Ideas....

[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).]