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
)
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.