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CaptainEasy

Join Date 02/2006

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So many small tech itterations for same overall tech

When you have about 10-20 of your current state-of-the-art war ships, and pour out research that yields a tech every 4-8 turns.... You decide its time to fit that extra weapon on your ship design but its not worth it if you have to sacrafice speed or anything else, so your research must do it for you. It just seems that when you get a new tech (like warp engines I) and decide to refit your ships, its a complete waste b/c by the time you've done it (and eaten the $1000-3000) you have the next small itteration of warp engines II, and III is only 5 or so turns behind that, with IV right behind that. Each of them are such small improvements (like 1 space saved per engine or something) that it seems like a total waste to upgrade anything, you always want to "just wait until THIS NEXT tech is done", then there is something else you want to wait for and so on. And this applies to not just engines, but miniturization, weapons, and defenses too.

Wouldn't it be better if there were like half of the techs available in these categories but each one took twice as long to research and provided twice the bonus of the next itteration.

IE: Warp Engines II would be what is currently Warp Engines III (and would take the amount of research equal to what is currently required to research both warp engines II and warp engines III). Then warp engines III would be what is currently warp engines V (and would take the amount of research equal to what is currently required to research both warp engines IV and warp engines V).

This could be done with all similar techs: engines, miniturization (this may be ok the way it is), beam Weapons, mass driver weapons, missile weapons, beam defense, mass driver defense, missile defense.

Notice I'm only talking about ship related techs. The upgrade process on colonies is automated and thus painless. But man, atleast this way when you got a tech it wouldn't be an aggrevation you had to deal with, it would be something you can't wait to fit onto your ships!

Anyone agree/disagree? For those who disagree, maybe there is something I'm missing about the point of so many itterations of the same tech???

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I think I disagree. I mean, you're absolutely correct that certain techs along the tree tend to upgrade fairly quickly, but I've made a conscious decision to wait for specific combinaion of techs before upgrading my ships. It does't makde sense to upgrade every time you've improved a tech, only when the chance allows you to, for example, increase speed, or firepower, defense, or combination thereof. Otherwise, you're right, it would be a waste of money. Cerain people are looking for specific iterations of a tech - everyone has a spcific combo they're looking for. So if you change it now, I think it may upset several people who've gotten into the swring of things (like myself). I have noticed a few bugs where one upgrade had no benefit over the previous. Don't recall which, but I recall it was one of the armor techs. Anyway, that's my two cent.

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Disagree. Three points:

(1) It's somewhat "realistic". Gradual refinements in technology are a fact of how such things are created. Granted, you can argue the degree to which the game should reflect that (2 Laser techs? 4? 5?). My point with this is just that jumping *too* quickly, however one might define "too", would lose the reality of the process.

(2) the game offers a built-in way to customize this to your liking. It's not necessary to remove techs from the tree itself - just adjust the Tech Research Rate when setting up a new game. You can have techs take more or less time as like.

(3) Even without adjusting the Research Rate, the structure of the game builds in pauses to your research along any branch of the tech tree. You simply can't research Weapon tech constantly. At some point you have to pause to improve your Logistics, or your Diplomacy, or whatever else is important to you that game. The time that you spend researching those other things is time that you can't be upgrading your Laser tech.

- Ash

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I think one thing that I would prefer is the removal of obsolete tech such as the earlier versions of a laser from the ship design screen, I see no point to put on a laser 2 when I have laser 5 tech. Only a muppet would do that.

J

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A muppet? You mean like Kermit the Frog? Didn't know he aspired to be Supreme Overlord.

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I think the tech tree could use some minor reductions. Do we really need 5 versions of the Laser which at the time that I generally research through them don't net me any advances in firepower? I'm all for the gradual build up of techs and think that is very realistic. I just wish that maybe there was a trade off between versions. For instance say version 3 of the laser didn't reduce it's size any but it now fires for 2 pts fo damage rather then 1. Then when you get to 4 maybe it goes back to reducing size but you also and keeps that extra point of damage that version 3 gave you. Generally when things start to get smaller there is a point where all of a sudden they can add more features yet keep it the same size. If you need a real world example think cell phones.

I guess it really depends on the pacing of the game you are playing. If it's an afternoon type game pace then you'll probably barely get to the third or fourth version before the game is over. If it's the several day version then you can probably skip lasers 1-5 and just wait for plasma beams before even building your first warship. I do like having lots of options from the list so I can tailor my ships to my immediate needs. It's just over the long haul things do seem rather redundant at times.

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I just wish that maybe there was a trade off between versions. For instance say version 3 of the laser didn't reduce it's size any but it now fires for 2 pts fo damage rather then 1. Then when you get to 4 maybe it goes back to reducing size but you also and keeps that extra point of damage that version 3 gave you.

Umm... this is EXACTLY what happens. Except that you can easily tell where there's going to be a damage increase, because the name changes.

So, Stinger I, II, III, and IV all do 1 damage, but are progressively smaller. Then Harpoon I increases in damage. Then the further Harpoons keep the same damage stat (2), but get smaller. And so on.

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its also important to note that the size of doing 1 damage continues to go down.

like..for example..

Stinger 1 does one damage with 14 size.. stinger 2 is 13... stinger 3 is 12... stinger 4 is 11... then you get harpoon that does 2 damage for 20 space. So.. Harpoon is BIGGER, but you are actually paying 10 size for each damage point..so all in all, you get more damage for less space.

it continues to do that all the way down the line, its just that it will continue to go up in damage every 4 or 5 techs.

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I certainly think there should be less redundant techs, I don't think there needs to be more than 3 versions of the same ship object. I also agree that obselete ship objects (Laser I when you have Laser III) shoudl also be removed from the ship design menu)

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And how about an "auto-upgrade" which replaces all obsolete components with newer versions of the same component (e.g. it replaces Laser I with Laser III, but not with Phasor I, since Phasor I is bigger)?

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I like it the way it is now. More smaller iterations means more room for decisions.
I mean, if there's only LaserI, LaserII, PlasmaI, PlasmaII etc. and each on would take 10-20 rounds to research... well, then it would be pretty much a no-brainer when to upgrade.
But as it is now... more room for decisions: Upgrade now to LaserIV? Or can I afford to wait another 5 rounds for LaserV?
Less steps in the tree would take away some room for strategic decisions imho.

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I like the way techs work now, you actually have more choices. And I for one do occasionally use lower level laser techs. for example I might want to save cost on a new frigate so I can producde them faster so I use a cheaper laser that does the same damage as my armament. This is just one example but there are plenty of ways to use the tech system in ways that almost no other game gives you the option of doing.

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Yep.. ive had room on a ship before to put one of the older techs so that I could get one or two more damage out of it.

it works fine the way it is now...the latest tech is at the top when you are building the ship.. not like you have to look for it.

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Exactly. If you check Frogboy's gameplay examples, he's not constantly upgrading ships during peacetime, or when he's dominating. What's the point? There's much better ways to use your economy. You're supposed to upgrade when you have to, when your intel and experience are telling you that what you have isn't enough anymore. I think that's the way Stardock expects us to play, and the current system is quite suitable for this. All the small upgrades mean that when you *do* decide to upgrade your ship, almost always you have something to uprade it *with*, no matter how minor. In the proposed bigger-but-a-lot-less-frequent upgrade research system, you could very well find that when you *needed* to upgrade your ship, you'd still be halfway through the next level of tech.

I do agree that if you have Laser V, Laser I is pretty useless in the component list. Also, I want component to have maker names like Frogboy has in his after-action-reports.

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I think the Weapon Techs are fine the way it is. Like someone said earlier, its all timing your techs. I usually tailor my weapons, logistics, movement, miniturization & defense techs in a such a way so that i can make a 2dmg/2def 2or3 speed small ships. once im done getting there, i start mass producing those ships as i research planetary invasion (which is needed to take worlds) It's a really tricky balancing out all those techs when playin in a 9player map set on tough (all AI are set to intelligent) and stay ahead of the competition (which will be the next door neighbor that you want to laserbeam). If you have time to research to laser IV without stopping to get other techs such as logistics or miniturization the computer should be womping on you (unless you know how to trade techs efficiently but that's another matter altogether)

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I like having so large a tech tree. So I don't agree with the first post.

What I thought would be a nice addition to the game is to have the money costs per each level of tech be more important. Currently you always move up to the next weapon tech even if you have extra room on a ship design.

The way it is now, all 5 Laser techs that do one damage each cost 25.

The four Stinger missile techs that do two damage each cost from 50 to 51. The next level of missile tech, Harpoon which does three damage cost 55.

The damage increases and size reductions on weapon techs is fun. Hardly anything is done with the money costs on them. Seems the only time that cost becomes a factor is engines on non-combat ships.

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techs work fine the way they are if you want to slow it down then reduce teh tech rate. And no tech upgrade minus the one armor one that was mentioned above are useless. I mean why would stardock put in a useless tech. I mean really do you think they feel like researching a useless tech while they are playing the game and looking to refine it?

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Xeno Communications II, Xeno Communications III, Xeno Communications IV...

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I like the way it is ... if you condense the techs then you are not as willing to sell, or give them away to the AI, and this is one of the best ways to get an AI to dance to your tune.

In CIV 4 I hardly every chatted with the AIs in diplomacy, cause there was just too little Tech and its effects too momentous to use as a carrot.

Dano

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A muppet? You mean like Kermit the Frog? Didn't know he aspired to be Supreme Overlord.

Kermit the Mighty will crush you with his green fist of doom.

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I like it the way it is. Right now, I might only need Point Defense II on one ship, but because size is more of an issue on a different design, I might have to wait until Point Defense III on that design.

I usually go through less than 10 combat designs in a game. a 2 attack, a 4 attack, maybe a 4 attack 2 defense, a 6 attack/6 defense, and the rest will depend more on which way the AIs are going with their ship designs.

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A muppet? You mean like Kermit the Frog? Didn't know he aspired to be Supreme Overlord.

In the intro movie, when you see the Dread Lord on the ship... that IS Kermit. He wears a cloak to cover his hideous green skin. Fozzie the Bear is the

, and Miss Piggy runs the engine room. Didn't anyone read the back story?

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I'd like to change that there is quite a number of techs that don't change anything, they're only a prerequisite for one other tech.

It doesn't have to be much, just adding little things like "+10% hitpoints" to "Superiors Hulls" (which does nothing on its own) would give the system a bit more flavour.

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I've been working on a mod for the past few days that is EXACTLY how the topic starter describes. I should be ready to release it over the weekend at the earliest., depending on how the AI reacts to the changes I'm making.

Basically, I'm removing all of the "I, II, III, IV, V, VI, etc..." iterations of all the techs and leaving only the core ones. "Laser, Plasma, etc." The remaining techs have their research points increased to the ammount that was "pruned" by removing the numbered versions. The resulting tech tree should be half or less than the current one.

This is going to make technologies VERY important, and also make researching them a commitment.

Personally I think there are in fact very many useless techs. The differences between each minor iteration are pretty trivial. You're going to be hard pressed to find glaring combat differences between a ship armed with "Laser I" and one armed with "Laser II." Plus as much as I like designing ships in this game, I don't enjoy doing it every 5-10 turns because of constant new "updates." Slowing down tech isn't really an answer either, because that will just make the game take longer, while the difference in the techs will remain just as trivial.

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