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"Shield Piercing Lasers" which alows the atachment of the Shield Piercing Modifier to all Lasers regardless of level.

if so, you would alway chose the newest laser. otherwise you have the think about it more closely. If i only have laser, i would use the most powerful (lvl4) for attack and my lvl 2 rapid recharge laser for point defence.

As Geoff points out the ship design will just call for "Laser" combined with the desired Mods. You automaticaly get the highest level laser when the ship is built. Lets say I initialy have a ship with Level II lasers with the "Rapid Fire" Mod. Then I make some a new discovery "Shield Pircing Lasers". I make a new ship and chosse lasers with this new Modifier attached to them. I dont have to do anything to indicate I want level II lasers its automatic. The discovery of "Shield Piercing Lasers" alows me to combine Lasers and the Sheild Piercing Mod, the Modifier dosent care what the level of the Laser is. Laster I discover "Ion Cannon level I", "Point defence Lasers" and the refinment "Laser level III". Now I could design a Ship with some Ion Cannons for main weapons and some Point Defence Lasers, the Lasers would again automaticaly be at level III without me needing to say so.

And ofcorse its possibly to combine multiple Mods on a single weapon as in Moo2, the effects are simply multiplicative (aka if I had 2 Mods that each double the weapons damage then the weapon dose 4 times as much damage).

As this topic progresses, people seem to be suggesting making the tech tree be a nightmare of micromanagement, at least where ship related research is involved.

The basics are weaopns types, hull sizes, shields, armor and engines. Probably a couple more but I'm trying to make a point here. Each of those types break down into individual technologies. Weapons are Lasers, Plasma Cannon, Nuclear Missiles, Graviton Beam, etc. Hulls are Frigate Destroyer, Cruiser, Battleship, etc. The rest break down similarly.

Each individual weapon also breaks down into refinements. Lasers are refined into Lasers Mk2, Lasers Mk3, Lasers Mk4, etc. All weapons and presumeably even hull sizes and armor may have refinements similar to this, I don't know for sure.

Utilae is talking about adding modifiers to these. When you research Lasers, all you get is Lasers. When you research Lasers Mk2, you now have the option of making your lasers Long Range. When you research Lasers Mk3, you now have the additional option of making them Armor Piercing. This continues until you have all of the available modifiers.

Now Impaler seems to be making the suggestion that those modifiers be additional individual techs to be researched. This means that for each individual weapon (just assigning numbers here 5 refinements to the weapon and 5 modifers) there would be 11 technologies that would need to be researched.

If there are say 50 different weapons that is 550 different tech related weapons. There could be even more than that and we already know there will be dozens of other ship related technologies plus 1 or 2 hundred other techs related to things other than ships. Combine everything together and we could be looking at nearly 1000 technologies. This would be no problem if the tech system was going to work like MOO3 or even MOO2. My understanding, though, is that the player must select each individual technology that needs to be researched. I have read on multiple occasions where the acronym KISS has been used. Keep It Simple Stupid. Not only that but it would make the research part of the gam a micro hell.

I think if there are going to be modifiers, they need to come with the refinements and be selectable. Utilae's idea is the best one here.

Impaler wrote: As Geoff points out the ship design will just call for "Laser" combined with the desired Mods. You automaticaly get the highest level laser when the ship is built.

Are you saying that if you have lasers level 4, you cannot design a ship that uses lasers level 2. Because you may still want to use lasers level 2 because they will be cheaper.

Impaler wrote: And ofcorse its possibly to combine multiple Mods on a single weapon as in Moo2, the effects are simply multiplicative (aka if I had 2 Mods that each double the weapons damage then the weapon dose 4 times as much damage).

Sure you can combine shield piercing and continuous. But I would not really like it so much if you could choose heavy mount twice.

Ranos wrote: As this topic progresses, people seem to be suggesting making the tech tree be a nightmare of micromanagement, at least where ship related research is involved.

Well, I am not. Really what I was suggesting was similar to Moo2. In fact it is very close. Because Moo2's weapons auto refined by researching in the same field, lasers automatcally got better.

Ranos wrote: Utilae is talking about adding modifiers to these. When you research Lasers, all you get is Lasers. When you research Lasers Mk2, you now have the option of making your lasers Long Range. When you research Lasers Mk3, you now have the additional option of making them Armor Piercing. This continues until you have all of the available modifiers.

Yeah, but I see it more like this:
-You research you theory, whatever that may be.
-You reserach laser, an applied tech.
-Then you refine it. Since refinement is likely to be a seperate system from normal research you could invest more into refinements then actual research. So you would invest in refining laser. It is level 1 when researched as an applied tech. But when you refine it, all you are doing is increasing its level. Based on the lasers level damage, range and what mods it can have change (like in an AD&D table).
-When you design your ships you can add a laser, but choose what level laser it is. You may choose level 1, so you can't add any mods (lets say it learns some mods at levels 2, 4 etc). If you choose to add another laser, you may choose to add level 4 lasers, this time you can add some mods (any of the ones learn't from the current level and below, so you could add the mods the laser learn't at levels 2 and 4).

Ranos wrote: Now Impaler seems to be making the suggestion that those modifiers be additional individual techs to be researched. This means that for each individual weapon (just assigning numbers here 5 refinements to the weapon and 5 modifers) there would be 11 technologies that would need to be researched.

Yes, his seems alot more micromanaged.

Ranos wrote: Utilae's idea is the best one here.

Thanks.

-When you design your ships you can add a laser, but choose what level laser it is. You may choose level 1, so you can't add any mods (lets say it learns some mods at levels 2, 4 etc). If you choose to add another laser, you may choose to add level 4 lasers, this time you can add some mods (any of the ones learn't from the current level and below, so you could add the mods the laser learn't at levels 2 and 4).

NO NO NO you NEVER choosse what level of Lasers you want, you just pick Laser and get the highest level. The higher level laser is UNAMBIGUSLY better then the lower level laser. All of its desirable atributes are either equal or better and any negatives completly pail in comparison to the benefits. This has been explained several times already on this thread, please read it.

A good example would be Diablo 2 Skills, in D2 you can incresse your "Fire Ball" skill up to level 20 but you never have to chosse what level of fireball your going to cast. Having to chosse what level to use would be a total headache for players and their would be no point because the highest is always the best.

http://www.battle.net/diablo2exp/skills/

Also as for the tec tree, dont think of the Refinments as being new Tecnologies, they arnt. Its just an options to RE-Reserch something you already know to make it better. It dosent clutter up the Tec tree because the new refinment option just apears "on" the old tec with a little Roman Numeral III, V, XII ect ect.

Impaler wrote: NO NO NO you NEVER choosse what level of Lasers you want, you just pick Laser and get the highest level. The higher level laser is UNAMBIGUSLY better then the lower level laser. All of its desirable atributes are either equal or better and any negatives completly pail in comparison to the benefits. This has been explained several times already on this thread, please read it.

I am thinking of cost and space here. If a level 2 laser did more damage, had more range, etc then a level 1 laser, then what about the cost and space used up. Will a higher level laser cost more, and use more space or will it cost less and use less space. Does refining a laser necesarily mean that it will get smaller and cheaper.

Impaler wrote: Also as for the tec tree, dont think of the Refinments as being new Tecnologies, they arnt. Its just an options to RE-Reserch something you already know to make it better. It dosent clutter up the Tec tree because the new refinment option just apears "on" the old tec with a little Roman Numeral III, V, XII ect ect.

I am also under the assumption that refinements are not a new tech, but are simply the old tech, upgrade a level.

I think the idea behind refinements is to improve on what already exists. IMHO there should be no additional cost and definately no additional space used. I know that was talked about eailier. This is to make refitting your ships with the refined version a pain free experience.

Impaler wrote:Also as for the tec tree, dont think of the Refinments as being new Tecnologies, they arnt. Its just an options to RE-Reserch something you already know to make it better. It dosent clutter up the Tec tree because the new refinment option just apears "on" the old tec with a little Roman Numeral III, V, XII ect ect.

That helps but it doesn't address the issue I was talking about. I what I said and what I meant was that this would mean the player would have to be continuosly going into the tech screen and selecting what techs, refinements, modifications, etc. to research.

In MOO2, you just continue researching the field that a tech was in and that automatically lead to the developement of refinements and modifications. You had to select what you wanted to research in each available field. In MOO3, refinements and modifications were additional things to be researched. This was no big deal since all you had to do was mangae the sliders and the techs were researched as their level was reached.

If we have to go into the FO tech tree and select everything we want to research, it is already going to be tedious. Refinements are, I beleive, a very necessary part of the game and even if it just means clicking on the same old button to research the next level, it is still tedious. Adding in modifications as separate techs to research, as you mentioned earlier, makes even more research that needs to be done, dragging the tech tree on forever.

Its all about a trade off. Diversifying each empire by requiring them to decide what refinements to research but adding the tedious act of clicking in the tech tree all the time or making every empire almost identical but saving the player the hassle of clicking in the tech tree all the time.

I would prefer either the MOO3 approach where not all techs were available to all empires or having multiple versions of the same tech but each with its own special attribute that makes it unique and only one is available to each empire. The second one sounds better to me since this doesn't mean somebody missing a vitally important weapon or shield.

Check back on page 3 Utilae we whent over that already, if size were to decresse then you would need to re-design the whole ship to get the benefit. So Rule #1 is...

"Refinment levels never change the size/mass of a component"

In general Cost is either constant or incresse MUCH MUCH slower then damage output. For example if level 1 Laser dose 3 Damage and Costs 3 then level II laser would do 6 damage and cost 4. And Level III dose 10 damage and costs 5. Its a no-brainer the higher level laser has a Cost:Damage ratio that much greater then the older version. If you couldnt afford to fill the ship with high level lasers your better off filling it only half full then you are if you used a greater number of low level devices.

Ranos: You have a point their it will require more selections by the player. Ofcorse their could aways be a "Reserch the next best thing in this field" and your going to be able to Queue several Resarch Projects at a time if you wish.

utilae wrote:I am thinking of cost and space here. If a level 2 laser did more damage, had more range, etc then a level 1 laser, then what about the cost and space used up. Will a higher level laser cost more, and use more space or will it cost less and use less space.

I imagine it will be necessary for balanced purposes to have higher tech / better parts to be equal or more expensive than lower tech parts.

However, within that limitation, you could just put fewer lasers on the ship to save cost and space... (rather than the same number of cheaper / lower tech / less effective versions of the laser)

Edit: As Impaler seems to have said as well. (Though I don't necessarily agree with his comment about cost having to increase much more slowly than combat effectiveness. This is a balancing issue.)

Impaler wrote: Check back on page 3 Utilae we whent over that already, if size were to decresse then you would need to re-design the whole ship to get the benefit. So Rule #1 is...

"Refinment levels never change the size/mass of a component"

So there is gonna be no miniturisation (a staple in refinement). There should still be miniturisation but more like how you describe cost (below quote). That way we gear it so that the player should redesign ships less fequently, but still gets the benefits of miniturisation.

Impaler wrote: In general Cost is either constant or incresse MUCH MUCH slower then damage output. For example if level 1 Laser dose 3 Damage and Costs 3 then level II laser would do 6 damage and cost 4. And Level III dose 10 damage and costs 5. Its a no-brainer the higher level laser has a Cost:Damage ratio that much greater then the older version. If you couldnt afford to fill the ship with high level lasers your better off filling it only half full then you are if you used a greater number of low level devices.

This sounds fine. If there is not point in having lower level lasers because it would not be cost effective, then that is a good insentive to not redesign ships too much.

utilae wrote:So there is gonna be no miniturisation (a staple in refinement).

It might still be possible to have refinements called "miniaturization" that reduce the cost of a componet (but not the number you can put in)... though that would be rather unintuitive...

Impaler wrote: In general Cost is either constant or incresse MUCH MUCH slower then damage output. For example if level 1 Laser dose 3 Damage and Costs 3 then level II laser would do 6 damage and cost 4. And Level III dose 10 damage and costs 5. Its a no-brainer the higher level laser has a Cost:Damage ratio that much greater then the older version. If you couldnt afford to fill the ship with high level lasers your better off filling it only half full then you are if you used a greater number of low level devices.

This sounds fine. If there is not point in having lower level lasers because it would not be cost effective, then that is a good insentive to not redesign ships too much.

I feel I should point out that the suggested system isn't perfect. If your ship only has two lasers, for instance, and each level 1 laser costs 8, and each level 2 laser costs 10, then there's a big cost difference between two level 1's and a single level 2. And you can't really do anything about that, since you can't put in half a laser (presumably). So the player's choices are unfortunately limited to some degree.

Then again, for this to be a problem, the costs have to be fairly close anyway, so maybe the player wouldn't mind putting in the level 2 lasers even if all s/he wanted were level 1's...

This also ignores cases where the number of lasers is more important than their power, such as shooting down swarms of small weak ships that take only one shot to kill, even with a lower-powered laser than the best you know how to make... Perhaps a "rapid fire" refinement should be commonplace, in order to make few higher level components function like (better than) more lower-level components.

The player recives the benefits of Refinment by all the OTHER things that are done in a better way. Miniturization is by no means a nessesity and its been pointed out numerous times that its is infact encourages anoying and tedius redesigning. Dont fall into the "Oh but Moo2 had that so we MUST have it to, its an absolute nessesity" kind of thinking, most especialy when when we can do better then that.

Take for example a Ship with 10 Lasers that take up 10 space each and do 3 damage each. Insted of the refinment making the laser take up 5 space and making the player redesign the ship to hold 20 of them we could instead say the higher level laser shoots twice as fast and all the math works out to be identical. The only other possible benefit of Miniturization is being able to place a single weapon in a Hull which previously couldnt hold said weapon. Having size based Mods attach to the weapon and shrink it will solve that problem making miniturization unnessary.

To elaborate on Geoffs example, the level II laser is costing 25% more then the Level I. As long as it dose 25% more damage and some other sweeteners such as +1 range, +1 accuracy ect ect I dont realy see how the player will be unhappy with using it. Along with mods you can get basicaly any combination you want.

Hmm, i'm with utilae on how weapons research should work.

OK, maybe having Moo2 in mind makes no sense, because there you only had laser and heavy laser and no laser lvl X. But still i think it's not a good solution to define, that newer laser are always the better choice, because they are smaler/equal, cheaper/equal, .... New Lasers should rather always be bigger, more powerful and should cost more. Miniturization should decrease the weapon size (not necessary for an specific weapon).

I think we don't want to pump out new techs every other turn as moo3 did. if so, we should design new ships, when new ship techs are discovered. Hey guys, didn't you enjoy ship design?

Geoff the Medio wrote:I feel I should point out that the suggested system isn't perfect. If your ship only has two lasers, for instance, and each level 1 laser costs 8, and each level 2 laser costs 10, then there's a big cost difference between two level 1's and a single level 2. And you can't really do anything about that, since you can't put in half a laser (presumably). So the player's choices are unfortunately limited to some degree.

You misunderstand. There is a difference between cost and space. Laser Mk1 does 5 damage, costs 5 and takes up 5 space. Laser Mk2 does 8 damage, costs 6 but still takes up 5 space. Cost is the ammount of pp this particular item costs where space is how much room is take up on the ship.

Impaler wrote:Take for example a Ship with 10 Lasers that take up 10 space each and do 3 damage each. Insted of the refinment making the laser take up 5 space and making the player redesign the ship to hold 20 of them we could instead say the higher level laser shoots twice as fast and all the math works out to be identical. The only other possible benefit of Miniturization is being able to place a single weapon in a Hull which previously couldnt hold said weapon. Having size based Mods attach to the weapon and shrink it will solve that problem making miniturization unnessary.

I was going to something similar to this before I read your post. Maybe the system could work as follows:

Laser Mk1: Damage 6, Cost 4, Space 5. Modifiers activated: None
Laser Mk2: Damage 8, Cost 5, Space 5. Modifiers activated: None
Laser Mk3: Damage 10, Cost 6, Space 5. Modifiers activated: Long Range: Cost increase: 2, space increase : 1, range x1.5
Laser Mk4: Damage 12, Cost 7, Space 5, 2x fire rate. Modifiers activated: None
Laser Mk5: Damage 14, Cost 8, Space 5, 2x fire rate. Modifiers activated: Continuous fire: Cost increase: 3, space increase : 2, fire duration x1.5
Laser Mk6: Damage 16, Cost 9, Space 5, 2x fire rate. Modifiers activated: None
Laser Mk7: Damage 18, Cost 10, Space 5, 3x fire rate. Modifiers activated: Armor Piercing: Cost Increase: 5, space increase : 3, 60% chance to pierce armor on hit

As you can see, the damage done increases along with the cost. At Mk4, the "miniaturization effect" occurs, giving the Lasers a 2x fire rate. Modifeir activated means you now have the option of adding this modifier when you are designing a ship. Once the ship has been designed, all a refit does is upgrade the lasers from Mk4 to Mk5. It would take a new design and an overhaul of the existing ships to add or remove a modifier.

noelte wrote:OK, maybe having Moo2 in mind makes no sense, because there you only had laser and heavy laser and no laser lvl X. But still i think it's not a good solution to define, that newer laser are always the better choice, because they are smaler/equal, cheaper/equal, .... New Lasers should rather always be bigger, more powerful and should cost more. Miniturization should decrease the weapon size (not necessary for an specific weapon).

Why should newer equal bigger? When it comes to ship hulls, newer should equal bigger, because it allows for more space. When it comes to weapons, newer should equal more powerful, but not necesarily bigger. You should have weapons mount options for allowing bigger weapons. With refinement should come more power and a faster fire rate (which represents miniaturization as I stated above).

Now I can almost gaurantee that I won't get any "realism arguement" crap on this next comment. Name one thing in real life that newer didn't mean better choice. Now before you give the obvious answers, things that didn't work as intended don't count. In FO like all games, everything works. So, let me rephrase my challenge. Name one thing in real life that a newer version that worked properly didn't mean a better choice.

I'll leave it at that.

Name one thing in real life that newer didn't mean better choice.

After a quick thought, it's easy to answer. I plan using a HDTV HTPC. So even if a P4 EE is the most powerful pc, i'm looking for an cheaper, more silent pc, which uses less power and can handle the job.

One good thing in life is, that if new things come out, the older once get cheaper.