whatis filler tech, exactly?

[dumbluck]

Is it included in the TDM? What does it do, abd why?

[jc173]

It's from God Emporer's research mod, it's just a junk tech to help the AI research better. The Tech Area Min Percent in the research queues apparently do not always work right so he added the filter tech so the AI now sets up the four techs its working on better. He can probably explain it better than I can but there was a thread on it awhile back, just look for Posts from him.

[dumbluck]

i tryed searching for "filler tech" but i couldn't find any refereces to it in the threads it brought up.

[Marty Ward]

Try searching for AI research. There is a long thread where the reason behind the filler tech is discussed, if you can just find it in the 22,000+ Posts

[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

[dumbluck]

quote:

---

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

---

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?

[Nitram Draw]

The filler tech are cheap, 2 points I think, so you don't waste very many points on them.

[dumbluck]

ok. now my head is really spinning!!! If the filler tech are really cheap, then they wouldn't do any good because they would only hold that place for one turn, right? then it would just go to the next project in the list!


oooooohhh, mommy, my head hurts!!!

[God Emperor]

he he he....

dumbluck, Nitram has got it straight. The AI research queue will always have Filler Tech 1 and Filler Tech 2 in it, up to level 50. Once the AI achieves level 50 in Filler Tech 1 and Filler Tech 2, it drops back to having four regular projects in it.
Regards,
GE

[Suicide Junkie]

So, instead of the AI spending 25% of its research on each of 4 major projects, it spends (50%-2pts), on the first two projects, and 4 points on the filler techs each turn, right?