All characters are given one of four technological background traits: pre-industrial, industrial, spacer and transcendent. Colonists with lower background are incapable of doing research or produce items requiring more advanced background.
You may be interested in my other mod that is intended as a replacement for this one, while pursuing the same vision: [url=https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3345889109]https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3345889109[/url]
You may also be interested in this submod which aims to fine tune the gear equipment restrictions, combining features of this mod and Arcane Technology: [url=https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3332415028]https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3332415028[/url]
[b]Known incompatibilities:[/b] Xandrmoro.Rim.FinishIt mod.
Jan 16 Update.
1. You should be able to load existing saves now. The game will assign default background to all existing pawns.
2. Added two ways for colonists to develop their background from Tribal to Spacer: through passive drift (a very slow process, speed is based on average tech background of the colony)
and by actively studying.
3. Added 2 new subskills of learning skill:
a) studying - allows colonists to develop their tech background more quickly. Studying is possible if there is at least one colonist of higher level. Governed by intellectual skill.
b) mentoring - allows pawns to increase studying speed of other characters. Governed by social skill, characters with higher skill spend less time mentoring others.
You can convert any table into a study desk for colonists to do their study and mentoring jobs. Current progress can be seen in the Trait tooltip.
-------------------------------------------------
The tech background is determined mostly by the lech level of the faction, with following exceptions:
1. Default player colony starts with industrial tech level, but background for crashlanded colonists is set to spacer.
2. Pirates are generated with random background, with probability roughly 30 / 40 / 30.
3. Space refugees are either spacer or transcendent - 80 / 20 chance.
4. There is a small chance for local urban and tribal people to have a random background (to simulate assimilated space refugees etc.)
In the base game transcendent level is essentially equivalent to spacer, except that it lets you repair some ancient artifacts. However it may change with mods that add post-spacer techs. It is unclear whether chance of finding transcendent colonists is adequate to run a colony with such mods.
You may change tech background of your initial colonists with "prepare carefully" mod, but be careful, removing trait entirely counts as Tribal background.
Enjoy watching your colony degenerate into tribalism :)
Let me know if you find any bugs, or have comments or suggestions.