[SunDevil]

Tampa_gamer:

I just did the whole research thing as well.
It took me a total of 10 hours and six pages to write everything down. Anyway what I was thinking was, for the neutral races have them research everything in a numerical order.

For example I call this round 1. In other words this is the first phase of research for a neutral race.

Round 1 <= 20,000
1.Projectile Weapons 5000
2.Planetary Weapons 5000
3.Smaller Weapons 5000
4.Repair 10,000
5.Propulsion 10,000
6.Explosive Warheads 10,000
7.Ship Construction 20,000

Now the benefits for a neutral race to go through the research tree in order(as in researching the least costing items first) would be first that it doesn't tie itself up in the beginning with large projects. Two it will have a balanced research plan so it can discover things in order and not have to go back. Third if/when MM gets the whole trade aspect of the game right, you know that you could trade/steal research in an area that you might not of covered yet and it will be guaranteed that a nuetral race would at least have the first couple of levels in the field researched already.

This helps because the neutral races will actually have a balanced ship design and colony design because they will research all fields and not just specialize. This will make the ai harder to beat in combat because now you need a balanced fleet to fight the neutral ai.

Damn this is a long post. Give me some opinions about this strategy.