FreeOrion

Is there anything planned in the way of having advanced technology decreasing the cost of old technology?

Stars! did it by decreasing the cost of every tech when advancement was made in that specific field.

Example:
At the begining of the game, the scout hull costs 28 ressources. Since this technology is based on construction, when you reach construction 24, miniaturization applies a cost reduction of 24*1% = 24%, so the hull costs only 76% of it's initial cost, 21 ressources.
(the numbers in the example are not the exact Stars! values)

This models the way hi-tech makes low-tech more efficient so low technology can still be relevant in late game.

EDIT: in English, miniaturization is spelled with a z, not a s (as in miniaturisation)

Are tech effects being modelled in that sort of abstracted, smoothed out uniform improvement with each 'level' gained?

I imagine there's enough interested parties to design a more fleshed out tech tree that would have specific advances that give specific tailored advantages for specific older tech, as well as various refinements for already known techs.

I also imagine tailor effects would be more moddable as well... as a smoother development would probably be represented as a property of a class of techs, as opposed to each tech having an identical property that stacks...

Example:

You develop scout hulls -> Yay! You can make scouts.

You develop refined / advanced scout hulls -> Wow! You can make scouts for 25% less PP

Much later, you develop advanced ultra nano singularity manuafcturing -> Nifty! You can make scouts, and a few other things, twice as fast (ie. double the PP / turn construction limit).

And so forth.

Well, this is what I wanted to avoid, something that is functionally the same, only bigger and badder. Your design bank will be cluttered with each update. I don't mean to have no update, but to reduce it as much as possible:

10 types of lasers: go
10 types of scout hull: no-go

If the tree is less linear than Stars! (more like a tree than 6 lines) every child tech would make all of its parent tech a little bit more efficient.

Note that the miniaturization only affect some value (cost, maybe weight), it doesn't add functionnality (increased weapoin reach, more cargo capacity, etc).

I'm not saying you'd learn to make an "Advanced Scout Hull"... I'm saying you'd improve ("advance") your ability to make the same old scout hulls you were making before, thus lessening their cost by 25%.

You'd only ever have 1 scout hull, and it would never be replaced or made obsolete (or perhaps only very rarely, say once or twice in the tech tree, and then only optionally). All that would change is how much PP you need to make one, and how many PP / turn you can use to reach the required total.

Regarding the child techs improving all parent techs, the only concrete objection I can make is based on realism, so doesn't count.

From a "my judgement / intuition" perspective though, I do worry that with a relatively complex tech tree, you'd end up in situations where the latter techs are based, way back in the tree, on dozens of seemingly unrelated techs, which were only prerequisites, but not something that would for any reason be improved due to researching their far-off descendent tech. This seems bad to me, but you may disagree.

So we mean the same thing.

It doesn't matter to me if the improvement is a "smoothed out uniform improvement with each 'level' gained" or in bigger steps at some points of the tech tree.

Granularity has the advantage of providing a sense of novelty, but smoothness don't invite you to do sprint in your research effort. I prefer smoothness, but I don't mind granularity.

Why doesn't the option to sprint to a key important tech to get that nifty bonus appeal to you? Seems pretty cool (and more importantly, strategically interesting) to me...

Of course, 25% cheaper scout hull production probly won't turn the tide of defeat, but still...

It's just a personal choice. I don't like pushing research to reach a certain point and then cut funding because I was doing more research than I should. But I think you misunderstood my "sprint" thing.

Example:
In Civilisation, at some point, you want a tech badly. Say communism, because you are large and you need it. So you sell baracks to have more cash so you can raise science funding. You turn farmer into scientists. In short, you rush your science to achieve that important step: the tech accomplishment. Then, I go back to normal, cut science funding and get food.

That's what I call sprinting (as in a short race) to an important tech.

Why I wouldn't want miniaturization to behave the same way it that the "normal" tech tree will already have this behaviour. So I'm already sprinting to important tech. It's just to provide gameplay variety (every little tech advances count a little and every key tech advances count a lot).

I know Reality isn't the de facto model, but in Reality, improvement in engineering is a constant process that benefit from various, often not related research fields.

You guys might want to check out the passed tech model. Improvements to techs are already part of the model.

That is the answer I sought in the first line of the first post.

Thanks for the answer tzlaine.

Where *is* the passed features list? (Or, more importantly, the *details* of the passed features?) All I can find is this thread:

http://www.freeorion.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=87

which just has a dead link to artclusta.com

... I'm hoping for a single post with everything detailed, or something in the wiki, not a 5 page thread of opposing views, some of which are contradicted and or selective agreed to

http://www.freeorion.org/forum/viewtopi ... c&start=17

This post defers to future discussion re: refinement. Did that ever happen? I don't really want to read the whole thread to find out...

Based on what I did read in that forum though, it sounds like one would research specific improvements (refinement) to known applied technologies (techs that give you new stuff to build), as opposed to having some / all descendent techs improve all (or any) of their ancestors.

It'd be cool to have two type of scientists: scientists who advance theoretical science and engeneers who advance applied science. ; )

Maybe in the HEGEmony (Higher Education Galactic Empire) mod.
For the regular flavor, I think a tech tree is heavy enough.

Where can i see the passed features of tech tree?

ok, it looks like this is all that's official:

http://www.freeorion.org/forum/viewtopi ... &start=112

Regarding tech miniturisation,etc:

What I would like is that you have a tech such as lasers. They start at level 1 when they are researched (they are an applied tech at this point). Then you would refine them. So you would not research lasers level 2. No you would use the seperate refine system. The refine system would probably be automatic. And the more you dedicate to refinements, the faster applied techs that you have researched improve. Basically when they improve they just increase in level, like a character in a RPG game. Also at certain levels, the tech 'learns' abilities, such as 'armour piercing'.

eg.
Lasers level 1
-Damage 1-5
-Range 1000
-Size 50
-Cost 100

Lasers level 2
-Damage 1-7
-Range 1500
-Size 47
-Cost 95

Lasers level 3
-Damage 3-11
-Range 2000
-Size 43
-Cost 90
-Learns 'Shield Piercing'

Lasers level 4
-Damage 5-12
-Range 2500
-Size 40
-Cost 80

Lasers level 5
-Damage 7-17
-Range 3000
-Size 37
-Cost 70
-learns 'Armour Piercing'

It would be cool if it was done this way.