63 replies to this topic

[Sha'thar of the Gosht Kohr]

Sha'thar's still somewhat concerned over the rampant sharing of information, regarding tech breakthroughs. She worries that we'll get another 20 turns into the game and folks will begin to see a 'sameness' of technologies developed.

Should it be a concern?

[MadMartinB]

You missed a choice. No if the player is capable of role playing. Many players have found the path to better ICs, industrial output, Antimatter engines, better stripmines. The real question is wether all of the empires of a player will go that path.

I play a pirate and a colonist. The pirate is still working on 2G Industrial Science since I will not buy it with SRPs. The Colonist is slowly working on weapons and has bought better ICs, and Industrial Output and is working on antimatter engines (woopppsss)

Depends on the players flair.

[ShadowKitsune]

While the Technology Tree is large, it is finite. So eventually, the entire tree will become a known quantity. As far as sameness goes, that will depend on how close a look you want to take from one empire to the next. It would be a truly sad thing if, in order to survive, each empire was a virtual copy of one another. I do not believe that this will be the case, but one never knows what the future may bring.

-SK

[Ixitixl]

I agree that the list of technological discoveries is huge, but I do believe that eventually every empire will have the same list of key breakthroughs. These primary breakthroughs will be the ones that are too important to ignore. Examples are Improved Strip-mines and Transwarp Jump Drives. Hopefully it will be the secondary choices that we make that will help differentiate the "Technological Uniqueness" from each other.

[MadMartinB]

Ix..

Why are Improved Stripmines important? They are 3x more efficient but take time and effort to make. Here are some thoughts...

Each empire has a tradition that dictates their tech. There are a few tech items that are important for all players except the stay in my home system players. These would be engines and NTWD/FTWD.

Colonizers: need to find a way to get more people off planet (better engines and quicker turn around) and also need to free up people to get them off world. (IIC, Impr Strip etc..)

Pirates/Space Combat junkies: Engines, weapons etc....

etc..

remember that to get 3G Industrial Science as quick as possible + Improved ICs for a throughput of 975 and engines to turn those ships takes (on slot 1..some of the pre req can be bought):

1G Psych, 2G Psych, 1G Civil Admin, 2G Civil Admin, 2G Industrial, 3G industrial, 2G and 3G computer, Advanced Bionics, 1G Cybernetics, MK II Nuke, MK I Fusion and MK III Fusion.

This is 13 turns of time.

A space combat man could do 3x engines, 3x weapon 1, 3x Armor, MK I Force Shield, MK I Deflector, Advanced Fuel 2x Survey Sensors in about the same amount of time.

This would mean some pretty serious combat ships out there searching. And many players will say that you can defend your homeworld etc.. While this is true I can only imagine the joy of having a pirate ship arrive at your asteroid belt and sit there while your 8 convoy route ships then process and run into the fleet losing 600 berthings or so. Ouch... (please contact the Mindsphere to share all pains)

[Krelnett_of_Kraan]

We think there will be some technologies that everyone will have, but a lot of the easily-perceived uniqueness will be in ship-design choices. Some will be heavily armored, others will stack on more weapons. Some come from cold worlds that have billions of tons of demonblood to build frost cannons with, others come from crystal forests or have large deposits of shenn stones for plasmatic devices. Some will have cloaking technology, others will decide it takes too many resources and skip it.
We surmise the galaxy'll have about as much diversity as, say, Star Trek. Everyone uses more or less the same warp tech, but some have phasers, others disruptors, etc.
And they all LOOK totally different.

[woolfe99]

All I can say is that my allies have a vast store of tech knowledge, but everyone's tech choices are extremely diverse. Yes, there are a *few* key techs that everyone wants, e.g. NTWD's, improved materials, but stuff like that is a no-brainer. Other than that, when I look at allies' PDF's, I see on average maybe 3-4 techs on their research queue that I am currently researching.

[EternusIV]

This is a great poll.

I agree with most of the senitments that advocate tech sharing for two reasons:

1) Even if we all knew the entire tech tree, there is no possible way that we can develop every tech in the long run which will lead to diversity; and

2) War will change our priorites


I share one concern, Sha'thar....

The focus on tech developments have been regarding improved industries and engine technology (for very good reason) -- how could a fledgling empire ignore these avenues? The result is that many empires will have Fusion/Antimatter and improved industries at the top of their research lists....making it appear that a cookie-cutter-starter-approach is materializing quickly.

In fact, it is fair to say that by turn 30-40, a majority of empires might have similar tech lists: Improved IC, Antimatter Engines, NTWD, Mk IV JSS, Mk III Force Shield, Intermediate Weapons....these are all items that we currently value based upon our current assumptions about the game....which will change.

I think that the tech pace ultimately creates the diversity. Even with SRPs, every empire will hit a ceiling on what techs we can actually "buy" -- techs beyond that ceiling will take a very long time to develop.....and thats when the hard choices have to be made. Eventually, no two empires will focus on the same thing - their needs will change as time goes on.




I voted 'no' only because I don't see this as an issue in the long run. In fact, I can see where empires that started within even a year of each other will all face the tech ceiling at about the same time. We will get bored waiting for the post-tech-ceiling items and start building warships to beat each other up (which - could easily reach your neighbor's homeworld in ONE turn with the technology outlined above provided you had all the warp points surveyed)

Another factor is weapon matchup (based on the Naval Combat Primer) - if your warmonger neighbor has non-existent Energy Weapon defenses, you would be wise to develop Energy Weapons to give yourself the edge.

Here is another scenario: say that you have eliminated the space defenses of another player. You send in your 20 divisions of troops to GATK to grab all the resources and industries....only to find 350 divisions of troops waiting for you on the ground! Decision: 1) MDD to eliminate? or 2) crank out more troops?

We currently have the luxury to stare at the tech tree and develop away at our heart's content - but once war starts, I feel that our tech needs will change according to the severity of circumstances.

[MadMartinB]

Interesting thoughts Eternus... Couple items:

1. 30 turns for Antimatter is doubtful (very) unless you cripple your economy and they blow up (or so it tells us).

2. I come trampling along to your home world where you have 250 Divisions of Imperial Heavy Infantry. I land my 5 division of Heavy Infantry with my war like race. Now I have research ground weapons to say a good level.Take 1 such weapon. You have spent ooddlllllleeesss of slots to get those antimatter drives (at 9 slots it would take some 11 months....

Eternus:
Imperial Heavy Infantry = heavy Weapons strength of 40

TAC Rating Heavy Weapons: 40*250*10 (recoiless rifle) = 100,000

Mean Pirate Martin:

TAC Rating Heavy Weapons: 40*10*450 (recoiless rifle + fair + Adequate + Good group weapon for Heavy Weapons) = 180,000

Uh Oh Eternus. Also..if I am a ground combat monster my CCB bonus will be high. My 10 divisions eat your 250 for breakfast.

[woolfe99]

MadMartinB, on Jan 15 2004, 02:00 PM, said:

1. 30 turns for Antimatter is doubtful (very) unless you cripple your economy and they blow up (or so it tells us).

You have spent ooddlllllleeesss of slots to get those antimatter drives (at 9 slots it would take some 11 months....

I wouldn't make those assumptions. I have seen interesting trends with tech beyond tier 4...

[Sssarass]

I would disssagree that sssharing of the tech tree hasss at leassst for usss had a big impact. We were ssshown the path to NTWD, but didn't change our current rc ssselection asss it wass going to arrive by natural meansss.

Now perhapsss ssshould sssomeone get sssay 5G Ssssocial Ssscience and it opened up Imperial Universssity that bosssted onesss resssearch effortsss, we might be tempted to alter our rc ssselection and put quite a few on that one...

But we have been happily muddling along the path finding very interesssting thingsss and branchesss, thisss has allowed usss to ssstuble onto 3G Indussstrial Ssscience and improved indussstrial complexesss and the latessst dissscovery of ICE isss a very, very interesssting material we haven't quite figured it out . And thingsss like the Mk I Antimatter Engine would be nice to have, but it isss at thisss point not a mussst have at leassst for usss. Being a more carefull race, we don't need to russsh out into the universsse.

CTO Sssarass

[Dr.0]

I vote yes.

A no vote is actually ambiguous. If you were truly roleplaying the game, then you would/could not trade or reveal technological information until you meet an alien race within the game.

Jack

[WKE235]

Sharing Tech info merely allows players to better choose the direction and style they wish to develop their race. For those who started the game, we've blindly chosen differing techs, often when the RC may have been better spent elsewhere to follow our racial designs. Newer races, if they join a group, can quickly develop in the direction they wish. I have a feeling some of the more interesting player encounters will be with players that right now only have 10-15 turns in, as each will be more diverse and finely tuned towards how they want to player.

[EternusIV]

MMB-

Exactly my point I think We sacrifice something along the way no matter what we research?

Dr.0-

Good point

WKE-

Totally agree.

[hobknob]

When too much info is shared then you have folks turning to the sure thing and the avenues if independant research slow down dramatically since you "know" the path to something you think you really want. There are still a lot of basic (standard material) techs out there that are not showing up and I attribute this to too much research being assigned to "known" avenues of research. Sharing tech is not the only cause of this, part of it has to do with some of the very obscure tech combinations required and extreme lack of useful descriptions of current tech.

Case in point is the Nuclear Trans Warp Drive - who would have ever thought that you needed advanced fuel to get it. There was never any mention of any fuel issues with any of the previous techs and no explanation of "why" a fleets AP's were reduced to 0 after warp.

One other cause of the cookie cutter effect is that so far there is only a single avenue to get an item like improved industries. If there were several avenues for this tech then you wouldn't feel forced to all follow the same path just to get something which many feel could be an extremely valuable item.

JMHO of course.