Help! Ran out of stuff to research!!

[ColdSteel]

I think Raynor has a good point about all of this. Right now, at some point, research goes completely away as a part of the game. This is bad design decision in my opinion as it removes an important and fun element in the critical end game stages. Maybe the decision wouldn't matter in other 4x games but SE4 offers the player really *long* games. It does matter.

MM didn't really have to do much more than allow you to keep researching to reduce component sizes so you can cram more into your advanced ships. In the late game where everyone has all the high tech goodies this becomes important and allows the building of multi-function ships and more powerful specialized ships.

In addition, MM could have opened up a similar line of research that would allow you to increase facility space on planets once everything else was researched. For each level of research completed, you would get 1 additional facility space on your planets. Again this would continue to allow growth in the late game stages.

This is one case where I think MM did the game a disservice by being swayed by beta-tester input (if that's what really happened) and by not looking for a simpler implementation to prevent the situation that Raynor so accurately describes. The MOO2 model is really the way to go here, IMO.

Maybe the game is flexible enough that a mod can address this shortcoming in some fashion. I hope so, anyway.

The real pity is, I don't think this approach would have been that difficult to code, given the modular approach SE4 takes to ship design and facilities. Maybe Aaron will rethink this decision after people have played the game long enough to reach some definitive conclusions and he has some more time on his hands than he currently does now.

Please understand, I think SE4 is a wonderful game and I love it. It has such tremendous potential. That's why I'm so saddened to learn that such an important component of the design is crippled in an unfortunate way.

[This message has been edited by ColdSteel (edited 10 February 2001).]

[nmoppa]

Coldsteel, did you ever play Moo 1 or 2? Really there is not much fun going on with researching anything only achieving Messages like "again we succeeded in minimizing" whatever. The fun of researching is simply to be confronted with something uterly new, That nmakes the difference for HARDCORE LONGLASTING gameplayers like us.

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PERHAPS THIS IS A GOOD DAY TO DIE <Worf facing another critical fight>

[ColdSteel]

nmoppa, the problem never came up that much for me in MOO/MOO2 because I always wrapped up the game before it became much of a consideration. The MOO games are *much* shorter than SE4 games so that's why it becomes more of a problem here.

You have a point about the interest waning after you run out of new tech to research but there is still *some* interest in being able to jam more stuff into a hull and increase facilities on a planet. At least then you are still using the research queue and your research facilities. Otherwise that part of the game just goes completely "bye, bye".

Maybe a better solution is for modders to band together and extend the research tree such that this will not be likely to happen even in long games. Is that even possible? Is the tech tree that extendable? Does this introduce other problems? I don't know.

As one who has designed some stuff myself, all I know is that its not good design to have a integral feature of your game design become useless at some point for the rest of the game. Especially if it is likely to happen often. Just bugs me, I guess.

[evader]

A way to add to research with out componets is to my more tach levels. I have done this to an extent and I find it to be a good addition to the game.

[Marty Ward]

You could also increase the cost of research facilities, the cost of research per topic or add empty research levels in areas that are requirements for other techs.
I don't think the problem is the lack of things to research but that you can research most things relatively fast.

[nmoppa]

Marty, I have played soo many games in this genre, I believe I can honestly say at a certain point you feel it is important the game allows new tech to research, and not how long it takes. Coldsteel feels the same, if I understand his Messages correct.

Now, It's also true NO GAME sofar has giving us players SOO MUCH to research as SE IV does. BUT we always want more, as it should be. MM listens to our requests, incomparable to the after sales support from other "commercial" games.

Just try to play Reach for the Stars 2, It's an embarrasement to the general intellect of SE IV players. A real waste of time and money. In my opinion the only real competitor to SE IV is Stars! (the promised and upcoming release SUPERNOVA I mean). And exactly there lies our hope of competition. Unless we guys start our own project to TRY TO DO BETTER THAN MM. Big task, I promise you!

Sorry for any typoes, I'm not a native English Speaker.

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PERHAPS THIS IS A GOOD DAY TO DIE <Worf facing another critical fight>

[This message has been edited by nmoppa (edited 10 February 2001).]

[ColdSteel]

Well, I do think pacing does play a role here. The current tech tree will probably not run out in games with smaller numbers of sectors and races. It's those big games that are a problem.

You could make the research rates variable depending on the number of sectors in the game. Essentially assign a tech "burn rate" that fits the size of the game you configure on startup. That's one approach that I think might work and would be real easy for MM to implement.

Another would be to have some final end game technologies that are just so awesomely powerful that whoever got them would soon crush their opponents. This is essentially what happened in MOO/MOO2. (remember Stellar Converters?)

A final idea would be to introduce the idea of regression. That is, where races could lose areas of technology (due to plagues, virus', alien mind tech devices, mind attacks via enemy intelligence projects, whatever) so that you might have to go back and research an area once again if it got wiped out. By doing this, a races' advances would not be a straight up steady line graph but instead a series of peaks and valleys that more closely mirror the ups and downs of a real civilization. The progress of the human race to date has been a series of these periods of discovery and enlightenment, followed by dark ages where knowledge is lost only to be discovered once more later on.

Something to think about, anyway.