FreeOrion

Hey. I'm new to the project, and am aware that it is incomplete, but it looks like it has a lot of potential. However, one suggestion I have is to slow down the tech development. Within the fisrt few turns, I developed like 50 new techs just by queing it up. The tech itself is sweet though, with specific descriptions for each one and everything. Good work!

The current low-cost fast-researching techs are that way for testing purposes. They'll be given appropriate costs and times later when balancing content.

Any chance of adopting a more moo2-like tech system?

It seems to me that this type of 'tech sphagetti' menu always invites a zillion redundant techs and never ever has a comfortable interface.
moo2s was simple, extremely effecient, extremely easy to navigate and use, remarkably easy to understand, requiring no myriad filters, endless mouse scrolling or a magnification lense.
It was simple, concise, powerful and done with extreme finesse.
Granted it doesn't give you the option to link 5 techs as prerequisites to another but I think I'd always choose the kind that I can use comfortably and has 0 redundancy.

I mean yeah I love all the flavor text, but what is the point of having a starting tech that gives no apparent benefit just so it has a picture and long text?

And conversely there's no point whatever in having multiple techs that all give incremental bonuses to the same thing. it's the point where game design becomes flowchart design and is redundant (good lesson to learn from stardocks games)... unlike in moo2 where each and every tech is something that's usually completely new.


I think the tech tree mechanism could be looked over, sifted for redundancy of design and then condensed... in the roadmap there's a lot about adding more branches to it and that sort of blew my mind..!

awsome project btw

The tech tree as it is now needs to be pared down, perhaps to have about two theories per "level" of tech on average, with about 5 levels, instead of three or four per level we have now. The categories should also be reorgtanized and consolidated into about four instead of the current five, as the current breakdown doesn't really group things evenly or logically. After doing that, adding about three more categories won't make the result much more complicated than it is now.

But more importantly, the tree needs to be filled in with actual useful stuff. Most of it is just theories, with a spattering of applications in the first few tiers. The second half is pretty much empty.

The point of the theories is the choice between getting useful stuff out of the current tech tier (applications) vs. research up higher and getting more advanced stuff. The theories have no initial payoff, so stepping up a notch in the tree is a time-consuming and costly choice vs. getting immediate rewards. They might also have distinct properties for espionage. It might be a lot easier to steal technical details than to "steal" theorietical knowledge, or it might require a different type of spy (planted theorist vs. hacking networks).

I'm not exactly sure where to post this but here is where it has ended up.
I remember from Moo2, the major strategy was to have better technology than the other guy. So sometimes you would sit there doing nothing but research topic after topic.
I think that there should be something to break it up a little. Like to research a better beam weapon you might actually have to build a ship with the beam weapon you have as a prerequisite. Once you have actually used the technology then the new tech should become available.
In reality this makes more sense than without. Could you believe it if someone invented the cannon, never made it and then eventually invent a machinegun to mass produce for war?

_________________
it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are,
the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer
be at the rghit pclae.

Also, is there going to be any miniaturization like in Moo2? That was good because it meant that the smaller ships sizes didn't become obsolete. I like lots of small ships and it sucks when they're a waste of resources. (the big ship destroys all the smaller ships).

_________________
it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are,
the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer
be at the rghit pclae.

This is good idea. For example researching tech Nuclear missiles requires using this weapon in war. But after researching tech Supercomputer it allowed theoretical research without real using or when Intergalactic Senate forbid testing or use in war(old missiles become absolete, but developing newer version can wipe out enemy civilization).


I think that small ships should have better stealth and therefore it should be harder to hit them. And there should be also way to allow something like small invisible ship with 20 missiles, which will be visible only when it fires(like Klingon ship in Star Trek) - with some techs it can be possible to unload 20 missiles near enemy ship and then made ship visible and then fire all 20 missiles simultaneously.

No. One reason is that miniaturization would mean that the same hull could contain more ship parts. This means that an upgraded hull will have a different design, and will need to be redesigned by the player. Upgrading in freeorion, if/when added, will involve replacing or improving the already-present parts in a design, without changing the number or types of them, allowing a ship to be upgraded automatically, possibly without changing the "ship design" assigned to it.

Another reason is that FreeOrion ship designs use parts in slots. There's no way to "miniaturize" the parts since they are either in a slot or not.


It is intended that ships of various hulls will be balanced. Doing this doens't require "miniaturization" specifically.

So a smaller ship would have advantages over the bigger ships that make them strategically sane?
eg. * Smaller ships are faster and harder to hit. (you might need anti fighter specific weaponry to deal with them)
* They are more effective for stealth purposes.

obviously you would still need many small ships to beat a bigger ship but that just comes down to balancing building costs with ship sizes.

_________________
it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are,
the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer
be at the rghit pclae.

I guess miniaturization in FreeOrion would be more like increasing damage by a factor.
eg
Miniaturization reduces weapon size to 50%. This means damage is doubled. The weapon itself does not take any extra space or slots. The design does not change this way.

Personally, I'm quite glad that there are no plans for something like miniaturisation. When it was used in Moo2 for example, researching new weapons technology would also tend to miniaturise and improve existing weapons. This made it less clear-cut which weapon would be better to use.

Was the objective of the weapons research to gain the new weapons technology or to improve the pre-existing one? If more batteries of the older weapon can be packed onto a ship frame, does the increase in total firepower now become sufficiently more damaging to stay on your ship designs (with more gun batteries added), or is it better to switch? If so, then at what point should the player switch?

You can work this out if you're willing to get a calculator and do some sums, or you can just rely on the experience you gain from playing the game several times, but I don't see why the player should ever have to resort to this. It's not mainly what the games are about. A 4X game isn't about doing grunt work experimenting to find which of the two weapons turns out to be the best. It should be as simple as the more advanced weapon being better, unless the pre-existing weapon filled a different tactical niche.

Miniaturisation isn't necessarily a bad idea per se, but I think that certain ways it can be used like in Moo2 as detailed, can just conflate and muddy a decision about how to achieve an objective rather than letting the player make decisions about which objective to achieve in the first place, if that makes sense

If you were to have miniaturization the next newly researched weapon should have more advantage than just damage. Like the added advantage to penetrate shields, persistent damage or kill marines. Then the decision about which weapon to use becomes cost vs abilities. Thus the next weapon is always better but the previous weapon doesn't immediately become obsolete.
Say someone likes the basic laser cannon. They are available from the beginning of the game and quickly become useless. However with miniaturization you could churn out ships packed with them and deal raw damage for less cost. It then becomes a plausible strategy but if someone had massive shields and you decided not to use the shield penetrating beam weapon you would be in trouble.
It gives the game more depth than when you just pick the newest weapon because it is the best.

_________________
it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are,
the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer
be at the rghit pclae.

You're more or less describing the refinement mechanism that's already planned. Certain techs are refinement class (as opposed to theory or application... see the filters on the tech screen) to prevous techs. Researching refinements improves the application it's under. Going up to the next level (generally represented by subsequent theories) will be a bigger / longer investment with a longer-term better result, but in the short term, refinement of already-researched applications has cheaper / faster benefits, but which are limited to be less powerful than the next theory-level in the long run.

After playing StarFury and Space Empires, I noticed they use "levelled" weapons, like a level 1 laser will do less damage compared to a level 9000 laser and could also have better range as well.

Basically with every advancement in laser technology made, you could create a levelled up version of the stock laser which will get better the more you refine it.

This could be a good idea, since it looks like the FreeOrion ship design system isn't going away from the "slot" system. My personal preference would be to use the MOO style creation system and have specials as well.

I do like the idea of having to make a ship armed with a certain weapon before you can make further advancements in that area of tech.