Ideas....

[Beck]

Restrictions do not have to be arbitrary or unrealistic. One of things I dislike about the racial techs is the reasoning does not work both ways. On one hand if you're organic, it's taken ions to develop their special tech and hence is too difficult within the bounds of the game for others to learn even if taught by a willing ally. Yet if one developed an organic culture, wouldn't the reverse generally though not always apply? Having devoted their entire culture in organics for ions, wouldn't there be certain general techs which would be equally unlearnable to them not being of organic nature. As it is, there is no way of limiting them to the general techs (or any of the other racial techs). This is where I would see the use of a "can't have a certain tech" requirement. If you choose to follow certain paths like the racial techs, there would be areas because of that specialization which you would as find as undecipherable as the racial techs are considered to be to the rest of the races. There could be other specialty techs which would preclude some other tech if for no other reason than the inertia that builds up as huge amounts of resources are devoted to any single task. There becomes a point when too much is invested with too many people's egos, etc. on the line to change to something else. It's not always one can't do something as much as one won't. And if it basically got you to the same general point its even tougher. The organics come up with their own Version of armor, they wouldn't even think of developing any other type as the one they have within their frame of reference works just fine. They shouldn't have ability to research the general tech armor as they would have no cause to until such a time as they encountered other races and some other armor proven more effective. It wouldn't have to prevent you from capturing the tech.

[Suicide Junkie]

quote:

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The organics come up with their own Version of armor, they wouldn't even think of developing any other type as the one they have within their frame of reference works just fine. They shouldn't have ability to research the general tech armor as they would have no cause to until such a time as they encountered other races and some other armor proven more effective. It wouldn't have to prevent you from capturing the tech.

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Sounds to me like increasing the tech level costs for low level stuff by 10x would just about do that for you.

-"I've got Organic Armor, should we really spend 10 million research points and three decades to get something almost the same, or get something new, like better engines instead?"

That would give you a longer build-up and a longer sweep of tubulent tech changes for more variety.

[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).]