Ideas....

[Arc.Smiloid]

Just adding by $0.02.

I found an interesting thing. This particularly applies to the technology in the game Battletech.

Basically, as time goes on for the BT universe technology will actually shrink and recede.

The story is that the Star League united humanity into a utopic enlightenment where research flourished. Then it all went to hell and the Star League left the rest of humanity to fight each other. Without the Star League scientists, all the remaining humans found themselves unable to advance technology and were hard-pressed to even keep current tech levels from dropping. As it stands, they can produce and repair, but not research technology any further,

I guess it could act like some sort of research maintenance on technologies. If there isn't enough researching then technologies will be gradually forgotten. And as you get more and more technology you will pay more maintenance and have less research to advance with.

Which would have different effect on gameplay like, "Do you really want to go that far with this particular tech field? It may not allow you to advance others."

So empires could actually hit certain research caps and be unable to advance their technology any further without adding research centers.

What do you think?

I can dream can't I?

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[Suicide Junkie]

As long as you are able to use designs that have tech beyond your current understanding.

You should be able to retrofit to the super-tech design, but not build it.

So, If you've got some ancient techs that you've forgotten, you can still upgrade the ship to hold better engines that you've researched, without losing the Polaron relics you've got.

[Arc.Smiloid]

Actually, the way I figure it would work... If you lose the technology you lose the capability to produce, retrofit or repair those components altogether. But you could still use em if you built them before you lose the tech.

As it is, there is little limit to how far you can take technology you simply research and research away. I would be very interested in seeing how the game would play if I was forced to limit my total known techs due to research maintenance.

I would think that tech degradation would be a slow process if it wasn't properly maintained.

I think it would be pretty cool to have as an option. It would seem a bit unrealistic.

Too much work for MM to implement though. =/

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[Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz]

quote:

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Too much work for MM to implement though.

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Not necessarily: a cut down Version could be implimented very cheaply.

Add a "Tech Maintenance Cost" parameter to the race - default (say) 5%.
Then every turn reduce the available research points by 5% x cummulative number of points spent thus far.
If the result is <=0 no further research until you build more research centers.

This would have the effect of making late changes of research emphasis suitably expensive. E.g. If I'd focused on missiles and at a late stage of the game decided that I needed some direct fire tech, I'd have to build extra research centers just to catch up with my maintenance outgoings before spending the next 10k points on "Polaron Beams I" or whatever.

Perhaps this is a more realistic "tree" model? Techs aren't mutally exclusive - it's just very expensive to change tack.

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Resistence is futile.

(Edit to clarify that tech maintenance shouldn't be cummulative. I.e. -ve research points shouldn't be carried forward. This is to match the "use 'em or lose 'em" property of +ve research points.)

[This message has been edited by Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz (edited 01 June 2001).]