Reasearch needs "meaning."

Thanks for your input Ultimitx!
How many planets and solar systems would you typically play with?

Welcome to the club Ultimitx.

It is generally agreed ed that the TT is underwhelming at the moment, but sadly enough no one in the community has really proposed any enhancement ideas that seem to have gone over well for various reasons. Everyone is listing however if you have any new ideas.

I have an idea...research cap ship designs...i think its silly to have to research cruisers but not cap ships other than the basic cap ship factory

Please bear with the length of this post but my ideas are to the point and do not need much to be implemented; they are very practical.

Thanks for the welcome, glad to be here! I typically play with 4 stars and about 80 planets. I am more of a single player player so my ideas are coming from that direction.

Here are a few ideas on what needs improved:

1) Have a few options to slow/speed the speed of teching down. I would love to have the option of a tech taking at least 5-10 mins to complete. It would make me think out what tech I really need to advance and benefit myself, should I go for economics or military? Ship design or planet habitation? This would add great depth to the game because of the many different strategies that could come out of slow teching. In the 3-hour game I played I almost had the entire tech tree researched; it gave it no meaning to gameplay.

2) Triple the size of the tech tree. I know this could be very difficult to do but with the promised new content that will constantly keep coming out it shouldn't be that difficult.

- There could be an option when starting the game to include these extra techs so not to overwhelm the multiplayer aspect of the game. It would be useless to have a ton of techs that would never be reached because who can/want to play a multiplayer game for 12+ hours? (I would love to but it is not at all practical.)

3) Have techs have multiple prerequisites to be able to tech them, and have many branches off a few basic techs. This will open up the tech tree. Some players can decide to go down one way of the tree while the other goes another way. One example is a player exploiting and teching far down a combat oriented path while another down a defensive one, imagine the battles that will result and the possibilities of different strategies!

4) Smooth out the look of the tech tree. When I first started playing I was confused with the tech tree, everything was crammed in all over the place. I catch on quick with games but the more casual gamer probably will not. If I were a casually gamer the aesthetics of the tech tree would be a huge turn off for me. I believe the casual gamer makes up a large part of the gaming community and are typically attracted to games like Sins.

5) Be able to trade techs with other civs. I figure this will eventually be implemented but I'll mention it anyways.

What has already been gotten right:

1) I love the three tabs in researching, it prevents the tech tree from being even more jumbled:)

2) It is a great multiplayer tech tree; it goes fast and is to the point.

3) I think it is well off with 200+ days to go!

On being able to add more to the tech tree / having it be too jumbled, maybe be able to zoom in/out on it, like with GalCiv2's trees. That way you could fit more in without having to use scroll boxes (which I don't like much. Though that would mess up the ability to simply know that higher up techs take more research labs, maybe denote such groupings by lines indicating the jump? (And at higher levels, double / triple lines indicating the higher level jumps?)

Hmm.. try playing with one star and three other opponents (small galaxy default default settings)- you should find that teching-up will go much more slowly (at least in my experience anyway..), due to the limited amount of resources


Eek... I personally think the tech tree is big enough as it is: imagine not having those three tabs (combat, empire, artifact)
I think it would be much better to concentrate on quality than quantity. Having too many techs is just asking for balancing issues.


Hehe, I'm guessing this is an near-release sort of thing to deal with
(Though I agree, the tree can be confusing at first glance).


Hmm.. really? I think this is more or less impossible with other races, based on my current understanding - the advent and vasari likely have techs specialized to their race... trading their techs with the TEC will likely be useless IMO...
Of course, TEC could trade with TEC and vasari could trade with vasari but I think if there's a situation where you have three teams, two TEC and one vasari, the game could become a no-show if the TEC team up...

that has come up several times, the problem is the cap ships are specialised and do will in different fields, of though most really use the Kol and the akkan, but I think something needs doing to the cap ships, probably when the real balancing starts they will be made more expensive to limit their numbers?

I like playing huge maps, small ones don't appeal to me much:)

I've started going the same route, at least 3 stars, 30-40 planets...

Maybe they could tier teching depending on map size. Maybe a 1-2 minute tech on a small map (such as online ladder play) and 10-15 minute tech on huge maps. Also, maybe you could have a started teching point. Say in shorter games, you start with higher technology than in huge long games, where you start lower.

The issue I have with the tech is that it's mostly very incremental. A 5% increase in laser firepower is nice but it doesn't drastically change the game. When I'm forced to choose between that and a 5% increase in some other stat it just isn't an interesting choice to make.

Tech is low investment, low return right now. I find myself queuing up a bunch of things because it doesn't really matter what order they get researched in.

I'd suggest changing it to high investment, high return. The Capital ship element of SotSE is awesome because you're forced to really choose between models. They take time, a huge investment and it may be some time before you get to bring another one online. They're also incredibly nasty and worth every cent. Every time I have to build a capital ship I pause to consider what I really want to produce. I absolutely love the cap-ship system in place. If anything I'd make them even more powerful and costly.

It would be interesting if tech was the same way. It would force people to choose between a significant increase in firepower and new ship models. Techs could be a luxury with repercussions that significantly change your strategies. Currently, orbital trade and refining are such technologies. The rest are far less impressive. Instead of 6 missile upgrades, consider two upgrades with very significant effects on firepower and missile speed. Instead of a slew of mildly useful frigate techs, force people to choose between techs that unlock multiple frigates and certain cruiser models. Long Range Engagement Doctrine might allow the construction of light carriers as well as missile frigates. Defensive Doctrine might allow flak frigates and command cruisers. Make those techs just expensive enough to be annoying and you force people to really consider what tactics their fledgling empire has available.

I don't like it, but I like where it is going... very interesting but as described unbalancing (of course).

Bigger techs that have more power is a good idea in my opinion.

Any feedback on an option to increase/decrease tech speed as a game option at startup?

I think if you renamed and revamped the techs a little.

Rather then Advanced Fighter Level 1, give each tech an interesting name, description, and reason for what it does.

For example:
Advanced Fighter Level 1 becomes: Lateral Thruster Improvement
Description is: Makes Fighters more maneuverable in combat.
The reason: Our scientists have finally figured out how to accurately attach thrusters allowing our fighters to control more accurately etc etc etc.

You know, give each tech it's unique background, instead of just Laser level 1.

oooh me likes you

You don't need to like me.

Seriously, it's the format from Gal Civ II.

Sins is basically using the research tree from Rise of Nations.

What it needs is the research tree of Imperium Galactica II and Hegemonia (Each upgrade had it's own name, i.e. ECM, Magnetic Shielding, Phase Shielding), Conquest Frontier Wars (In order to be able to build advanced ships, you had to have several things researched as well as individual facilities built, i.e. for a carrier, you needed hanger facilities built on a planet, along with a propulsion laboratory) and last but not least, Starships Unlimited (you researched individual parts, then decided what gets placed in a ship. The ships appearance doesn't change, just the parts inside it. So if a ship had several Electronic Computers(They increased your sensor range) and you researched Biocomputers, you would have to order your ship to return to the nearest planet to wait in dry dock for less then a minute while the new parts were built on a planet and installed. The whole thing was really impressive on a grand scale, and really effected the way you researched.)


Research needs more of a point. To achieve this, give each thing you research a really really good name, so people can say "Oh ya, well all I did was research Vortex streams, making my ships go faster, then I researched Modulated Shields, which helps defend against two types of attacks, and finally, I advanced from tactical missiles to flat out Nuclear warheads, to devastate my opponent even more."

As opposed to current research where you would say, "I researched engine upgrade level 1, followed by shield upgrade level 2, and then I concluded with missile upgrade 2. Needless to say, my enemies felt the pounding that day."

me likes you too (hint: not lordkosc)

Another idea to spice up research is to have some techs cost more to research than others ( even if on the same level in the tech tree ). I like the strategic choice of going for either three short techs first or one larger one with that much more impact on my empire. If there was also then feedback on how long a tech will take, I can decide quickly which one to pick. It would also make it more important the order that I research since one could take much longer than the other. Do I get the short one 'over with' or start right away on the larger one?

I also like the idea of tech taking longer in bigger maps.