Dear Cernunos,
You have a great and interesting ideas.
Indeed, research gameplay in snadbox mode has not been yet realized in any game that i know off.
What is the problem here? - problem is that it is very broad topic which has lots of small details.
And main point is that its hard to define the mechanics of this gameplay.
Look at combat - mechanics is obvious - its a move, so in the gameplay we mimic it by pressing the keyboard or moving mouse so its possible for easy implementation.
Look at science research - what is the fundamental real world action here? - well its some sort of creativity, you suddenly got some idea or interest which you have to realize - from here we can deduce that only that first straightforward implementation of research gameplay is by getting lots of special events (ideas, interests) and later on trying to relize them by doing some quest-like things. Actually its a rather deep question interconnected with character creation and stats. For example explorer can study himself - so in this case he actually does not know he's stats or abilities and the whole point is to discover what are your true abilities and stats and not just read them off the stat screen. Also stat improvements can be non linear for example you have to do DIFFERENT things to raise the skill from 1 to 2 from 2 to 3 and so on.
What is the place of researcher in the game world? - well, he can be military advisor, healer, siege equipment constructor (like ship constructor in space games , Master of Orion and so on), armor constructor, agriculture scientists advising on what to grow and which animals to use, he can be geneticist studying different animals and for example providing better horses for the state or better cows (dogs and so on). Another thing he can be astronom and astrologist studying skies and predicting important events or just giving people advices on the ground of star knowledge (lors come to him to seek good times for starting a war getting married and so on). He can be a tool disigner trying to improve tools.
This is one thing. Another thing is feeling of adventure and wondering - here one thing i see is a great traveler path,
so he tries to reach distant civilizations and forgotten temples which be default it very hard!, because you put in your mode good idea of realistic weather and travel conditions so in this case the path of archeologist or monk will become a true path of travel!, so main challenge in game becomes travel itself!
Actually if you look at game world as we know it know there is not single game where the traveling itself would the the main point of the game. It's always too easy too straightforward and too broing since game world is finite.
I would be glad to see if you can realize a real gameplay challange by sole means of traveling (you are already doing that to some extent). Then reaching the great wall of china or pyramids will be a great deal for our computer character.
Dont listen what other people say MB is not just about fighting its about everything what can be done in 3D.
Thank you for thinking about this message.
150mb.