actually, I'll clarify that a bit more, since it keeps coming up.
Many of the time consuming calculations can be threaded, the way we've set up the ecslib should make that easy to do safely. (the threading, not the calculations).
I'm less concerned about the processing load as I am about the programming load.
To do either would be extremely time consuming, for someone with both the mathematical background AND with the user interface experience to do in a way that wouldn't be a buggy, kludgy, annoying to play mess.
not only does it have to be not buggy, kludgy, and playable from the users perspective, it has to be clear, concise, and expandable from the coders perspective, so that somone else who comes along and wants to add a new/planned *something* feature, doesn't throw up their hands in disgust because they can't figure out what's going on.
currently none of the regular coders have *either* the math background or the user experience background, let alone *both* to want to even attempt this.
If someone came along with both those things who wanted to attempt it, they'd still need to work with us to get the current code to a place where doing these things even makes sense.
we've still got a handful of medium sized problems to work through before we even get to the place where we can do non-newtonian in 2d (in a non buggy, fun, playable, clear, concise and expandable, we currently do have a buggy, not yet playable somewhat messy 2d implementation of colonies for example).
We need to solve those problems first. we need something simple, small, playable, and fun.
All the indi games that I've come across that were successful grew from something small, simple, and fun, then iterated on it.