Capitalism 2 and Capitalism Lab Forum

Normally technology affects output of factories, and there is a related product research.
I have seen a few plans in this forum, about making more complex production chain, which due to the many step will require research for every step, no matter how much the technology affects the output.

I have just started building a mod where the plan is to have a more realistic production chain which will require more steps to reach an end product.

As a start farms do no longer slaughter animals but are simply used for breeding and sell living animals.
But side products such as milk eggs and wool are still collected and sold from the farm.
the living animals are then sold to a butcher/factory who slaughters the animals and makes frozen or ground meat and other things that require slaughtering of the animals, like e.g. leather

In order to reduce the number of needed technologies to research, my plan is that some processes are not affected by technology, and I actually made it possible by adding two inputs of the same animal, each affecting the out product by 50% for a total of 100% and so the product is unaffected by technology.
Since both inputs is satified by the same purchase unit, it does only require 1 attached purchase unit.

The manufaturing units leaves the production quality blank (i.e not 0/ 100 but completely blank, this far my plan on no effect from technology is made possible.
And the game seems to support it too. Maybe not by intension, but it still works.
But, Though the technology is not used it is still listed as a research and in the manufacturing guide it is listed with to inputs.

My suggestions is simply to allow an input to have 100% effect on the output quality.
And then either automatically remove the research if the input quality sums up to 100%, or have a field in manufacturing.dbf where you can turn off research for the product.

this way you are able to make longer production chains but without the needs of research for each and every step.
it might seems like it will not only aid my project, but i guess that other modding projects that are skipped due to a longer chain of research for longer production chain, might see the light of day.

In the standard game there are actualy some products that requires no research, namely livestock products, and their quality is only relateed to the expertise of the livestock raising unit, and this could as an alternative also be implemented for some other units

I've generally made the product qualities as high as 80% where technology is not important in my mod. My play testing indicates this is more than adequate to reduce tech to a virtual irrelevance, but I kept some level in (even though it's less important) simply because I feel tech is more than just the science behind the product. It's also new machines, new techniques and more efficient production methods. All of this would still be relevant on any product - even livestock products.

Personally, I think removing tech from a chain makes for a less interesting game as everyone can always produce at the same level. I can see where you are coming from, but total removal just feels wrong.

Productivity is as standard determined by employee level, while different factors determine the quality depending on the unit type.

There are already several unit types where output quality are completely unaffected by technology or experience:
livestock processing, purchase, sales, advertising, labelling, inventory, logging, mining, extraction, warehouse input, warehouse storage warehouse output and research.
None of these units affects the quality at all. only input quaity determines the output quality.
Well, you can say that research units do, but you can also see it as their experience affect the number of techpoint generated (i.e. productivity)
Though livestock processing units change the quality too, they do it by a fixed formula: min((InputQuality-30)*1.8+30,100), but it is still not depending on technology nor experience.

Managing and programming units are also unaffected by technology, and their experience will even lower the quality unless their skill level is 100.

Livestock products are in vanila are not affected by technology at all, and quality are solely dependent on employee level.

And all of the above units are due to not being dependent on technology, completely unaffected by competitiors technology too.

The only unit where technology have an effect is manufacturing units through your tech level and eventually modified by competitors tech level.

And a single type of products are even unaffected by input quality: software. It is only affected by technology.
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When modding or programming it will be important that you determine how much technology should affect the output (which you already can do now),
and just because you can set the technology effect to zero, does not mean that you should do it for all products and for someproducts it would make no sense letting them be unaffected by technology.

An example where it would make sense that technology have no effect (base on a bread recipe i know):
It requires a mixture of water and milk and olive oil.
Anyone can pour a gallon of water and a gallon of oil into a gallon of milk, no matter how experienced they are, and the quality of the mixture will only be dependent on the quality of the water, milk and oil. With experience you might be working faster, but it will not have any effect on the quality of the mixture.

And the same for the mixture of rye flour and wheat flour, and the mixture of sugar and salt.

But when it comes to baking the bread it depends on the recipe and improvement of the recipe, and how well the baker manages time and temperature and kneading.

That quailty in some cases depends on the experience of the worker could also be implemented, but IMO technology should cover this.

The advantage of allowing some products (especially semi) needing no technology, would be that you could make products that require a wider and more realistic range of raw and/or semi-products without a huge expansion of researches too.