Re: What is \'reasonable\' return on research?
My god... I've started a graduate seminar on 4X game design...
BTW, I agree that Temporal races ought to have a propulsion advantage. I used that nifty 'warp core' component that someone posted ages ago and gave them their own propulsion technology. It's got the 'bonus movement' ability like the solar sail, and it's also a Quantum Reactor so they don't have to research that independently.
As for all these research graphs and trees, this is awfully elaborate for a simple system like SE IV is right now. I was just referring to linear benefits. Does it makes more sense to get a larger and larger degree of benefits for increasing research costs or should benefits be linear, which results in 'diminishing returns' by default.
Yeah, for SE V I'd like to see variable tech research costs, and variable 'connections' across the tree to get to certain techs. This would play havoc with the AI but it would be so much more interesting for human players. But this will require major hardcode revisions. I suspect that the elaborate systems being discussed here will be a real pain to implement and especially to maintain with the current design of SE IV. We need some way of implementing entire series of components with one definition.
[ July 12, 2002, 20:29: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]
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