I do not believe there is a point to having 4 techs to build titans as-is now. It seems like a handicap for people bad at basic arithmetic, and a boring chore for the rest of us.
Why? Having an un-built Titan locks up a large amount of resources for no gain, so there simply is no point starting to build a Titan unless you know you have/will it all funded... at which point you will start the Titan construction and Techs 2 through 4 more or less simultaneously.
There's no realistic opportunity in most games for human opposition to disrupt the process anywhere but at the titan factory (if all those tech centers could be taken down, so could be -or would even have to be- all planets, essentially). So really, the techs don't help with anything.
If these 4 techs really need to exist, perhaps you could make them very expensive and use them to activate Titan abilities instead?
Example:
Tech 1: Titan factories and Titans with shields can be built. Very few, weak weapons for sub-capital ship firepower, no movement, no abilities. At this point, it only serves to tank / as latent threat in system, attackers will now have to decide whether it's a good idea to invest something like 6-10 minutes of the fleet firing at it to try and get rid of it.
Tech 2: Movement activated.
Tech 3: Regular firepower activated.
Tech 4: Titan upgrades (Abilities) activated.
And maybe for multiplayer, make it so it can't be seen how much a Titan is capable of until it engages some capital ship or 8 or so frigates.
Even better would be to get the upgrades out of the tech tree and make them buyable per-Titan... but I guess that would require some addition to the game engine - it'd be a shame to dedicate the experience levels to this.
I prefer it this way.
Just remember, the Titan will continue to build up to the point where you have the tech. Therefore, if you remove one tech center, the Titan will stop at 75% until another lab can be built.
Now, if someone is building a Titan at a regular or slow pace, it should matter too much because most likely he already has more than four labs already. The notification for other players is not necessarily too big a deal, since they either already have their Titan or are probably on the way to get one anyway.
However, if someone is rushing a Titan, this creates a perfect opportunity for harassment (unless it is the econ player). I mean, they have to scramble to get a new lab up, possibly scuttling a civics lab or other important structure (such as a Trade Port or culture centre).
I'm not saying it will happen in every game, but on smaller maps this really creates some great opportunities, especially 1v1s...
The four techs are there so you can't just rush for it at the very beginning of the game but while still making a viable early to mid game strategy.
"some capital ship or 8 or so frigates" in multiplayer?
The standard multiplayer game can result in battles anywhere from 50 frigates to 200 frigates. A titan has to deal with this and as well as capital ships, starbases, and turrets. A titan shines here already for us. Some with their nice AOE ablities such as the Ragnarov, you can mop up these 50-100 frigates very easily.
It really isn't exactly a boring chore but rather a buffer.
the techs arn't pointless in reality they increase the cost and production time of ultimately a deciding factor in your play style, I don't really care much for the leveling system of titans but having that research is a good idea either having it your way or the way it is now doesn't matter people are still going to get all four before they're titan is used anyway so why change the wording of the hot tip.
In fact I think we should give the titan its own tree in the research tab.
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Not true i just finished my first online game - i rushed took a 3rd astroid far away and colonise (was saving XP on the planets for my titan) anyway human kill 2 of my research labs but because i had purchased the titan construction contunied to the end and it was at about 3% built then lab no4. was destroyed
Is that a BUG or is it intentional ?
The very first planet can have four tech buildings. Easily so if you add the asteroid nearby. The limiting factor is cost, not tech buildings.
First of all, the AI won't do this, so it seems irrelevant for single player games.
And in multiplayer, attacking the tech buildings is only a viable strategy in perhaps 1 planet matches where a fleet can blockade a planet - but in that case the game is won anyways.
Otherwise, while your fleet of ships tries to overcome the Titan builder's (likely smaller) fleet and kills one-two tech buildings, the Titan builder would long have removed buildings on 2-3 other planets and replaced it with more than sufficient tech buildings to complete the Titan. He could even start doing that preventively after the Titan starts building. You simply won't stop that.
Adds more rewards for players that can micro well. Plat it well and you can finish the research periods around the time you actually need them rather then tying up resources by researching them long in advance.
Have you even tried this?
Assuming you're on normal / quick research, it doesn't even really matter right now. The research completes quickly relative to how slow the Titan builds anyways.
And if research was very slow, guess what you have to do? Right, complete the exact x initial percents of the entirety of the 4 stages (-something really no one should have to learn first-) and only at that correct moment start to build the factory and Titan. This will minimizes the amount of time spent with resources locked up. There's however no element of "microing well" or any other such thing involved, as far as I can tell.
Meh, I was mostly arguing in generalities about the merits of this kind of progression rather then the reality of the situation. My point was that properly implemented this sort of progressive research does have a purpose.
I prefer this way too. But the techs seems way too cheap. The titan is strong and should be available late. It should require alot of pretechs. Meaning there should be a few other military techs you need before you can start researching the titan. Only thing you need now is really 4 research stations. It should be atleast twice as hard to get.
I more or less agree. Having it this way has some merit when playing with research speeds on the slowest setting, as then the argument that it benefits planning ahead for exactly when you need it makes some sense, as time requirements for research is actually a significant factor.
But for normal settings, the only merit of having it this way is that slight bit of room for players to capitalize on efficiency by not queuing things up in advance. That's not really a bad thing, but as far as aesthetics go I don't see it needing to be four techs starting at level 1 as opposed to a single tech with 4 tiers at level 4.
Why have 4 buttons for what is essentially 1 thing? As someone else pointed out, the limiting factor is cost, not number of labs. By the time you've got the money to be putting out a Titan, having 4 labs is a pretty trivial concern anyways, there's really no need to be able to start researching them sooner, certainly not at the 1 lab mark.
The techs also help to make the Titan easier to fund. If you had to pay the combined amount once, for some "supertech", you would need substantially longer until you could even start working on the Titan. This way you can take sort-of babysteps.
Although I like the idea with the "unfinished" Titan sitting there working as a sort-of mega-turret.
I'd go the opposite way, though.
Stage 1: Husk. No shields, minimal firepower.
Stage 2: Full firepower
Stage 3: Shields
Stage 4: Movement + Abilities + Levelling, full Titan
You "capitalize" on the efficiency gained just... how? You don't have enough time to re-earn the investment until the next Titan stage is due. And stalling the Titan research / construction mid-way into the whole affair isn't an option now, is it?
That is an indicative that the wrong approach was taken. Bottom line is: You need to push ALL four research buttons before the Titan does anything at all.
If you take "baby steps" with delays in between, you certainly used the entirely sub-optimal path with resources tied up for nothing at all and delayed arrival of your massive chunk of firepower...
No shields until later is probably a good idea... but firepower and abilities are the main points to having a Titan, these should be the last two upgrades. Especially because "Provoke" and repair ability ships can cover very well for the lack of shields, in particularly so when the enemy fleet goes "pop" rapidly.
Hrm, fair point.
But about the queueing, what I mean is: While Stage 1 is building and Stage 2 is researching, I can gather the resources to click Stage 3, right? If it were just one stage, I'd need all resources in advance before ever clicking the button. In other words since the queue deducts the resources the moment I push the button, I can "delay" payment and click in the next step somewhere during the previous one. Were all combined, such an option wouldn't exist.
To illustrate this better, consider if I'd need 2000 resource for 4 stages each, each taking 60s.
Assuming I can make 1000 resources per 60s, I can start on the project when I have 5000 resources. I click in Stages 1 & 2. Somewhere after 1 completes I queue up 3, and until 3 is done I have the 2000 for the final stage.
If it were one step, I could only start it 3 minutes later, since Id have to first wait until I hogged 8000 resources.
Sure. But if the last step simply took 3 minutes less, it'd all be the same, really. You still need to pay in full and you still cannot afford to do only half as-is now, as you get absolutely nothing for doing only half.
Combining the 4 Techs into a single one would delay the building of a Titan, since the player has to wait until he has enough ressources to research them all at once, with 4 different Techs he can start earlier, with less ressources availiable.
If it would be a good thing to delay Titans further threw merging the 4 Techs into 1 or not I can´t judge yet, since I haven´t played too many games against human players.
While the time to get a Titan would increase, it also might be a buff, since you don´t have to commit ressources as early, which are gone once the research is finished, but you might need them to defend yourself.
justmy2veldspa.. cents
You can have weapons and abilities unlocked by tier 1, 2, 3 research, but that means you can get a titan built with just that first lab and even if it has 2 weapon systems and 1-2 abilities or upgrades, it is still on the field of play.
Stacking the research and setting them all to tier 2 (which means 3 labs) might not be much help either.
That concept is common to every RTS out there, and economics in general. The gist of it is that idle money is wasted money. There is nothing gained on money just sitting there, and having a research in queue already paid for is no different than that.
Any situation where you can delay an expense with no consequence creates an opportunity in the form of spending that money on something else that will further your goals. Obviously, like you said you're not going to want to spend all of it, as that may delay your construction if you don't earn enough back in time, but some of it? Absolutely.
It's not something that most people bother with all that much, but when you start dealing with pro players, in any game, every advantage counts and any time you have money just sitting there, you're missing one.
Can't see much of an opportunity there except on slow research or normal research with fast/faster build speed. And even then the window of opportunity for investing the resources, exploiting that advantage and earning back the money is really quite short. (Foundry + Titan needs to be at 75% when tech 4 completes, actually try it with various settings, if you feel like it).
Well, if this stays, I'm sure the "pro" players will figure out how to do this nicely without delays. And since the only real potential here is to fall over one's own feet (no significant external disuption possible, really), it won't really matter in "pro vs pro" games other than being yet another boring chore.
But I guess with the "slow" research settings it will probably be exploitable when playing "pro vs noobs". The "noobs" will mess something up and research inefficiently while having a Titan construction started.
Perhaps someone gets distracted by some fighting at the frontline, perhaps they did not notice they lost a tech center to a sneak attack, or perhaps because the titan builder doesn't know that he/she REALLY has to scrap and replace buildings on planets if the tech level is threatened to fall below the Titan research's required threshold... things a "pro" couldn't fall for.
Either way, a situaton ensues where a foundry, and 2-3 tech levels worth of expenditure are locked for a prolonged while serving absolutely not purpose at all. Then the "pro" can certainly feel so much more "pro" for having had more than 15k worth of resources extra for many minutes. It will be... fun?!
i agree with the OP. My solution would be each research makes the titan more expensive but lets it build more. That was you can research one and start building the titan for part of its cost (1/4 would be logical). The next research adds another 1/4 of the cost on but lets you start the building process up again. This way if you research them all at once, your just making it so you have to come up with the full cost of the titan right away. My way you get to make payments as you can by only researching them one at a time. Thoughts?
giveing the titan a research tree is a better idea then a leveling system
I think they should have it, that is have one Tier 2 tech for 0-50% and a tier 4 for 50-100.
Though I would like it if the Titan research was a bit more expensive without needing additional labs.
actually, I'd rather keep the 4 techs, but doing the research is how you build a titan. Yes, increase the cost of each layer of research so that the total cost is the same. This helps the idea that it's a prototype and you have to research as you build it.
I'm ok with it. Just one titan tech that cost the same as the four techs combined would be out of place in the tech tree due to expesne, but it should be expensive.
The Titan is a big deal. The lead up in the tech tree gives you the impression this is a big project everyone is working toward. Also cost and layout probably slows the progress in popping out a Titan super fast.
I don't understand what is wrong with making it a single button but just givving it four tiers.
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