I think it would be reasonable to give hints such as “X and Y are necessary for Z”, where X would be in this case fuel, Y would be oxygen and Z something like “igniting the engine” or something like that. However, with a bit of an afterthought I think that the style of the editor described above would be more fitting for the more primitive technologies. Maybe it might work even with the complicated stuff, but that would require some simplifications, tips or whatever.
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My thoughts so far.
Tech Tree issue: So I’m still in the creative freedom camp, but i do agree with @hhyyrylainen that it has to be something that can actually be feasibly programmed. So far a tech tree is the most feasible thing, even if i don’t agree that it should exist. I still believe that a tech tree/web is too limiting, and takes away some of the dynamic feel that the evolution stages would have. If you really think about it, technology is an aspect of culture, and should develop dynamically like it, it’s not universal, tech would develop differently in different places. An example is the Old World sword and the New World macuahuitl. Though they are very different in most aspects, they are still both bladed, versatile melee weapons, a response to the same pressure. And I’m pretty sure that an alien race would also develop technology differently. I got this from another topic I can’t remember at the top of my head, and of course @tjwhale referenced this, but your technology should also be adapted to your species anatomy. That’s my main problem with a tech tree, because it assumes that your race would develop exactly like humans would, when there really is no reason why they can’t do things differently. Something like the civ 6 tech tree is cool and all, but that’s just what humans developed throughout history. If you put into account all the differences and discrepancies dealing with alien races, a tech tree wouldn’t really work in my opinion. This sorta brings me to the next point.
Tech editor: I like @Zahyyy’s idea, and I’d like to add a few things to it.
This is for the really simple and fundamental technology. So basically there could be different shapes of stones and organic material (bones and wood in this case) that you could use. Bones and wood obviously you could find from skeletons, but maybe for stones you could get different shapes from either finding them in the wild like bones or by different scenarios involving bashing a rock against another. Each shape would have different attributes like hardness or damage. In the editor, you can connect and shape them into tools. Now let’s use @Zahyyy’s editor concept (which is very good btw) as an example. Say you increase the size of that sharp cutting stone. The tool could chop down trees faster or cause more damage (that attribute would increase), but is harder to carry (it could decrease the movement speed of whoever controls it). I still don’t have a really solid concept yet, but i do agree with Sol that there should be some sort of stats or attributes system.
in conclusion, this is a very tricky concept lol
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I have decided to make a thorough explanation of my idea to make it less vague.
Words I will be using:
Handle - Part of the weapon that’s meant to be grabbed. This is the base of every weapon, other parts are being mounted onto it.
(Active) part - The part of the weapon that is supposed to deal damage. It is (usually )mounted onto the handle.
Basic properties
Each material and shape has have certain stats, which affect properties of the weapon. Here they are.
Materials
- Density - I am not calling it weight, because weight would be dependent on the size of the object. If you have one stone and another stone that’s twice as big, it’s gonna weight twice as much, because they have the same density. The weight of the object, determined by its density and size will affect the “agility” of the weapon. The heavier the weapon is, the longer it takes to swing it. The weight also affects the damage the weapon deals. They would go in this order.
Wood (IRL ~0.3-1.3 g/cm3 but in most of the cases stays below 1, so for the game purposes plant life could have the density of 0.5 g/cm3)
Bones(~1.7 g/cm3, but might be different in game)
Stones (2.0-3.5 g/cm3 from shale to dolerite, depends on what rocks are around you)
Metals (circa ~7-19 g/cm3 from tin to gold)
*Stiffness - Stiffness relates to how a component bends under a force while still returning to its original shape once the force is not present. The less stiff a material is, the easier it is to bend it. This concept will be connected to our next bullet point.
*Strength - “Strength is a measure of the stress that can be applied to a material before it permanently deforms or breaks.” Basically how much you can bend it before it breaks.
I will now explain how the stiffness and strength would work. If the stiffness is very low, you can bend the material very easily, however, if the strength is high, the material won’t break even if bended. A great example of high strength would be the majority of metals, since even if they are bended, they can usually be returned to the original shape. I will now make a vague guess about the properties of these materials, as I was not able to find reliable values anywhere.
Wood - Pretty low stiffness (can be deformed), Pretty low strength (deformation might lead to fracture)
Bone - Pretty high stiffness (barely deforms), Low strength (deformation can easily lead to fracture)
Stone - Super high stiffness (almost won’t deform at all), Very low strength (deformation immediately fractures it)
Metals - Stiffness varies (depends on the metal), Strength varies, but usually super high (almost no deformation leads to fracture)
Stiffness and strength determine the “durability” of the tool, i.e. how much force can it take before it bends/breaks. I will go deeper into this later.
Shape
The shape of the material determines the effect it has on hit and with what efficiency it does so. There are three main factors being taken into account, those are weight (already kinda covered in “Density”), then length, and Sharpness x Bluntness. Sharpness and bluntness are the opposite sides of the same scale, meaning you have to choose one or the other (kinda).
*Sharpness - If you choose to go for sharpness, you are choosing thin/pointy parts (blades/spikes basically). Sharp objects can penetrate your target and cause serious wounds and bleeding.
*Bluntness - If you choose bluntness, you go for (usually) round parts and you want them to be as heavy as possible, as to cause the most amount of damage. However, you have to make sure that your handle can sustain the weight and won’t break. Blunt weapons cause only minor wounds with minimal bleeding, but might cause severe fractures. Basically anything that is not a blade/spike is a blunt part.
*Length - Determines the reach of your weapon. If your handle + active parts have a total length of let’s say 1.5 meters, you will be able to damage enemies that are 1.5 meters away. But beware, because the longer the weapon is, the easier it might be for it to snap in two (basically a lever in physics - imagine breaking a branch that has the diameter of 5cm and the length of 30cm as compared to breaking a branch that’s 5cm in diameter, but 2 meters long).
*Weight - The more weight the weapon has, the more damage it deals on impact. A bit more notable with blunt weapons compared to sharp ones, as blunt weapons deal the hefty majority of damage mostly by their weight. Weight also affects the rate at which you swing your weapon.
An interesting thing is, that given the creative freedom, you can create even a mix between the blunt and sharp weapons, such as a “bladed mace” with very sharp edges. This would however require you to use metal and I will soon explain why.
Durability
Durability says how much force can it take before it bends/breaks. Now, don’t imagine the same durability as in Minecraft, where one action is equal to -1 durability. No.
Earlier, we established concepts such as strength and stiffness. Basically, stiffness of the material tells us how much force can be applied to the part before it deforms. Strength then tells us how much deformation can the material take before breaking.
With every hit, you are applying force based on the weight of your weapon. This force is applied both to your weapon and to your target. If the forces applied are high enough to deform either your weapon, or your target, they will do so. If the bending exceeds the strength of either your weapon, or your target, they will fracture.
An example: You are attacking a creature with your weapon that has medium stiffness and a super high strength (probably iron or so). The creature has a protective shell that is very stiff, but has very low strength (probably a chitin shell of some sorts - does not deform, but with enough force fractures). The force upon impact is very high, thus it exceeds stiffness of both, the weapon and the target. However, the strength of the weapon allows for deformations to happen, as opposed to the protective crust, which fractures. This exceeding of stiffness causes damage to your weapon based on how much was the stiffness threshold overshot and by that amount lowering your durability. Durability determines the amount of damage your weapon causes - 50% durability means 50% damage. This did not help explain it, did it? One more try.
Damaged, but not broken weapons can be repaired for free at your workstation/in your village/whereverwhatever. Also, your weapon’s susceptibility towards taking damage is influenced by its weight and length. The length can be dealt with by reinforcing the handle with rings and stuff.
Skills
As you can tell, all of the assets for making weapons won’t be available right away. You need to have the materials first. Materials can be gathered in your surroundings by you or other tribe members. Three main materials available to you right away will be stones, wood (both can be found just lying around OR you can harvest branches from trees) and bones (into this I include teeth as well) from corpses. At first, you won’t be able to do much - poke stuff with the branches, throw rocks or hit things with the rocks. But as you use them in this manner, you will gain skills to use them in better ways. For example, if you’ve been using stones for a bit, you might figure out how to make a hand axe! Hurray, your first tool. With the hand axe, you can now modify the sticks - for example, you can sharpen them. Or you can split their end and put the hand axe into the split. Your first weapon! The more you use/process these materials or the tools made from them, you gradually gain mastery over their shapes and uses.
Metalurgy would work in a very similar way. Once you discover metalurgy, you will have access to a very few action parts, all of which will have very inconvenient shapes. However, as you gain more and more skills, you will unlock more and more parts with more refined shape and thus effectiveness!
Edit - Also, at some point in gaining mastery over metalurgy in this manner, you will become able to mount metal parts not just at the handle, but also onto another metal parts. Sounds trivial, but it’s going to be very powerful when letting your creativity go.
Okay, this took me a few hours, so I will call it quit for now. But count on me brainstorming this idea further! Again, if anything is unclear, feel free to ask! Thank you for your patience! I know it sounds complicated, but the player won’t even notice a lot of these stuff. They will just kinda feel natural.
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I like the concept of using an editor to model early weapons with their stats being determined by the parts.
However I fail to see how such an approach can be extended to later techs. I can easily see the player needing to model a hundred different techs, even if all but one melee weapons could be skipped. It would still take a ton of time for the player to make everything from steam engines, trains, guns, cars, assembly lines, to different space ship components. I don’t think it would be fun to have to remake all the techs on each play though and spend hours and hours in the tech editor.
Back to the tech web. You guys are still not getting my point about optional required techs. For example a melee weapon tech could require either a tech for sharpening rocks or metalworking, that way you can get there multiple ways. The same would apply elsewhere as well. Leading to the conclusion that there is no mandatory way to go through the tech web. And with the bonuses for techs coming from gameplay and the species traits, the optimal way through the web would be different on each playthrough.
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Yeah I figured it’s not suitable for the later tech. But somewhere above I mentioned why having a separate editor for primitive tech and for advanced tech might not be a problem.
Check out the “Skills” section in my last post, I tackled this topic a bit there. I think it would feel really natural. (Again applies just to primitive tech though)
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Yeah this is a nice idea for multiple ways to get to a tech.
I guess this whole paradigm of “make what you wan and the game will determine it’s properties” will be tested in the multicellular and so we’ll see how far we can take it then.
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@hhyyrylainen, I maybe just came up with a way to combine the tech web with the “natural” approach. If you read the “Skills” part, you’ll see how I imagine the skills being developed and improved by actively using them. But when do you start being able to do so? I think this should be the very first tech in the center of the tech web, that gets automatically unlocked once you reach a certain level of cognitive abilities or whatever makes you transfer into the tribal stage. But what you get at the beginning is just the most elementary basics of the “tech” (tech in this context meaning being able to grab stuff in your surrounding and use them), but as you actually actively use this skill, you get better and better at it. I think this might be possible to be applied for any item in the tech web - you get a very basic concept/technology, but as you use it more and more, you get better and better at it, unlocking new parts and abilities. For example with rockets - by unlocking the tech you get some basic boring stuff that can barely make a rocket, but the more you use it and experiment with it, the better you get at it, again, unlocking new parts and abilities. What do you think?
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Tjwhale made a good point, I think. This properties idea can be tested in the multicellular phase, and we can see how well it works. Thrive is still exclusively a microbiology game at the moment, so testing these ideas in the aware stage can’t yet happen.
Perhaps the various cell/creature parts could be made of different materials with different properties, as I and Zahyyy have been contemplating. Cellulose has different properties from chitin, etc. Perhaps the effectiveness of a cell’s pilus could be determined by what it is made of and what the cell it is attacking is made of. A pilus made of a weak material could only puncture weak membranes, while cell walls would require a stronger pilus. These ideas for the technology editor could be applied to the cell editor. Moreover, this would implement consistency throughout the game, so the player could use the same user interface for cell parts, creature parts, and technologies.
I think Hhyyrylainen’s concern about this being far too tedious is important. What Zahyyy is suggesting is very cool, but I could easily imagine a player not wanting to spend all that time in the editor. So, I suggest that there be some kind of “do it for me” button where the game would automatically generate something that functions sufficiently. These AI-generated objects would not be as refined as player-designed ones, so players who spend an extended time in the editors are rewarded for the effort. That way, if the player doesn’t want to sit in the editor for a long time, he doesn’t have to. However, I do not know how realistic this is from a programming perspective. The game already has dynamic AI-designed cells, though, so I imagine this is doable.
Alternatively, there could be pre-made templates that could be loaded by players uninterested in the editors. So there might be an “axe” file that could be loaded, giving the player an axe and obviating any involvement in the editor.
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If you want to create something that works at least sufficiently, it’s gonna take you like 10 seconds - you click a handle and you slap a part you want on the handle. I think that wasting 10 seconds is pretty alright even if you are super lazy.
I think it would be way better if there was no classification such as “axe”, “mace” or so, because that could get complicated really quickly. If you rather design something without a classification and just name it, you avoid having to create hundreds of slots for the editor. It might seem like there’s just a few melee weapons, but there’s hundreds of them. Rather, if you take a handle and slap an axe-shaped part from each side (just as in my illustration, just from both - left and right), it does not have to be classified and it will still know how fast should it swing and how much damage should it deal. Also, this way you can create just 1-3 weapons and be okay with that or you can create any weapon you could think of. And it can take you 10 seconds, it can take you several minutes - refining it, detailing it to make it look cool and whatever you want. Also, even having the option to get rid of the editor in the later stages seems like a bad idea to me.
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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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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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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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I still agree with @tjwhale that the automation of the process is not a way to go.
- As TJ said, it’s a huge amount of work, if even possible.
- 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?
- Also I’d like to react to @CaptainCH
There are several things that seem off to me.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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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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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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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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.
1 Like
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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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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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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