Tech - Which, Why and How?

from Stardock Forums
I've been thinking about this tech tree thingie. Perhaps I'm the only one wishing to discuss what it should be possible to do with it.

IMO the reason for the tech tree is to let the players and AI's improve on their race, society, military and inter-species interaction.

What I miss is a discussion on what kind of improvements will be implemented in the game, how many new ships and how drastically should the "standard" tech tree let players alter their race & empire.

Comments, please :)
202 views 10 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
Come to think of it, this brings up another nasty issue - scenario building and how to let users add new graphics to the game.

Not that I expect that to be the main focus right now - but ceratinly an issue that needs to be adressed in the future.
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
Adding graphics will not be hard in Gal Civ it may be easier then you think..


Galactic Civilizations
Art Director
Alex G
Galactic Civilizations IV
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
Alex is feeling his power today. :)

--Cari
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
That's wonderful news. I have tried to look at the .mdl files and I didn't feel very smart doing so :)

Now I just wish somebody would comment on the tech tree issue. :( Perhaps the discussion is irrelevant - or it may be premature..
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
I have to admit that as a scientist the tech tree really interests me. I like the suggestions on the galciv notice board of implementing improvements to ships.
I'm also a huge fan of technological narrow mindedness. The more you know, the more likely you are to ignore something else as unimportant. It's actually very true in research and would allow a tech tree where researching one area could potentially remove another area from the tech tree.
I would also really like to see some interaction between the government type and variety and the tech tree. In reality the type of government has a huge role on research. There should be a very different focus to research if the war party rules the senate or the technology party rules. How to implement this without thousands of techs is a good question though.
Maybe keep a fairly similar tech tree but have the advancements you gain from the techtree only apply when a certain party holds a required number of seats.
For example to research battleship1 you should really have some war party members in the senate. Or maybe you can research it, but don't gain the battleship to build until the war party has owned 20% of the seats in the senate. From this moment onwards you can always build a battleship.
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
That's a very intersting point Solitair! Hmm. I wonder how this could be implemented.
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
DAMN! I like that, One of the things I never liked in most STG's is that fact that I could pretty much research everything in one game. It took away from the replay value. I agree lets find away to do it!
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
Definatly a very good idea. Will make the game vary more. So if one choose "good" or "evil" paths will block and change the tech-tree. As for other decisions.
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
On a related note: (should my comments here be in a separate thread?) I notice that the information
on available techs says nothing about what techs will be enabled if you research this one. The OS/2
version had this. Is it just not in there now for the time being, or is this the way it will be.

Cheers,
Jack
Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top
To implement it you would need to attach a non-tech pre-requisite to each technology. That then would allow any technology to require any of the following

(a) a certain race to have been discovered
(b) a certain ship to have been built
(c) a particular anomoly to have been explored
(d) a certain number of planets to be owned
(e) a particular party to control x% of the senate
(f) a particular type of government
(g) a particular random event to have occured

With this control you could then add or modify techs which would only be available to research during or after certain events. I could imagine games then where those events never occur and so play differently from techs where they do occur.

I think the hard part is implementing the code to allow you to add non-tech based pre-requisites. The easy part is then making the techs. I can add lots of suggestions for that.

Paul.