You nominally "apple-gize" (to borrow from SNL re Trump), but then you go on to make a ridiculous distortion of my response, which was, like your original argument, about the choice of which techs to research, not about whether any growth techs were entirely unrelated to each other. You claimed that tech use would go from 18 to a mere 4 techs if "allowing outposts to Terraform ... cutting down the whole tree." I countered that many of the growth techs have nothing to do with whether you can terraform outposts.mem359 wrote:I don't see how 2 out of 18 can be considered as "many" having nothing to do with those 3 techs.
We both agree that researching Orb Habitation and Bioterror have nothing to do with terraforming outposts, so that is 2.
I would say that the choice to research Lifecycle Manipulation is independent of being able to terraform outposts, so it and its prereq Gen Eng make 4 so far.
Planet Eco, Sub Hab, amd Sym Bio all improve (at least) good habitats and are well worth it just for that and so you'll choose them whether or not you can terraform outposts, making 7
Nanotech Cybernetics provides a very useful ship part, I assume one would research it regardless of terraforming outposts, so it, GenMed and NanoMed make 10,
XenoGen is necessary for Exobots to be able to colonize asteroid belts without already having growth specials, and I consider that important enough to be independent of whether or not you can terraform outposts, so that makes 11 so far
Your starting point was 18 techs, which assumes that people like Gaia and Pure Energy Metabolism enough to research them even if they can't terraform outposts, so really all that seems to leave is Xeno Hybrid which people might not bother with if they could terraform outposts. If they got not so much benefit from Cyborgs then maybe they wouldn't go for PureEnergyMetab either, so that gets you up to three techs that people might drop if they could terraform outposts.
If going from 18 to 17 or 15 (or if we exclude the 2 you never use no matter what, then going from 16 to 15 or 13) seems like chopping down a tree to you, then remind me not to hire you to chop down any trees.