settled-reach/decisions/rejected.md

Rejected Alternatives

Alternatives considered and rejected, with rationale preserved for future reference.

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R-001: Stellaris mod

• Rejected: 2026-02-08
• Reason: Character system too shallow, multi-empire assumption conflicts with the Settled Reach's single-civilization focus, wormhole-as-infrastructure not achievable within Stellaris modding. Team Leader's experience with Star Trek: New Horizons confirmed that even well-suited IPs struggle with character connection in Stellaris.

R-002: CK3 total conversion

• Rejected: 2026-02-08
• Reason: Would require building a space map from scratch within CK3's framework - essentially building a game inside a game. The map system fundamentally doesn't support the complexity needed.

R-003: Other existing games (Distant Worlds 2, GalCiv IV, Sins of a Solar Empire II, Victoria 3)

• Rejected: 2026-02-08
• Reason: Each captures at most 40% of what's needed. Smaller modding communities, less mature tools, and none solve the core CK3+Stellaris hybrid requirement.

R-004: Pure Bevy (Rust) — no Godot

• Rejected: 2026-02-09
• Reason: No visual editor (level design is code-only). UI framework in flux. API breaks significantly between versions. For a solo developer who needs visual tools for hand-crafted buildings (D-014), Godot's editor is a massive productivity advantage. Bevy's ECS is used — just not its renderer.

R-005: Pure Godot (GDScript or C#)

• Rejected: 2026-02-09
• Reason: Scene tree paradigm fights ECS-style simulation. Perception queries (D-017) and information boundaries (D-010) map naturally to ECS component queries, not scene tree traversal. Multi-core scaling for expanded content impossible in GDScript. Kept as kill-switch fallback if Rust architecture exceeds time budget.

R-006: Godot + Rust via GDExtension

• Rejected: 2026-02-09
• Reason: gdext is pre-1.0 with breaking API changes. Godot version upgrades break GDExtension ABI. Thread safety at FFI boundary is CRITICAL risk (Gd<T> is !Send/!Sync). Couples Rust and Godot learning curves. Subprocess/IPC achieves the same architecture without the FFI risk surface, and maps directly to D-010 client-server. See docs/architecture/risk-godot-rust-bridge.md for full analysis.

R-007: Godot + C++ via GDExtension

• Rejected: 2026-02-09
• Reason: More mature bindings than gdext, but trades Rust's safety guarantees for C++ memory unsafety. No advantage over subprocess/IPC approach. Developer not experienced in C++.

R-008: Fyrox (pure Rust engine)

• Rejected: 2026-02-09
• Reason: Single maintainer. ~1/50th of Godot's community. Less documentation, fewer tutorials, weaker AI training data for Claude Code. Single-maintainer risk unacceptable for multi-year project.

R-009: Custom framework (Rust + raylib/macroquad)

• Rejected: 2026-02-09
• Reason: Maximum control but you build everything — tilemap rendering, camera, UI, audio, input, asset pipeline. Months before testing a mechanic. The game's hard problems are simulation, not rendering — don't reinvent the rendering wheel.

R-010: protobuf for client-server serialization

• Rejected: 2026-02-09
• Reason: Schema evolution across independent deployments is a problem we don't have (one developer, client and server ship together). Poor GDScript support. Rigid schema fights dynamic HUD composition driven by perception modes (D-017). MessagePack's schema-optional nature fits better.

R-011: Single currency for Phase 2 economics

• Rejected: 2026-04-05
• Proposed by: Burnelli-Sheldon (economist), Sprint 32 Workshop #796 Round 1
• Reason: Three currencies create structural economic bloc tension as an emergent property of initialization, requiring no event generation. The Tractus/Mark divide maps directly to the canonical Assembly vs. Compact political divide. Deferring to a later phase would require retrofitting political geography into a running simulation. Complexity cost low; design value high.
• Cross-reference: D-171 (economics.md)

R-012: Overheard NPC conversation system (D-078) — scrapped

• Rejected: 2026-04-10
• Reason: The entire NPC ambient interaction model (overheard conversations, room grammar, zone-type NPC population, behavior engine for physical spaces) is scrapped. These systems were designed speculatively before a walkable environment exists. The NPC interaction model will be designed and built from scratch after Phase 5 (world generation at tile level) is complete. All content authored against these systems (overheard.ron, zone-type conversation pools) is orphaned. Related content pattern note in content.md and D-078 in perception.md are superseded.
• Cross-reference: D-078 (perception.md), content pattern note (content.md #664)

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12 rejected alternatives. Last updated: 2026-04-10