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

[thubar2000]

I something weird happened to what I tried to post. Anyway, wouldn't it just be easier to make the initial tech points adjustable. I'm referring to the 20k at the beginning of a low tech game. In effect, the tech just arrives a round later.

This has the advantage of using an existing mechanism.

If the AI uses its usual way of choosing tech projects, this won't cause to much grief for Aaron. If it uses a different method, this may not be feasible.

Thu

[Suicide Junkie]

The key thing you've missed, Thubar, is that you need to be able to research deeper than one level in a tech.

Given the research system in SE4, you cannot have excess research spill over into the next tech level.

IE: in SE3, you could dump 100,000 research points into propulsion on turn 1, then add nothing more. On turn 2, you would get tech level two, and your progress bar would be full. On turn 3, you'd get level 3, and your bar would still be full.

In SE4, any excess points are lost, so players would all get tech level 1 or 2 in everything, and there'd be no variety.

[geoschmo]

Personally I was not all that great a fan of the starting tech levels system in SEIII anyway. You could get another level of propulsion for the same cost as a level of steallar manipulation. That didn't make much sense. There needed to be some way to factor in the variable cost in research for different techs.

Although I am sure it helped to speed up those Multiplayer games some. With simultaneous turns in SEIV that really isn't as much of a critical determining factor anymore.

If you don't want to research every tech every game, do a medium tech start. If that is too low, tweak the "raise levels" in the text file. If you don't want everybody to have the same tech start, you can try my idea. Or we can get back to work on the racial tech/start tech mod. The point is you have options. You don't have to wait for a code change that might not happen, and that not everyone would agree is a good idea.

Geoschmo

[thubar2000]

That's true, I did miss the aspect of going deeper than one tech level. Thanks for the correction.

Thubar