The value of monoliths versus resource specific facilities has been debated at great length in the past. We even wasted a bunch of time at once point and did detailed statistical analysis comparing the two. (Man, we had too much time on our hands back then didn't we?
)
Boiled down the answer is it depends on how long you epect the game to Last. IIRC the break even point when a monolith started giving you more total resources than a resource specific facility built in the same spot was something like 30 to 50 turns. When you figure the average PBW game ends about turn 150, you can easily see why a great number of people don't bother building them in multiplayer games. Waiting 40 turns for the resources you could have already had and built ships with in a multiplayer game is suicide.
If however you are in a long game and things are stable, no immediate need of resources, then yes long term monoliths are more efficent. And your point abou tresearching the resource specific technologies is valid. Very few people research those either. They are very pricey for very little return.
Technically Fighters and Drones are not seekers at all. They are units. They get lumped in with seekers often beccause they are targetable by Point-Defense.
Tech cost has a formula. It depends on the level cost, which is different for each tech (You can see the level cost in the techarea.txt file) and the Tech Cost chosen at game setup.
For low tech cost games it's Level Cost (LC) times Tech Level (TL)
For Medium Tech Games it's LC times half of TLē(this one may be wrong, I'll have to look it up)
For High Tech cost games it's LC times TLē
Geoschmo
[ August 29, 2002, 22:12: Message edited by: geoschmo ]