I was looking through the boards and noticed a lot of people have one issue or another with the tech tree so I tried to come up with a solution that would add some variety to every game and make things generally more unpredictable without too much more work on SD's part, I think.
So my thought is to hide the tech tree basically. When you pick your tech to research you can only see the ones currently available to research. Then when you finish the research, the game randomly selects another tech for you to look at vs. minaturizing or reducing the cost of a previously researched tech. Here is an example:
Weapons: (have Basic Laser)
Laser -----------------> Plasma Weapon - Cost 15 wks
. | -----------------> Laser Shield (increase def. against)
. |
. |
. --> Miniaturized Laser, lvl 2 - Cost: 5 wks
. --> Cheaper Laser, lvl 2 - Cost: 7 wks
. --> More Powerful, +1 attk - Cost: 10 wks
Plasma ----------------> ???
This way there is some more variety in the technologies, you can usually research up to a new tech but at a definate cost vs letting the cost drop as you research improvements to your current tech, and the tree doesn't need to be linear. Maybe the game doesn't always give you the next available tech until, say, you miniaturize the current one 1 level and make it 2 lvls more powerful. In reality, you might know that something is possible only after you have pushed an old technology to a new level and saw an interesting new property that you decide to explore and research. It would add some of that flavor into it. Obviously, you would limit how much someone could cheapen/increase power/miniaturize but it would certainly add more variety in the types of ships available and what you can do with them.
Any thoughts? Hope this wasn't too out there.
