Technology

[D Inqu]

One thing which usually happens in 4X games is that tech can be stolen/traded or even reverse engineered. The problem is that it is often represented in a very simplistic way.

When you encounter tech artifacts, it's likely they come from a much more advanced tech. The odds of "reverse engineering" should be no more than a Victorian society reverse engineering a smartphone. Not just tech, but the very functions it offers may be outside the understanding of the reserachers.

So how could this work? Recovering tech could give some research boost to related disciplines, maybe unlock a field of science?

 

[Zupanicarr]

Well they said you can recover tech from the debris left over after a space battle, it's likely the other guy didn't have technology that was that further ahead... they did lose...
But in all seriousness, whether you salvage tech after a battle, regardless of whether you were involved in the battle; or gain tech from some ancient artifact, you're probably going to be at a point where step one is figuring out how it's powered (if it is), then from there you figure out how it works. Even if it's ancient and completely alien, your civilization is still advanced enough for space flight, I don't think reverse engineering tech will be that unlikely, time consuming, but not unlikely.
It's not really comparable to a Victorian society figuring out a smartphone.

 

[Will Lucky]

I wonder how the Federations are going to work, will they all of a sudden all get access to the tech? Or will the tech just diffuse faster through the different nation components.

 

[D Inqu]

Well they said you can recover tech from the debris left over after a space battle, it's likely the other guy didn't have technology that was that further ahead... they did lose...

Not necessarily. You may just taken out a scout/probe from a civ way ahead of you, or maybe even come across someone else's debris.

But in all seriousness, whether you salvage tech after a battle, regardless of whether you were involved in the battle; or gain tech from some ancient artifact, you're probably going to be at a point where step one is figuring out how it's powered (if it is), then from there you figure out how it works. Even if it's ancient and completely alien, your civilization is still advanced enough for space flight, I don't think reverse engineering tech will be that unlikely, time consuming, but not unlikely.
It's not really comparable to a Victorian society figuring out a smartphone.

It is comparable with Victorians and a smart phone. Victorians are a mere 150 years behind us, have structured science. Fairly reasonable (and actually generous) assumption on the tech level difference between early space fliers and some ancient artifact. So what are you (a Victorian) going to learn from a smartphone?

You will learn it's a metal box with a glass front. That's about it (if battery is not charged). Trying to figure out hot it's powered will fry it, as the is no such things as "chargers". There is no such thing as AC current! Even trying to open it may irreversibly break it. There is no chance to understand how it works, as even the concepts for semiconductor circuit boards do not exist, and transistors have not been invented yet, and imaging nm scale electronics is impossible. You make get some ideas for in your research of materials (gain bonus so some material related research).

 

[D Inqu]

Let's fast forward and instead have a Roswell era guys with the same smart phone. That's now a mere 65-70 years ago. What will you learn?
You will learn it's a metal box with a glass front. That's still about all you can learn directly. The equipment you have can detect electrical activity if you have a charged battery. If you're lucky you may try to recharge the battery a couple of times without destroying the whole thing. If you open to look inside you will still break it, though you now have the tools to look in detail at some of the components, and you will probably recognise as being electronic components. But you will still not recognise their purpose. the thing is, while you now have the precursors of the tech of the smartphone, you will not recognise them as such:

Left: First ever transistor, end 1947. Middle. First integrated circuit board: 1958. Right: CPU core of a Samsung smart phone, 2012.

So, your understanding of the transistor is in the image. Even if you ruin you smart phone and stick the processor under an electron microscope, you will not recognise the 20-nm barely visible bits as individual transistors. So what can you learn? /much more than Victorians. You may introduce the idea of circuits on silicon boards 10 years earlier. You will start work on miniaturisation earlier. You may accelerate development of alkaline batteries. The Aiken tube (first flat screen) may appear a few years earlier. In other words, you will learn a lot and gain a lot. But you will not "reverse engineer" the smart phone and will not be able to replicate it. You will still need decades of electronics development for that.

 

[lwarmonger]

You have options... by which they mean choices. And those are shaped by who you have doing your research. So each research project you do will end one of several ways, but even when you have to make a decision, your options will be determined by the scientist traits. But that means you won't get (or perhaps even see) the other ways. That will lead to drastically different research being done by each civilization that will shape each one. If each tech level can turn out 6 or 8 different ways based off of the scientist you have doing the work, random chance and your decisions, then there will be a lot of unexplored possibilities that other species may have explored. You may not be behind technologically, just pursued different paths.