[TA Beta1] "...But I don't *want* your crappy tech..."

I'll agree on this one; it should definately be up to the player.

Can't you just select the 'all' tab under available projects, on the planet screen to show the 'overwritten' improvements again?.

I haven't played enough to verify how any of this works. But I would have to agree that a player should be able to build both, or either. I shouldn't be locked into one or the other.

In the example I mentioned, its not just a matter of the tile improvement in question...the original tech slot gave a +10 pop and +10 morale passive bonus that is far more valuable than just the buildings themselves...franky, one doesn't want their farms overly potent. The slot had not yet been researched, so the buildings were not yet availiable, in the retro tab or otherwise. Those ability to research those bonuses was lost, along with the slot.

Did you go check your civilization stats to see if you lost that bonus when the tech was overwritten?

The tech wasn't researched yet. The opportunity to research it was lost.

Then perhaps the answer is to give you the middle technologies as if you had researched them rather than add another pop-up window that you have to click on?

(My philosophy: Boo on popups that I have to click on, Yay for reasonable alternatives)

Heh, after reloading twice after invasions to get my own tech back, they finally slipped it in on me again at some point when I wasnt looking, and now my fat passives are gone for good..

I'm not actually sure that race specific building tech should be tradeable/or able to be gained through conquest, aside from picking up buildings already built on a conquered world. It seems like thats part of the "balance" and identity built into the races. I mean, shared techs and some of their unique techs should be availiable, to make for interesting trades, but maybe not the ones that "overwrite" one of your own techs...that would seem to somewhat defeat the idea of unique races.

Admittedly, in a single player game you don't really need for the races to be "balanced" (though I think it's a good goal to have)...they certainly weren't before...but the results I'm getting in the tech tree now are feeling a bit "chaotic".

I think the best way to handle this in the end is that when you steal, trade, whatever a non-racial unique tech, you should get your race's version of the tech, always. I'm actually kinda surprised it wasn't that way already, to be honest.

I've always thought that you should get the choice of denying or not using
a captured tech.

Like when you upgrade your govt. you get the choice.

Lots of time I stuck with upgraded manufacturing that bankrupts my system
unless I delete all of them.

I think there is a way of refusing all by planet in DA. But that is cumbersome.

Just like choosing ships in the shipyard, where you can choose all, core, or user ships, there needs to just be a simple set of tabs to help choose what to build on a planet. I don't remotely care what I trade for, it should never replace something I have researched. I should always have my hard earned research, in addition to any other choices from other sources.

You could additionally color code the various types, or you could add a secondary sort by/choose type. So the first set of tabs might be "all, mine, foreign". And the secondary could be "all, factories, influence, farming, etc". If you choose 'all' on the secondary then it color codes each by category.

Regardless of how it is actually implemented, we just should not have our techs replaced. We need to be able to use them, if we choose.

If it were a simple case of reverting to old buildings, that is accomplished in the "availiable projects" tab...though as you say, it can be cumbersome when you have many worlds.

Once again though, it's not about the buildings, its about the potential passive bonuses that were lost when the tech slot was overwritten.

Perhaps an "Alien Tech" tab would be the best method in this situation? That way, you only automatically upgrade to your own types of research, but still have the ability to use any stolen/traded tech you might acquire. And definitely no replacing anything on the tech tree, perhaps start a new branch for stolen traded alien tech.

Question, sorta off topic. Right now in the beta, you can play the Drengin, Arceans, and Terrans. In your games, is it only those 3 races, or are the other races still available to play, also? Reason for asking is because it is already obvious that there are some tweaks that need to be made when instances such as the one above occur. And as they add in the other modified races, will the first 3 still be available to see how they interact with each other

ideally, i'd like both. in your situation, i would have liked to invade the Arceans and get their version of the farm tech, but still have my Drengin version "unresearched" so I can get the passive bonuses -- or perhaps 50% research, to represent the idea that a big part of "the drengin version" of the tech was already figured out, owing to the fact that they had the Arcean model to base their own work off of.

Yes, other race's techs shouldn't overwrite your own. I don't really much care how it's fixed, but this is problematic. I don't mind if you simply can't gain the tech, or if I have a popup, or whatever. Ideally, you'd get both techs for the passive bonus as well as the better improvement, but that may not be realistic for development.

The other problem with "conflicting" techs is that they cause your list of improvements to become almost unmanageable. If I'm playing as the Drengin/Korath and have slave canyons as well as manufacturing centers, I will almost never build the manufacturing centers - I probably only grabbed them for the starbase improvements. The maintenance cost may not be much (I think 4bc vs. 1bc), though on a large scale it theoretically could hurt. But more importantly, I prefer to keep my evil pure! Slaves are the way of the future! I don't want these silly manufacturing centers on my planets!

As a side issue which I've seen other people mention, I do not want all these cool race specific buildings to be built by others. The concept of Korath using Falls of Wellness (unless you could fill them with blood), or an Altarian slave canyon is silly. SD just put a lot of effort into making the races unique. They should stay that way. Some, even perhaps most, of the unique techs should be tradeable, but the buildings shouldn't be an option for anyone but the race they were intended for.

I enjoy roleplaying as the humans. Demolishing evil improvements and rebuilding the planet with 'civilized' structures adds a lot to the game.

then i'd think being able to build other races' improvements would only enhance your roleplaying. SD's explicitly said that when you take over a planet as, say, the humans, and it's full of slave pits, you'll have to make the (out-of-game) ethical choice of whether to keep them or build over them.

if you steel a tech from a race, you learn how to build their structure. no way around it. whether or not you do is an ethical choice up to you.

what i think would be more interesting is if the AI actually made those choices. but i think they just look for the best building to suit their needs that they can build, and build it.

Alien tech should spawn a parallel branch of your tech tree, so that, for example, if you conquer three different civ's planets or spy for techs and get the same kind of top tier tech with different passive benefits, you benefit from all of them.

In other words, there should be a separate root available for each alien race's "acquired" technology. That would definitively prevent overwrites.

If it were just ethics, I guess i wouldn't have so much of a problem, but most of these unique improvements are so specifically geared toward the races that can build them that it doesn't make sense to let others use them.

How would the Altarians, Arceans, etc. be able to use the Pain Amplifier? All it would do is torture their scientists and drop their research to 0.

How would you explain any race taking over a Yor planet and using the Collectives? Did the race just suddenly become cyborgs? I could see the Drengins amusing themselves by putting people in it and watching them get electrocuted, but that isn't a really effective use.

I think this will allow people to crunch all the numbers and figure out what tech they need to steal from each race to get the best results in all fields. No one would build regular economy buildings if they could build a Graft of Ages, for example. We'll be back to generic races in no time, just with nicer icons. You won't have to deal with any weaknesses, as the races were designed to have. Just find the best, and build it.

this is a good and fair point, but one which can be addressed within the realms of your roleplaying. instead of saying, "i refuse to use that technology," you can say, "there's no way my people could even use that technology."



and for some people, that will be the fun of it. this is a non-sequitor from your last post. this is player behavior that has nothing to do with RPing, but with maxing out MV scores. and what's wrong with that? you don't appear to have any MV characters, so what does it matter to you what other players do?

also, there's an oversight within the point itself. being able to steel the best tech from other players means they must research it first. you can't rely on that. it also means there will be 2 tech trees you have to chose to have no access to (due to the 10 player limit). aquiring a tech isn't always easy, and i have a strong feeling the devs will make these techs much more valued by their respective AIs (via the new willingness to trade XML tag).

don't get me wrong. i play in both modes, RPing and MVing. but i consider them like playing almost entirely different games.

I'm not sure that you understand what a non-sequitur is. It's something that has nothing to do with the topic being discussed, not something you disagree with. At any rate, the problem I have is that 'other players' includes the AI. I flipped a Drenign planet last night, and they had a Central Mine and were building two Schools. The AI is taking advantage of this issue the same way a human would, and it renders the differences between the races utterly moot.

I believe that you see an oversight because you haven't thought this through completely. It is not necessary to steal technology, it's very easy to get it by trading. We are not necessarily talking about more advanced technology here, we are talking about supposedly race-specific buildings. The Torians start the game with the Central Mine, it just happens to be far superior to Drengin manufacturing buildings.

I don't want to play with tech trading off. I think that you should be able to trade for most of the techs. I just don't want the other races to go right back to generic. It completely ruins the backstories for all the races to have them using structures that run counter to their culture or biology.

I agree that some techs shouldn't be tradeable. None of the techs you get in the beginning should, nor should any tech that heavily depends on the race's physiology, like the Dregnin/Korath's research techs and probably a good portion of the Yor's tech tree...

As for Overwrites, I said before that each race should get their own version of a tech when they trade for it. Makes it easier to balance races on their own merits.

I just think there should be an ethics, and maybe an actual production modifier (like -1 from the building's optimum) for building another race's racially, culturally specific item.

Would it really be worth losing your Evil label (and benefits) by building too many of those namby-pamby Schools?

How about if every non-native building gave you a -1 to Morale?

Let's turn this 'problem' into a game enrichment.


drrider

I have read through this thread, looked at all the suggestions, and come up with a few of my own. One of the big problems I am seeing people have is how with the new unique techs for each race, It will all basically stop being unique the moment the tech trading gets going, or the invasions begin. And with the AI doing it, If people dont follow suit, they will quickly be at a disadvantage, so even if you choose to role play, the AI wont.



One solution I think would work for this is a possible reverse-engineering ability. Capturing or trading for a better version of farming or manufacturing from another race, instead of giving you that building, can open up another tech line that you can put researche into that will integrate some of the bonuses from the better tech into your own races buildings, like the drengins in the original post. Instead of the farms with the passive growth bonuses being overwritten, they are given bonuses based on the racial tech that was captured. And to keep them from suddenly having overpowered farms everywhere, the original farms overwritten are prototypes requiring both research and manufacturing put into them to make them finish up and available to the rest of your empire.




In the case of a traded tech, you can designate one of your worlds to be the place where the prototypes are first built. This would also add a strategic element to the game as well, defend the planet where they are being built and tested. I dont know if this idea could be implemented before the scheduled release date though. Also, this gives rise to the possibility of an Uber Farm eventually being made, so it might be wise to exponentially increase the cost of integrating additional technologies into the same upgrade type such as farms, manufacturing centers, research labs, and commerce centers to reduce the likelyhood of the uber empire of doom popping up.




It would also force you to choose which techs you would want to integrate first. Maybe also make it possible to do more than one integration at a time at an increased cost to your empires reasearch and economy. Essentially this method would be siphoning research away from your main research branch into the integration process, so while you would still be researching those Death Rays or Terror Stars, the progress would be slowed depending on what reverse-engineering you have going on.




Hey, it sounds kind of like a Super Project, except on a bigger scale... That might work, turn the whole process I just described into a Super Project that doesnt just build off of planetary resources, but resources from your whole empire. If you Capture a tech or trade a tech that is unique, a Super project can become available to integrate that tech into your exhisting buildings, giving you access to a better model with enhanced bonuses, with the stipulation that a captured tech must have its project build on the world that it was captured on, giving a further tactical consideration when invading. The need to defend a captured world that it is being built on, and assign a higher priority to the ai for recapturing said world in order to prevent its enemy from gaining access to that tech. Wow, that sounds complicated now that I think about it. Well, this all may just be a monumentally stupid idea, but I think it could work. Heh, this has all been just one big ramble, but hope it inspires someone...