Researching Techs

Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

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Researching Techs

This is a very very early implementation of the research screen.

We have a lot of work to do on research as we’ve been experimenting with lots of different ideas for the past few months.

The goal was to have something very different from Galactic Civilizations but also something that is easy for people to add their own techs, distinguish different factions with their own techs, and allow for infinite researching.

In this UI, the player has researched the ability to research 3 things at once (no penalty). This option gives us a lot more flexibility in terms of letting people make interesting choices on what kind of civilization they want to develop (we’ll explain more on this as we get closer).

More to come.

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Quoting alibenbaba,

reply 24

Usually researching 3 items at once will only split the research efforts thin, - researching one at a time would yield the three techs in the same amount of time, but the player benefits from the effects of the technologies earlier.

Would 'research without penalty' mean the player has effectively tripled his research output, or is research based on random success rolls, so researching three techs at once increases the chance on a success?

Otherwise multiple research is a red herring, seems useful but distracts from the only correct option 'always research one tech a time'.

Opinions?

Realistically, it almost always makes more sense to research multiple things at the same time. Throwing all your scientists on a new metal alloy might make it go a bit faster, but the biologists and aerospace guys you put on the project sure won't be very effective.

The devs could easily make it the opposite of what you suggest where researching less than X techs at a time imposes penalties on the overall amount of resarch points. This puts a stop to gamey rushes to a popular tech and means that nations will increase their technologies in a more natural way.

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It really comes down to how it's implemented. If it's a straight up "you have X research points and you can split that up into however many different technologies at once" then yes, it would always be better to to research one at a time. But if you use research points more efficiently by researching multiple things simultaneously then that isn't the case at all. And if unlocking extra research spots lets you research another tech at full speed, regardless of what else you're doing, then it'd be downright stupid to only research one thing at a time.

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He never even said that we could focus research.

In this UI, the player has researched the ability to research 3 things at once (no penalty)

Way I figure it, when you unlock the ability to add another research slot, that's all you've done. You've gone from putting X research points per turn into 2 fields each to putting X research points per turn into 3 fields each.

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Thing is, there are a dozen different ways to put meaning into his post where there is none. When you get right down to it, his post doesn't tell us anything other than that we will be able to research multiple techs at once, and that we will have to do something to gain that capability. We don't even know if this game will use research points at all, and we certainly don't know how they might be divvied up.

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Quoting Frogboy many pages (and months) ago....

"I don't know if this counts as tech randomization but we are planning to have a pool of techs that are are inserted into games based on whether they make their probability roll.

I.e. certain techs would show up in some games but not in others. Not core techs but ones that spice things up in different directions."

If they can't stand to have core techs NEVER show up in some games, just randomly have them sometimes show up later, maybe not at the same time for each faction.

Anyway, I like the basic concept. I'd like almost anything to force some variety by stopping us from always picking our favorite techs. In this, as in so many other things, MOM is an example of doing things well, while AOW:SM is an example of close-but-not-quite. Not a big deal at first, but wait till you've played Elemental for as many years as I've played MOM. Get enough of these details right, and people will by playing 10+ years, even without modding.

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