Funny you should mention that.
Take a look at the basic tech mod, which is still in the old downloads section. I started it quite a while ago, but came to the conclusion that it would be too time consuming to complete by hand. The research structure was three-dimensional. For missiles, you could research launchers to reduce reload time, missiles to increase seeker speed and range, and warheads to increase damage and seeker dmg resistance. Most armors have a similar setup with 10 or even 15 levels per dimension. Most research only gives incremental benefits; I didn't think a DUC LXXXVI needed to have 5280 damage.
Recently, I've been working on developing a program to automate the generation of components, from 1-dimensional research to x-dimensional research. You input tech reqs, a base level for things like tonnage space and structure, cost, supply usage, ability values, etc., and give a rate of increase (or decrease) applied to the component at level up based on the levels of each technology. I'm currently working on making it a Windows-based program instead of crummy text,
which is an interesting task since I've never Windows programmed before. Actually, I've never even attempted a program of this scale before, so it's been...challenging. When completed, it will allow anyone to quickly create as many levels of Component X as you could possibly want in the time it would take to create two or three levels by hand. If anyone's interested, let me know; this is definitely in progress, and isn't going to be completed in the next day or two (suicide_junkie, I don't know how you do it!
), but I'll keep plugging away until it's done. Then, I just might get that Basic Tech Mod done.
[ 19 January 2002: Message edited by: Krsqk ]