The general story of Ringworld is one of exploration and discovery. A group of explorers venture out of known space to visit a vast artificial megastructure in space made by an advanced civilization. They crash land on the structure - the Ringworld - and seek out civilization as a means to get them off it and back to their own civilization. The Ringworld is a location that seems ripe for discovery - the foundation material is super strong and blocks 40% of neutrinos, for civilization itself to exist on it cheap transmutation must be available - the ability to generate one type of element from another - and yet these questions are never really explored. Aside from the Ringworld, the science fictional world itself is rife with things for the reader to discover - stepping discs, slide walks, booster spice, aliens called Puppeteers, aliens called Kzin, hyperdrive travel, the hull material of a General Products ship, Slaver stasis fields - the list goes on. Yet as with the Ringworld none of these exist for the sake of discovery or exploration, rather they serve simply for the sake of variety or to advance the plot. Ringworld is far from hard science fiction, and even frames itself as a fantasy at one point in a sort of knowing gesture.
