Changes to research method

[hg316]

Was just thinking that a way to add a little more diversity to the game would be to affect the types of research planets can do.

Currently any planet can research everything one after another until all research has been done. But what if research was limited depending on previous research done before

As an example, split the research page into 6 fields, weapons, ships types, contructions, propulsion, etc

In each of these fields there are three researches possible for it, when you research one of them the other two disappear forcing to continue down that line of research in that particular field, the other five fields are unaffected until you research something in that field aswell.

So if we looked at propulsion you might have three available, Increased engines(makes your ships travel faster to defend in galaxy) Increased Hyperdrive(makes your ships travel faster to other galaxies) and Manovering thrusters(gives your ships a better initiative in battle)

If you reserached the increased thrusters then once complete you can only do Increased Engines II then III then IV etc as the other two researchs are no longer available. the same would apply to the other fields. Construction could have research's to increase the strength of building against bombing or you could go down the route of faster building times, or even to allow certain buildings to be available to build like spy centre's, then Finance, then etc.

The above is an example only so that you "hopefully" understand what I'm trying to suggest. Do not know wether planets should be allowed to exchange research with each other as it does make it slightly pointless if you simply can do that.

Would hopefully mean that each planet and race can be slightly different from each other and you can get into situations where one terran race is better than the other in combat purely because he has better manovering while the other did better thrusters for example.
Cheers

(ducks his head awaiting the inevitable critism)

[Mzyxptlk]

Not a bad idea in principle, but I'm not sure we can come up with 15 useful and not-shitty (example, init changes = bad) research branches.

[hg316]

Yes I completely agree, it would be hard to come up with enough research idea's to fill out 4 or more fields without drastically changing the scope of the game.

Would just like to repeat that the examples given above were just that, examples only hehe, having research changing the initiative for example would cause a lot of imbalance for players.

Perhaps a better idea would be to to limit the types of research you can do in that you can either research better engines to make ships travel faster OR research into better covert opts instead. Then asteroid mining and structures would be in another field(planet mines would have to be improved to account for the lack of asteroid ability)

I might be wrong but people who covert opt a lot might not attack as much as others that don't. So the lose of ship speed would be balanced by the effectiveness of better spying and might have other spying abilities adding like steal x amount of frigate classed ships for x amount of cost, or even delay incomming attack by one tick or something to give spying more, umph!

[hg316]

Good points,
The reason why I was suggesting that certain tech trees "close-out" is that the tech paths you choose will have certain benefits over the other tech trees and vice versa. Meaning that you get varied levels of ability in Terran, Xan, Cath, Zik and Etd races.

So if you went for covert opt(defensive) as opposed to travel-time(offensive) then you'd have access to lots of covert opt research and would be able to do a lot more than currently able to.

If I'm understanding you correctly Aedolaws, are you suggesting that certain tech from ALL trees is accessible to all and then it goes into more niche tech paths with more advanced options becoming available in that field. So that if player "A" went down the covert opt path then Player "A" would be able to do lots of different covert opts whereas Player "B" that did improved engine research would only be able to do basic cov opts.

For example everyone can research the first couple of improved engines upgrade and asteroid mining, but after a while you have to dedicate to a particular reseach field?

[Zaejii]

isn't this similar to the old science / war branches?

[[JungleMuffin]]

I like the idea of having 2 or so paths in each tech field, it gives the game far more diversity, which after 27 rounds, is what the game needs imo. If taken too far, it could over complicate the game, restricting its appeal, but if applied on a reasonably moderate basis, it could provide another technical aspect, somewhat like governments.

Another idea, perhaps instead of having 2 paths in each field, whereby once you start, you cant stop, leaving you with 4-0 of a certain tech type, you could maybe have the tech feild restricted to tiers, where u end up 3-0, 2-2 etc. You could also increase the bonuses according to the tier/tier stacked (allthough this would only work in particular fields of arm/dam% bonus etc.)

[Zaejii]

i really hate to say it, but maybe researching basic 'points' and having some kind of tree like... /cringe... world of warcraft could be interesting? where each tier has a certain point cost and each point is worth X amounts of research time.. yeah i know its a horrible idea.. but maybe someone can turn it into something that doesn't make me think of warcraft

[[JungleMuffin]]

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