[Jack Simth]

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:

Jack:
Interesting.

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:

As to your second part, that seems to me an example of tech C having a prerequisite D, that is also needed by B.

A= PPB
B= ECM
C= Torpedos
D= Military Science

Now, for that first part...
It sounds like this could be trying to emulate a lack of knowlege of the tech tree...

Which is reasonable, no? It could also explain the racial techs (e.g. crystal techies can't grasp that organic tech because some of the theories they rely on say it's impossible, and vice-versa; those who buy both traits have a different set of theories that work and aren't mutually exclusive). Also, I was focusing more on the philisophical side.

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:


However, after the first few times playing, players will know to take tech C instead of tech A in order to get tech B

Yes ... but remember, A was better than C in every way possible; assuming they have the same research costs, it then becomes a matter of choosing short-term or long-term. Likewise, I didn't address what comes later down the line in tech A....

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:

And in addition, there is no way to clear the exclusion when the race's researchers experience the paradigm shift (such as in the examples you gave)

Well, for picking up the tech from elsewhere, it could get back on track via supplying a forbidden tech, which is a prerequisite for later stuff in that tree. As for them being bLasted in the face with it, I suppose you're right - but then again, a black-box demonstration wouldn't really help too terribly much anyway, would it? They would also need to be told something of how it works (which just ain't gonna happen in a combat situation) - although they could perhaps steal it.

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:

Plenty of implementation problems, for sure.

Considering that we are discussing things that would require hard-coded changes? Yah, definately.

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:

Now, it seems to me with the system of prerequisites as seen in SE4, the tech dosen't become available for research at all until you have knowledge of everything that is required...
Thus, you can't really be sidelined by some other tech.

You could a little if there is always something better to research - you just keep researching the best, and the not-best from earlier could reasonably get ignored - however, when the tech tree no longer produces better stuff for the cost (it does run out, after all), then a player would start going back and filling things out. But yes, it was mostly just a philisophical argument for the inclusion of exclusive techs; applying it to a possible mod would be tricky at best.

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:


On the other hand, if the glass is half full, you could see it as the interesting possibility of jumping techs.
Something like a tech area that opens up cloaking devices after researching stealth armor.
That bridge tech could become unavailable after researching physics 1, but the cloaking devices are still accessible through the regular path to Physics level 3.

Yes, that is an interesting possibility.

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Something else that could be interesting would be a stratified random tech tree constructor - at the start of the game, for each empire the engine looks at the tech tree, and randomly splices it at points the data files tell it are available for splicing, limiting it to a small set of possible pairings on the splices. For example, the prerequisites for a tech might look like: (A AND B) OR (A AND C)|(B AND C) OR (B AND D)|(C AND D) OR (C AND E)

Where the | tells the randomizer that only one of those segments are picked (and the empire it applies to has no say in which set must be researched), split there. Such a thing could halt familiarity with the tech tree from being as much of an advantage.

[ July 02, 2003, 19:56: Message edited by: Jack Simth ]