doogles

Join Date 10/2003

Can we tone down the unique tech trading some?

I like TA for the most part, but one thing that really bugs me is how much unique technology can be traded. The Yor have some excellent soldering techs that can turn the biggest pansies into a dangerous enemy on the ground. The iconians have this excellent +50% econ bonus building that seems really overpowered in others' hands. The Drengin and Korath can certainly share their insights as slavers, but how does Pain Amplification make sense in the hands of the Altarians? And the poor Arceans should never be bullied into giving away weather control! That technology is entirely too strong to just pass around the galaxy to anybody who doesn't desperately need the boost (i.e., the Arceans for their navigation centers).

But more than just asking, "what makes sense to trade?", being able to trade for so many unique techs turns TA into DA with extra content. When you can get a hold of so many "unique" techs, everybody ends up being entirely too similar mid-game.

And possibly even more annoying is the fact that it's so vital to some races to get at other race's unique techs. Playing with tech trading off is no longer an option with some races having no access to starbase mining modules, good econ techs, morale techs (Hello, Thalans!), etc.

If at all possible I'd like to see the official, metaverse-friendly tech trees be (a) more balanced so races like the Thalan aren't impossible to keep happy (I assume balancing will happen anyway, but it's part of my rant, so I gotta mention it), and (

most of the interesting and powerful unique techs flagged untradeable. Stealing techs via invasion and espionage wouldn't be as annoying to me, because it's impossible to guarantee you'll get Awesome Unbalancing Technology X at the specific moment you need it most. But trading is just getting silly.

If SD wants this game to encourage playing each race due to the awesome differences, they need to disallow players from acquiring those differences in-game.

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I agree! Seems like you can regularly pick up Weather Control or another powerful empire-wide effect, in return for just some crummy early game tech.

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I don't entirely disagree. However, I like that sometimes there is some really cool tech and only one guy has it and the only way I can get it is to be friendly towards him and offer him something really good. So perhaps some more of the unique techs should not be tradable, but not all of them.

What if almost all of the tradable unique techs were "we do not want to trade this right now unless we great a great deal." That would make them attainable to someone who has an interesting plan or hope, but not everyday.

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Personally, I just turn that idiotic tech trading off. Makes the whole game a lot funner because the races keep their uniqueness, and also a bit more balanced because I can't go and trade Soil Enhancement, Industrial Sector and 1k bc for Doom Rays.

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I also play without it. It usually avoids to combat ships with multiple weapon/defense techs.
Imagine, the US would trade their(as I think) expensive and quite useless stealth tech to
an (as always) "temp-ally-foe" in exchange for say some needed diplomacy skills, lol. The russians would party, having access to that tech, as they already possess stealth detection tech.

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What if almost all of the tradable unique techs were "we do not want to trade this right now unless we great a great deal." That would make them attainable to someone who has an interesting plan or hope, but not everyday.

This is probably the best bet, to be honest, and they have already added a "WillingnessToTrade" attribute to the game to try to control this better.

As a side note, I do think that any tech that relies heavily on the race in question's physiology should not be tradeable. This includes the Dregnin/Korath research/pain amplification tree, but also includes Farming, Life Support, and even the Colonization techs. Anything else, like Weather Control, on the other hand, is perfectly able to be traded, but it certainly should have a low WillingnessToTrade value.

There are a few exceptions to this in my mind (the Kyrnn's Conversion techs, for one), but it works well as a general rule of thumb.

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I agree that the solution is to just give some of these unique techs a much higher value in the eyes of the AI so they are not so willingly traded for such a low value A player that is not satisfied with that solution should just turn tech trading off altogether, which, of course, is already an option in the game.

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For me it has made the Drath move from my least favourite race to my most. As the Drath you have the potential to set the relationship patterns of all other races masterfully. I can play them with say 4 opponents 2 good ethics and two evil, get them all fighting their own ethic-mate.

You can screw up what should normally be good relations, and leave yourself as one of the only remaining races in the game that they will be happy trading with.

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Playing with tech trading off is no longer an option with some races having no access to starbase mining modules, good econ techs, morale techs (Hello, Thalans!), etc.

I've heard this from other people before. I don't know how they miss it, but the Thalans have a pretty nice Morale building in their tree.

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Playing with tech trading off is no longer an option with some races having no access to starbase mining modules, good econ techs, morale techs (Hello, Thalans!), etc.

I've heard this from other people before. I don't know how they miss it, but the Thalans have a pretty nice Morale building in their tree.

That only goes so far, compared to the flexibility of starbases. Even the Iconians lack the line of production/econ upgrades for their starbases, so it's a very challenging game if you go with no tech trading. Unless I've missed a post from the devs somewhere, we still don't know if this is an intentional design for these races, or if the devs just haven't finished the tech trees yet, and everyone will get the usual starbase modules. It would be nice to know that.

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

+153

I only started experimenting with no tech trading last summer, and that was mostly b/c I never felt like I could get the deals that the computer players gave each other.

Re TA, I'm also hoping that the tech trees will change a good bit and that truly "universal" things like resource mining techs will be in every tree in some form. I'm pretty sure that the draft tree for the Thalans (in the builds before they were playable) did not have the advanced governments, but in Beta 4 they do.

Methinks there is *much* playtesting left for those of us who can find the time

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Is there going to be an option where "Unique" means it's useless to other races?

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

+153

IIRC, there is a "Can (or can't) be traded" flag for each tech. I think I saw that in a preview of the tech tree editor. But I think "unique" is not the same thing; some games will start with some techs available only to specific civs, but right now you can trade some of your "unique" stuff but not others.

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Re TA, I'm also hoping that the tech trees will change a good bit and that truly "universal" things like resource mining techs will be in every tree in some form.

I still feel those Resource Mining modules should just be placed under Space Mining. It's something everyone has, and it makes logical sense (at least to me)

No idea where you could place the Economic Modules, though.

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

+153

No idea where you could place the Economic Modules, though.

I can imagine some civs not being able to build the production-boosting modules for Econ bases. The way the new Thalan tree reads to me, it might just be too much to expect a Thalan equivalent in one of those tiny, primitive bases.

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I did wonder about this, but I sorta like picking up the 50% planetary economy bonus tech

. If the AI is stupid enough to trade it then I'm game. The absence of other techs (like certain starbases for the Thalans) does seem to make it work out ok.

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Ultimately, ff it were up to me, I would have had three different levels of "tradeability" for techs:

1. Can't be traded at all - Used very sparingly

2. Can be traded if both Civs involved in the trade have the tech in their tree - Used the most often.

This would be very useful with the way the Yor Tech Tree currently is... if there are two races in game that use the Yor tech tree, they couldn't trade their unique techs back and forth, even though they logically should be able to use them.

3. Can always be traded - Used mostly for Weapons, Defenses, etc, but also race-unique techs that have no reason beside Willingness that they couldn't be traded.

These levels would be used along side the AI Values and Willingness to Trade values.

Maybe something like this can be integrated before the release of TA, but the game is supposed to be feature frozen now... ah well.

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Playing with tech trading off is no longer an option with some races having no access to starbase mining modules, good econ techs, morale techs (Hello, Thalans!), etc.

I've heard this from other people before. I don't know how they miss it, but the Thalans have a pretty nice Morale building in their tree.

They have one good morale building, and it's an achievement (one per empire). Their other building is mediocre at best - 25% morale boost. The old tree had the virtual reality station for a 40% boost. When you have a race whose homeworld will be 24 billion people large, you really don't want to use all your tiles on those little 25% morale buildings.

I did wonder about this, but I sorta like picking up the 50% planetary economy bonus tech

. If the AI is stupid enough to trade it then I'm game. The absence of other techs (like certain starbases for the Thalans) does seem to make it work out ok.

This is one I actually strongly dislike as I stated above. If the iconians trade it away, which the AI is bound to do if it sees a "good deal", then the other race suddenly has a huge boost, since they likely have their own econ techs or buildings. To me, that's one that should be a VERY hard-to-get tech. Whether it's expensive to research or not, it's such a huge advantage to non-iconians that it should be difficult as hell to trade.

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As a side note, maybe unique techs should be tradeable only by the race who originates the tech. I play as the Arceans, I can pick and choose to trade Weather Control with my allies, but they can't turn around and trade it to my enemies, because I originated the technology. Not realistic perhaps, but trade goods are already like this, and it would certainly make things more interesting. Befriend the arceans to get weather control, or just conquer them, knowing the Yor already got weather control from them and will have a huge advantage?

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They have one good morale building, and it's an achievement (one per empire). Their other building is mediocre at best - 25% morale boost. The old tree had the virtual reality station for a 40% boost.

Well... it may only be 25% morale, but it is a helluva lot cheaper than the closest normal morale buildings. 25bc to build and 1bc maintenance compared to 250bc to build and 5bc maintenance for Extreme Stadiums (which only have 20% morale) or 300bc to build and 6 maintenance for Zero G Sports Arenas (which give +5% morale more).

It may not be the best Morale building in the game, but it is DAMN cheap compared to other ones.

As a side note, maybe unique techs should be tradeable only by the race who originates the tech. I play as the Arceans, I can pick and choose to trade Weather Control with my allies, but they can't turn around and trade it to my enemies, because I originated the technology. Not realistic perhaps, but trade goods are already like this, and it would certainly make things more interesting. Befriend the arceans to get weather control, or just conquer them, knowing the Yor already got weather control from them and will have a huge advantage?

Something like this plus a "Can be Traded only if both races have it in their Tech Tree" trade-ability flag could easily keep the Tech Tree trading under control (and make it easier to modify the level of trade-ability in the game, too)...

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This is an absolutely brilliant idea, for so many reasons. If it were implemented, it goes a long way to limiting the availability of unique technologies. On the other hand, it preserves, even enhances, the diplomatic aspect of the game.

With the unique technology trees, different civilizations play differently. If your idea were implemented, different alliances will play differently. Taking on a Yor/Drengin coalition may be a completely different challenge from fighting the Yor and Thalans, due to the unique combination of technology they may have traded. And, of course, the allies you choose yourself will become a more significant decision.

Of course, even when you're friendly with a civ, it should still be quite costly to get some of the more powerful unique technologies.

You should make a new thread devoted to this, on the off-chance the developers miss your post.

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People have been talking about "technology brokering" for a while now on the boards. Hasn't happened for whatever reason.

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No idea where you could place the Economic Modules, though.

Doesn't that sort of thing make their super ability irrelevant. "You can instantly build factories, but we're going to excise everything that makes factories better?"

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

+153

"You can instantly build factories, but we're going to excise everything that makes factories better?"

Although I'm open to the notion that super abilities might need to change to reflect the new civ details, this is sort of an apples-and-oranges thing. I'm really glad to have the Thalan factory-building bonus given how friggin' expensive the new Thalan industrial improvements are. I haven't gotten there, but I can imagine when the advanced factories go out, I could end up regretting a traditional booster array if I'd built one.

p.s. My sketch-notion about why no starbase facilities could "make sense" is just an attempt to use my imagination to console myself about something I don't like (yet?). The uknown waters of the new economy seem to have most of us rather out of sorts.

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Fair enough.

BTW, I've been wanting to say that I love your avatar. Also, I just noticed that your favorite metaverse race is the Thalan, so, er, sorry about directing my frustration at you.

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The Russians do not have stealth-detection tech. Where'd you get that info from? Of course, you can detect stealth if the stealth plane is DIRECTLY ABOVE your radar, but that's useless because they'll only be directly above for a fraction of a second. You could use cell phone towers, but they can be jammed with terrific ease and cannot track, just detect.

As such, detecting is nearly useless even if you can do it. You can't track stealth, can't lock on to it, and can't shoot at it unless your using the ol' Mk.1 eyeball as your sensor.

Back on topic, the new tech system makes the 'Minor Race X steals all technology of Major Race Y' event more valuable. You can give the minor some extreme colonization tech or space mining tech which they can't use and obtain your weather control, engines, economics, governments, morale stuff, organic hulls, blah blah blah etc. with ease.

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

+153

I love your avatar.

I wish I could say I made that pic, and sometimes that I'd thought to use a nickname when I started posting here, Psilon Mobster maybe.

I am indeed hung up on the Thalans b/c their base bonuses go nicely with my tendency to make faux-Psilons out of everything I play in a galctic 4X game. Knowledge is power, as they say...

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