FreeOrion

Apologies if this has been done to death before, but I wonder whether it might be worth making certain features of the game optional. For example, the tech tree is complex, and not entirely necessary. If I want to run a fairly quick game against a friend or the AI, I might disable tech, so that turns can be completed more quickly, and the more stable explore and expand aspects of the game can come to the fore.

Another example would be the monsters - if I want a more even game between players, with less random influence from Krakens and the like, I might turn the monsters off

It might also help with play testing - if we could disable certain complex or troublesome aspects of the game, and more quickly/easily play through other aspects of the game

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--Steaker--

Disabling tech in a space strategy game would be like disabling the accelerator in your car.

Monsters on the other hand, already can be turned off (or set to low, medium or high frequency), during setup.

Edit: An "dev option" (read "cheat") to unlock all techs might be a reasonable idea, though.

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Warning: Antarans in dimensional portal are closer than they appear.

I guess an alternative to turning off research, would be for me to put together an alternative, simpler tech tree, and use it as a mod

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--Steaker--

All you need to do is switch out the .txt files.

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I'll try this, and post back to let you know how I get on (just in case it is of interest to any others)

I'm also getting to grips with how the current AI is put together, and once I get my new machine will give it a tidy up and a good test against the latest SVN code. It might be helpful for me to combine the two exercises - as far as I can gather, the current AI makes only limited progress through the tech research tree, so if I prune the tree back, the AI will be at no disadvantage to human players in this respect, and I can then concentrate on ensuring that the AI makes sensible exploration and expansion decisions, particularly given the recent removal of food and minerals.

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--Steaker--

Doing this sort of this as a mod is probably the only way it's going to happen. We don't have the resources to maintain more than (or even?) one set of content files in a balanced and playable state.