Weapons?

Tech research speed on 'very slow' on Immense /Uncommon hab/common planets/abundant stars feels like the same speed that it used to 'normal'.

I've been beating this drum for a while. I like "very slow" because I like using technologies before they're instantly obsolete. Sure I skip some like Hyperdrive+ and go for Ions, but it's just impossible with the broken tech speeds.

They did acknowledge in the release notes that tech speed might be broken. "Very Slow" needs to go back to how it was, but personally I'd like to see a "horrifically slow", for even slower research. And actually, tech speeds themselves should probably be adjusted. There's certain technology gains that are just too fast in general. The sensor techs spring to mind.

I agree.. but the area that the techs seem the most broken is in the weapon trees. They are simply way too short. it is four researches to go from a weapon damage 2 weapon to black hole guns. something is wrong about that.... really

On tech speeds, I play on slow in gigantic mode. I agree to that this seems to be more "normal" from DA to TA.

However, I dump a heck of a lot of resources, in both race configuration and planetary development to research. Could be why I win more technical victorys than political or military.

How about them 10's and 100's of billions of folks though, working to the common goal (I know, sounds almost socialistic), seems to me that the speed of research would be faster and comparing say to the Earth in general, disjointed, non-cooperational, that's my piece of the pie attitude thats holding us back itko (In this Kats Opinion) which is never humble.

I like the seperate technical weapons, and would like to see the defense side of the tree broken down futher actually, but not having been able to play each race down to a technical victory yet, my thoughts are still jumbled on exactly what is broke, tech speeds or just the simplification of the tech tree. Maybe we all need to pool thoughts on new weapons and defenses so that in the next iteration of Galactic Civilizations this won't be a speck on the windshield.

W/R
Suralle Straykat
Kat Lord @ Large

I think there's plenty of weapons techs, but the research is mostly linear, not exponential.

For example, each iteration of laser weapons costs 100 more than the previous. Instead, I think it should be an exponential curve. Only races that dedicate a lot of time and energy should get the real end-game weapons, instead of simply stumbling across them or just buying them off of someone. Beams weapons should lose their practicality in research at Phasors II or something, and after that, only hard dedication to that weapon will give you more.

Same thing for every other weapon/defense tech. It's always a weird stopping point.

"Well I just got Disruptors II, but it *IS* only 7 more weeks until Dispruptors III.... it should be "Wow I finally got Disruptors II, hope I can afford the time to get Disruptors III soon."

Note that this is for my preference, which is ultra-slow-tech games. As I said, I like using hardware before it goes obsolete.

I would say that more planets equals faster research. I suppose there could be a scale system for the techs per galaxy size but thats just an idea. I'm not sure how feasible that would be. Like, normal galaxy normal tech speed, tech = 100 pts, large galaxy normal tech speed, tech = 200 pts, Immense = 500 pts. Or something along those lines.

@Noble

It's already scaled by the number of planets in the galaxy, I believe.

@Taslios

Oh, hell yes. I totally agree... the progression of martial technology is quite absurd, especially with civilisations that get it easy like the Drengin, Korath, and Thalans. I agree with Uranium... the later techs need to become prohibitively difficult to improve. Combat is always the most interesting when the ships do not have enough firepower to one shot each other consistently, and the high end weapons techs have a tendency to make ships far too powerful for their HP.

Granted, you can definitly work around that by jacking up the HP of your hulls with the proper components, but it still can become pretty ridiculous, and those sturdy hulls cost a fair bit.

I'll echo the call for really slow tech progression. I like needing to think about my techs instead of having the progression be utterly trivial, so I'm all in favour of kicking those tech speeds back down to something more reasonable.

I kind of agree with the slowing down of tech. While I have not played a game with really slow tech it sounds intriguing.

The only fly in the ointment with the new TA beta is that new economy techs are critical to surviving. They would need to either change the economy for slow tech games or make the econ techs much cheaper.

I guess what I would really like to see is a very slow weapons tech option with the rest unchanged. The idea of huge hulls bristling with particle beam weapons and sparrows appeals to me vs Doom Rays that are usually available when you get the big hulls.

The way things are now there is no percentage in loading up research to gain a weapons advantage because at the higher difficulty levels no one is far behind you in spite of anything you do.

With the new tech modding options upcoming I guess we will be able to do this, but it will, I assume, not be kosher for metaverse.

When I want to play really slow tech, I run an immense galaxy, 10 races including myself, rare everything, no minor races. I do normally leave tech trading on though.

My thoughts on this are that how hard weapons and defences are to research should depend on the race you play very martial races should have an easier time in this field of research and of course do.

But in general I think refinements of the same basic technologies should be fairly cheap as they are.

e.g. Lasers I, II, III, IV, etc.

But jumps up to new technologies e.g. from Lasers to…..Whatever the next type of been weapons are should be a much bigger jump.

Refining a current technology is much easier in terms of research than inventing something novel.

This would create other problems, it would make Creativity the main source of high tech. If you have 45 weeks to research a weapon the races with high creativity will get it sooner then the rest, indeed they may well get most of their longest techs this way. So you would need to either change or remove creativity.

Secondly it would man if you spent a very long time going up lasers and one of the other races got full shields and whatever weapon system you would be extremely vunerable to that race for a very long time. Espacially if you did not have any defense to their weapon type. So for your plan to work you may have to condense to a single weapon and a single defense tech.

Creativity is broken anyway - you can tech your way to a victory without having a single dime spent on it. At 'very slow', it used to take a hundred weeks for the 'tech victory' condition even with lots of research. Creativity TBH should still work as it does, but have a weight on each tech.



And what's he going to do? Throw shoes at you? Note that I said 'exponential' curve. That means that the first weapons techs aren't going to be much more expensive than they already are - and later in the game, as you get more research it should be easier to afford a change in weaponry.

I see what you mean, but I think you're wrong, because right now, you can just tech rush to Black Hole Eruptors and it serves the same purpose, only it's too easy. There's fundamentally no difference between rushing to BHEs and stopping at disruptors beacuse it's currently too tech-prohibitive.

I think you're reading too much into this, and I have to say that for expensive 'endgame' weapons, it would be absolutely no different from any other research. If I waste all my time grabbing advanced colonization techs, I'm going to get trashed by the fact that everyone else has better everything than me. Weapons should be the same way - you need foresight, planning, and intelligence (like, espionage) to be effective.

I quite well appreciate what you’re saying, and rather than shoes was I thinking one of the other weapon branches.

I also agree that’s it’s a bit too easy right now, and I do believe that very slow tech is not working correctly and the devs intend to fix this.

However, what I’m pointing out is that with 3 weapon systems, if it takes years to research a full weapon tree and full defence tree suited to take advantage of X AI, and then the game can become paper scissors stone.

Your idea has merit if there was one weapon system, but will 3 it will be problematic. Imagine that eventually you have full armour and full missile tech. Indeed lets say every race has time to get a full weapon and defence tech. You can easily destroy the Korx because they have Mass drivers and Armour. However your extremely vulnerable to the Terrans who have full Laser and point defence. What’s more it will take you a couple of years or more to catch up in another weapon and defence. Paper scissors stone.

KingBingo, isn't that the point of having three different types? The game IS paper, scissors, stone. You do get some cross over benefit from your defences, so you're not totally vulnerable, but you would need much more of your defence components to defend against an off weapon type. I for one like this, and wish it wasn't so easy to switch form one type to another. If you spend all your time in one branch of weapons, it should be difficult to change gears and run down another branch. At least that's my opinion. RIght now it just seems to fast, and too easy to master of all the weapon types.

Sure, and I do agree it feels a little easy at the moment. Its just a question of how far you take it. If you want a year to go by while you try and research a new weapon because your being dumped on by the Korath that are almost immune to your laser then you might well loose the war while your waiting to research your next tech line.

The trouble the devs have is getting the balance right without killing the fun.