[dumbluck]

quote:

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Originally posted by God Emperor:
dumbluck,
As has been touched on, I created the two Filler Tech's in order to shorten the number of techs that the AI has in its research queue, which is always four. There are %'s included to allow the queue to be shortened but these do not work currently (Aaron has said that he will work on it).

The importance of the queue length is that without the Filler Tech's, the AI's research is very unfocussed as it researches most of the Theoretical sciences very early on when it should be devoting more points to follow on tech's.

eg if the AI wanted to research Armour, point defence, shields and ship construction, its research queue would look something like;

Chemistry 50k
Military Science 50k
Physics 50k
Ship Construction ??k
Armour I
Point Defence I
Shields I
Ship Construction #
Armour II
Point Defence II
Shields II
etc

In this sequence, the AI has probably spent over 200k of research and not actually gotten any benefit.
When I research, after a theoretical science has been completed, I immediately research the follow on techs. The Filler techs help the AI to do the same.
With the Filler tech's, the queue could look something like this;

Chemistry 50k
Military Science 50k
Filler Tech 1
Filler Tech 2
Armour I
Point Defence I
Filler Tech 1
Filler Tech 2
Armour II
Point Defence II
Filler Tech 1
Filler Tech 2
Armour III
Point Defence III
Filler Tech 1
Filler Tech 2
Physics 50k
Ship Construction ??k
Shields I
etc

Under this scenario, the AI has put only 100k early on into the theoretical sciences with the next 100k going into useful stuff like armour and point defence - see the difference?

The Filler techs are not available with mod pack as they constitute a change (though minor) to the base files (only TechArea file is affected actually).
I have however posted a ResearchDesign mod for all of the races and a couple of others for the Klingons, Romulans, Shadows and Borg which make use of the Filler Techs.

Hope that helps, or is what you were after.
Regards,
GE

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Honestly, I'm still confused. Wouldn't the research points spent on filler tech be better spent on actual research, or am I just totally missing the point here?