Personally I'm not sure that using N (the number of technologies researched) is such a good idea. It's quite possible to reach that number early on in the game by researching some of the cheaper technologies. If instead the cost of researching began to grow after accumulating a certain number of research points then you wouldn't be penalised for obtaining technologies that, for example, don't unlock anything except other new technologies.

Has anyone considered the possibility of simply adding a negative morale bonus to the tech structures?

This way its a guns vs butter concept put up too many tech centers and your people become unhappy about the cost.

It happens in the real world all the time , look at NASA .

I don't like the idea, because it borks the concept of tech value equivalence. That is, some techs are more expensive than others - unless, under this system, you wait to research those others, in which case they cost more than the techs that are allegedly more expensive.

There's two systems that have the potential to work well, as I see it.

System 1: all techs have preset tech costs, scaled to galaxy size and tech rate. If a tech costs 200 research points on turn 1, then it costs 200 research points on turn 325987. The advantage is that, with no inflation, Lasers 1 will never jump up to cost more than Black Hole Erupters cost just because you went for the Erupters before you bothered with the Lasers. The disadvantage is that if the devs misjudge how much total tech costs should be, the game goes wacky, and it takes a lot of detailed attention to individual tech costs to make things balance out properly.

System 2: all techs cost the same amount, scaled to galaxy size and tech rate. Every time you complete research on a tech, this amount inflates by a set percentage. Thus, the first tech you complete will always be cheap, and the last tech you complete (assuming you traverse the whole tech tree) will always be way expensive. The advantage here is that the system is simple to implement, and generally simple to tweak for balance (compared to the first system, at least). The disadvantage is that this massively borks parallel tech branches, like the weapon and defense techs. After a certain point, it is no longer viable to research low level energy weapons when you can get a high end missile weapon improvement for the same research cost.

The current system, with techs having different base costs *AND* inflating over the course of the game, has the disadvantages of both systems. IMHO, the inflation should either be hardcoded into the tech trees as base tech costs, or pulled out of base tech costs entirely and made systematic and gradual.

I think there is a danger with going too far with research inflation, in that the human player is far more able to judge the opportunity cost of researching something later rather than sooner.

Failure to see such a downside to pursuing one branch only in the tech tree is the reason why I believe the Torians pick up Industrial Sector as fast as possible in every game that I've played, despite there being an abundance of better technologies to pursue in the meantime. They just don't understand that in order to make use of Industrial Sector you need to be filling the other tiles on the planet with something which makes it practical to spend 10bc on maintenance per tile of industry, otherwise it's more cost-effective to use the earlier factories.

Of course it could just be that they are actually a lot smarter than I give them credit for and picked up Industrial Sector while it was still cheap to research.

Which is why I suggest the possibility of adding negative morale to tech buildings it will limit the ability to create ultra tech planets and increase the importance of tech bonus tiles. Tech would then act the same as population if you increase too much without proper consideration you pay the penalty . Any feedback? ,good idea? ,bad idea? I should be hung up by my thumbs for even suggesting it?