Research is too CHEAP

Hum... I think this could be easy to mod. Making every research lab produce negative resources points... Of course, if Aaron want to hardcode something about it...

Well, by building so many Research centres you are sacrificing the planetary facility capacity to produce other resources. Indirectly, there is a cost to the minerals you could have produced with that same facility space or the food you could have produced if you had built a farm instead of a RC.

Otherwise, instead of making RC's more expensive, why not modify from the other end and make technologies require more RP's? That is perfectly moddable in the game as it is.

"Do not be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed." - DVader

*'##*@@ now look what you have done given my favotite Modder an evil idea , reserch in Stock isent too cheap its just that a human player is in position to take more advantage of it than the AI as they are just about every thing else you care to name. The only thing which is stoping the organising a reserch rush AI is the lack of a script to model this and the fidilyness of working out how to script it.

This is even more the case in captain kwocks ballence Mod and Fallen Havens IRM where its quite easy to get in a weaker position than the AI's a position where your only hint of a way out is to reserch rush and that is a long term stratergy which leaves you at a disadvantage whilst it comes to fruition

A quick tweak to the data/Facilities.txt file and the Research Center is the same cost in Minerals, but now matched in Organics and Radioactives. There is a valid argument to this, but also in that you can't use the space you placed them on.

Now if I can just figure out how to work Anim8or, I can get more going in the way of shipsets. Like one based on Hardware Wars.

"Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been and will always long to return." ~Leonardo DaVinci

There is a valid point to this. How to implement is still debatable, but I do agree that higher tech gives too much advantage for too cheap a price.

My alternate solution would be to lower resource income from the resource facilities (maybe also increase their research cost, which dents the research rush) and make higher tech facilities/weapons/products/etc MUCH more expensive as you upgrade them. Of course, raise the limit for how much more expensive a ship you can retrofit an existing one to. This way, you are forced to have a good economy to have a high-tech fleet.

Furthermore, doing this would force you to build a lot more storage facilities as when you want to retrofit an entire fleet you'll need ridiculous amounts of resources in one turn. Storage facilities would compete for space with research centres (as you build both on low value planets).

My final thought is to change the "Formula Cost High" such that when you choose "High Research Cost" at the start of the game, you get say... x5 cost and let everything start with some basic tech - this would then make other paths of acquiring technology (capture ships, intel networks, diplomatic treaties) viable.

---Sig---
Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.

in my opinion higher tech should increase in cost by a large factor. it costs more too run one Aircraft carrier for the United States than most 3rd world navys spend in total per year.

i dont see the tech as a problem. after all for the most part better tech should reduce costs of things. and it works that way in the real world except for things like top of the line weapon systems. i think a more natural fix for this would be to see a much larger increase in costs for upgrading things like hull sizes or miltiple weapon systems.

example, you start out early researching DUC's, generaly you get too level 10 or so and stop switch to something else. that second weapon system should cost you double what the first did both in cost and in RPs. kinda like what almost happenes with engines. the higher up the tech tree you go for engines , the more RP it costs per level increase for each engine class. and toss in a cost spike (both RP required and and goods to build and maintain the finished product) every 5 levels and your on the right track then couple that with this

go totaly radical and top out a players tech advantages and tye em to the AIs state of the art. so i couldnt research say, Dreadnoughts at all unless all the AI in the game was atleast capable of researching cruisers. that would either A) stop me from getting access to dreadnoughts at all , or B) force me to GIVE the cruiser tech to the AI in order for me to advance my own research program. you could call it "inflation" it would basicaly mean that our tech advantage is so large that our "economy" becomes so out of ballance with the rest of the galaxy that we cant afford the cost of new tech untill they catch up on their own or we help em along.

and one further point that is kicking around in my mind is the time to build new ships. it would take the US navy atleast a full year to make a current state of the art Frigate, and 4 or 5 (some times as many as 10) years to build a new Aircraft carrier. i think ship build times are much to low. i shouldnt be able to crank out a whole fleet of frigats in less than 5 game turns. to say nothing about dreadnoughts in less than 5.

limit the potential tech spread between the player and the AI, up the build times for ships by a large margin, and increase costs both in RP and maintinance for higher tech larger ships and that goes a long way to solving the AI problems. it would also raise the usage of the 'defence' techs alot. since it would be far cheaper to build sats and fighters, and bases than to build offencive war fleets. the AI could be tuned to go nuts building cheap sats and fighters and starbases to defend their systems against us, at the same time huge costs and long build times for our uber fleets would make us think twice about sending that dread you spent the last 2 years building into that wormhole you know is infested with terrorists behind every chunk of wreckage with the futures equivilant of an AK-47 and an RPG.

of corse your still going to be able to outplay the AI if only by building cheap low tech fleets of your own, but atleast then it wouldnt be like clubing baby seals and you may actualy loose a ship now and then. defence maintinance should be dirt cheap, offence techs should cost you an arm and both legs in my opinion. that DUC that would cost you 500 minerals to maintain on a dreadnought should only cost you 5 to maintain on a base or a sat.

Kato wrote:

Otherwise, instead of making RC's more expensive, why not modify from the other end and make technologies require more RP's? That is perfectly moddable in the game as it is.

The player already build more Research labs than the AI can ever do, increasing RP cost just delays the inevitable as the player will ALWAYS have more RPs than the AIs... The best solution is forcing the player to divert more resources to keep thoses labs working, hopefully open the door wide open to invasion if the player invest too much in research and not enough in it's fleet...

I don't like this because it would make fleet smaller. I want large fleets, i don't want them to become too expensive. Besides it would be hell to make the AI keep a good fleet around. In my mod i made fleet cost relatively cheap so large fleets can be built. But the problem remain that it's still too easy to invest massively in tech and not suffer much from the lack of fleet.

I plan on experimenting with negative resource income (or negative storage) for Research labs and Intel centers so the points they provide aren't that cheap to get. I did try to increase the facilities cost but that hurt the AI too much as the facilities takes forever to build... Maintenance isn't much of an issue as the one with higher tech increase it's income and can reduce it's maintenance fees, wich just help the one with a tech advantage. But if the cost in resources increased with the production of points (evil grin)...

Edit : It's unfortunate, but the game don't accept negative production or negative storage... Will have to do it some other way.

Some of the facilities and components chew up resources or supplies. There is no reason you cannot create a formula that introduced a supply cost based on the facility level or research point generation or both. In addition it could increase the cost of the resources for upgrades.

Such a move would make the user think before rushing for higher level labs.

No, it would only make fleets smaller for tech rushers and at least with my playing style, it really won't dent how big I make my fleets. It just means I spend more time researching resource extraction and space yards. The AI will happily be building low-cost Zero G (maybe Gauss) weapon fleets whereas I'd be building expensive Mega-Energy Discharge fleets - if I'm allowed to have the same number of ships (for not all that much more expenses) when they're so obviously distanced in tech, then there's something wrong there. I'm all for Big Fleets but I shouldn't be allowed Big AND Advanced fleets for 'roughly' the same price.

I mean look how lunatic I've made my current game with all the advantages I've given to the AI. Perhaps problematic is that I still expect to win, though I'm at least hoping it'll slow me down quite a lot.
- AI starts with all 3 colonisation techs
- No domed colonies allowed by anyone
- AI had 2 other empires immediately surrender to it, thus has 3 times the Homeworlds
- AI was given a tech boost to start with (granted I gave myself a smaller one)
- AI is given x7 build speed and x2 point production
- No Intel
- I have no other empires to trade tech with

---Sig---
Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.

I think the super easy method would be to decrease RP production. That way it change the ratio of RP produced for the maintenance cost... But in the long run, human player would still tech rush the AI that can't be as flexible a human player can...

Another ideal solution would be 'diminishing returns' but I have no idea whether this can be implemented or not:

Check how much facility space of your empire is being used for Research Centres. If it's over 20%, then the extra research centres start bringing diminishing returns of how much RP they produce. It's realistic too, as when you have far too many people doing the same thing they're going to argue and fumble around a lot (and spend ages having meetings to discuss what they've been doing).

No clue whether this is do-able or not though.

---Sig---
Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.

That would be a good way to fix the problem. Unfortunately, i've looked into this already and haven't found a way to implement it. It could be done with a script, but MM has this part hard coded. I could program it to have a diminishing return effect, but it would only affect planets and would just make it more effective to have RC on every planets rather than have planets dedicated to them. It would just hurt gameplay...

I'm not sure I'd like changes to this. I'm quite happy with the way research works.

Just... the computer player doesn't use it to it's full extent. I think one should find the change there.

Granted; If you go for more research then you advance faster than your opponents... but isn't that their problem? They should invest then too..

Like in the real world... One invents a weapon.. the other one has to find a way to counter it... if you don't... well... your loss.

~
On the other hand... I am tempted by the idea of placing a resource price tag on certain research.
- Organic tree research would require an equal organic resource amount to the tech... engines cut into your refining... Hull construction in your minerals...

Perhaps find a balance there... 1 resource of type x for this tech. Perhaps the most powerful techs would require 1 resource of multiple types per tech..

> This could cause problems though. Imagine your 600K research points empire... The cost of resources would be trememdous.
I generally dobn't have that much reserves as I put my resources in fleets...

I think the issue here is that there is no other sensible alternative to "Build lots of research centres and do your own research". Sure lots of tech should be rewarded but at present it's too easy to mass spam research centres for little consequence and the AI can't do this.

Maybe instead we ought to make the other paths to tech much more viable:
- Make a new Intel project category specifically called "Steal Tech" which ONLY does Tech Stealing ops. I'm not sure how to mod that but it must be possible. At present, you can only do "Sabotage - Empire Wide" and hope that your successes do Steal Tech as opposed to destroy tech or steal/destroy resources.

- Make ship capture much lower in the tech tree. The other tools to make ship capture easy (shield-only weapons, toxic injectors and tractor beams) can stay where they are.

- Fix the "one way clauses don't have the player's empire name on them so don't count" thing with the AI and make the AI trade tech more with each other. The human can do this to an extent by making a "give us all your tech, we'll give you 50% of our resources" treaty to 'buy' tech.

---Sig---
Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.

I think that the solution is easy: Just increase Research Facilities maintenance costs by x2 or x3.

So you want to do a tech rush? OK, but you will have to pay for it. You´ll be able to built as many research centers as You like... or as your production limits leave You to do so. And, if you have too many research centers, You won´t be able to pay the upkeep for a big ship fleet.

But maybe the problem is production too... Mining facilities produce a lot in stock, so it is very easy to build an support a lot of research centers with a few mines.

In BM I see a more balanced solution to this problem:

1.- Mining facilities produce 2000 resources, instead of 3000 in stock. This means that I need a 50% extra facilities to pay my research centers.

2.- Research centers cost +250 organics and rads = research is more costy. I usually need to find new sources of organics and rads if I want to go for a tech rush, because the number of starting facilities of this kind is reduced.

Simply by increasing research centers cost, let´s say to 2500/500/500 you may get the effect desired:

-first, upkeep will increase nicely, so it will be harder to maintain a large number of facilities.

-Second, construction times will be slowed, so it will be more neccesary to spend more time building facilities. Right now I can build 2 research centers/turn by using emergency build, and that allows a serious tech rush.

I agree. Right now, the one and only strategy to get techs is to build lots of research centers. These ideas would give wider strategy possibilities. I would add one extra option:

-Capturing an enemy planet allows you to capture one enemy tech. A ruin-like effect, but giving a tech level from the defeated player.

This option has a nice advantage: it produces a balancing effect.

If a player gets a big tech advantage, it is almost umpossible to catch him. He´ll probably win. Allowing this "capture tech by capturing planets" gives more benefits to weakest players (they can get higher level tech if they are able to capture a planet, being able to chase strongest players) than to strong players (they won´t capture many enemy techs if they already have them...)

How about... For each level of research in a weapon, the damage increases by 5% (additive), while the cost increases by 10% (multiplicative)? So a level 11 weapon would do 150% damage and cost 259% as much, compared to a level 1 weapon.

You can argue that the current system is already diminishing returns - since you're typically paying twice as many RPs for the same gain in a component's ability from the previous level.

The RP rush works because most of the time because you're not concerned about the AI attacking, so you can be lax in other areas of your empire management - sacrificing resource spaces for research as you don't need to support a larger star fleet.

Making the AI a bit more dangerous in the early game and providing a low bonus for the AI (to even out the advantage players can get by micromanaging) will make a significant difference.

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Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

Player research only what he needs (think he needs), defend his space by blocking WPs with satelites/mines and build research fac everywhere as long as he have enough resources. Once he needs it, he sell some res. fac. on high % worlds and build resource gathering facilities.

If AI did same, we would not have this problem.

These are my observations based mostly on IRM, though they may be true of stock or even the balance mod. There are two separate problems here, which need to be addressed separately:

1.) Research is the end-all and be-all of SE:V - there is nothing else, get the most RP and you've won, don't build any facilities except research centers. I exaggerate, but that's the essence of it.

2.) The AI doesn't 'tech rush', the human does, thus the AI doesn't stand a chance.

There are several solutions to the first problem, I apologize for the parts that have been mentioned already:

-Applied research needs to go. More RP leads to more levels of applied research, which leads to more RP, which leads to ... on and on. It's a snowball effect that allows a tech rusher to quickly double the AI's RP without even building new research centers. Building more mining facilities doesn't make you a more efficient miner - but building more research centers makes you better at mining and research, there's no reason to build any facilities except research centers. I wouldn't mind if applied research was removed from the game entirely, but at the very least it needs an expensive pre-req to remove it from the early game tech rush.

-Resource Extraction techs are too powerful - they need to be very expensive, perhaps have some kind of pre-req. In IRM I can scrap a few mining facilities, replace them with research centers, research a few levels of mineral extraction, and wind up with more minerals and more research than the AI who kept his miner facilities - now why would you want to build any facilities except research centers?

-High tech weapons, armor, etc are too powerful with too little cost. Of course it should be rewarding to get that powerful new mega death laser, it should not be so costly that it's not worth building - but it should have much more cost than a DUC. When I'm building high tech ships for roughly the same cost as the AI's DUC ships, and my ships can beat them 1v5.. I can ignore all those pesky resources, I barely need them. Again, why build anything except research centers? There need to be some heavier resource costs associated with advanced technology - if my ship is 5x more effective than the AI DUC ships, it needs to be 3-4x as expensive.

-Resources need to be more important in general, lower production for all extraction facilities would help, so would increased cost to build/maintain research centers. Right now you just don't need a whole lot of minerals, and you usually have "too many" (i.e. excess resources going to waste) - yet research centers suffer no such limitation, more is always better. In order to make miner facilities worth building over research centers, there needs to be much more of a need for minerals, no matter what your technology is or what stage of the game you're in.

If all of the above was fixed, tech rushing would still be viable, but not the only way to play - then we'd have to worry about the second issue, tweaking the AI to make use of the advantages (and disadvantages) of research generation. Fallen Haven has partially addressed all of these problems in IRM, and it's much better overall than stock - but not perfect yet, IRM slows down tech rushers but does not stop them from dominating the AI.

At the slow ponderous rate the AI researchs if you increase it they will have tech level 1 weapons to your 10 anyways, just for a much longer time.

Well then, the other 'easy' way to tackle these issues is to go and make Applied Research and various Resource Extraction techs 10 times more RP costly. May as well do this after giving the AI a huge boost in Applied Research etc at the start of the game (custom, non-random AI empires). Or heck, make a Government/Society type only used by AI empires that does something weird like +500% Research.

---Sig---
Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.

I'm still working on my new purchasing system, but i did some revision on the mod. One thing i did was reducing the amount of RP and IP produced by labs and intel centers. Instead of 500, it's now 100. They increase by 8 pts per level, but their cost is by 10%. This should help slow down tech research in favor of bigger fleets. This won't prevent a tech rusher from trying, but this fix should not affect the AI research pathern i made. I don't think this will fix everything but it should help a bit...

Once i'm done with my revamp of the purchasing system, i will try to revamp the diplomacy and increase the aggressivity of the AI so the player don't get the luxury of peace for too long...

I agree with revery on everything, you´re absolutely correct. Tech is everything in every 4x game, and it has always been so; the trouble is, in SE V the AI can´t rush like the human player does.

I too said time and time again that a prerequisite for applied research would make a huge difference. If that isn´t possible, then the RP point gain per level should be smaller, or the RP cost for Applied research should rise exponentially. It´s the easiest way to stop tech rushing.

Another problem: society and government types are totally umbalanced. There is no reason at all to choose theocracy, hive etc because unrest and loyalty penalties etc don´t make ANY difference. And there are too many societies with tech penalties. If an AI player is a hive and berserker, for example, it´s totally screwed up right from the beginning (-18% tech?!) and becames essentially an angry punching bag =)

To prove my point, edit the government and society configs, eliminate the research penalties and see waht happens. It makes the game a lot better (at least in stock, I haven´t tried it in BM and IRM).

Another problem... the AI lacks focus on research. If you sign a tech sharing treaty with a neutral, for example, you´ll get a lot of useless stuff (bio weapons, ressuply, cultural achievements etc). Needless to say how crippling it is to the AI to waste 50000 rp on a silly tech it will NEVER use.

Unfortunately we can't set research cost per-tech. What you can do is make Applied Research a very *long* tech area (say, 100 levels to everything else's 10). That gives the research formulas more time to increase its cost.

Normally, all the techs you call useless are supposed to be useful. In IRM i tried my best to make all general techs useful. The AI may end up with components it will not use, but the researched tech should give it something elsewhere. Btw, cultural achievements are useful, 1% may not seem like much, but in the long run, it pays. My AI does a better job at research than stock, i did spend a lot of time making sure it would focus on the right stuff at the right time.

Yep, indeed a few percents of research make a lot of difference on the long run; however, to really reap some benefit you need at least 2-3% bonus, and by then you used a total 300000rp (in stock). And with all that rp, you can do a LOT of research (cruiser lvl 1 up to battleship lvl 5)that is MUCH more useful on short and perhaps even long term.

Indeed, under serious pressure from the AI most people would never even think of researching cultural achievements... Too expensive, too little result.

Here's an idea I haven't seen raised yet ...

Limit the number of Research Centers any one player is allowed to have in the game.

This would literally make a tech rush impossible, while not penalizing anyone more than anyone else.

I'm SURE I would still have more to them simply because i put these facilities on all my planets, but if the AI did this they would at least probably quadruple their RP.

ESPECIALLY if they get a bad spawn with atmospheres that their race can't breathe.

This is the root of the problem.

edit: i usually have 200k rp to the higest ais 40k in balance mod. If they had 1 or 2 additional atmospheres like I do i would EXPECT that to increase with each additional atmosphere they have. 2 could easily doube that rp, more or less, 3 could triple, give or take, etc.

i usually play a research race as well, with all kinds of bonuses, if the AI used migration properlythey would be VERY competative in research

I think the issue is less with the cost/maintenance of research facilities and more with the efficiency of the AI in using the RPs they have. An average player can easily compete with an AI even if the AI has more RPs, because the player is smarter about how they spend the RPs they have. If I'm at war with an AI and I'm researching battleships and APBs and the AI is researching medical facilities, who do you think is going to win?
If we want the AI to be competative, we need to focus more on improving it's ability to research technologies that will make it competative, and less on hampering the human players. And making the AI more aggressive should be a priority first, since as it is, we are afforded the luxury of building nothing but research centres because we don't have hordes of dreadnoughts knocking on our doors.

Suction feet are not to be trifled with!

Oh that's easy to deal with - just set No domed colonies for the time being and wait for v1.29 or so to come out such that modders can make the AI distinguish what is and isn't a domed colony (then instruct it to scrap races that don't breathe right if there's immigrants).

Right now in my extremely non-standard start to an IRM game, I have 215 tech levels by around turn 20. The AI has 469 tech levels and 3 times the RP (before we give it the x2 point bonus). It started with 3 times more Homeworlds, Lv 12 Research Centres and all 3 colonisation techs. Perhaps more relevantly, it has x7 build speed and something like Lv 20 space yards. I expect it to sometime make an attack since All Vision is switched on so it knows where my defences and colonies are.

---Sig---
Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.

Yes, Research is to cheap, but in my opinion this is more a timescale problem, than an AI problem. Which is another general problem.
If the AI is getting better, it could be even worse. You could speed up research by tech exchange.
Researching Ringworlds in less than ten years ?
High technology cost in the standard game options is much to low.

I would agree with the assessment that research is far too powerful. Even in the 100 turn demo, I was routinely getting to 100,000+ RP, depending on the planets I found.

But, research is generally overpowered and unrealistic in all 4X games. From Civ 1 and MOO1 all the way to GC2, Civ 4 and SEV, all these games have technology proceeding too rapidly for the time frames. I think its endemic of the breed.

Research is a strategic endeavor. Ship movement, as envisioned in SEV, is a tactical/operational endeavor. These two scales are unbalanced.

For SEV, I could see it working at 1/10th the current rate (Intelligence would need a similar cut). This would produce research one time per game year. It removes the need to micromanage the research, and allows the player to focus on the operational/tactical aspects of the game. It would probably work well to start with a larger core of research projects, perhaps even with some 'legacy' research (random progress on some techs) at the start.

Mendel
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority

The problem there is most games would be over before you got much research done at all..

Oh hey... does this mean we can implement exponential increase of tech cost, or some other function?

As for not getting much research done before the game ends... that's not necessarily a bad thing provided we start with some 'basics'. Set the game to start in 2405.0 or something and set everyone to start with some basic tech, then make Applied Research expensive... yeah lots of minor tweaks you could do which add up.

---Sig---
Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.

Ya, it costs way to little... balance is an issue.

"Travel the path of integrity without looking back, for there is never a wrong time to do the right thing." - Unknown.

Agreed if you are going to include reserch in a monthly time frame its more or less going to have to be unrealisticaly fast. It might be nice to be able to add more reserch cost options to slow reserch rates down in a long game. However the game isue is not the speed of reserch but that in stock especialy a human player is that much beter at it than the AI after all every one gets the same speed of reserch realistic or not.

How big universe you play?
High cost for biggest possible universe can be too low, but for small one is imo high enough if you want slow research.

(I don't want too slow research, becose turns takes too long).
Compared to eg MOO2 where i pressed end turn and uless something happened, multiple turns passed fast, SE V needs fast research.

You can make it any formula you like. I've tried sine-wave research formulas that appear to work all right.

Makes for a more challenging game for sure, thanks.

However there is one thing, in this if you take over an alien planet with a different atmosphere you can still build colony ships there and colonies on planets that race can breathe. I have yet to see what the AI does with this as well when this is set. I have seen some colony ships sitting above planets so i'm thinking that they are unaware that this is set as an option.

In general, the migration process needs to be improved. That is, population need to migrate out of a colony if they're the ones keeping it domed and I'm fairly certain that population already migrates to breathable atmospheres, even if that colony is currently domed.

Aaron should make it so that if there is more than one race on a planet, if one can't breath on that planet, it should have a stronger migration so it start leaving the planet in favor of the other(s) race. Also, the dominant race on that planet should be the one that determine if the planet is domed or not. We should not have to worry about moving population around to prevent a planet from being domed (and spacing population should never be a solution for anything...).

Yes if they migrated off by themselves that would solve everything.

It would probably be easier though to program the AI to scrap or transport that specific population off the planet. Is that something that could be done now? If so i'll make an attempt at it.

You would probably need some identifyer on "cargo" that sees if its a race, which i bet exists, but then checks the atmospheres compaired to the planets. So all you would have to do is write a script to check if there is a race there that can breathe it and then scrap all those that don't. If scripts exist that can check that kind of thing it would be easy to write i'd assume.

We have some tools in the scripts, but you would have to build a function from scratch. Right now the AI ferry population around but it does not check for the race (or at least, nothing i could see in the code). There is no function right now that look if the cargo's race can breath the atmosphere of the destination planet, and no script to remove unwanted population from a planet...

The AI already make the difference between population and mere cargo, but as far as i can tell, it does not make any check about what it can breath. By default it will load native population of your empire and send it to another planet that need extra population, that's it. No check if there is a better suited race in your empire for a given planet or a need to move some population elsewhere.

There are some built-in functions coming up in the next patch that will allow for smart pickup or scrapping of non-breathers from a planet. It should help us modders to do some interesting things.

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Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

But you can tell the AI what is domed by screening the cargo space of the planet. If you pull up the space object and check the cargo space available that is (1) set in the planetsize.txt file and (2) also screen to see if the Advanced Storage Techniques racial trait was implemented...the cargo space will not change from those two values. This was how I could write a nested routine to adjust population size. I screened for the cargo space and that told the routine how to limit the population growth.... It is still buggy but is workable. Just have not been able to verify what happens in a case where the population gets adjusted like that...meaning I can't see how migration ties in since that code is not available.

a thought is you have a slider against the amount of RP you generate. then you expend it like normal. so for example you generate 100k, but decide to use 80k. and so it would cost x resources to generate 80k.

the cost in resources should be non-linear. so it's not just 10% of 80k... b/c when you can generate 400k in research points, you're probably generating over 1MM in mineral, organics, and radioactives... and 40k out of all that... pfff... might as well not have it.

this way, you're not scrounging to just barely meet the needs for research in the beginning, but harder to run away w/ research as well.

I wouldn't doubt that these items will be taken advantage of in stock. It's a priority right now for Aaron to make SE:V relatively bug free and then you'll see a lot more attention paid to the AI's doings.

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Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

The following is part of some notes I'm compiling:
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-refined research and economy system;
(I'm uncertain now how this might be done; research facilities could have increasing maintenace of all three resources, currently research seems "free"; an "overall economy" slider?, one side is production and the other side is research and intelligence;

*or 3 percentage sliders, one for each: production, research, and intelligence; the three sliders together will equal 100%; we should be able to lock each of these sliders; unlocked sliders will be affected by raising/lowering one; economy sliders for each planet also?,
*incorporates amount of population per facility and number of facilities?)

The only way research is linked and balanced with the rest of the empire resources is planetary slots. RP themselves are used to set a priority among projects and to gauge the relative difficulty in completing each research project. So by changing RP generation you change only the research speed and increase the need for more planetary slots which IMHO is a just a quick fix and perhaps the only fix.

Research in 4X games is god, and most, if not all of the time it is implemented badly, hence "Research is too cheap" posts. We have those in all 4X games including racial abilities that made the problem worse like "creative" in MOO2.

From my notes on game development:

Research should be a game within a game and more interesting than waiting exactly x turns for "the device of ultimate pain"

I would love to see who will implement a multi-tier research system first:

1st tier theoretical: A lottery system. RPs in this level are the tickets. this is the way to get all the cool techs, but not any actual benefit yet. The lottery is held among the techs that have accumulated RPs. When a tech wins the lottery RPs are zeroed across the board. You must spend a variable number of RPs before the lotery gets a *chance* to happen. The chance of making a breakthrough should be capped no matter how many RPs you spend. This introduces uncertainty since you wouldn't know in how many turns you would get a discovery and what discovery you would get.

2nd tier practical: you can research a known technology for inventions (components, bonuses and abilities). i.e. spend 1000 RPs for component X

2nd tier reverse engineering and espionage: You know that your opponent has a tech or a component you need (through observation or intel). Spend X RPs and X intel points to get a chance roll of copying the tech. Having a captured ship or colony with the tech provides a bonus. (enter the covert research facility, that produces RPs and IPs perhaps)

3rd tire refining: Spend X RP, and Y resouces to develop an improved version of an application. (component, bonus etc..).

And of course there will be sliders to set the relative spendings in each area.

Now that's what I call research.

Another good thing would be, if spending quadruple effort in research would give only double results (so you would research multiple things at once, going straight for THE KICKASS research would be much weaker strategy, and AI could be researching lot of things at once, so it would not have tech edge, but not realy lag behind)

Interesting, and quite logical, since "real" discoveries are often a matter of luck... But don´t think it could be fair to find out that my oponents, with half of my RP´s, have better techs than me just because I´ve had bad luck.

In this case it is more a question of unbalanced research costs rather than the general "research is too cheap"

Simply make the kickass research cost 4x more (or whatever neccesary to have a balanced research). It must be a valid strategy, but at the right (and expensive) cost.

In my imaginary game the effect of luck can be parameterized to be more or less important so that I don't get the "impossible to research tech effect". But IMHO the effect of luck is what this design is after.

You are missing the problem of tech combos! A fast engine is not a winner tech by it self, but a fast engine coupled with a long range weapon is a killer combo. There are other combos as well. making the tech more expensive doesn't solve anything because you can still research the combo deterministically. Tech lottery is the only answer.

With this system allied tech exchange and tech espionage become more important and influential in the game design. There is also the psychological game effect: now that the player doesn't know for sure when he will complete the technologies he needs for his new ship design, sitting and waiting doesn't sound like a viable strategical choice. He will have to compromise in his designs and ppl will stop putting such a heavy focus in tech, because "A bird in the hand is worth two or more in the bush". I'm almost certain that you will see bigger fleets and less research centers with this approach.

Try the game "Sword of the Stars", it has random tech cost (well, you get the chance to get early breakthrough or going overbudget) and not all tech are vailiable to everyone, every game.

I don't think that will be enough to convince players from changing an age old technique that always works in 4x games. A huge tradeof is needed to make it a difficult gamble to pull rather than a sure way to win.

In one game from my friend, he used something similar. Each state had some "research slots" (2 for normal, more from "racial" bonus). Each tech had same cost (simply 100%) (but it was becose it was not computer game, so it had to be made simplier), and each turn normal state generated 20% (+racial bonus +investment in research) which he could place in any tech in slot in any ratio he wanted.
After adding this, he rolled d100 for every slot and if he was under what he already had there, he gained tech.

From espionage/trade you didn't gained tech, but 20% of that tech.

This system guaranted that everyone could research something every 5 turns, but with possibility to have random breakthrough sooner.

btw. it would realy suck if someone lost becose of bad luck in techs. But probability of this happening is low as long as there are lot of individual techs/tech levels, so in the end everybody is close to average result.

IMO, if luck can unbalance the game, it must be discarded.

I´ve won games just because I was lucky and found a few ruins that gave me a nice tech before my oponents. No matter how good was their strategy, they just weren´t able to catch me after I gained advantage. Your system still allows a lucky player to get his techs while the other players are trying to trade or steal them, so any strategy can become useless against that case.

About combos, again it is a question of tech/cost balancing.

I prefer simpler solutions. They usually are easier to implement and it is easier to determine/balance their effect in gameplay.

1.- There is only one strategy: Build lots of research centers = win.

- Solution A: Add more variety to tech obtaining strategies:

* Allow capturing techs when capturing an enemy planet, without any prerequisite.
* Make a specific "steal tech" intel proyect.
* Make easier to obtain "ship capture" tech.
* Allow the possibility to "buy" RPs with resources.

- Solution B: Make research centers more expensive, so it supposes a high cost to build and maintain them. This way You´ll have to choose between a lot of research or a lot of ships. A high tech ship can be destroyed by a superior number of lower tech ships, as far as the game is balanced, so the decision can be tricky.

- Solution C: A+B

2.- Combos and obtaining Ultimate Techs early: Balance tech costs.

Right now, like Alpedar says, a typical strategy is to go straight for the "kickass tech". Instead of researching DUC, I go for Physics and I get superior weapons (APB + Meson) and shields. Or I can skip CSM and get Plasma missiles trough Chemistry, or even better, Torpedos and ECM through Military Science.

Since the prerequisites (chemistry, physics..) are very cheap, it is very easy to get superior techs faster and at a reduced cost. Just make this prerequisite techs much more expensive, and You´ll get a much more balanced tech tree.

My system would require a "minimum" expenditure in RP before even considering rolling for a tech. This prevents 1 RP tech acquisition by lucky players and that minimum could be 70% of the research cost. There is also a cap to the maximum chance of getting the tech say 80% per turn so that none can estimate with certainty when he will get the tech. The space between 0% to 80% would be moddable and preferably short, like 3-4 turns I would imagine.

You would still be capable of getting exactly the tech you wanted by only researching that tech but I would add incentives to the risk of multiple tech researching, like the cross-disciplinary research center that would provide different RP depending on the number of concurrent theoretical research categories.

Another problem with the existing research tree is that it is very linear. this makes it possible to reach the kickass tech very fast since most items have 1 or 2 prerequisites only. We should add more abstract intermediate research projects that are not necessarily too expensive as a means of creating a tree (or a bark) of prerequisites. At least this one is a moddable change albeit a big one.

One of the things you have to think about is why you are researching what you are reasarching.

You choose your tech to fit a situation...what situations do we have in SEV? well space combat mostly. So what do you need? high damage long range weapons. High protection and speed.

Why are you going to reasearch anything else but the best in these areas if you want to win?

Changing how research works will only slow down or speed up how a tech rush is done...but the rush is still going to be there.

What could be done is to set up systems(and maybe so its not too random but groups of systems together) where certain techs have a much harder time working and others dont.

Let me give you an example of this(which is caused by the sector to system wide bug) In one system there is something that causes problems with the combat sensors of ships...this is great for my carriers which rule the system but when they came out of that system to attack the Nilith imperium in a "normal" system my fighters where totally destroyed...

So change the situations more and not the tech tree so much

I could research intel, because I can club my opponent to death with that since he has no intel points.
I could research mines because I have more space than my opponent and I need time to build up an advantage.
I could research missiles, because my newest enemy has no point defense in his ships.
I could research ecm, because my opponent uses long range beams and he has no good sensors.
and so on..

If what you say is true then ultimately we should strip all the other techs from the game.
It might be that those 3 tech effects need to be balanced and not their cost, so as to make more alternative ways of winning possible.

I like the idea of 'lottery theoretical + intel copying' but I admit that'd be hard to implement then balance. If you want a quick approach...
- see IRM tech tree. It has the "more pre-requisites" approach and all it then needs is to make those pre-requisites much much more expensive.
- Vastly increase construction speeds. Undermine the tech rush by making construction faster in relation. The same can be achieved by reducing research speed dreastically I guess.
- In line with the above point - make the Space Yard component much easier to get so you can have Base Space Yards orbiting your planets right from early game (BM does this). Again, let them be very fast in constructing too (they won't have population bonuses to speed things up further).
- Final and Most Important Point! Make the AI aggressive. Aggressive exploration, expansion, defensive unit production and colony assault.

We're discussing "Tech makes you so much stronger than the AI". A Tech advantage alone doesn't mean anything - I've faced AI that had twice the tech levels I had (read: 300 more) and I still got bored to death because I was the only one who knew how to make a fleet, attack strategic locations with that fleet and fight tactically in good formations with that fleet. Case in point: despite that tech difference (and 3 times as many homeworlds), the AI had half my ships. All I needed was some basic requirements - beam weapons to avoid overkill issues and Space Yard Ships/Bases.

Therefore, as well as nerfing the overpowering advantage a 'tech rush' gives you (compared to a construction rush), we need to get the AI to attack you properly.

---Sig---
Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.

Seeing your post gnosis, I would be very worried about the type of opponents you play against if they dont have any intel points...tho it is a valid point intel could be used to help you win..

But you seem to have missed the two points I was trying to make so let me give you point 1 followed by point 2.

1. Whatever tech system there is, it will be possible to tech rush...it just get slowed down or sped up

Insert quote "I could just research DUC's, because my opponent doesn't have any research points...DOH"

2. Making techs that would not normally be researched useful....that was point 2...if it wasn't clear in my first post... it was because I had a big fat French woman wanting to use the computer I was on!

Question does anyone really research DUCs as the primary weapon...and not go for say MBs? Or CSM instead of Torps...quiet Badger!

However if in several sytems...grouped together...so its not one system here and one over there... Say in those systems energy weapons had sone kind of problem working and DUC's didnt because DUC's are physical not energy weapons...you know like guns we have here on earth...then if you lived in those systems its logical that you'd research DUCs and not energy weapons...It would also mean that those attacking you might have to research DUCs to or be at a disadvantage.

So lets conclude...In any tech tree people are ALWAYS going to try to research the best tech in the shortest time...to win.
SO CHANGE THE SITUATION so the best tech isn't always the best tech.

Changing the Situation is going to be tricky unless there are easily accessible "system wide" abilities for stellar objects to do that without stacking.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong but I get the impression people aren't familiar with how a "tech rush" can fail - admittedly this is easier to see in balanced RTS games than 4x games. The equivalent situation/statement in SE V would be:

"Who cares if you have (assuming balanced stock figures) [Lv 12 APBs, Lv 6 Shields and Lv 2 Destroyers] ships if I have 300 [Lv 1 DUC, Lv 1 Armour, Lv 10 Frigate] ships entering your (developed) systems?"

Knowing you're in a tech rush, I'd target your Space Yards and Research Centres, not caring whether I capture or raze down those facilities. Assuming the tech tree allowed relatively early, fast Space Yard Ships, I'd be following up my campaign by building arrays of Space Stations on your warp points and in Storms/Asteroids that would then be further constructing stuff while choking warp points.

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Or an alternative - I use most of my planet space to have very high Intel and make sure there's lots of resources and Space Yards. Then my 200 [Lv 1 DUC, Lv 1 Armour, Lv 10 Frigate] ships (yes, I insist on having lots of space on these ships for more ARMOUR but that's an aside) would instead target what few of your Intel Centres you have and then you'll be finding your few ships Betraying you and do both of 1) Destroy your facilities and 2) get Deconstructed at Space Yard Ships to give me all the tech you worked for. Then I'd switch focus to "Sabotage - Empire Wide" to directly steal from you.

Granted I may not be able to outright kill you with these maneuvers, but I'd have stopped your tech rush and stolen your hard work too (if Capture Ship tech was made available earlier).

The defensive countermeasures to either of these tactics would severely hamper your tech rush. So long as we're in Early game I don't care what your fancy ships have as they can't win when outnumbered 15:1 (which is what happens if I went Production/Construction heavy). Unrealistic? Not when construction speed is increased and Base Space Yards are available from the start.

First things I research these days are "Space Yards" and "Light Hull Construction" - the rest are irrelevant details. Indeed, when I attack the AI I do so with 50 [Lv 1 DUC, Lv 10 Frigate, max number of Lv 1 Armour] ships (when my latest tech is actually say... Lv 5 Incinerator Beam) and there's nothing they can do.

---Sig---
Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.