This is an expansion off an earlier
thread of mine, and caj's response and appoco's mild interest.
Basically you introduce a bunch of additional researches and tack them onto the end of the current research paths. Each of these additional research paths would disable all the others, or maybe you could do two of them or something I don't really mind. Research time would escalate as "normal".
Onto the end of the cov-ops tree: Overburn defence, Overburn attack, Stealth Attack (as explained in the above thread)
Onto the end of the core mining tree: 5% bonus on income, 10% bonus on income
Onto the end of the scans tree: Be able to build one ship belonging to other races, become able to build two ships belonging to other races.
Onto the end of the space travel tree: Two tick defences, two tick attacks.
Onto the end of the infrastructure tree: Enable new types of structures to be built (I haven't really thought this one through but salvage centres, improved types of basic structures (factories which prod twice as fast, fcs which give twice as big a bonus etc). You could have 1 or 2 or 3 of these researches each giving better bonuses
Onto the end of the hulls tree: 5% cheaper ships, 10% cheaper ships.
I didn't bother putting anything in for adding onto the end of the hct tree for obvious reasons. Maybe deathstars though!?!?!?!?!?!
I'd be interested to hear anyone's opinions on the viability of these, particularly pateam's heh. I've tried to make them as simple as possible in order to make coding viable. Nothing would happen that's particularly "new". I guess the two tick thing would require some new coding though. Suggestions on something to replace that would be welcome!