Help! Ran out of stuff to research!!
 

In MOO2, you can research FOREVER. Once you've researched all the tech areas available, you start researching what I think it calls 'Advanced Technologies'. From that point on, instead of getting new items, you just make your existing stuff smaller.

I find this approach to be extremely realistic and am quite disappointed not to find something similar in SEIV. SEIV is the better game with more stuff to research. But its research will forever pale in comparison to MOO2's while it remains possible to research everything and then have your research labs sitting idle.

Comments welcome as always. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Help! Ran out of stuff to research!!
 

Well think of this from a programers point of view. How much to to little and how much is too much?

If you wish more tech, you can always make it yourself, and mod it to the game. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif If you do, let me know. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Help! Ran out of stuff to research!!
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Atrocities:
Well think of this from a programers point of view. How much is too little and how much is too much?

If you wish more tech, you can always make it yourself, and mod it to the game. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif If you do, let me know. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Infinite is enough. Not infinite is not good enough. I'm not talking infinite items but rather infinite refinement of existing items. The more you research an area, the smaller the items get.

From a programmer's perspective, either the game engine supports changing the size of a component or it doesn't. Maybe hard, maybe not. It depends on the original game design.

I just hate that the game at some point stops and says: Okay. Once you've researched how to build a computer that can calculate rocket trajectories that fits in a single building, you stop. I want instead for the game to let me keep researching until such a computer sits on my desk.

Thanks for the offer. You can bet I'll take you up on it. Although, I may just try to spend some time documenting what other folks have done. It would be hard to match the creativity of the tons of folks whose Posts I've read!

Re: Help! Ran out of stuff to research!!
 

MM was originallly considering having a program that would just keep expanding component abilities infinitely but it was vetoed by the beta testers. Too time consuming, and eventually you'll start having game balance problems.

Re: Help! Ran out of stuff to research!!
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Warlord Adamus:
MM was originallly considering having a program that would just keep expanding component abilities infinitely but it was vetoed by the beta testers. Too time consuming, and eventually you'll start having game balance problems.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Hmm... that's disappointing.

I think right now, you have a problem in which an advanced tech empire runs out of decent weapons to research about 70 turns into the game...

Re: Help! Ran out of stuff to research!!
 

I have to admit, WHAT WE HARDCORE http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/ima...ons/icon10.gif GAMERS WANT is a game with unlimited possibilities, including an infinite number of possibilities to research. MOO 2 was also not unlimited, after researching everything (much less, though, than in SE IV!), indeed you could go on researching for some time resulting in only smaller "cargo" to include in whatever you want, but a level 10 it also stops. AARON feels the same about the infinite possibilities. I hope to live long enough that it's indeed possible to fulfill this dream. For the time being, however, I HARDLY SLEEP PLAYING THE CURRENT VERSION OF WHAT I FEEL IS THE BEST STRATEGY GAME EVER!

I don't complain, I knew what would going to happen when I ordered the game. Only it's SO difficult to explain your partner that it's really NOT possible to go to WHATEVER this evening since you have to "WORK http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif" late again and to prove this is correct you show her or him all the time you spend on this BB to actually make live for a lot of humans better (and when he or she is convinced, quickly CTRL ALT TAB back to the game in progress http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/blush.gif).

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PERHAPS THIS IS A GOOD DAY TO DIE &lt;Worf facing another critical fight&gt;

[This message has been edited by nmoppa (edited 10 February 2001).]

Re: Help! Ran out of stuff to research!!
 

I think Raynor has a good point about all of this. Right now, at some point, research goes completely away as a part of the game. This is bad design decision in my opinion as it removes an important and fun element in the critical end game stages. Maybe the decision wouldn't matter in other 4x games but SE4 offers the player really *long* games. It does matter.

MM didn't really have to do much more than allow you to keep researching to reduce component sizes so you can cram more into your advanced ships. In the late game where everyone has all the high tech goodies this becomes important and allows the building of multi-function ships and more powerful specialized ships.

In addition, MM could have opened up a similar line of research that would allow you to increase facility space on planets once everything else was researched. For each level of research completed, you would get 1 additional facility space on your planets. Again this would continue to allow growth in the late game stages.

This is one case where I think MM did the game a disservice by being swayed by beta-tester input (if that's what really happened) and by not looking for a simpler implementation to prevent the situation that Raynor so accurately describes. The MOO2 model is really the way to go here, IMO.

Maybe the game is flexible enough that a mod can address this shortcoming in some fashion. I hope so, anyway.

The real pity is, I don't think this approach would have been that difficult to code, given the modular approach SE4 takes to ship design and facilities. Maybe Aaron will rethink this decision after people have played the game long enough to reach some definitive conclusions and he has some more time on his hands than he currently does now.

Please understand, I think SE4 is a wonderful game and I love it. It has such tremendous potential. That's why I'm so saddened to learn that such an important component of the design is crippled in an unfortunate way. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon9.gif

[This message has been edited by ColdSteel (edited 10 February 2001).]

Re: Help! Ran out of stuff to research!!
 

Coldsteel, did you ever play Moo 1 or 2? Really there is not much fun going on with researching anything only achieving Messages like "again we succeeded in minimizing" whatever. The fun of researching is simply to be confronted with something uterly new, That nmakes the difference for HARDCORE LONGLASTING gameplayers like us.

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PERHAPS THIS IS A GOOD DAY TO DIE &lt;Worf facing another critical fight&gt;

Re: Help! Ran out of stuff to research!!
 

nmoppa, the problem never came up that much for me in MOO/MOO2 because I always wrapped up the game before it became much of a consideration. The MOO games are *much* shorter than SE4 games so that's why it becomes more of a problem here.

You have a point about the interest waning after you run out of new tech to research but there is still *some* interest in being able to jam more stuff into a hull and increase facilities on a planet. At least then you are still using the research queue and your research facilities. Otherwise that part of the game just goes completely "bye, bye".

Maybe a better solution is for modders to band together and extend the research tree such that this will not be likely to happen even in long games. Is that even possible? Is the tech tree that extendable? Does this introduce other problems? I don't know.

As one who has designed some stuff myself, all I know is that its not good design to have a integral feature of your game design become useless at some point for the rest of the game. Especially if it is likely to happen often. Just bugs me, I guess.

Re: Help! Ran out of stuff to research!!
 

A way to add to research with out componets is to my more tach levels. I have done this to an extent and I find it to be a good addition to the game.

Re: Help! Ran out of stuff to research!!
 

You could also increase the cost of research facilities, the cost of research per topic or add empty research levels in areas that are requirements for other techs.
I don't think the problem is the lack of things to research but that you can research most things relatively fast.

Re: Help! Ran out of stuff to research!!
 

Marty, I have played soo many games in this genre, I believe I can honestly say at a certain point you feel it is important the game allows new tech to research, and not how long it takes. Coldsteel feels the same, if I understand his Messages correct.

Now, It's also true NO GAME sofar has giving us players SOO MUCH to research as SE IV does. BUT we always want more, as it should be. MM listens to our requests, incomparable to the after sales support from other "commercial" games.

Just try to play Reach for the Stars 2, It's an embarrasement to the general intellect of SE IV players. A real waste of time and money. In my opinion the only real competitor to SE IV is Stars! (the promised and upcoming release SUPERNOVA I mean). And exactly there lies our hope of competition. Unless we guys start our own project to TRY TO DO BETTER THAN MM. Big task, I promise you! http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/ima...ons/icon12.gif

Sorry for any typoes, I'm not a native English Speaker.

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PERHAPS THIS IS A GOOD DAY TO DIE &lt;Worf facing another critical fight&gt;

[This message has been edited by nmoppa (edited 10 February 2001).]

Re: Help! Ran out of stuff to research!!
 

Well, I do think pacing does play a role here. The current tech tree will probably not run out in games with smaller numbers of sectors and races. It's those big games that are a problem.

You could make the research rates variable depending on the number of sectors in the game. Essentially assign a tech "burn rate" that fits the size of the game you configure on startup. That's one approach that I think might work and would be real easy for MM to implement.

Another would be to have some final end game technologies that are just so awesomely powerful that whoever got them would soon crush their opponents. This is essentially what happened in MOO/MOO2. (remember Stellar Converters?)

A final idea would be to introduce the idea of regression. That is, where races could lose areas of technology (due to plagues, virus', alien mind tech devices, mind attacks via enemy intelligence projects, whatever) so that you might have to go back and research an area once again if it got wiped out. By doing this, a races' advances would not be a straight up steady line graph but instead a series of peaks and valleys that more closely mirror the ups and downs of a real civilization. The progress of the human race to date has been a series of these periods of discovery and enlightenment, followed by dark ages where knowledge is lost only to be discovered once more later on.

Something to think about, anyway.

Re: Help! Ran out of stuff to research!!
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by nmoppa:
Coldsteel, did you ever play Moo 1 or 2? Really there is not much fun going on with researching anything only achieving Messages like "again we succeeded in minimizing" whatever. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

You didn't think it was fun to keep researching until you could fit as many weapons/shields on a small ship as once fit on a large ship?

I certainly did. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Help! Ran out of stuff to research!!
 

Once you run out of stuff that you *want* to research or once you have *actually* researched everything, then you just have tons and tons of facilities lying around useless.

How about adding a tech area which converts research points into intel points? Yeah, I know this would require MM help not just a mod. Let it start out at 50% intel points for all your research points and then let that number go up and up as you researched progressively more expensive projects.

Another option would be to create a facility which changes research points into mineral, organic and/or radioactive production. This also would help minimize the impact of having tons of research facilities sitting idle on many of your planets.

The bottom line is to find some way so that research facilities aren't just sitting idle once you have researched everything.

Re: Help! Ran out of stuff to research!!
 

Not saying it wouldn't have been an interesting addition, but i'll just play devils advocate for a minute..

"I think right now, you have a problem in which an advanced tech empire runs out of decent weapons to research about 70 turns into the game..."

This is entirely dependant on what path your empire chooses. Iv'e probably played hundreds of games and Iv'e never run out of weapons research by turn 70. If you're doing that then your empire is most likely being unattended in other areas.

"Right now, at some point, research goes completely away as a part of the game. "

Not really. The fruits of that research are there until the game ends.

"nmoppa, the problem never came up that much for me in MOO/MOO2 because I always wrapped up the game before it became much of a consideration. "

Most could say this about SE4..

"A final idea would be to introduce the idea of regression. "

Very interesting in theory, but what in practice ? Can you imagine being locked in a Multi-player battle and all of the sudden your tech base randomly drops to the stone age ? That wouldn't be fair. Or in single when an AI player is afflicted with the same problem. A human player would destroy that player before he could ever recover.

"Once you run out of stuff that you *want* to research or once you have *actually* researched everything, then you just have tons and tons of facilities lying around useless. "

This is why there is now a "scrap facility type" button. Not a perfect solution I know, but all of the sudden the build space your empire occupies is doubled. While you won't research a Superdreadnought, you can now build a whole lot more of them with the facility space freed up. I guess it's a glass is half empty vs. half full kinda thing.

Re: Help! Ran out of stuff to research!!
 

Speaking of research, anybody else like to see an option to start the game somewhere between the current medium and high tech?? So you get to the good stuff sooner or in a shorter game, but are not maxed out so no research is used at all?

Re: Help! Ran out of stuff to research!!
 

I think its quite easy to circumvent the "research" problem.
Fact is: there are several sizes of the universe (from tiny to huge, 255 systems)fact is: the sum of research points costs is the same for every single size of the universe. This is IMO the problem.

Solution: MM has to introduce a tech cost "multiplier" which is choosen either automatically by the game and/or which you can adjust manually at the begin of the game.

some examples:
-you play a game in a medium universe. The game sets the research point multiplier to "x1" which means that the point cost is the same as it is now.

If you are playing in a 255 system universe the game assume a RP-Multiplier of "x5" for example, which means that every tech costs 5 times the amount of now.

Of course you should able to edit every multiplier in x0,1 steps manually if you want to adjust your games.

Such a system would also help in special scenarios in which techs have a limited or more important role. (ok, the scenario generator ... a long way)

by
klausD

Re: Help! Ran out of stuff to research!!
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Warlord Adamus:
"I think right now, you have a problem in which an advanced tech empire runs out of decent weapons to research about 70 turns into the game..."

This is entirely dependant on what path your empire chooses. Iv'e probably played hundreds of games and Iv'e never run out of weapons research by turn 70. If you're doing that then your empire is most likely being unattended in other areas.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Ahhh... go back and read what I said. I didn't say I ran out of weapons to research. Rather, I said that I ran out of 'decent' weapons to research. I'm one of those crazy PPB-loving fools who stops researching weapons after I get PPB V's. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

If I had money, I'd offer a reward to the person who could design a ship using any other weapon in the game and match it up against the PPB V. (I'm talking my PPB V ship vs. an AI ship, of course. I'm sure a careful human player could make even a lousy weapon like the WMG III seem okay.)

Re: Help! Ran out of stuff to research!!
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Warlord Adamus:
"Right now, at some point, research goes completely away as a part of the game. "

Not really. The fruits of that research are there until the game ends.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Good point. You don't lose the fruits of the research. But you do lose the fruits of buiding lots and lots of research facilities.

I think my main complaint is twofold. First, the empire who heavily invests in research facilities is strongly penalized at a certain point in the game when s/he runs completely out of new tech to research. Second, this player is even more strongly penalized because s/he now has tons and tons of useless facilities lying around. Compare this to a player who builds only Intelligence facilities. These facilities have value from the start of the game to the end of the game.

Re: Help! Ran out of stuff to research!!
 

What CivII did was you could reseach just to get score points.

Re: Help! Ran out of stuff to research!!
 

"Ahhh... go back and read what I said. I didn't say I ran out of weapons to research. Rather, I said that I ran out of 'decent' weapons to research. "

Thanks but I read it right the first time. Any weapon can be used effectively (except maybe the wormhole beam) if applied right. Besides, you can expect to see PPB changed eventually. Decent is subjective. If you researched through PPB and you consider it the only decent weapon then what's the solution, adding 10 more levels, copying MOO's miniaturization idea ? No, thanks.

"Good point. You don't lose the fruits of the research. But you do lose the fruits of buiding lots and lots of research facilities."

And those fruits would be ? Umm, the fruits of the research facilities ARE the techs that are derived from them, not the facilities themselves.

"I think my main complaint is twofold. First, the empire who heavily invests in research facilities is strongly penalized at a certain point in the game when s/he runs completely out of new tech to research. Second, this player is even more strongly penalized because s/he now has tons and tons of useless facilities lying around. Compare this to a player who builds only Intelligence facilities. These facilities have value from the start of the game to the end of the game."

He's not penalized, in most cases he has already out-teched everyone at the point that he no longer has anything to research. At that point he can scrap them by type with the press of a single button, so there are infact no useless facilities lying around, ever. Comparing it to intelligence isn't a good comparison, they have different outputs. And as I said, if the tech is already researched then 'research' is also effective from the beginning to the end, considering you use that tech on your ships.

Re: Help! Ran out of stuff to research!!
 

Warlord Adamus,

I said I ran out of weapons I was interested in researching. You responded that you never ran out of weapons to research. These are like comparing apples and oranges. If I visit a car lot and see 200 cars but none I'm interested in purchasing, then when you ask if I saw any cars, I like, I answer no. You visit the same lot and say: There are plenty of cars there. This is apples and oranges. Your response didn't address my concern. Thus, I suggest you didn't read my response correctly. I apologize if I offended you. But I didn't think we were discussing the same point.

As to research being the fruits of the facilities not the facilities themselves, I'm afraid you've lost me there. All I'm saying is that you have a lot of wasted space being taken up by research facilities once there is nothing left to research. You would agree to that wouldn't you?

Sure, I understand that I can scrap all those facilities. But I don't want to. Am I lazy. You bet! Surely, you can see, though, that even after you scrap those facilities, you are going to have to spend MANY turns building something to go in its place--probably Intel Centers.

Re: Help! Ran out of stuff to research!!
 

I think there are two ideas described here that would be easy to implement by MM and would help ease the situation described.

1) Vary the research rate variable based on the size of the game as I had suggested earlier and klausD followed up on later.

2) When/if you do run out of tech to research, use your research points as part of the race score calculation as Instar suggested. This would assure the continued usefulness of research facilities.

One or both of these suggestions could be implemented pretty easily by Aaron and would go a long way towards filling this gap in the game.

The fact is that unless a proposed solution *is* fairly easy to implement, it's just not very likely to make it into the game.

Re: Help! Ran out of stuff to research!!
 

"I said I ran out of weapons I was interested in researching. "

What you said was:


"I think right now, you have a problem in which an advanced tech empire runs out of decent weapons to research about 70 turns into the game..."

Okay, you are saying you personally run out of weapons which you personally consider decent by turn 70. There is a big difference between that and a blanket statement saying there are no decent weapons left to research because you already did by turn 70. Sure you can research PPB's under 70 turns, what's your point ? I'm sure I could research the entire Point-defense tree in under 20. I'm not offended at all, btw.

"As to research being the fruits of the facilities not the facilities themselves, I'm afraid you've lost me there. All I'm saying is that you have a lot of wasted space being taken up by research facilities once there is nothing left to research. You would agree to that wouldn't you?"

No I wouldn't. If having those research facilities enabled you to build all these big, fancy ships with cool components, then how were they wasted when you've used them to their full potential?

If you don't want to scrap them and reclaim that space then that's your fault IMO. Yep, it will take time to replace them fully, but no more time than it did putting them up. Let's face it, if you've researched the entire tech tree you could have won the game a hundred or so turns prior.

Re: Help! Ran out of stuff to research!!
 

Increasing the cost/build time of the reesearch facility could help to. I'm a research nut. If the building took 2 turns to make instead of 1 the pace of research would slow.
Another thought is to have diminishing returns. Have point level where over which additional research point counted at half value, or quarter or whatever.
I don't know about everyone else but I generally research without dividing points. This would encourage dividing points and researching lots of areas at once as the number of points you have increases.

Re: Help! Ran out of stuff to research!!
 

BTW, I do agree with you that in a perfect world we'd never run out of new things to research. But I just don't see it happening. Making everything smaller could be interesting until everything is size 1.

A program could have been created that had a single component, example:

Laser Beam I

Size:1
Range:1
Power:1

Now a program could just expand on the numbers for each successive level researched, and change everything to 2 or 3 or 569 but you end up with limitations in tactical combat. Range being one limitation (you can only shoot so many squares), damage being another (You don't need to do 6 million damage to kill a DN). This is similar to what was one the SE4list and what MM was considering.

All that said though, I like Klaus and Instar suggestions as a better solution.

Re: Help! Ran out of stuff to research!!
 

You build intel facilities. They generate intel the entire game. The only time that intel points aren't useful is when everyone is dead and the game is over.

You build research facilities. You resesarch everything. You run out of stuff to research. Those buildings are now useless to you.

The only way you can argue that those buildings aren't useless once you've researched everything is if you think that maybe you have to spend research points to maintain your current tech level. I suppose that might be an interesting idea. But it isn't currently the way the game works.

Once you've researched everything, those buildings are wasted space. I'm not saying they were wasted space the turn before you finished researching everything. I'm saying they are wasted space now that there is nothing more for you to research.

To put it another way, once there are no more research projects for you to create, those buildings are useless to you. If there is nothing to spend research points on, there is no reason to build, upgrade or keep existing research facilities.

I'm gonna keep going until you agree with me on this extremely simple point.

Re: Help! Ran out of stuff to research!!
 

Also, since this is an open ended game you will eventually run out of stuff to research. You could never add enough unique or original items to keep you researching until turn 10,000

Re: Help! Ran out of stuff to research!!
 

Hmm atmosphere changers are also useless after the atmosphere has changed but you can also scrap it out and use that space.

Well I guess you could perhaps move a different race onto the planet and see if it changed the atmosphere again http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/ima...ons/icon12.gif.

I understand that a lot more facilities are involved when you talk about research facilities but the principal is the same. Yes it would always be better if there were more areas to research but more can be added by modding them in. You can also make the Phased Poleron Beam less effective in your games so you would want to research other areas.

One problem if infinite technology was added into the game how would you play an all tech game then? The computer would go into an infinite loop, I haven't caused one of those since I studied fortran in college http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif.

Actually my favorite fix for this research problem would be to have a bit of randomness added to the research areas. If you don't know the actual range or damage for each specific weapon each time you started up the game you would have to spend more time researching because the first thing you researched probably wouldn't be the baddest weapon on the block for that game. And if the resource production for mineral miners came out low resources would be at a premium and Organic tech races might do better that game.


[This message has been edited by Tomgs (edited 11 February 2001).]

Re: Help! Ran out of stuff to research!!
 

raynor- You are missing the point. Of course having tons of research facilities around *after* you have already researched everything don't help you. But, you should have scrapped them before then. Your whole assertion in this thread was that empires that focus on research especially are penalized, my view is that they are not.

Your intel comparison doesn't cut it, as the missions are canned, single level operations. The lone programmer can not input a limitless amount of techs so that the research facilities are totally useful throughout the entirety of 'raynor's' game. As I already mentioned, if you've researched the entire tree you should have already won by then. The other solutions on this thread are fine.

Re: Help! Ran out of stuff to research!!
 

There are two points I've been making here. The first point is: I want more research fields. I think the best way to get more research fields is to make very expensive techs that take many turns to research but which result in smaller components.

The second point I've been trying to make is that if there isn't anything left to research, then there should be *something* to do with those research facilities. Don't expect me to accept the 'Oh, just scrap them then' argument anytime soon.

Re: Help! Ran out of stuff to research!!
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>You are missing the point. Of course having tons of research facilities around *after* you have already researched everything don't help you. But, you should have scrapped them before then. Your whole assertion in this thread was that empires that focus on research especially are penalized, my view is that they are not.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Nope. My first point was that I wanted more research areas. My second focus was the creation of open-ended research projects that generate intel points.


<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>
Your intel comparison doesn't cut it, as the missions are canned, single level operations. The lone programmer can not input a limitless amount of techs so that the research facilities are totally useful throughout the entirety of 'raynor's' game. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I think the point I was trying to make about the intel projects was along the lines of what to do with the research facilities--i.e. create a reseach project that generates intel points so that intel facilities aren't useless after everything has been researched.

Re: Help! Ran out of stuff to research!!
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Instar:
What CivII did was you could reseach just to get score points.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Just wanted to quote Instar so that some of you who only read the Last message by Adamus could see that we were at one point *actually* talking about something to do with research facilities other than just scrap them once everything was researched.

http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Help! Ran out of stuff to research!!
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>
The lone programmer can not input a limitless amount of techs so that the research facilities are totally useful throughout the entirety of 'raynor's' game. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

This is an essentially false statement.

It is extremely easy to add a very small number of extremely expensive research projects which produce identically featured components which are smaller than the originals. If the cost for each project is exponentially more expensive, certainly, it will be possible to eventually research them all. But if the cost of these 'Advanced' technologies is ten times as much as all the other technologies in the game combined, I would argue that you are 'approaching' limitless technology.

(And yes, I'm gonna create these myself--with the help of awesome folks like SunDevil, Tampa_Gamer, etc who are amazingly willing to help folks like me create weird stuff. Just gotta finish my formation editor, then the component editor, then...) http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Help! Ran out of stuff to research!!
 

raynar
I dont think that minimizing components is the solution for "eternal" research. It was once a good try in MOO2 but in this game everything was fixed and not editable.

Thankfully in SE4 you can add an awful amount of new and very advanced techs to the tech tree. This is an important feature of the game which we could use to solve the problem.

My suggestion would be extend the techtree with several very expensive techs (maybe Mio of techpoints each level) and making them public for others of course http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif)
The problem is just to evaluate how many techs you need that you can never run out of them even in a very long 250 system game.

Such handling of the prob would be a lot more fun than this "dry" future level x thing in MOO2.

bye
Klaus

PS: another help would be the suggestion I made below with a tech multiplier, IMO.

Re: Help! Ran out of stuff to research!!
 

One option is to make Stellar Manipulations much more expensive. They are hugely powerful, after all. Bump the point cost per level up some.

Another option is possible if MM would provide a way to enable racial technologies for other races. You could then have an area called 'genetic engineering' for a few million points and then a field for each of the racial techs for a few million more. Then it would really be possible to research EVRYTHING. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 12 February 2001).]

Re: Help! Ran out of stuff to research!!
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Another option is possible if MM would provide a way to enable racial technologies for other races. You could then have an area called 'genetic engineering' for a few million points and then a field for each of the racial techs for a few million more. Then it would really be possible to research EVRYTHING.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I like that idea Baron, but you don't really need MM to do this. You could simply add all the components "for Organic tech say" to a different branch on the research tree that does not require the Organic Racial attribute to research.

Then make them extrordinalrily expensive, so as to not imbalance the game. There is nothing about the techs themselves in the code that requires the Organic tech. Only researching them does.

That's why if you capture ships or facilities that have racial tech as a foundation, they still work for you, but you can't repair them or build new ones.


[This message has been edited by geoschmo (edited 12 February 2001).]

Re: Help! Ran out of stuff to research!!
 

The Baron has several good ideas. Has anything relating to the running out of tech issue and what to do about it been discussed within the beta group lately? With Aaron?

Re: Help! Ran out of stuff to research!!
 

Thanks, y'all. Some great ideas.

Hey! Check out the interview with Geoschmo on TwinGalaxies pages.

I'm gonna email them and suggest they interview Baron Munchausen next. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif