of self-hurt would decrease.
Like:
Nuclear Research has phases/steps/stages: I, II, III, …
As the species reaches more advanced stages, the probability of a Nuclear Plant meltdown would halve, starting like at 50%.
This means that if you have 10 cities, each one with a nuclear plant, it would be expected that at stage I, 5 cities would be damaged or destroyed by a meltdown.
How it connects to your idea:
If you give any technology to any civilization without enough research in that area, the probability would be higher for self-hurt on their part. However, giving the technology to someone with already good development for that research, then the missmanagement of that technology would be less probable.
Good suggestion, but I think a 50/50 meltdown chance in the beginning might be a bit high.
Really? I thought 50/50 was low for a “new” technology.
If the player/AI sends more researchers to a new technology site, perhaps the chance would be lowered?
it really depends how long a stage is.
Also, nuclear progress goes FAST and meltdowns come in a lot of styles. In the Chernobyl era meltdowns were relatively manageable, the accident occurred while they were simulating cooling down the reactor without power like you’d have to in an emergency. The reactor wasn’t super well made though, so what they thought would cool it off made it MUCH hotter. If you make all of your reactors well, you might just never had to deal with meltdowns. Seriously, look at a list of all nuclear disasters. The accident categories contain basically all adverse effects other than shutting the plant down for a weekend. Roughly zero cities have been destroyed by use of nuclear power. There have been a few incidents resulting in evacuations of the area but no one puts nuclear power plants in the middle of a city. There are 94 nuclear reactors in the united states alone. 3 mile island might have been the only one to ever result in evacuation of any kind, and it wasn’t a total evacuation like you had in the soviet union. Obvious a lot of avoided accidents come from not putting nuclear power everywhere, but even considering, that’s a 1% failure rate, over decades. I’d assume we have a tier, like, III or IV, and cumulatively since the first test reactor in Harvard in the 40s, we have had one disaster, and a few incidents no one cares about. I’d say a 50% disaster rate is way too high, maybe a 50% incident rate is sane, but honestly, I don’t care if the nuclear plant turns off fr a weekend.
Yeah, a 50/50 chance of a nuclear plant causing contamination seemed way too high for me.
Well, I reply to you and to all others who complain about the “50%” or “50/50” chance of meltdown.
Obviously, the 50% chance of meltdown was just for the sake of the example (I just threw a random easy portion in: 1/2). I don’t understand why you all got so focused on that detail, since what matters is actually the concept. The dev team will research those details more accurately when that part of the game is developed, that is, if this concept is even accepted. (I believe this would be the way it works)
Also, many pioneers of Nuclear and Radioactive research all ended up having serious health problems and even died due to their studies (without proper safety measures). So, for the initial phase, it doesnt even make sense to immediatly implement Nuclear research at the level of Nuclear Plants and Atomic bombs, but only use it as a step stone for further research.
I guess so. Then only this research having higher risk chances would make sense.