[ColdSteel]

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.