look up chemistry we covered this in class the different types of research

I also think that the game should actually correspond to real life
so that kids or people who play can actually learn something
civ III was great at this with the quote and then extra information if you wanted it civ IV was exceptional at it

If this mix research concept can be smoothly combined with a more solid system of tech pre-requesites, and other factors that contribute more to unlock certain technologies in favor of others (like previous techs previously researched) I think you have a very strong research concept in your hands. One that definitely would increase game replayability and a sense of being more “in control”. I also like your idea for the “creative” trait.

You have a believer

1. Research points that give you “theory levels” in whichever field you choose to advance in (Physics, Chem, Math, Bio, Socio)

2. Tech points that then either go to ‘the pot’ or to specific technologies that ‘the pot’ has made researchable.

So The way you would affect what techs you got would be choosing

1) which of the 5 fields you put most of your research points into.

2) which techs you put tech points into (since they would be prerequisites for other techs)

Then…
1) if you had “extra” tech prerequisites… greater chance of a tech being selected

2) if the tech is obsolete (the theory levels are far lower than what you have)… less chance of it being selected

3) if you have a friend with the tech/an artifact with the tech…increased chance of the tech being selected

I figure the first option is the best for player/racial input. As you research more Beam Weapons, they tend to increase your chance of future Beam weapons… Racial input could be in the starting techs.

(the way I would have the “creative” race pick is how many Tech points you get for each Research point you produce..)

Sounds interesting. In your opinion could this pot concept evolve to something like fields, as in MOO1? Example: Specific pot for Propulsion, Construction, Shields, etc?

Research lets you advance

As you research you get technology points.

those technology points are either put
1) into a pot that provides you new technologies to research (ie if you have sufficient points in the pot it randomly selects a technology that is now Researchable for you and then deducts its cost from the pot)

2) into technologies that the “pot” has made researchable to actually research them

So if Laser I costs 100, (25% from the pot)

then, once I have the Right level of advancement, and sufficient tech points in the pot, there is a chance that Laser I will be come researchable (costing 25 from the Pot)… then I can choose to actually research it for another 75.

This way the player can just research all the techs they randomly get, or research fewer of them but have more choices.

I like the concept of a core tech tree with random branches, but the key issue, of course (as previously mentioned by the article and Sui Generis) is balance. In particular, developers have to keep an eye on a few things:

1) Techs that are simply imbalanced on their own (sounds obvious but many developers tend to trick themselves into thinking stuff is balanced when it isn’t, especially if they are not part of a core tree)
2) Combinations of doom, where a certain set of random tech combos allows you to do something too powerful (often only discovered after many, many hours of game testing in public beta or public release)
3) Weighting the randomness. It is critical to make sure that a “random” tech tree is only partially random: players, particularly in games against other humans, need to get some level of equal quantity/quality of techs, be it through weighting where they show up in the tree or wherever. To me, no serious game with online competition can have the risk of a situation where one player gets 20 optional techs and the other gets 0.

I found MOO2’s tech tree without the creative trait annoying– I always thought it’d be improved if you could go back and research multiple techs at an increased cost. So perhaps the second tech from a level in the tree would be at 1.25x research cost, and the third at 1.5x. That would force you to think very hard about teching laterally as opposed to up, but at least give you the option. I would also have modified creative to reduce research costs as opposed to give you everything at once, but I have the luxury of 10 years + of hindsight of playing the game to make that suggestion.

Just to throw another design concept out there for fun, one thing I have always been a big fan of in any game type is moderate randomization. By this I mean systems– be they for treasure, items, technology, etc, which can be modified in a meaningful but easy way for the developer to create more variety. The best example of this is Diablo’s loot system, which has a mix and match prefix/suffix for many, many options. The way I’d apply this to a research tree is giving a base chance (modifiable by race, traits, items, buildings, etc) of having a “breakthrough” on a particular technology. The breakthrough would be a slight bonus to what the base is– so for example, if you’re researching automated factories, maybe you get an “Efficient Automated Factory” which has +5 production over the norm, or “Tacyhon Personal Deflector Shields” which is +12 instead of +10. Of course you could go the opposite direction and have a chance to have a sub-par research effort as well…

Anyway, just some of my thoughts on this topic. Research trees make or brake a game– love the article and appreciate you swinging by Videolamer!
GoldenJew´s last blog ..Fan Service Inc.

So to give an example of a low level Moo2 tech field:

“Advanced construction” offers a choice of:
-=Automated factories
-=Planetary Missile base
-=Heavy armour (a ship modification)

Creatives get all three, uncreatives would only be offered one which the game selects randomly and any other race gets one, but has a free choice.

For Moo1, just substitute Moo1 techs. So the choice might be between Shield 4 (for ships), Personal Deflector shield +10 (for ground troops), or Planetary shield class V and the one you get is random. That’s it – the techs that will be avilable to you are determined at the start of the game and then that’s it, you have to live with what you’ve got and hopefully make up for it by trading, spying or conquering the techs you lack.

As for race customisation, that wasn’t present – there was no trait picks system in Moo1 or anything like that. You just have to use the premade races but they weren’t at all bad imo.

Sorry about the verbose description here

So I remember that in MOO1, as you say Sui, the tech classes that you could research are not always the same (Shields I, II, V, VIII …). I can’t remember, you say that this was completely random. Did not any in-game decisions or race perks had anything to do with this at all?

This system is found in Moo1: technologies had several generations, each representing an improved and more advanced incarnation. E.g. Mark 1 deflector shields, Mark 2, etc until levels as high as Mark 10 or would be reached towards the end of the game.

Since the techs the player can research are a randomly determined subset of these and others, it is possible that the player may end up with anything from staying very current in the latest shield techs by having access to each to new mark as it becomes available, or the opposite extreme: having no new shield tech for several levels of the game (ie. Being stuck with Mark 2 shield until say Mark 7 became available)

I think this approach has it’s merits, as the inherent randomness of the available tech would defy any players attempts to stick to an exact formula for research and gameplay. Instead, the player must react and adapt to the techs that game offers him, with substantial ramifcations for gameplay (If you require a certain type of tech (eg. terraforming +60 say) do you attempt to trade for it, or steal it by espionage? Will you risk a war with another empire so your soldiers can obtain a copy of the tech?

-
I think the downside of this approach is that unless carefully balanced, it can lead to luck playing an overly large part in gameplay. If one key tech becomes to influential or powerful, then games can be decided by the dice roll of whether or not that tech is researchable.

For instance the missile technology Scatter pack X in Moo1. This technology gives the player a much improved MIRV missile, which means that one missile contains many warheads. The problem is that as well as increasing the number of warheads, the destructive power of each is increased too, so the actual improvement is quadratic rather than linear.
Any system like this needs to take care to balance each generation of techs.

-
Another possibility is to borrow from Moo2 and make certain available techs mutually exclusive. Each successive level of research in Moo2 would open up three new possible techs to research next, but ordinarily the player can only choose one of them.

Whilst there was normally no randomised subsets of this in Moo2 as there was in Moo1 (a pity!) it had the effect of partitioning the tech tree into strategically equivalent options
Read the intro paragraph here:
http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Master_of_Orion_II/Physics

To generalise, your choice of tech at the beginning influenced what techs you would have to make do with for much of the rest of the game and affect what techs you would want to choose later.

This was significant because choosing a more powerful laser in the mid game to compensate for not getting a powerful on earlier, means a different trade off than if you’d have gone for the earlier version of the laser. The early laser might only require you to forego a slightly better space scanner that you can improve later on in the tech tree, but going for the medium strength laser in the mid-game might mean excluding a very valuable unique tech that can’t be obtained in the upper levels at all.

Similarly, taking the weaker version of the laser earlier on and then ignoring the mid-game laser and waiting for a later-game laser option to become available means spending more time with the weak laser, which affects what you can do with your fleets, how you can defend your territory, whether or not you can win planets from other empires and so on.

-
I would *really* love to see a game that could take these concepts of randomness from Moo1 and strategic equivalency from Moo2 and marry them together. Ideally the game would be sufficiently random as to affect your strategy, how easy it would be to accomplish it and what approach you must take to achieve it. But it would also avoid submitting the player to the roll of the dice, by allowing some strategically equivalent decisions to be made at each stage of the game. The player would need to react to what the game throws at him, but has a choice of ways to respond (with significant consequences.)

Now that *would* be something I would look forwards to in a new 4X game!