Research tree idea

from GalCiv2 Forums
I was reading the manual, and I was thinking about weapons, and armor to a degree, and I had an idea. Using the beam weapons as an example, once you research Laser 1, you should be able to research Laser 2 or Plasma 1. All the 2-whatever do is make the inital weapon smaller, so in theory you should be able to research a new type of weapon. However, you could tie in the idea where the more you research to make the previous weapon smaller, the quicker it becomes to research the next weapon(perhaps you get new ideas on how to focus the laser or whatever). That way, if you research plasma 1 after laser 1, it may take 40 weeks, but if you research all the lasers, it only takes 10 weeks or something. Just an idea.
4,846 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I understand where you want to get, but the thing is you cannot research plasma without having first got the latest laser 3. You can't jump from laser 1 directly to plasma...
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I suppose, but technically lasers and plasma weapons have little to do with one another other than being beam weapons. Lasers deal with light intensification, whereas plasma is more gas-based (as far as I know). I guess I just feel that you shouldn't have to miniturize a weapon first before you can start working on a new type of weapon. Just my opinion.
Galactic Civilizations IV
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
You can't make a tech so it lowers the cost of another tech. You can make the tech tree to be say,
laser - laser II - laser III - etc
|- Plasma - plasma2
     |-phasor - phasor II
etc, but it winds up being rather lame in actual gameplay. You are either able to make huge jumps up the tech tree very easily, or you make each step up very expensive and painful both to research as well as not skip the II III etc weapons.
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Yah, it would be hard to balance it. It just is frustrating because sometimes I swear I'm at lasers and the AI is 4 weapons past that, so they have like 3-4 ships in a fleet and 250 beam attack (for example).
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
the main problem with doing that is the difficulty involved in even going about it. Making it branch from Laser 1 to Plasma 1 but you would not be able to affect the RP required from learning something. RP required at the start of the game is a static value and set based on your tech rate. Thus regardless of what you research you will not impact the amount needed for the next tech. So unless you're strapped for time there would ultimately be no real advantage to researching Laser II or Plasma II when you can simply go onto the next weapon which would be better anyways.

It's one of those ideas that are nice on paper but probably wouldn't be practical. Sorry.