Another Approach to Research

[Baron Munchausen]

Yes, I have had similar thoughts, but discussion here has only covered half of the problem so far. Besides research being to predictable, the technologies themselves - weapons, shields, etc. - are also too predictable. Who says that EVERY race would research the exact same kind of armor or shields that are just as effective in every way? Who says that type or armor or a particular beam weapon - anti-proton beam, phaser, whatever - would improve in clear increments as you researched further? We need a much finer-grained simulation with differences in technologies. One race's shields might stop beam weapons really well but not solid projectiles. Another race's shields might be great at stopping physical objects but not so good against radiation weapons. We need a world with "virtual laws of physics" and these theoretical sciences you are discussing would be required research to be able to learn those laws and then apply them to technology research. And the technologies themselves should be both more static and more flexible. More static in that you should not have to "upgrade/refit" your ships every time a tiny little improvement is found in the given technology that it is equipped with. More flexible in that they should not improve in these large, sharply defined steps but gradually in small increments. If you have researched 'Phasers' for example, the possible damage could increase a little bit because of a research breakthrough, and any of your ships that returned to a shipyard could be automatically upgraded. It's just a matter of "fine tuning" not totally ripping out the old beams and putting new ones in. But if you research a NEW weapon type, then you'd need the refit.

This would solve a lot of logistical headaches in SE. Like having to wait and wait for a new level in a given tech field to be researched, and getting NOTHING for your efforts until the magical break point is reached. And when you've got the new tech it can be a major pain to work out how to rotate all your fleets back to shipyards and give them upgrades. And since it's such a hassle you also tend to wait until you've researched several levels of a given technology - increasing the "delayed effects of efforts" problem with techs. With incremental improvements in technology, both of these problems would be much reduced. You could install 'Phasor I' or "Anti-proton beam I' of whatever in your ships and not have to worry about the hassles of upgrading to the same tech with slight improvements. The upgrades of a given tech would be automatic. Only totally NEW techs would require a refit.

What I'm talking about is a sort of blend of the MOO style of handling technology and the SE style. In MOO the technology remained the same, but got smaller and cheaper as you researched further but you didn't have to re-install it to get the benefits. In SE the technology gets more expensive, but more effective as you research further and you have to reinstall it to get the improvements.

[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 16 August 2000).]

[Jeb]

On the other hand, the "delayed effect of efforts" is one of the things that causes "just one more turn" syndrome. First you play another turn so you can research that dandy new tech. Then you play a few more turns waiting for a ship incorporating the new gizmo to be built. Then you play some more so you can see it in action. By that time, you're on the verge of a new breakthrough, and you're hooked for another couple of hours. If everything improved gradually and incrementally with no need for upgrades or new ship designs or anything, new tech would be a lot less fun.

While I'm being a contrarian, I might as well add that I'm not crazy about a more complicated research system. If there is still some sort of tree but players just aren't given information about what leads to what and how much it costs, this will have a couple of bad effects. 1) Some players will inevitably figure out the whole tree, and then have a massive advantage over those who are just guessing. 2) As a side effect of (1), Boards like this one will be deluged with newbie (and not so newbie) questions about the tech tree.

The other proposal on the table is to make research very random, so even knowing as much as you can about the tech tree still won't allow you predict what you'll discover or when. This is more realistic, but could really unbalance the game. Imagine in a PBEM game where the research subroutine generates some bad numbers and you wind up with fighters, planet improvement, radioactives extraction, and chemistry 3 while your opponent gets meat-and-potatoes techs like propulsion, shields, and energy pulse weapons.

All that said, I do like the idea of not everyone having the same tech. The MOO2 system of not allowing everyone to research every tech (except for those weenie Psilons) was fun, although could also lead to tedium if you tried to keep a "pet" enemy empire around in hopes of stealing all the techs you can't research yourself. So to really get this to work, some techs should just be mutually incompatible. I have no idea about how that shoudl work, though.

[Grumbling Grognard]

quote:

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The other proposal on the table is to make research very random, so even knowing as much as you can about the tech tree still won't allow you predict what you'll discover or when. This is more realistic, but could really unbalance the game. Imagine in a PBEM game where the research subroutine generates some bad numbers and you wind up with fighters, planet improvement, radioactives extraction, and chemistry 3 while your opponent gets meat-and-potatoes techs like propulsion, shields, and energy pulse weapons.

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"Balance"...the single most over-rated 'Holy Grail' in all of gaming IMHO.

No game of this sort can ever truly 100% balanced. It simply can not "balanced" because of the games very nature of diversity of units and the playing field. The only type of game that can ever be 100% balanced a game like chess or checkers where every unit is exactly like a unit controlled by the other player...but wait who moves first? Even games like backgammon are not balanced using the criteria you use above. What happens if you roll ones and twos over and over and your opponent rolls double sixes? Is that balanced?

Not to mention that randomness of a scale much larger than this already exists in SE4. The placement of planets, systems, atmosphere types and even the different players on the galactic map would have a much larger (and more direct) influence on the game then a system like I have outlined below.

Over coming adversity can be the most enjoyable thing about gaming. The games I remember the most and the most fondly are those in which I had to struggle my hardest to overcome adversity.

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The Grumbling Grognard

[Baron Munchausen]

quote:

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Originally posted by Jeb:
On the other hand, the "delayed effect of efforts" is one of the things that causes "just one more turn" syndrome. First you play another turn so you can research that dandy new tech. Then you play a few more turns waiting for a ship incorporating the new gizmo to be built. Then you play some more so you can see it in action. By that time, you're on the verge of a new breakthrough, and you're hooked for another couple of hours. If everything improved gradually and incrementally with no need for upgrades or new ship designs or anything, new tech would be a lot less fun.

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You've got a very strange idea of fun. It's precisely this "fits and starts" phenomena where you have long waits for new techs and then a sudden flood of new weapons and other techs into the field that so often makes playing 4X games so screwy. I HATE "just one more turn" syndrome - don't you? It would be much better to research a general type of tech, like a beam weapon or a new type of shields, and then have it improve incrementally without having to refit. Only changes in the TYPE of technology should require a refit. Then you could build ships with a new tech and not have to refit them two turns after they are completed.

quote:

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Originally posted by Jeb:
All that said, I do like the idea of not everyone having the same tech. The MOO2 system of not allowing everyone to research every tech (except for those weenie Psilons) was fun, although could also lead to tedium if you tried to keep a "pet" enemy empire around in hopes of stealing all the techs you can't research yourself. So to really get this to work, some techs should just be mutually incompatible. I have no idea about how that should work, though.

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That's one of the features that makes the current generation of 4X games better than MOO. It's not a matter of just choosing among a few techs that anyone else might also have chosen anymore, now there are real differences in what is possible for each race/empire. The "path" through the tech tree is much less predictable and if technologies were a bit less transparent there would be much less predictability to battle tactics, as well. Do we need to know that shields II absorbs exactly X number of points of damage? Do we need to know that ECM I reduces the enemy's chance to hit by exactly X percent? Not really. We just need to know that it's better than the previous Version, or better than not having it at all.


[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 17 August 2000).]

[Master Belisarius]

To be honest, I think that have not sense discuss about a different tech tree for SE4 , when the game will be gold in 15 days... (maybe we can discuss for SE5! ).
I believe that MM will not change the current system. In my opinion, the only thing that they could do now, it's try to balance the techs, and fix the bugs.

Anyway, talking about the random research result question, I have an approach like Jeb: I don't want to lose a game only because the other guy have more luck than me...
At any case, the random research results should be a game option.


WINGTE:
You said: "SE does have a form of "racial" modifiers but they don't seem to have any impact on the amount or type of recearch any race has access to."

But, what about the Psychic, Deeply Religous, Temporal Knowledge, Cristallurgy, Organic Manipulation, advanced traits?
These techs allow unique extra tech tree, for the race that have the racial advantage... The only problem that I can see with it, it's that some advanced traits looks much pore powerful, than others (for example Cristallurgy, Organic Manipulations, Psychic).

Also, for example, it's possible to create most of the Moo2 races, because you can manipulate the Culture, Physical Characteristics and Vocational Aptitudes.

Psilons: select the Scientists Culture, decrease the Physical Strength, and increase the Intelligence (research).

Alkari: spend your points in Defensiveness.

Bulrathi: Select the Warriors Culture, and spend your points in Aggressiveness and Physical Strength.

Mrrshan: select the Warriors Culture, and spend your points in Aggressiveness and Maintenance Aptitude.

Darloks: spend your points in Cunning.

Silicoids: select Xenophobes Culture, decrease the Reproduction and the Political Savy, and increase the Environmental Resistance.

Etc...

In my opinion, the SE4 Race settings, are MUCH more flexible than the Moo2 settings (and the Moo2 race settings were a great feature).
My only complaint, it's that think that some of them, still need to be balanced.

[wingte]

WINGTE:
You said: "SE does have a form of "racial" modifiers but they don't seem to have any impact on the amount or type of recearch any race has access to."

But, what about the Psychic, Deeply Religous, Temporal Knowledge, Cristallurgy, Organic Manipulation, advanced traits?
These techs allow unique extra tech tree, for the race that have the racial advantage... The only problem that I can see with it, it's that some advanced traits looks much pore powerful, than others (for example Cristallurgy, Organic Manipulations, Psychic).

Also, for example, it's possible to create most of the Moo2 races, because you can manipulate the Culture, Physical Characteristics and Vocational Aptitudes

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Well, I have no desire to recreate the MOO Races. Making too liberal use of the MOO II Creat your own race feature can produce one that is essentially unbeatable even in the hard mode by any race except the Silicoids. It also makes for a boring game.

Personally I like the Imperium Galactica II system where some races can't even use some of the tech that other races can research. Everything there seems to balance out,, but even in the easy mode there is no guarantee that any given race will be able to defeat any other race.


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Wingte

[wingte]

MB said
But, what about the Psychic, Deeply Religous, Temporal Knowledge, Cristallurgy, Organic Manipulation, advanced traits?
These techs allow unique extra tech tree, for the race that have the racial advantage... The only problem that I can see with it, it's that some advanced traits looks much pore powerful, than others (for example Cristallurgy, Organic Manipulations, Psychic).

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Well ,, 100 turns hasn't given me enough time to play with the advanced traits very much. As I understand it if I set the racial points high enough for me to get the advanced traits,, then all the computer generated players also have the opportunity to get the advanced traits. Of course it might be possible to simply reduce the individual traits enough to add one of the special reseach areas while locking all the computer generated one out.

Hmnnnn 1500 points is a lot of reduction. Are any of those sspecials worth it???




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Wingte