does science add anything to the game?

[ciel]

the more i play the more i question the value of science as a gameplay element in timberborn. considering that the advanced buildings take higher tier resources, isn't the natural progression of access to new resources and the capacity for the population to produce it all gating enough? am i ever going to not make my first unlock a forester? is making me unlock all 5 shapes of roof independently fun? as each update adds more and more new buildings, i feel like it becomes increasingly restrictive if i want to start up a new settlement and just build a beaver town.

i think real beaver science is building a new complex water system and nervously waiting to see if it works or not, instead of waiting to accrue enough whirligig rotations.

i do love the observatory and computron buildings though...

[jaquig]

I never have any issue getting the points to unlock everything before cycle 30.
literally, current update 4, bot workforce and reduced beaver pop numbers and not even at cycle 30 with 90k science points sitting ready for use.

and with only 1 district.

[ciel]

Originally posted by jaquig:

I never have any issue getting the points to unlock everything before cycle 30.
literally, current update 4, bot workforce and reduced beaver pop numbers and not even at cycle 30 with 90k science points sitting ready for use.

and with only 1 district.

thank you for sharing?

[brown29knight]

Science forces you to make early game choices.

Without it, unlocking planks would allow stairs, platforms, fluid dumps, foresters, and floodgates, all at once.

By gating these behind science, you are forced to pick and choose which ones will help you most in your map, and prioritize them.

It also forces you to use your limited population to either get those unlocked faster, or get food/water/resources, adding to the difficulty on the hardest settings.

Finally, it allows for challenge runs, where you play through the game without ever unlocking some buildings that other players find essential. For example:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3104959913

I'm 93 cycles into an experimental 5, hard difficulty, helix mountain play, and you can clearly see from the screenshot that I have never unlocked any form of floodgate, meaning I have to deal with 30 day badtides flowing past my base, not diverting them away.

[fractalgem]

am i ever going to not make my first unlock a forester?

Forester is often a for-later unlock in my playthroughs. Sure it would secure my wood for the future to build one, but there's often plenty of wood just waiting for you to staircase to it and i need wood NOW not in 12 days...or I desparately need that dropper RIGHT NOW THERE IS NO WAITING FOR IT.

Sure, in easy or normal, and maybe even hard, by all means get the forester first so you secure your wood harvests, but sometimes in a challenge you may need to hold off on securing your wood supply. Or not even have enough logs for the forester.

[EleventhStar]

Originally posted by brown29knight:

Science forces you to make early game choices.

Without it, unlocking planks would allow stairs, platforms, fluid dumps, foresters, and floodgates, all at once.

is there a functional difference though?

the only reason i choose stairs before platforms is because 2 stairs takes less wood to cross a river than 2+ platforms. because wood is more limiting than science.

similarly later on, gears are the limit to building medium water tanks, not science.

the only time i ever feel like i;m waiting for science points is when unlocking all robot workplaces, but that's just w/e as that's completionism more than anything.

By gating these behind science, you are forced to pick and choose which ones will help you most in your map, and prioritize them.

It also forces you to use your limited population to either get those unlocked faster, or get food/water/resources, adding to the difficulty on the hardest settings.

i get that this is the goal, but it's currently not being achieved at all. you get all the critical buildings trivially easy/fast. most people have little trouble running both beaver wheels and 2-3 science huts in the early game on hard.

the water dump irrigation nerf is a step in the good direction to address this though. but it does this by making you requiring more wood to achieve the same effect, not more science.

Finally, it allows for challenge runs, where you play through the game without ever unlocking some buildings that other players find essential.

no difference between not unlocking a building and just not building it. it's the same self imposed limitation either way.


changing science from points to materials might make more sense. e.g. you need 10 planks for your science guy to figure out how to build stairs, not 100 science points. add a research time to it while you are at it to make feel a bit more immersive.

[squirrelarmyuk]

I like the idea of using resources to unlock buildings. Having the inventor analysing scrap metal in order to unlock the smelter would be a natural action.

[stonelock99]

I never had a problem getting all the science I need, maybe not as fast as I want.