Tech tree

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

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Nycidian
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Tech tree

#1 Post by Nycidian »

eleazar wrote: ...
  • * Tech tree is still a pain to use. We've cut a lot of deadwood, but i increasingly suspect that removing deadwood will never make it user-friendly. Branching is usually very hard to follow, and when zoomed out far enough to get a partial overview-- even on my 2560x1440 screen, turns icons and labels into pixel-mush. We've discussed moving to a semi-random-removal tree and/or a columnar "tree". If we are going to change the format, the sooner the better.
...
  • * Further species differentiation
...
I really like the shear amount of tech in the game so far, in fact I would love more. But something that might help with the above two points as well as add to the game over all might be doing the following.

Separate the tree tech tree into different types of technology, Energy, Organic, Mechanical, maybe even sub types of these. Some technologies would be universal.

Now assign different types of tech to different types of species. These would be "Native" and naturally occur to those type of species meaning they would be visible on the tech tree. Non-Native types would be start invisible and would cost 1.5x to research. For non-native tech to become visible it would have to be "traded."

I.E. tech trading wouldn't give you tech but give you access to researching tech you wouldn't normally know about. Also any races that you have picked up would make that species native tech visible, this would also remove the 1.5 tech multiplier from that tech.

This would artificially narrow the trees by species but would allow those who want access to all techs to attempt to do so. It would also flavor species by ships types.

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eleazar
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Re: Tech tree

#2 Post by eleazar »

Nycidian wrote:Separate the tree tech tree into different types of technology, Energy, Organic, Mechanical, maybe even sub types of these. Some technologies would be universal.

Now assign different types of tech to different types of species. These would be "Native" and naturally occur to those type of species meaning they would be visible on the tech tree. Non-Native types would be start invisible and would cost 1.5x to research. For non-native tech to become visible it would have to be "traded."
This totally doesn't fit with our species approach:
"species does not equal empire"

Additionally there's with multiple species researching, there's no way (without complexifying the interface) to have some RPs vary in effectiveness.

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em3
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Re: Tech tree

#3 Post by em3 »

eleazar wrote:This totally doesn't fit with our species approach:
"species does not equal empire"

Additionally there's with multiple species researching, there's no way (without complexifying the interface) to have some RPs vary in effectiveness.
This was addressed in the above post:
Nycidian wrote:Also any races that you have picked up would make that species native tech visible, this would also remove the 1.5 tech multiplier from that tech.
Not that I like the idea in general.
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Nycidian
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Re: Tech tree

#4 Post by Nycidian »

eleazar wrote:
Nycidian wrote:Separate the tree tech tree into different types of technology, Energy, Organic, Mechanical, maybe even sub types of these. Some technologies would be universal.

Now assign different types of tech to different types of species. These would be "Native" and naturally occur to those type of species meaning they would be visible on the tech tree. Non-Native types would be start invisible and would cost 1.5x to research. For non-native tech to become visible it would have to be "traded."
This totally doesn't fit with our species approach:
"species does not equal empire"

Additionally there's with multiple species researching, there's no way (without complexifying the interface) to have some RPs vary in effectiveness.
First thank you for reading the idea.

However this wouldn't be species = empire

At the beginning your tech tree would be limited by species but every species you acquired would expand your tech tree.

Basically I thought that maybe different species would tend to think a certain way and be more likely to follow certain tracks of tech. By incorporating more species into your empire it would naturally broaden your empire way of thinking.

If you added in the idea of trading tech ideas to make non visible tech visible you bring in the idea of scientific exchange of ideas between neutral/friendly species who are not in the same empire.


Basically a empire that starts with an energy type species might start out being more likely to develop energy tech but if that empire acquired a lithic species now they have access to more tech that's more appropriate to a lithic species. Notice the species doesn't equal empire, but the starting species does influences the empire.


As for the cost it was just an idea i think visibility of tech would work by its self. And you could even add generic learning based tech that might reveal invisible tech. Like a think tank or some such.

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eleazar
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Re: Tech tree

#5 Post by eleazar »

Nycidian wrote:...However this wouldn't be species = empire
My mistake, my eyes skipped the critical line, and i assumed i was reading the standard species/tech suggestion we get regularly.

Zireael
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Re: Tech tree

#6 Post by Zireael »

The suggestion has merit and would certainly make game more interesting (that is, would make me play something else than Gyisache/Trith), not to mention it would reduce the clutter.

However, I still maintain that there should be no "theories" in the tree. Simply, we should make every "theory" do something. Reducing the general number of techs, while attempted in the past, will only lead to the tree being exhausted way too early.

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eleazar
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Re: Tech tree

#7 Post by eleazar »

As to the clutter clearing, i do not think more than a tiny portion of the tree could taken away from other species without having significant impact on the species viability. We want to make both single and multi species empire a valid way to play the game, and tech trading and stealing are not yet (nor likely to be soon) included.
Nycidian wrote:Separate the tree tech tree into different types of technology, Energy, Organic, Mechanical, maybe even sub types of these. Some technologies would be universal.

Now assign different types of tech to different types of species.

Note that currently having a telepathic species makes it much cheaper to research a key psionic tech. It is simply a scripting exercise to apply that to other techs or species tags. The issue is more of what techs should be cheaper for which groups of species.

Your proposed divisions "Energy, Organic, Mechanical" don't sound very promising. Most techs don't fall obviously into on of those categories. Also there's no good connection between what a species is made out of and what type of technology it uses. We humans are physically organic but our technology is mostly mechanical.

Obviously there are (or could be) techs that only benefit a certain class of species-- the old farming techs would only make sense boosting organic populations-- not energy beings. But there's no great reason to add a penalty to researching those tech-- there's no point in getting them if you don't have the species types they will benefit.


So, if you want to advance this line of thought, that is best done by providing examples and suggestions of what techs would be discounted to which species groups.

Brr
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Re: Tech tree

#8 Post by Brr »

How about this:
Most techs are 'standard', in addition there are three special categories Energy, Organic, Mechanical with each 10-20% of the full tech tree.
They are different in two ways:
Special tech trees must be unlocked by some expensive standard techs, so they are avaiable at midgame.
There is a research multiplier for them. Every researched Organic tech increases Organic multiplier and so on. Also some species could get a higher multiplier from beginning. So Players are motivated to specialize to one tech tree category but are able to research in every one.

This would make it possible (and I guess neccessary) to add some more techs, and would add a lot replay value. It would also sort the techs more in the sense of early and mid/endgame.

wheals
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Re: Tech tree

#9 Post by wheals »

Brr wrote:How about this:
Most techs are 'standard', in addition there are three special categories Energy, Organic, Mechanical with each 10-20% of the full tech tree.
They are different in two ways:
Special tech trees must be unlocked by some expensive standard techs, so they are avaiable at midgame.
There is a research multiplier for them. Every researched Organic tech increases Organic multiplier and so on. Also some species could get a higher multiplier from beginning. So Players are motivated to specialize to one tech tree category but are able to research in every one.

This would make it possible (and I guess neccessary) to add some more techs, and would add a lot replay value. It would also sort the techs more in the sense of early and mid/endgame.
Interesting. That would also give you a motivation to acquire more species once you already have one for most of the EPs.
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