FreeOrion

From what iv heard around on the forums lately is complaints about the pure vastness of the tech tree, its pure size can become easily overwhelming to new players and confusing to even some intermediate players.

Iv been a big player of "Warzone 2100" and I notice they gave a pretty good tech tree. You start off really small, just 3 techs and each tech adds a 2-3 additional techs.

This may be how FreeOrions working are but just thought id post a nice interactive guide to the Warzone 2100 techtree as tech tree example.

http://guide.wz2100.net/r/tech-tree-linear

I couldn't agree more

I was working a bit on a much smaller tech tree a year ago, but then got a bit dispirited by the undocumented features, and huge amount of discussion that had already taken place on virtually everything, making it quite a chore to come up with something that fitted inside the vision of the team here

I actually like the current tech tree, at least the beginning part. By turn 100 or so, depending on how cramped my starting area is and how annoying monsters/AI is being, I generally have 'the basics' down (autolabs, basic factories, orbital farming, extra supply) and am well on my way to galactic domination.

I suppose it breaks down a bit after around turn 300 or so, when you're getting so much tech research that your biggest limitation are those techs that have a minimum number of turns. By then, you're getting three and four techs per turn and get loggerjammed by some of the longer techs before you can burst out into a new venue of research.

I also like the current tech tree. My only gripe actually isn't with the tree itself, but with the UI associated with it. Each time a tech is added to the research queue, it resets the tree view to the original position. This gets annoying when you're trying to queue up a half dozen or more techs.