infectant
Multicellular
Spreading throughout your body...
Posts: 44
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Post by infectant on Jun 21, 2016 7:23:24 GMT
This is a topic that I haven't seen covered here. Maybe on the old forums, but I rarely go there. I am something of a compsci nerd, so I naturally wondered how computers will work in-game. I think it's a given that they'll be used for navigation and targeting, but I also want the to have mechanics in themselves. For example, software weapons. What are your ideas on computers?
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Post by Moopli on Jun 21, 2016 23:59:16 GMT
I think computers, and compsci in general, would probably act more like 'theoretical' techs, in that the various advancements each have a wide range of things they affect.
For example, on the hardware side you have miniaturization, and with increasing levels of it you get various benefits to more and more technologies as computers are able to be used in different contexts.
On the theoretical side you could have stuff like operations research, cryptography, coding theory, and algorithms, (probably all rolled up into one or two lines of theoretical computer science technology), which generally don't require you to produce new things, but allow the stuff you have to be used more efficiently. For example, even if you only have slide rules and specialized electromechanical computers, you could still run more efficient logistics networks, among other effects -- and this wouldn't need to be a simple multiplier to how efficiently your resources get allocated, but could even be a switch to an algorithm which gives better results behind the scenes, which I think would be really cool.
There's only one group of advancements that I can think of which wouldn't fall into this basic dichotomy, and it's the weird stuff, like using slime molds to solve network optimization problems, where you are still solving problems that are arguably computer science problems, but you're using the natural world to model your problem in such a way that natural processes can show you a good solution.
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infectant
Multicellular
Spreading throughout your body...
Posts: 44
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Post by infectant on Jun 22, 2016 11:59:15 GMT
Interesting. However, what I had in mind was more like computers being a world of their own, like a kind of "cyberspace". Needless to say, I've been playing a lot of hacking games.
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