Tech tree

[Codey]

Can some where in future come back old tech trees?
Where you had to make choices that disclosures some others. Like in the old days.

[Ultimate Newbie]

There has been some discussion (particularly from Appocomaster) about reintroducing the old "mutually exclusive" system of research branches, where players had to choose between certain areas (in R3, the choices were Hypergate/Mil Scan, Core Resources/Ion Cannon, and Battleships/Tarantulas). However, the problem with the old system was that players in alliances could virtually all go for Hyperspace (-1 ETA which is a significant bonus), but through their alliance still get access to Military Scans (which were of vital importance for calculating defence) - whereas solo players would really have to choose between one or the other.

Having said that, i think that there is still room for mutually exclusive tech branches, provided that there is no "best of both worlds" type outcome where there is one set of choices that is obviously the best. Ie, in R3 again it was generally accepted that Battleships/Hyperspace/Core Resources (which included the important Dagger) was the best choice especially for alliance players, however solo players might prefer Mil Scans (i did, anyway). As long as those are removed, then i am happy with them.

But i would like to hear from you, Codey, why you would want them to be introduced again? You didnt provide any reasoning why it would be good to have mutually exclusive tech branches, why they would improve the game, or what was wrong with the existing system.

[Codey]

Well the reason for this suggestion is that nowdays all players have all the same techs. I think this makes boring. (Because all have same techs you can easily make calcs, etc.) This would make game more intrestive, fun and first tiem in long time you'd really had to make these compromises between techs.
I think only problem is that to make tech tree so that there is critical changes. And other one I think is the races. Would there be different tech tree for all races? Or have all races have common tech tree?

But I hope some day to see different tech tree.

[Appocomaster]

Originally Posted by Ultimate Newbie

There has been some discussion (particularly from Appocomaster - who is also in charge of PAN development)

Yes, I'd love a more interesting tech tree.
My major problem stems from the fact that the tech trees are generally pretty different, so it's hard to force people to make choices between them. This more strongly backs up the option of either having race-specific techs after you've done some fair proportion of the tech tree (suggestion is here). I also wondered about splitting the races up into techs, so you can pick and choose a bit more (here). I've already thought of a few tech tree changes, which I'm sure people will find out about in the new year and which involve breaking apart bits of the tech tree and joining other bits up. I'm sure the development people (who should hopefully be added by the end of the week, finally ) will pick holes in it, so any ideas you have for changing the tech tree are welcome

[Flumps]

The idea of these tech tree changes is intruiging, i like the idea of being able to customise your planet more than you do now and unleash a whole hoard of new strategies and tactics, so that even some small players can successfully attack a big player if they have the right combination of researches. However, there are huge problems in balancing, god knows how long it would take the PA Team to come up with a viable set of researches. What i propose though is an intermediate solution.

Split some of all of the current research branches into two mutually exclusive ones, one that gives you a medium advantage straight away and the other that gives you a large advantage much later on.

This could either be done by:
1)
Having a series of researches that dont take long for the medium advantage and that take much longer for the large advantage, say 24 ticks for each research down the medium branch and 48 ticks for each research down the large branch

2)
Having the researches for the medium branch availiable from the start of the round and having the researches for the large branch only becoming availiable at a certain point in the round. (For the certain point it could be a fixed tick or it could be reliant on a certain event. It would make things a bit more interesting if the certain event could be affected by the people who need the large advantage research, e.g. the top 100 need to have had x amount of roids taken)

For an example: ETA tech tree
medium advantage ends up with: Attack ETA 9 ticks, Def ETA 7 ticks
large advantage ends up with: Attack ETA 8 ticks, Def ETA 6 ticks
(would need the highest def ETA to be lower than the lowest attack ETA so noone can be excluded from providing def)

Obviously it needs to be played around with.