Never-ending tech tree

I think that the never-ending techtree are good route to good strategy game.
Of course, I think about only some tech like:
-all weapon systems
-all defense systems
-logistic
-miniaturization

Why this is good way?

The ultimate target is, of course, ultimate weapon. If you have not it (because the tech tree is never-ending) what do you do?

In weapon and defense tech tree should be different weapon types (like laser/plasma/phasor) but the weapon system should hale two differential way:

- research to other type of weapon:
laser III -> plasma
phasors VII -> distruptor

-research to next generation of weapon
laser III -> laser IV -> laser V -> etc (unlimited)
doom’s ray II -> doom’s ray III ->  etc (unlimited)


Why never ending generation of weapon?

In this way, next weapon generation should take less space and cost (or be more powerful) and the player decide:

does he research next technology of weapon (laser to plasma),
or does he research next generations of laser systems.

Of course next generation tech should take more tech points
(geometrical procession 2 4 8 16 32, or Fibonacci procession 1 2 3 5 8 13 21),
so always in game is the point, where the next tech need too many points (f.e. laser 22 -> 23 need 2000pts, and plasma 5 -> 6 only 600pts.
So you see, that laser 23 is more expensive than plasma 6, but laser 23 is more powerful (or/and cheaper or/and smaller) than plasma.

Why this is good way?

In this type games, more players are waiting with battles for research ultimate tech weapons  (of course, we think about the favorite victory in multiplayer games: conquest). And after first 100-200 or more turns nothing happened - economy is growing, trade is growing. No wars, because all players are research the ultimate techs. Who first have ultimate weapon build massive fleet and attack the others (or other alliance).
In never-ending tech tree, this situation doesn't happened. Always is the point, when the plater must select: better tech or other tech.

Of course, The GC2 is very hard game (the gigantic tech tree, different ways to build power, different victories, many additional techs which help in battles), but maybe the players should have choice, which tech tree will be better to his game, limited or unlimited?

 
5,068 views 2 replies
Reply #1 Top
Sure would be awesome, i could only wish.
Although, there is a very serious obstacle to this; memory heap.

Right now some (or less fortunate) people are enjoying LIMITED hardware CPU cycles and once some genius at Intel can invent the UN_limited 128bits (or more, btw) wide pipeline chipset, we'd probably get the PC infrastructure to handle that much.

But, and i say that with relatively solid knowledge about Software designs... you can only put so much in RAM.

GC2 has the "underneath" elements to expand beyond anything most players would dare imagine at the risk of looping out more or less 90% of its user base, that's a given.

Thus, the never-ending concept is certainly feasible and in fact, is already coded *indirectly* since we are able to MOD this stuff as we see fit; yet again, by having to cope with balancing concerns.

I'm perfectly good with having to exit (by force or otherwise) any of these tech groups to discover the next rush of novelty. To me, the objective is within reach once it is made a clear goal and not when infinity clugs my intentions, choices or runtime files.
Reply #2 Top
They could just add a 'final' tech to these things that that never complete but just continue being researched.

Then you could have a formula which takes those research points currently in those final techs, works out a number, and just adds that to the last weapons damage number.

You could have this for the weapon, defense, and hit point lines, since (as far as i know) they are standard for all races, you could have them also work on starbases (to keep things simple)

One problem with this however is that you could end up with situations where certain races are never ever able to keep up, where as with a capped tree some races are just a little slower than others at getting to the final point.