First off, I found out about GalCiv4 being in the works yesterday and have been watching the Q&As on the page and reading about it since then. I've played since GalCiv1 for Windows, many, many, many hours on 1, 2, and 3, so I'm really looking forward to GalCiv4 when it comes out.

Regarding my request, one of the things that keeps being mentioned is that research is going to be based on what the player "draws". Which is fantastic, I like a bit of randomization to navigating the tech tree. But there's something else that I like, too, and that's the "Skunkworks" method of researching something as demonstrated in the game Armada 2526.

In Armada 2526 the player could build "Skunkworks" instead of normal research laboratories (there were about seven total different laboratory types). The benefit of the skunkworks was that you got a huge research bonus (something like 50% more than one would get from any other laboratory), but you had no control over what was researched beyond, after about researching half the technology, finally learning what "the guys" were working on and deciding whether to permit it to continue or to scrap it and make them move on to something else (which you also had no control over picking and had to wait awhile to even know what it was).

The downside was that you could end up with no shields or weapons or otherwise having one part of your sciences be neglected. The upside was that you didn't have to manage those choices and got a very nice boost to research speed because your engineers and scientists preferred to work on their own pet projects rather than "for the man" (or something like that, I forget how it was explained in the game).

Regardless, on top of randomized tech choices, I would really like to have the option to pick a certain research policy or build certain research buildings that reduce my choice in what's researched while giving me an overall boost in total research. Would this sort of mechanic be something that could be incorporated into GalCiv4?