Correct.Oberlus wrote: ↑Mon Feb 11, 2019 3:39 pmLet me see if I grasp correctly the difference between functional and themed approach:
- Stuff related to production increase: functional.
- Stuff related to underground (mines: production; habitation space and food production: pop; infrastructure for defense; ...): themed.
- Stuff related to empire logistics and organisation (industrial center: prod.; empire's logistics: supply and stockpile; interplanetary academic network: res.; meter regeneration; ...): themed.
- Stuff related to minds and brains (mind reading: spy; mind control; influence; use of brains as computing power: res.; ...)
Exactly.Subterranean hab., orbital hab., and n-dim hab. could be in three different trunks outside of growth (as they are now except for sub. hab.). Sub. hab could be within Underground Engineering (if we can get enough techs to fill such a trunk with several tiers and several apps per tier), Orb. hab. could be in some orbital industry themed trunk (with microgravity industry, staff regarding planetary defenses...), and something like that for N-Dim. hab. Should we place the three of them in the same trunk, that would be a functional category, right?
Yes, that's definitely the challenge when designing such a tech tree. Especially getting the balance between the different trunks right, so you do not end up with obvious optimal choices. It's probably impossible to make each and every trunk equally important, but at least there shouldn't be any trunks you absolutely need to research, nor any trunks that only offer stuff so unimportant/weak that no one ever bothers with them.Distributing wisely the different effects so that there are many subsets of trunks that you can focus on for a good strategy could be a challenge but very rewarding for gameplay.
It's probably ok for some trunks to only make sense if you decide to pursue a specific strategy (e.g. like wanting to play a stealthy empire).