FreeOrion

If you are referring to a change to a multiple-choice column tech tree-- well it seems to me that the work of cutting the unnecessary would still be mostly applicable to a future tech tree in whatever form.

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After consolidating a few things i get this error a ton of times -- which causes FO to crash:



So for now, i'm going to leave everything as a theory, even if adding practical effects.

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Is it still worth having a separate class of techs for theories and applications (and refinements of which there probably aren't any...)? Or should just that theory-depends-only-on-theory restriction be removed?

Very few refinements yet exist, but it would probably be premature to add many to a tech tree as unfinished as this one is anyway.

I neither support nor condemn the current tech classes at this time, just the "theory-depends-only-on-theory restriction".

Speaking of tech classes, it would be nice to have an "invisible" class for stuff like this:



And so far i've consolidated away 21 techs. Phew! It was a lot more work than i was assuming. Also the idea that i could logically combine the vast majority of theories with an application isn't looking so likely. Maybe 50 of the 80. I'm beginning to wonder if a more aggressive redesign wouldn't be more efficient.

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You should be able to put a line like after the researchturns line and before the prerequisites line. This will set a flag stored as part of the tech that it shouldn't appear on the tech tree. This won't actually work yet - the tech will probably still appear on the tree - but the parsing should be in place and it should be forwards-compatible.

Hulls, parts, and buildings can also have producible = False after their buildtime lines, though again I don't think this will yet do anything. I'm also not sure why I felt it was necessary to have at all, since if they aren't unlocked, then they won't be producible anyway...

That all said, I'm wondering if changing it to be a simple flag - like Unresearchable and Unproducible - would be better. That is, omit the boolean parameter bit, since there's a reasonable default already in place (true) when the line is omitted...

A flag seems a little clearer to me, if it is worth your trouble.

EDIT:
I really like some of our technobabble tech descriptions, but there are a lot of gaps in what the game can currently do. The interesting explanations too often tend to confuse more than support and explain.

I'm starting to think that the most expedient thing to do would be to replace the tech tree with something much less sophisticated. Simple lines of tech that doesn't cross-branch: I.E. "Detection 1" -> "Detection 2" -> "Detection 3", etc. ...each which provides a greater bonus. Such a "tree" would be much easier to add content to as new effects are enabled. Of course whenever possible the actual tech effects should be preserved.

And perhaps when we have all the tech functions created near 1.0 we would be in a much better position to try to interweave then in some artful and coherent fashion, rather than what we've been doing up till now, trying to fill in a pre-designed skeleton tree.

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Seconded completely.

Starting Techs
Why do we need Ancient Ruins Modifier, Optical Scanner and Planet Stealth Modifier at all?

There is not technology in the tech tree for Colony Pod, Optical Scanner, Extra Fuel Tank, Ground Troop Pod, Defence Grid and Laser ship parts. (Or the starting hulls and buildings such as Basic Shipyard and Orbital Drydock)

If we must have the three starting techs, their effects could be combined into one starting tech, so be less cluttering.

Or, the ship parts mentioned above could be on the tech tree as pre-researched techs and the effect of Optical Scanner technology (for planets) could be added to the Optical Scanner ship part technology.

It seems strange to me that I must research Galactic Exploration even though I start the game knowing how to do starlane travel. It would make sence that all the knowledge that I am already using shouldn't need researching. The basic technology that everyone starts with should be on the tech tree, so that in the future there could be campaigns where you could start out not knowing some things. Also it would be desirable to be allowed to start an Empire which doesn't have all these technologies at the beginning of the game.

If all the technologies on the tree had prerequisites which everyone started with I think it would be a more elegant design.

Colonies/Outposts
Also, colony ships are known at the start of the game, but outpost ships must be researched. This seems wrong to me. The game should start with the ability to put outposts on planets (which can research, not farm) and colonies should be added later with reseach. Asteroid Mining reseach should give the ability to put outposts on asteriods. The farming focus shouldn't be allowed on asteriods, just mining and research and later production (when the asteriod hulls have been reseached).

Refinements
There are vast amounts of hulls on the tech tree, but not many ship parts. Maybe different sizes of hulls of the same basic type should be refinements. We have Basic Autolabs and Basic Autofactories, but no advanced versions. These should be refinements.
The refinements should probably have the prerequisite of a theory a few steps further along the tree, so they cannot be reseached right away. (I always research Greater Industrial Centres and Supreme Industrial Centres right after Industrial Centres, so I get a big bonus very soon after the starting smaller bonus.)

My final point - trees grow upwards. the tech tree in FreeOrion goes sideways. It is a tech creeper.

The Galactic Exploration tech is not about how to use starlanes; it's about the effects of interstellar travel on society...

They exist for technical reasons about how different effects work. You aren't supposed to know or care about them. As of a few days ago Geoff made them invisible.

I also like that idea.

Outposts don't yet work entirely how we like-- they are not intended simply as "little colonies"-- but the idea is that outposts (at the beginning of the game) can be built in hostile environments where a colony would die. Think of them as a little base sealed off from fatal conditions. Like the first human settlement on Venus.

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Here's an idea for grouping the starting stuff in to "starting techs" that species normally would get. But we could eventually remove some of the techs from certain species to create unusual types such as removing "offensive warfare" from an extremely pacifistic species starting techs.

I think it would also help "root" the tree to have techs branch out of a few more concrete sources.

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Could the Standard Hull be renamed Basic_Large?

Also the Ship Optical Scanner could be a refinement of the colony version. All the scanners could be like this, so the big ground based or outpost based detectors would come first. Different sizes of the same kind of hull should all be refinements of the basic design. (I think someone else mentioned this earlier) Weapons could also be the same. A second refinement could make each device available to troops or spys (if they end up needing weapons, stealth and scanners).

I would like to see the refinemts for Industrial Centre and Deep Core Mining to require some theories, so you don't reseach the basic technology and the the refinement immediately after. This would be fine for the hulls and scanners mentioned above. The theory required could be one that is already in the tech tree, I just think a delay would be good, not a cost increase.

I have found that Force-Energy Infrastructure doesn't have any effect. It is a good idea though.

The Cyborgs technology could have a lot of refinements added, to represent increasingly more machinery being added to the population. Maybe some species benefits should be lost as the citizens of the empire loose some of their starting identity and become more homogeneous. All the citizens would be cyborgs and their original species becomes less important. Maybe the final technology on this path would convert all the empire's species to sentient machines, so the species of all ships and planets in the empire would be the same. Ships could be converted with one technology and planets with the final one. I really think players would enjoy choosing between terraforming planets and changing their population, rather than doing both as it now stands.

The benefits of some technologies shouldn't stack, to force a choice, rather than make it better to do everything. I liked that I couldn't build asteroid hulls in the same shipyard as neutronium parts. I had to choose between the two when designing ships. Neutronium Forge cannot be built on an Outpost and Asteriod Processor can only be built at an asteroid field (which must be an outpost). Asteroid Processor is unlocked by many technologies as any hull size could be first. It would be better if one of the hull types was the first application and the rest were refinements.

I also found a Neutronium Synthesizer at an Anceint Ruins site. I don't think I can build this by researching, which is also good. When I got Death Rays from another Ancient Ruins it wasn't so good. The game became very much easier instantly. The ruins producing things that cannot be got any other way is good, but jumping to the end of the technology tree is not so good because it devalues the effects of everyones reseach. The Tech-Tree should be the way to get the technologies which are on it. Some shortcuts are ok, but too many or too big. Rather than giving specific tech the Ruins could give a tech further up the tree than the player has progress, maybe it should even be further up the highest branch the player is on. Some unreseachable extra technologies could be placed on the tree at the top for this purpose - and for Progentitor races to have access to.

OK, i'm working on adding in the techs to accumulate ground troops on your planets.

Revision 4367:
I added 4 'planetary garrison' techs in addition to a pre-researched root tech 'self defense'.

You start the game with a troop meter of 5 (or 15 on a imperial capitol), and can eventually get it to 80 (or 90 on a capitol).

It's still a little rough. I put the techs in the production category, since none or the current categories really made sense.


We need more and/or different tech categories. There's currently tons of stuff under "ships" that has nothing to do with ships. I would like to see categories that are a little less about the imaginary branch of science in which an advance was discovered and more about the practical application of the tech.

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Practical applications-related categories is how they are / were supposed to be set up. Growth is about growing planets, Production is about increasing production output, Ships is about making new / better ships, Learning is about increasing research output (sort of), and Construction is about infrastructure (or stuff you need to be able to do other stuff faster / better). There used to be an Economics category that was about increasing trade, though Bigjoe5 removed it some time ago, perhaps because it was useless in the current game.

I disagree, which is why my made-up non-functional multiple-choice tree goes in exactly the opposite direction.

I feel like it's better for there to be a bit more variety within a category, so that it's not just a matter of "OK, I researched a detector, now I have to choose between researching another detector, or researching something else." Instead, it's better if the player makes a tech decision, then once the tech is researched, he gets to make a choice between a very different set of options, because the new techs that are available to him are very different from the ones he just researched.

This doesn't mean that techs that do the same thing shouldn't all go in the same category. Obviously in most cases, similar techs with an increasing, non-stacking effect should go in the same category, but there doesn't need to be a category that's exclusive to, say, weapons, for example.

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