SE IV Gold: Starting tech levels? Yes or No?

Mark Walton · #33 December 20th, 2001, 04:53 PM

quote:
Originally posted by geoschmo:
Trading techs is not a problem. As long as they are not listed as racial techs in the TechArea.txt files at the time of the trade, they can be traded. (Actually Racial techs can be traded as well, but the race receiveing it has to have that racial trait as well to be able to understand it.)

Good, I had hoped this would work. It means we can switch racial traits away from being racial, too, if we want. Careful there though... I would be inclined to put the research cost WAY higher. I mean, does it really break the game if a race can become psychic later? Should it really be impossible to develop Crystalline or Temporal tech after discovering space flight?

quote:
Originally posted by geoschmo:

What should work though would be to change the TechArea.txt file so that there are no levels. Instead of Fighters levels 1 through 3, you would have seperate tech areas for Fighters I, Fighters II and Fighters III. It would flatten out the Tech Tree, actually it wouldn't be a tree anymore, it would be a list.
(snip by MW)
Also if there was a comp that required level 3 of propulsion (Emergency propulsion IIRC) then selecting level 6 would not give it to you.

Yes, very interesting! The points costs could be balanced out in proportion to the number of research pointe required to reach that level. So, if your race CAN produce top-level APB's on the first turn, they probably can't do a whole lot else. (Like, actually afford to build a vessel carrying one)

quote:
Originally posted by geoschmo:

You'd also have to redo the AI's, but that wouldn't be as difficult as it might seem. I have some ideas already about that. It should be possible to adjust them so they function in this environment as well as in the stock one.

Geoschmo

I would be interested to hear those ideas, it may just be creating a different style of ai_research.txt : the idea would really have to work well though, for people to be bothered to do it... unless we name the techs in such a way that a script would handle it.

This might work well with some of the ideas I shelved for my mod (which one day will be in releasable format!!) regarding weapons (and other tech) development. I'll dig out my notes and start thinking.