Themed Tech Tree Fundamentals

For what's not in 'Top Priority Game Design'. Post your ideas, visions, suggestions for the game, rules, modifications, etc.

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LienRag
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Re: Themed Tech Tree Fundamentals

#46 Post by LienRag »

Oberlus wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2019 8:46 am
LienRag wrote: Wed Jun 12, 2019 11:41 pmCopypasta
:evil:
I am having serious trouble to not feel insulted. I acknowledge that is my own problem. But anyway, you could try to have more tact. Putting an H within the IMO does not fix that.
It seems that I indeed did insult you, and for that I offer my fullest apologies, as it was in no way my intention: I was entirely unaware of the pejorative meaning that the word copypasta carries - maybe I should stop trying to write a higher level of English than I can master.

Oberlus wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2019 8:46 am
LienRag wrote: Wed Jun 12, 2019 11:41 pmIf I may have a say about that: Biotech is NOT Zerg! Please don't make the Organic Hull line a Zerg copypasta...
I'm not opposed to the idea of being a Zerg-like hull line in FreeOrion (I do think that like in Starcraft it would be better if reserved to some species? Definitely not Humans for example), but the Organic Hulls imho refers to a wide corpus of bio-oriented Space Opera (like in Sylvain Runberg's Orbital) and I really wouldn't want these symbiosis-based ships (i.e. organic hulls but non-organic weapons) oblitared by a Zerg-like line (that are not symbiotic but beasts of their kind, all-in-one hull, armor, weapons, and engine).
My feelings are different.
The fact that current living hulls are just the same as any other hull with the label "living" is boredome. I don't know how can you call that "a wide corpus of bio-oriented space opera". Make them actual living beings instead of organic machines is what gives them flavour. So praise Zergs/Tyranids!
But yeah, zergs and tyranids can be cybernetic too.
I reluctantly agree with these arguments, but though I can't remember right now other elements of the wide corpus of bioships in Space Opera apart from the aforementioned Orbital (and tales that my older brother used to tell us when I was young) I still feel that livings hulls stricto sensu (i.e symbiotic, not purely "bio") are at least one way to go - and they're different from Zergs (which would be the model for "bio" ones).
Oberlus wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2019 8:31 am
LienRag wrote: Fri Jun 14, 2019 11:07 pmplease don't take away my laser-bearing living hulls!
You'll have to beg for that on your knees :twisted:

Nah, it's a joke. My idea is to allow for organic living hulls to mount some non-organic weapons, but only once you get enough cybernetic techs, you know, to blend organic and inorganic tissues.
Also, the solar concentrator will go to Crystal theme, so organic hulls won't get any special advantage from lasers.

I liked the way that solar concentrators were tied to both lasers AND organic hulls, as it made these symbiosis aspect more than pure roleplay but actual game mechanisms (and also made going for Robotic Hull less of a no-brainer).
If you remove them from the bio line I'd appreciate very much (and I think the game would profit from it) if other symbiotic-like mechanisms could be implemented.

I'm uneasy about your idea of requiring cybernetic techs to mount non-organic weapons on organic hulls: it's both a very good idea and a setback (imho) from what we have now.
Could there be living hulls that need bio parts (and as such require cybernetic techs to mount non-bio parts on them) and living hulls (I'm leaving aside the dead ones like Static) that accommodate non-bio parts from start?
Or maybe bio slots and generic slots on the same hull? How cybernetic techs would modify what can be done with bio slots I leave to you.
Like a war elephant has both tusks/trampling feet and metal plate armor/archer tower on its back?
LienRag wrote: Wed Jun 12, 2019 11:41 pmI do think that like in Starcraft it would be better if reserved to some species?
Do you? Anyway, there won't be hull or weapon lines reserved to certain species, at least that is what I perceive as the general preference among developers and players.
I think indeed that pursuing the symbiotic reasoning to its consequences, and as such tying the bios and organic hulls (whatever they will be) to species characteristics, would be very interesting, but that can wait for later releases (even be postponed to 1.1 if need be).
To clarify things, I'm not necessarily speaking of allowing only certain species to use them (though I would not be adverse to forbidding some species to have bio ships at all), more of creating synergies: some species would have only some hulls or some ship parts, or would get boni/mali with some hulls or some ship parts.


Ophiuchus wrote: Sat Jun 15, 2019 8:02 am
LienRag wrote: Fri Jun 14, 2019 11:07 pm
Ophiuchus wrote: Fri Jun 14, 2019 8:53 am I do not get how that is supposed to work
It's supposed to work the way I described it in my post;
In what way is that an adequate answer? I took time to read your post. I did not understand what you meant. Please take care.
Actually I was in a hurry at the time I wrote this reply (which is my sole responsibility, I acknowledge that) and at a loss about how to explain again what I just explained one post earlier. If you had pointed to what you didn't understand or just, as you did now, explained that you didn't understand my explanations it would have clarified that I needed to explain differently what I had previously explained.
Oh, and apparently I misunderstood the word "overflow" too, so yes my idea would produce quite a lot of overflow and force the player to navigate his strategies around that.

The basic idea is that I consider that we need to allow for combining themes (nonetheless because it's mathematically easy to prove that it gives more variety to the game than going monotheme) without making theme-switching without consequences (else there's no real "theme" and we're back to where the game is right now).

Rewarding the player who stays on a theme by allowing him to access higher tiers early (as I understand the current tier proposal) is a simple and interesting way to approach that, but it's still prone to later-game ability (and as such encouragement) to research at little cost all the low-tiered techs of all themes.
So, yes, I do like the current research system more, and I'm not the one who decided to change it to a tiered and strictly-themed one, but once that change has been decided, the current system doesn't work anymore.

Also, I don't like punishing mechanisms like those you mentioned earlier (though now that I re-read them I'm not certain that I actually understood them).

So I thought that an elegant solution could be just tweaking the current system a little bit, but with (imho) interesting consequences.

I'll try to explain in detail how it would work: let's say we have 5 themes A B C D E and for each of them a number of techs, such as A1 would be the first tech of theme A and C3 the third tech of theme C.
The player' queue is A1-A2-C1-A3-C2-E1-A4-A5-C3
Excess research for tech A1 will pour into A2, if there's still excess it will pour into A3 (not C1) and so on.
When A1 and A2 are acquired, C1 will start being researched (as it got no research at all that far).
Excess research will pour directly into C2, not into A3.
Which means that A3 will not get researched anymore (if it wasn't acquired before the end of A2's research process) until C1 is acquired.
Again, if there's still excess it will pour into C3, not any tech in between.
When C1 is acquired, A3 is researched and excess pours into A4 and eventually A5 if there's enough of it.
When A3 is acquired research resumes on C2, and when C2 is acquired research starts on E1.
If there is excess and there is no researchable E2 in the queue, excess is wasted - maybe the player should have timed E1's research differently.
LienRag wrote: Fri Jun 14, 2019 11:07 pm there would be no overflown resources since it would have gone to other Techs in the same Theme. Wanting to complete the research of Techs in Theme B after finishing researching a tech in it or preferring to go back to the more important Theme A would be up to the player.
So you can switch any time the current theme you research, right? So the only thing which changes - is not allowed to research tech from multiple themes. Also huge research production (more RP than you can spend on the current tier in parallel) leads to wasting research (lets call that over-overflowing)?
So the cost to researching multiple themes here is that you can't progress in another theme using overflowing RP. Compared to now you would probably waste time and RP on tech you do not want. I think we wanted less of this. Also the over-overflowing of RP is a step backward.
Having research overflow (now that I understand what you meant) pour into the next tech of the same theme achieve many things (note that by "next tech" I mean the tech that the player put next in the queue, not a hardcoded order):
- It doesn't change the way the current system work as long as you stay in one theme, which is a behavior we want to reward
- It's quite easy to understand even when occasionally switching theme, and easy to represent in the UI (just greying the techs that are in-between but not researchable due to not belonging to the current researched theme, as are techs with unfulfilled requirements in the current system)
- It allows theme-switching (which we want) but make it a real choice with consequences to it (which we also very much want)
- It doesn't really remove the variety of research strategies but rather makes the player think hard about which one to pursue, as the overflow would not be wasted per se (as it will be there when the player will resume research of this theme) while still being useless for the moment if the player does not pursue with the same theme
- It creates a real cost for researching techs of different themes even when their RP cost will be trivial, as it will pause the research of the main theme

I am not sure that over-overflowing would appear if the player builds his research queue carefully, and if you still consider that a problem I think it's quite easy to avoid it by giving each Theme huge RP-absorbing techs early (so that by sticking to a few themes one can reasonably hope to acquire them at a time or another, but switching themes too often would only delay that).

I don't consider that there are techs a player doesn't want (with a few exception), rather techs that a player wants less than others.
My design would indeed force a player to think whether he really wants a tech from theme B bad enough that he'll consume RPs into other very secondary techs from theme B, or stick to theme A and get higher tiers techs earlier.

BTW, has it be considered that not all techs need to count towards unlocking higher tiers?
That could help balance the theme-switching too if some nice techs do not help unlocking tiers (so, if they are not in your main theme, they're sort of a dead-end)...


LienRag wrote: Fri Jun 14, 2019 11:07 pm though you are right to stick to quite strict design principles, I do not consider wikepedia-style deletionnism on the tech tree to be one of them.
"wikepedia-style deletionnism" - What? I am not sure what you are talking about. I am talking about that I do not like an artificial inflation from 100 to 300 techs. And that I prefer a e.g. 50 tech tree to an 100 tech tree if it leads to a comparable playing depth/experience. Half the number the techs means a quarter of required maintenance. I do not oppose "good" tech, i do not care about "wacky". But even in the current tree there is a lot of uninteresting tech. And many suggestions for new techs i read about are on that level.

Note that you locally can add as many techs etc as you like using FOCS.
Well, I was referring to the "deletionnist" movement among wikipedia editors, which started with some reasonable positions (basically aiming for "random page" to provide more often than not topics of interest rather than obscure nerdgasm about the third admiral of the fourth fleet of the fifth planet of a second-rate fiction show) and now runs totally amok, deleting stubs before anybody has a chance to ameliorate them (the usual process of building wikipedia) or claiming non-notability of anything they don't personally know.
Not saying that you're comparable to these evildoers of course, but that good intentions can bring bad results...

I didn't think about FOCS and maybe plugin-style tech trees could be a possibility (a skinny tech tree to your liking and proposed FOCS scripts to add fluffier tech trees in a simple and intuitive manner)?
I'm not in favor of it (as I already wrote, I'm in favor of as much techs as possible as long as they do no make the game unbalanced) but I hear your arguments about maintenance.
And I guess that a "colder" gameplay (less techs and as such more predictability of research paths) can have its appeal to some players.

Imho though, lots of techs bring lots of fun as it overhelms the player with possibilities - I can understand how you could consider that an issue rather than a boon though - and that is very effective to create immersion, while running out of techs breaks that immersion (like Civ's "future techs").

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Re: Themed Tech Tree Fundamentals

#47 Post by Oberlus »

LienRag wrote: Fri Jul 05, 2019 2:11 amI was entirely unaware of the pejorative meaning that the word copypasta carries - maybe I should stop trying to write a higher level of English than I can master.
Maybe you should indeed...

You must be sarcastic. Copypasta isn't high-level English. It isn't high-level Spanish either, and I assume it isn't high-level anything. It's meaning is simple: clumsy/lazy copy/plagiarism.
You meant, with no doubt, that my proposal was just a plagiarism of Starcraft zerglings (and the offending part of it comes from implying I have little imagination or was lazy, and not that I'm doing anything morally disaproved).
So I could say you something rough right now.

For the record: If talking about tentacles, acid blobs and flying spines (which all are weapons already in FO used in the space monsters) means to you "zerg copypasta", then talking about lasers, plasma and death rays should be to you like "Star Trek/Wars copypasta". And I'm sure you agree that making such assumption is silly, for starters. And for desert.
LienRag wrote: Fri Jul 05, 2019 2:11 amIf you had pointed to what you didn't understand or just, as you did now, explained that you didn't understand my explanations it would have clarified that I needed to explain differently what I had previously explained.
OK.
So either you are (at least partially) a troll in search of victims, or you have some fancy way to deal with people that makes you look like a troublesome troll.
This, coupled with your ideas and suggestions being either copypastes of previous contributors or nonsensical/bad ideas (examples of nonsensical/bad ideas below), makes me humbly think that it's better for me to not waste time reading you.
In lower-level English: Have a nice life!


I liked the way that solar concentrators were tied to both lasers AND organic hulls, as it made these symbiosis aspect more than pure roleplay but actual game mechanisms
Solar concentrators tied to both lasers AND asteroid/crystal hulls made these symbiosis aspect more than pure roleplay, an actual game mechanic.
If you remove [solar concentrators] from the bio line I'd appreciate very much (and I think the game would profit from it) if other symbiotic-like mechanisms could be implemented.
Bio hulls will have other symbiotic-like mechanisms, already proposed in the weapons rework thread.
requiring cybernetic techs to mount non-organic weapons on organic hulls [...] a setback (imho) from what we have now.
It's not a setback .
living hulls that accommodate non-bio parts from start?
Yes, once you get the cyber techs to unlock them.
we need to allow for combining themes (nonetheless because it's mathematically easy to prove that it gives more variety to the game than going monotheme) without making theme-switching without consequences (else there's no real "theme" and we're back to where the game is right now).
First, that's obvious. Second, theme-switching has consequences in the proposed tiered system.
is a simple and interesting way to approach that, but it's still prone to later-game ability (and as such encouragement) to research at little cost all the low-tiered techs of all themes.
First: not true if we make it right. Second: also true for youir more complex, micromanagy and awkward (IMHO) suggestion.
So, yes, I do like the current research system more
Not the first time you say this. Maybe this time I'll remember.
Anyway, keep playing it. FreeOrion is opensource and mod friendly. So no matter how we change the game, you can use older versions of your like and add to those the improvements from the official repository that you do like.
I'm not the one who decided to change it
Are you sure? Wow, those are striking news, I would have never expect something like this.
to a tiered and strictly-themed one
So you also don't like the themed part of the proposed change. Interesting.
but once that change has been decided, the current system doesn't work anymore.
Do you mean that by deciding a future change the current system, the one you like (if I have understood you well, see above), no longer works, or that the decided change, that has not been implemented so we haven't tested it but is similar to what has been used in previous comercially-successful games, does not work anymore (as if it worked before deciding it)?
(You could try to reword your statement using lower-lever English.)
So I thought that an elegant solution could be just tweaking the current system a little bit, but with (imho) interesting consequences.

I'll try to explain in detail how it would work: let's say we have 5 themes A B C D E and for each of them a number of techs, such as A1 would be the first tech of theme A and C3 the third tech of theme C.
[...]
If there is excess and there is no researchable E2 in the queue, excess is wasted - maybe the player should have timed E1's research differently.
Not elegant at all (IMHO).
Requires more micromanagement to get the same you get with the themed, tiered system.
And does not fix any of the problems of current system we want to address with the new system.
It's quite easy to understand even when occasionally switching theme, and easy to represent in the UI
Tiered system is easier to understand and easier to represent in the UI.
It doesn't really remove the variety of research strategies but rather makes the player think hard about which one to pursue, as the overflow would not be wasted per se (as it will be there when the player will resume research of this theme) while still being useless for the moment if the player does not pursue with the same theme
It might remove variety of strategies if it works as you want it to work: if you go deep in a single theme (say focus on theme A until tier 3), when you decide to go for a second theme your RPs are high enough to be wasted even if you queue up all the directly researchable apps of that second theme, so you are encouraged to either switch themes constantly (to go wide instead of deep: theme A tier 1, theme B tier 1...) until your RPs overflow in a single theme of that tier and then you start the tour on next tier (theme A tier 2, theme B tier 2, etc.), or to focus on one single theme for the whole game (theme A, tier 1 to last, switch all planetary focus to production/influience and try to win with your late game techs, also investing in theme B tier 1, ofc). Intermediate strategies could be counterproductive. You can't know wihout at least making some numbers or simulations.
It creates a real cost for researching techs of different themes even when their RP cost will be trivial
A cost that could be cancelled by careful planification and constant monitorisation of the research queue, with help of close managemente of the planetary foci. That might not be "micromanagement" in the more strict sense of the word, but I know of many players that won't complaint if I call it micromanagement. And fresh news: we don't want micromanagement.
I think it's quite easy to avoid it by giving each Theme huge RP-absorbing techs early
You are talking about cost balancing. The same can be done to the tiered system without your suggestion. Or maybe you were talking about scramblingg the tech tree by placing powerful (high tier) techs at the start of the themes to compensate the awkward effects of your not elegant tech tree tweaking, which makes even less sense.
by sticking to a few themes one can reasonably hope to acquire them at a time or another
That's surprising.
switching themes too often would only delay that
Nope, if player carfully manages planetary foci and research queue. Even less if you place huge techs at low tiers.
I don't consider that there are techs a player doesn't want
Do you like researching mass driver refinements when you have lasers and no active ship with MDs?
Would you research a tech that unlocks a policy that has been superseded by another policy you already have.
My design would indeed force a player to think whether he really wants a tech from theme B bad enough that he'll consume RPs into other very secondary techs from theme B, or stick to theme A and get higher tiers techs earlier.
The tiered system has exactly that (and I mean EXACTLY that), without the awkwardness of forcing the player to spend more time changing toggles and reordering the tech queue to minimise RPs waste.
BTW, has it be considered that not all techs need to count towards unlocking higher tiers?
If you mean that some techs would not contribute to next tier unlocking, nope, we haven't considered that.
That could help balance the theme-switching too if some nice techs do not help unlocking tiers (so, if they are not in your main theme, they're sort of a dead-end)...
How would that help? I'm not saying it will not help, I'm asking how would that help. But nah, forget it, I'm already repentant from making and actual question to you.
Well, I was referring to the "deletionnist" movement among wikipedia editors, which [...]
Not saying that you're comparable to these evildoers of course, but that good intentions can bring bad results...
Seriously, what a blatant digression.
I didn't think about FOCS and maybe plugin-style tech trees could be a possibility (a skinny tech tree to your liking and proposed FOCS scripts to add fluffier tech trees in a simple and intuitive manner)?
Sounds like "I didn't think of FreeOrion, I just wanted to say random stuff on a random forum for my own amusement".
Not saying that you are doing that, of course, but that not informing about what you're critisicing can bring bad temper on the people that is actually using some of its free time to get an idea of what they are talking about.
Because FreeOrion has FOCS precisely for you to be able to have the tech tree you like without needing to compile anything, just edit text files, but the FOCS scripts are not to add the techs, but are the techs (and parts, and specials, and whatnot) themselves.
a "colder" gameplay (less techs and as such more predictability of research paths) can have its appeal to some players.
You haven't got it yet.
Imho though, lots of techs bring lots of fun as it overhelms the player with possibilities
Overwhelming fun.
is very effective to create immersion, while running out of techs breaks that immersion
You don't need many techs to avoid running out of them, you need to make them hard to be researched, the same way you don't need few techs to run out of techs to research, you can make them fast-researchable.
The only truth here, way appart form humble opinions, is that we need as many techs as we need to gather all the mechanics we want in the game (and one of these mechanics is "researching strategy", which we don't want to become obsolete at any point in normal games, we all want research to be a core mechanic of the game for whole matches, and for that reason we will balance tech costs and planet outputs so that researching a single tech theme takes more or less the same time than expanding through half a galaxy in a "normal" game, or something like that). But we don''t want more techs than that just to give more stuff to add to the queue, as if the fun comes from number of mouse clicks per turn.

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Re: Themed Tech Tree Fundamentals

#48 Post by labgnome »

So I think we are getting to the point where we can start discussing in detail what we want the tech tree to look like and we should probably take a poll on the matter. I will say my opinion has shifted since this discussion started, and while I still like the idea of essentially parallel technology trees, I agree that that might be too constraining for some other players. I have had some ideas formulating myself but I think that we should get some direct feedback from the community about what options out of the serious contenders they would prefer:
  • Large Theme Tech Tree
  • Large Theme Tech Tree with Side Themes
  • Small Theme Tech Tree
  • Functional Tech Tree
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Re: Themed Tech Tree Fundamentals

#49 Post by Oberlus »

labgnome wrote: Thu Jul 25, 2019 1:32 amwe are getting to the point where we can start discussing in detail what we want the tech tree to look like
It is my perception we've been doing that for quite a long time already, with some decisions already made.

I'm not opening a poll on this matter (fell free to open one yourself) because I already know the opinions of most active developers and forum users:
- Themed tech tree (not functional): great majority.
- No clear consensus on many-small (15-20) vs few-big (6-7) vs few-big-with-side (6+6) themes, but maybe majority for few-big-with-side-themes.

Regarding this last point, I am now inclined to go for a compromise between the three: not many, not few themes, around 10, some more relevant and some less relevant (side themes that can require certain techs or tiers from main themes).

Not sure what you mean by "large/small tech tree". Few large themes vs many small themes? Because what I understand a priori from that is "many techs vs few techs".


I am mentally blank at distributing social/government policies (i.e. the techs that unlock them) among the themes.
At first, before most of the values and policies discussions fostered by labgnome, I was giving baby steps about social control policies: oppression (slavery, totalitarism, subdue peoples desires by force) vs manipulation (fool, deceive peoples opinions) vs cooperation (open information, free cooperation, horizontal government/organisation). Maybe merge oppression and manipulation.
My nightmare was that, although I had a more or less clear vision of where (which theme) should be everything else (weapons, engineering, research boosts, etc.), this oppression/cooperation thingy wasn't that clear. Should them be distributed among the themes already sketched (either in the few-large or the many-small themes' proposals) or create new themes by themselves? Themes focused on certain kind of policies seemed (to me) to defeat the purpose of the themed tech tree, so I wanted (and still want) to weave them together with more technical stuff.
For example, the concentration camps, clearly oppression related, is it related to cybertec, biotec, crystal, energy, mech? I don't think so. I could arbitrarily assign Mech a more totalitarian flavour, but I don't like that. All this made me think the proposal with more themes (either 10 or 20) is better, more flexible. If I can come up with small themes that are "objectively" related to oppression, hierarchy and things like that... It seems easier, but still not easy.

Note that this problem of mine does not concern the distribution of technological policies that are meant to substitute current tech boosts. For example, if we turn Nascent AI into a policy, it makes sense in Cybertec (for large themes) or in AI theme (small themes). The same for all boosts already present in FreeOrion as well as for many recently proposed policies.
But it does concern some of the new policies meant to boost certain strategies that are not currently well represented in FreeOrion. E.g. tall vs wide. A policy that encourages adventurers to colonise new worlds (pro wide) or one that encourages fast local development (pro tall), do they make more sense in one theme or another?

These are my general doubts.

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Re: Themed Tech Tree Fundamentals

#50 Post by labgnome »

Oberlus wrote: Thu Jul 25, 2019 7:46 amRegarding this last point, I am now inclined to go for a compromise between the three: not many, not few themes, around 10, some more relevant and some less relevant (side themes that can require certain techs or tiers from main themes).
I like this compromise, and am interested in hearing what ideas you have for themes. I hope we can collaborate on the design of the new tech tree.

At first, before most of the values and policies discussions fostered by labgnome, I was giving baby steps about social control policies: oppression (slavery, totalitarism, subdue peoples desires by force) vs manipulation (fool, deceive peoples opinions) vs cooperation (open information, free cooperation, horizontal government/organisation). Maybe merge oppression and manipulation.
I am sorry if I disrupted your development process with my ideas. Feedback regarding what you have been thinking along those lines would be useful. I can try to re-work the names of policies to fit into those ideas if you like.

For example, the concentration camps, clearly oppression related, is it related to cybertec, biotec, crystal, energy, mech? I don't think so. I could arbitrarily assign Mech a more totalitarian flavour, but I don't like that. All this made me think the proposal with more themes (either 10 or 20) is better, more flexible. If I can come up with small themes that are "objectively" related to oppression, hierarchy and things like that... It seems easier, but still not easy.
You could include the bombardment weapons and the terror projectors and the nova-bomb to a "Terror" or "Oppression" theme. "Cooperation" really only has the species interdesign academy (shouldn't it be interspecies design academy?) in addition to policies. I don't know if it should get a theme, or if we should try to think of more cooperation-oriented things to include in the game.

But it does concern some of the new policies meant to boost certain strategies that are not currently well represented in FreeOrion. E.g. tall vs wide. A policy that encourages adventurers to colonise new worlds (pro wide) or one that encourages fast local development (pro tall), do they make more sense in one theme or another?
I'm also not sure how we want to work that out. Hopefully something can come out of brainstorming here on the forum.
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Re: Themed Tech Tree Fundamentals

#51 Post by Oberlus »

labgnome wrote: Thu Jul 25, 2019 12:16 pmI am sorry if I disrupted your development process with my ideas.
:D Nothing to sorry about. The thing is I got choice paralysis from so many things to consider (but they must be considered). Bay steps and brainstorming, yes.

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Re: Themed Tech Tree Fundamentals

#52 Post by em3 »

I like how the latest Civ did this. There is a separate "Technology" tree and a separate "Ideas" tree.

Back to FO - I think that most policies and related technologies could be made into a single themed trunk, like Philosophy or Sociology.

I mean, even concentration camps or forced labor are not a technological advancement, but more of abstract constructs (with very real applications). You can build an "organic" or "robotic" concentration camp. But you need the ideas for mass genocide and forced labor to implement one.
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Re: Themed Tech Tree Fundamentals

#53 Post by Oberlus »

em3 wrote: Tue Jul 30, 2019 2:18 pmI think that most policies and related technologies could be made into a single themed trunk, like Philosophy or Sociology.

I mean, even concentration camps or forced labor are not a technological advancement, but more of abstract constructs (with very real applications). You can build an "organic" or "robotic" concentration camp. But you need the ideas for mass genocide and forced labor to implement one.
Yes. Right now I'm debating between this two options:
  1. having two separated tech trunk themed as oppression and cooperation (inspired in VicCiv),
  2. weaving all that stuff among the all the rest of trunks (inspired in MoO2)
(1) Might be simpler to implement, but that is not a priority for me. It also makes sense, as it does for Civ.
However I think I like more (2) because it could bring in more varied strategies. My reasoning is as follows. If I put explossive-collars-for-slaves (oppression) in Mech, cerebral-implants-to-control-populations (oppression) in Cybertec, environment-drugs-that-remove-the-will (oppression) in Biotec, universal-network-of-information (cooperation) in Cybertec, gaian-distribution-of-resources (cooperation) in Biotec, etc. each of them enabling certain policies, players could add them to the subset of techs/apps that they get on each tier to unlock the next one, competing with other techs unrelated to oppression/cooperation. This reminds me the kind of choices that MoO2 forced you to make in research, which allowed for many different strategies. So the idea (away from Civ) is to give them all some kind of techy fluff explanations to make them fit better in the techy themes. Small problem for me right now is that my corrupted mind is giving me more ideas for oppression than for cooperation, and not many for oppression either.

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Re: Themed Tech Tree Fundamentals

#54 Post by em3 »

Cooperative:
  • Galactic students exchange program (increases domestic RP and RP in all known non-hostile empires)
  • Trade unions (increases happiness in exchange for some production or influence)
  • Government transparency (disables some stealth and influence actions in favor of happiness or loyalty)
These things are really hard to come up with, especially with also having to place them in existing thematic trunks and also avoiding redundancy (with duplicate policies/technologies in various trunks).
Last edited by em3 on Tue Jul 30, 2019 5:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Themed Tech Tree Fundamentals

#55 Post by Oberlus »

em3 wrote: Tue Jul 30, 2019 5:19 pmCooperative:
  • Galactic students exchange program (increases domestic RP and RP in all known non-hostile empires)
  • Trade unions (increases happiness in exchange for some production or influence)
  • Government transparency (disables some stealth and influence actions in favor of happiness or loyalty)
Good ideas!
I need to come up with some techy stuff about spreading and sharing of information and resources among the civil population (to increase happyness/loyalty, resistance to "evil" foreign propaganda, influence, research and maybe production and population).
em3 wrote: Tue Jul 30, 2019 5:19 pmThese things are really hard to come up with, especially with also having to place them in existing thematic trunks and also avoiding redundancy (with duplicate policies/technologies in various trunks).
It's hard indeed!
But the redundancy part doesn't worry me. We have different game mechanics (at least three, maybe five or six) that can be affected by different policies. And having two slightly different policies for same mechanics, each one in a different trunk that fits the fluff of the policy. So around 3-6 techs for base cooperation policies, x2 with some redundancy, plus higher tier variants. And the same for oppresion policies.

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Re: Themed Tech Tree Fundamentals

#56 Post by labgnome »

Oberlus wrote: Tue Jul 30, 2019 2:43 pmYes. Right now I'm debating between this two options:
  1. having two separated tech trunk themed as oppression and cooperation (inspired in VicCiv),
  2. weaving all that stuff among the all the rest of trunks (inspired in MoO2)
I think I would favor weaving stuff throughout the trunks whenever possible. IRL societies are rarely completely oppressive or cooperative.

However I can see the advantage of separating them out into their own categories. Namely so that you don't get the old Civ problem of needing to research fascism to get jet-fighters. Although I think the tier system largely negates that issue.
Small problem for me right now is that my corrupted mind is giving me more ideas for oppression than for cooperation, and not many for oppression either.
Cooperation:
  • Freedom of Movement: if any two allied empires both have this technology, they can use each other's species to colonize outposts.
  • Common Economic Zone: provides a flat domestic and allied production focus boost, allies researching this tech stacks the effect.
  • Shared Information Network: provides a flat domestic and allied influence focus boost, allies researching this tech stacks the effect.
  • Troop Coordination: provides a flat domestic and allied defensive troop boost, allies researching this tech stacks the effect.
  • Defense Coordination: provides a domestic and allied defense boost, allies researching this tech stacks the effect.
  • Economic Abundance: provides a pop-based domestic production boost.
  • Leisure Society: provides a pop-based domestic research boost.
  • Utopian Culture: provides a pop-based domestic influence boost.
Oppression:
  • Economic Imperium: provides a pop-based production focus boost for the species that owns the capitol.
  • Intellectual Superiority: provides a pop-based research focus boost for the species that owns the capitol.
  • Cultural Dominion: provides a pop-based influence boost focus for the species that owns the capitol.
  • Trade Monopolies: provides a supply boost for the species that owns the capitol.
  • Stockpile Hoarding: provides a pop-based stockpile focus boost for the species that owns the capitol.
  • Imperial Conscription: provides a pop-based defensive troop boost for the species that owns the capitol.
  • Imperial Garrison: provides a flat defensive troop boost on all planets.
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Re: Themed Tech Tree Fundamentals

#57 Post by labgnome »

em3 wrote: Tue Jul 30, 2019 5:19 pm Cooperative:
  • Galactic students exchange program (increases domestic RP and RP in all known non-hostile empires)
  • Trade unions (increases happiness in exchange for some production or influence)
  • Government transparency (disables some stealth and influence actions in favor of happiness or loyalty)
I'd maybe restrict Galactic Student Exchange Program's benefits to allies, perhaps with it staking the more allies research the tech.
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Re: Themed Tech Tree Fundamentals

#58 Post by Oberlus »

labgnome wrote: Sat Aug 03, 2019 5:04 pm
Good ideas. I think I can addapt some of the alliance-based ideas to single-empire ideas (here "cooperation" should be changed to "egalitarianism" or something? I'm just thinking of the opposite of Oppresion as a form of social organisation, but not about cooperation between allied empires).

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Re: Themed Tech Tree Fundamentals

#59 Post by labgnome »

Oberlus wrote: Sat Aug 03, 2019 7:22 pm
labgnome wrote: Sat Aug 03, 2019 5:04 pm
Good ideas. I think I can addapt some of the alliance-based ideas to single-empire ideas (here "cooperation" should be changed to "egalitarianism" or something? I'm just thinking of the opposite of Oppresion as a form of social organisation, but not about cooperation between allied empires).
I was just trying to think of what existing game attributes could display oppression vs. cooperation. I thought that helping allies as well vs. only helping the capitol-owning species might be a way do display the opposite philosophies in terms of game mechanics. I was trying to think of a way to go beyond just fluff descriptions.
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Re: Themed Tech Tree Fundamentals

#60 Post by Oberlus »

Good point, labgnome.
Certainly, some "things" could combine both the effects that go the happy way for empire administration and effects that encourage alliances.

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