Tech Editor

Future Game
31

Yes, that’s a good point. Having set categories of tools would be a bad idea. I suppose you are right that a merely sufficient tool could be created in a few seconds. Still, perhaps the player should not have to design everything. There is an issue I call “the dictator problem”, and it plagues video games. The dictator problem is when the player is in control of everything, and nothing happens without the player’s input. Games with the dictator problem feel dead and uninteresting. Think of Starcraft. The units just stand there and do nothing unless the player commands them to move. In real life, however, there is a hierarchy of commanders, so the general would only give an overall plan. He couldn’t micromanage everything like in Starcraft.

Similarly, the player of Thrive should not have to design everything. There will presumably be other societies against which the player is competing, and those AI societies will use tools too. Whatever program the AI uses to make tools could be utilized by the player too so that development can happen even if the player is uninterested in micromanagement. In Hearts of Iron 4, the player sets a general battle plan and clicks a button for the units to automatically perform that plan. The units are generally very bad at this and benefit from micromanagement, but the player does not have to do that if he does not want to. The AI that manages the player’s army is the same as the one that manages his opponents’ armies.

This could be a way to simulate the people’s development of their tools. Instead of some god (the player) granting their technologies too them, they invent the technology. If your god is a lazy ape who just wants to watch a simulation, this system is beneficial to him.

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32

I think there is a general culture in Thrive of saying “make a complicated system and then automate it if people don’t want to use it”. I think it’s a way people have tried to resolve different visions, basically do it all and then automate it if it’s not the thing you want, that way everyone is happy.

I’m rather against it for two reasons:

firstly it’s a huge amount of work to build a complicated system and then it’s another huge amount of work to automate it, and we do all that so the player won’t play with it? That’s very poor return in terms of hours of gameplay for hours of dev effort.

secondly I think a game needs to be a cohesive experience. I don’t think having a giant box of options will lead to a particularly strong core experience personally.

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33

Aha. @Solitarian makes a really good point and I think that it needs to be acknowledged further. Maybe technology can be automated in the game. Whatever you design, your scientists will over time tinker with it and make an improved version of that tech that you created. Say you designed an axe, over time your people will try to find ways to improve that axe, like making the stone part bigger or smaller or using a different type of handle, etc. but the AI will try to find the best version of that axe, or maybe develop something else entirely from it. It could even branch off into other technologies. This could help create the “dynamic” feel of technology and could eliminate having to micromanage tech when you really should be governing your tribe. And of course you can always take matters into your own hands and edit that tech yourself if you feel like your people aren’t refining it the right way.

Maybe the tech tree would turn into something i call a “zeitgeist tree” (zeitgeist is German for “spirit of the age”). The zeitgeist tree or zeitgeist web, for lack of a better name, would consist of technological concepts that are universal, not technologies specifically. For example, it’s obvious that every alien race has to build a rocket in order to go to space. There’s no denying that. But your race might still develop that rocket differently. Say you’ve just researched steam power and the next research is rocketry. Instead of the research presumably going on in the background, your scientists start developing objects that are related to rocketry, and eventually they will develop their own version of a “rocket”. You can always give them a helping hand, and your scientists will develop premade parts that are tried and true, or you can develop your own. Another aspect is the attitude of the nation. Your people could be less scientific, which slows down the development of that sweet rocket. Your people could be more militaristic, wanting to develop more weapons for warfare, instead of looking to the heavens.

This is just a lot of speculation tho, obviously the concept needs to be more balanced out, but I think @Solitarian’s point might be leading on to something.

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34

I still agree with @tjwhale that the automation of the process is not a way to go.

  1. As TJ said, it’s a huge amount of work, if even possible.
  2. To me that feels like playing the microbial stage without using the editor yourself, but rather just having an auto-evo help you out. If you let someone else do the progress, what is left to do for you, really?
  3. Also I’d like to react to @CaptainCH

There are several things that seem off to me.

  1. There won’t be such a thing as an axe. Yes, you can create a thing called an axe in the game, but the game will not recognize it as such. Rather, the game will take its stats and apply them to the movement speed, damage and range. There’s hundreds of melee weapons out there. How would devs know what melee weapons to include in the game? But if there are no categories and everything is oriented around the stats, you can create anything you want. Imagine any melee weapon you can - a long two-sided mace, dagger-sized warhammer, scimitar-shaped axe, mix of a spear and scythe, A PRETTY [REDACTED] DOPE TRIDENT, an axe that does have 3 or 4 blades instead of 1 or 2, maybe just a very reinforced cane, or perhaps a two-sided sword. You probably see where this is going. You couldn’t even make categories for just a half of them. But without categories, you can make whatever you want.
  2. The computer would have no way of knowing what’s an improvement and what’s not. Is it an improvement to make it havier, thus deal more dama or is it an improvement to make it lighter, thus faster? And where does the part even go? You get the point. And again, this AI would be really hard to program.
  3. If it develops on its own, as you say, do you even need an editor? You can be just spoon-fed a randomly generated weapon with completely random stats. Imagine the cell stage working like that - ever time you reproduce, you don’t go into the editor, you just experience one auto-evo. I don’t think that’s way to go.
  4. Connected with that, if it also automatically branches of into other technologies, we don’t even need a tech web anymore, you just automatically generate “an axe” and leave the game do its thing for a few hours and voila, you’re in space.
  5. If you want the weapons random, it would take you literally seconds to do so. You don’t need an AI for that. Click on a random handle, select a random part, drop it somewhere on the handle, done. As easy as that.

PS:
Also, just a quick addition as a bit of an explanation, because I feel I have forgotten to explain a lot of things in the long post.
For targets with a very low stiffness (fleshy bois - us, octopi, most of mammals) you would want to use sharp tools to damage the fleshy flesh the most.
For targets with a very high stiffness (crunchy bois - crabbos, huge buggos, anything with a shell/crust) you want to use blunt tools to crunch 'em bones and stuff.
Stiffness does not reflect on the HP, strength does. Hopefully it’s understandable.

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35

Tbh i didn’t really want there to be too much automation either, i was really just trying to come up with a solution to the whole anti-tech tree problem. However i do think that there shouldn’t be too much micromanagement. I think there needs to be a balance between that and having freedom to do whatever you want. So far the simplest solution is that you can either slap on some parts and call it good or you could spend more time in the editor refining it to maximum effectiveness. I feel like there needs to be some sort of gradual change taking place, but maybe the change happening with each editor session is enough.

With that said i do agree with weapons not being classified by what they are but by their stats. Aliens would probably develop tools and weapons that are a lot different compared to what we humans use.

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36

So I’ve been thinking about the tech web for a bit and I think it can be done in a pretty nice way. But there would have to be some rules to it.

  • Almost every tech would have some sort of requirement. By that I don’t mean the previous tech (though that would be necessary as well), but rather an event or perhaps a sapience level. Example - For fire, you either need to observe fire somewhere (naturally occurring, another tribe…) or have skills with stone at least at level 3 (idk that’s just a random number), because your first fire-making process would be banging rocks together.
  • By unlocking the tech you do not gain mastery of it, but rather just the basics, which you master by actively using them. Higher skills unlock more and more aspects of the technology, along with the technology becoming more refined. Example - Unlocking metalurgy would unlock some parts in the tech editor (the one I’ve been talking about for several last posts - basically the melee and tools editor), however these parts would be far from perfect - basically just random pieces of the most basic metal and very few of them can be considered actually sharp or strong. However, the more skill you gain, you also gain better pieces and over time, as you master the process of forging the ores, you even unlock new metals, alloys and parts. Side note - Metalurgy would definitely require fire and perhaps finding an ore somewhere.
  • The web would not be linear, but rather go from one centre to all the other directions. (And perhaps following the @tjwhale’s idea, I think that system with 4 segments would work really well). This will prevent linear technological advancement that is same in every playthrough.

Okay, now to the actual structure of the web. In the very middle of the web there would be “Tools” - the ability to grab and use stuff. This “tech” would get unlocked automatically once the player reaches certain level of sapience. This might probably even occur still in the late aware stage, providing a nice and smooth transition. When this skill is unlocked, the player is basically at the same level as most primates, sucha as chimpanzees, who actually use some basic “tools” such as twigs and so on.
From this center point, there would be a fairly large amount of new technologies to choose from, some (most) of them still locked due to the requirements (my first bullet point). Some of them would be for example fire, domestication, agriculture, metalurgy, or language (some of those might need one more tech before them, but you get the point). Let’s take a look at some of them.

Tools
The very first tech. Gets unlocked automatically once a certain sapience threshold is reached. Allows your species to grab items and actively use them. These would be sticks, stones and (can break my) bones. Interacting with these object increases the player’s skill level with the particular item, allowing them to refine them into slightly better shapes, not too late after that even create tools for themselves from said materials. (Unlocks the tech editor). Gaining skills in separate fields (= materials) of Tools improves each field individually, granting you better assets to use.

Fire
Grants your species the ability to wield and create fire. Requires either observing fire or stone skill of level at least 3 (or so) as your first way to create fire would be banging rocks together. Fire can scare of predators, provides light and enables you to cook your food. Gaining skills in fire provides better and faster way to create it, along with things like torches, different fireplaces for different situations (there’s A LOT of different fireplaces all with different benefits) et cetera.

Language
Language grants you the ability to communicate. Requires higher level of sapience. Language unlocks a very basic strategy mode, that gradually gets better, as you gain skills by organizing, giving orders and so on.

Agriculture
Grants you the ability to plant crops and kickstart your agriculture. Probably requires Tools and Language. Gaining skills in agriculture grants you better ways of farming, along with gradually better selective breeding (It is called breeding even if it’s a plant, right?).

Domestication
Domestication gets unlocked by befriending an animal by feeding it, perhaps even providing a shelter to it. These animals will fight along your side.

Metalurgy
Metalurgy provides you with new materials to work with. In this stage of the game, this is most notable in the Tools area, where you gain new assets to use. Metalurgy requires fire at least at level 5 (? might depend on the melting temperature?) and finding an ore of a metal you can process with your current technology. Gaining skills in this area is virtually the same as gaining skills in Tools, where you gain skill with each material separately, but on top of that you also gain skills in fire and also metalurgy itself, enabling you to create very basic forges et cetera.

I think this is enough to give you an idea about how this might work. It utilizes systems suggested by @tjwhale, @hhyyrylainen and myself, along with using the system for weapons and tools with stats proposed by me and @Solitarian. I think this proposal might have a chance to make everyone happy. Do we have a tech web? Yes. Is it linear? No. Is it simple “unlock this and you know it”? No. Is it easy to use? Yes.

What do y’all think? Any questions, ideas, improvements?

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37

I like the idea of a “sapience level”. This would obviously be granted via biological evolution, but it would need to be further developed to access more advanced technologies. It initially would only allow basic tool use (i.e. octopuses using shells, chimpanzees using sticks, etc.). This would mean that biological and technological evolution would be happening simultaneously, with technology eventually taking precedence due to advancing far more quickly than biology. I think that would be an excellent way to transition from one stage to the next.

I don’t like the idea of a tech tree or web (If Dwarf Fortress is great without one, Thrive can be too!), but if there must be something like that, Zahyyy’s idea seems theoretically acceptable. The pragmatics of programming, however, are unknown to me. Are we certain that further speculation will help? I have written all my ideas. Again, Thrive is only about microbiology at the moment, so we should focus on changes that can be implemented now or very soon.

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Someone here mentioned the “stats” system being applicable to certain membranes and tissues, which might not be so far off, plus it will make the entire game more consistent, which (I assume) would simplify the programming process a bit. As once we’d have the stats for tissues and membranes implemented, we could just use the same thing for the tools, with just a very few stats added.

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I like the idea of using stuff more giving you level ups or access to special techs. For example a sea faring nation that builds a lot of boats should be able to build better boats than a large landlocked nation with many universities, to a point.

I think metalurgy was invented (~3000BC) quite a long time after people settled in cities (~7,500BC) and so I’m not sure how much small scale tool crafting you’d do by that point.

Sounds like an interesting idea though. I like the sound of slowly moving from pure animal to village dweller, sounds fun.

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40

Thank you! I think that this small scale tech editor would be applicable even for these early cities. You simply create a weapon and assign it to guards let’s say. As I said, the “editor sessions” can (but definitely don’t have to) take up just a few seconds and you want to use them only if 1) you discover a new technology such as a new metal and you want to implement it, or 2) you yourself want to make changes to what you’ve already made 3) you don’t need, but rather want another weapon to be added to your units. I have no idea how long will the awakening stage be, but I think that at worst, you would have to pop into the editor for 10 seconds every 15 minutes or so. I hope that this stage won’t be super short such as in Spore, where you could finish the stage in thirty minutes. If the stage is going to be fairly long, these editor sessions might even be once every 30 minutes or so. Which is in my opinion absolutely okay and does not feel like you have to do so much micromanagement.
And your example with boats is on spot.

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41

I think tech should need to present some sort of advantage, with it needing a concrete advantage early on, but can have more abstract advantages later on. This would depend on the creature, so a turtle-like thing would not use armour, for example.

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How could we inplement prototypes and experiments? I had a idea that the reaserch would be that there would be experiments which would give you upgrades or units or equipment that would be specific for your nations enviroment like if your nations is in a swampy enviroment you would have
Amphibious equipment like : amphibious car , tanks…

Or there would be would be a Tech tree that would just passive upgrade like +15% damage for infantry ET ectrea (i domy know how to write it).
You would order a vehicles which would have specifided time to design then there would be test with prototypes which your as a head of a state if the prototype is good or not if the design should be remade or it should be made to production, of course ypu need to know in what state is your nation(war, peace …).
I dunno what else should i say . Be free to expand onto my theory .

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I still think turtles need to use armor, otherwise the game would get boring real quick when guns are invented.

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I love the idea of enviroment specific tech. For example, I think that an amphibious specie should have the abillity to go onto land for the sole purpose of inventing metalworking (if it’s really that necessary in the first place) only to go back into the depths of the sea afterwards…

Just imagen what advantages it would bring to already be able to both naturally breath under liquids and on land when reaching the space stage. You wouldn’t have to invent dive equipment to further research the aquatic life on a planet.

Insects and reptiles could even have the big advantage to breath certain gases, for example being immune to toxin when they start destroying their homeworld during industrial.

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One of the things I’m worried about for the later stages of Thrive is that species would lose their identity.
To use the turtles as an example: In the earlier stages of the game the Turtles’ natural armour would be a defining characteristic of them. They’re ‘the armoured ones’. But as technology improves, their natural armour would be less and less relevant compared to their tech. Turtles shields don’t do much against firearms, after all.

I like your suggestion about species from different environments being better at tech that works well in their environment. Not only does it make sense (of course the species would know more about their native enviroment), but it also solves the issue I mentioned in the previous paragraph very well.

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Not all species for instance stegosaurus would still use their spikes at the back of their tails as a weapon even in the future .
Tuttles could dtill use their natural armor by upgrading it? Possibly?

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A stegosaurus’ thagomizers would not be very useful compared to technologically advanced weapons, nor would they be able to penetrate technologically advanced armour,

I just don’t see any reason for some sapient stegosaurus to try to whack someone with its tail when it’s got a perfectly fine gun to shoot him with.

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I defeated all the undead as an elephant man and claimed the book containing the secrets of life and death, so now I am a necromancer. As such, I resurrect this thread with some interesting videos from a Youtube channel called How to Make Everything. The videomaker has been recreating tools of the stone and copper ages while using them for various historically accurate tasks. I find the video series interesting, and it has given me a good idea of these tools’ effectiveness. The videos reminded me of the discussion in this thread.

Here is a link to the first video, which is about stone tools.

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What if the tech editor will be only used on spesific ocasions for instance the tech tree will be used for basic technology . And the more diverse will be a pop up and you will be throwen into to “tech editor” . So there might be no chance that there will a tank or something like that. Or there will be multiple designers that will be in the industrial stage. So the industrial stage will be a bit diffrent than the sociaty stage. And it would add sone realism to the game.

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The way Stellaris handles tech progression is through a set of “tech cards” - there are direct paths through the tree, but many techs are basically one-offs. There are tiers, so you’d need to research lower-tier technologies to get higher-tier cards circulating. You can progress upon three cards at once: one for each of the branches of theoretical physics, biology/sociology, and engineering.
Most of the boosts to research come from reverse-engineering debris, research agreements (not true tech-sharing, you still need to research what your ally already has), or just various specialization traits.

This non-linear approach to tech makes for the possibility of not even inventing some things, and that works well for both Stellaris and Thrive - there are no pre-defined histories, the universe is random.
And what you make out of more complex pieces of technology is up to you - a tank could be explained for what it is: an armored vehicle with treads and artillery.
Technology cards in Thrive should be linked to development philosophies: Militaries want to increase combat stats such as defense, stealth, and power with maybe some other guiding constraint like efficiency or agility. This would inspire vehicles with sturdier construction, or the strength to carry a big gun, but it’s really a timeless idea. Civilians care less for defense (unless there’s a national security risk), and more for reliability and aesthetics.
It’s difficult to separate technological ideas and application - if one civilization knows armored plating and mounted flak cannons, why wouldn’t they just put it on their military hardware? As long as they know it, it’s likely that they’ll use it if it’s more effective. Stellaris auto-designs ships with your latest components, and that’s a huge time-saver for a non-minmaxer.

To be somewhat fair, once your species stops having to fight wild animals, you lose some identity - it’s only turtles vs turtles from then. Your weapons might be heavier bludgeon-type things to compensate for natural armor, but literally everyone will use that design philosophy. Adapting to all environments as your species spreads worldwide loses some species identity, too. Like all things Thrive, certain elements gradually phase out as you progress.
In the space age, you will encounter multiple species and then identity comes into play - primarily cultural/economic, as each species has evolved from scratch with different needs. A hairless, warm-blooded species may trade textiles, and a pheromone-heavy species might export scented candles. Direct effects from biological diversity may arise, too - dexterous and intelligent species make better specialists and leaders, whereas naturally-dangerous species arouse suspicion from their enhanced guerilla abilities. Depending on how pronounced these differences are, brutish species should be encouraged to assimilate more erudite ones to reap their benefits. Be wary of pushing your hardy main species into physical labor while aliens write the checks - that’s sure to cause unrest.
Some empires also employ an additional strategy - using so many species with so many battle philosophies that the enemy cannot fully adapt. Acting in unity may be hard, but overwhelming the enemy with new tactics is a strategy.

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