The main goal of the research system as I see it is to provide a different set of technologies researchable each game. Currently it does this by being pseudo random, and tieing the amount of research points to the category (civic, warefare, etc) level, rather than particular technologies within the categories.
The Problem: after a few levels in any particular category, there are too many techs that may appear when you research the field. This causes a cat and mouse game with some earlier techs if you decide you want to hold of on them to get a rare tech.
My Solution: Use a magic the gathering style cards in hand limitation, AND reduce the number of techs appearing each level. Basically each time you research a category, you get a list of techs that were in your "hand" from the previous breakthrough in the category, plus 1-3 random new techs that haven't appeared before. There is a limiter for each category of how many technologies you can keep in your hand after each break through. After you choose the technology you want to get, if your "hand" holds more technologies than what that category is allowed, YOU must choose which technologies to NEVER research.
I believe this would put an end to the issue of the cat and mouse of technology discovery and make create a strategic choice for the player to CHOOSE where they want to go with the category.
NB// I'm wholly against the use of prerequisites in the technology fields. But if they are there, then the UI needs to be designed so that all techs that have a technology in your "hand" as a prerequisite can be pulled up to enable the player to make informed decisions about whether to reseach the tech or not.
This is clever!
It might be difficult for the player to manage 5 hands at a time of differing sizes, which is the biggest worry I have about this proposal. Also, with such a large set, I think hand size has to be the same for each category, for the player to have a chance of keeping up. Have you considered a unified hand for all the categories?
This is going into an updated version of my big writeup, but I think if you want to go completely without prerequisites, you need to reduce the value of each technology, making them more about inventions / single things and giving the "basics" with category level instead of specific technologies to prevent players from shooting themselves too hard in the foot (pistol instead of shotgun, if you will). I think that would handle the expectation that folk have for prereqs in earth-like worlds while still giving you the flexibility of non-prerequisites.
With the "hand" idea, the only time you have to worry about what techs you have is when you finish researching a category. So, say I finish Warefare. Then I might have 6 techs to choose from with a limit of 4 to take with me. So i would choose the tech to get the benefit of, and the game would indicate that i now must choose which tech I must discard.
Does that get around the issue you are seeing?
On a side note, I posted on your giant discourse thread my thoughts on prereqs. Basically, if you have to have them, the less and closer to tech level 1 the better.
PS, thanks for the Kudos!!!
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