Maximizing player freedom and making an unique tech system is nice and all. But how could these ideas work concretely? It’s not possible to make a game from ideas that are not possible to program. So I think it’s very important to discuss plausible ways for research to work in thrive.
I’ll share my idea how technology would work, which I as a programmer think is actually implementable without major issues.
First off, I don’t think it is plausible to make an editor where the player can by placing parts create the technology for their species. Instead we need to go for a technology web where each technology has a number of prerequisites, some of which may be optional to make it less rigid, but skipping the optional techs would make the later technologies take longer. And then we could also loan the heureka moments from civ 6 that would speed along a technology if the player does something. We could literally steal the idea that if the player uses ranged weapons a lot, it makes researching bows and crossbows cheaper. There would also need to be some tech researched that gives the idea that something is even possible. It wouldn’t be possible to research quantum mechanics without first covering physics that can lead to that way of thinking. Continuing from that example the technology like crossbow could have the following requirements:
- some tech for elastic parts (for example bows)
- wood carving tech (which would already be researched for bows)
- technology required for the bolt
Then each tech could also be upgraded, like a crossbow with heavier pull strength and a mechanical loading mechanism. So with this web of tech the player can easily skip some tech and with the heurekas it would shape which techs are the most optimal for a player to go towards.
Factorio has a sort of tech web, where you need some techs as prerequisites for other ones. And as that would be very complex to show as a tree, they don’t. It’s instead a list of available and locked technologies. Stellaris has a limited number of techs available so the player can’t effectively b-line for some specific tech. And then the heurekas (or were they called inspirations) from civ allow player action to make researching things easier. By taking aspects of all of these systems, I think we can make good gameplay mechanics for tech researching in Thrive.
So that would be basically how the player discovers tech. @tjwhale said well that as you are responsible for governing a nation, dictating all minute details of tech aren’t very realistic.
Then we can fill the creativity aspect by allowing the player to customize the blueprints of their tech. For example after discovering the spear a default spear would be available, but if the player wants to can customize the look of their spears as long as they keep the required aspects of it.
I think you just described exactly how research in stellaris works (other than not being able to queue things). And people are fine with it.