Research Reloaded - [DWU][WIP][beta soon] New huge research tree, new everything

[Icemania]

I'd recommend keeping the weapons reasonably balanced. Refer here for Battle Arena style testing for Vanilla weapons. Before testing it's important to optimise ship designs for each weapon type first. Then set-up any scenario you like using Game Editor to test.

[lurchi]

True that. I guess there'll be lots of rebalancing once the framework is done.

[lurchi]

ORIGINAL: ParagonExile

Lurchi.

You're a good man. I just want to tell you that.

[:D]

[ParagonExile]

ORIGINAL: lurchi

ORIGINAL: ParagonExile

Lurchi.

You're a good man. I just want to tell you that.

[:D]

Well... unless you're a woman.

[Blackstork]

Ohoh things getting hot here.

[lurchi]

ORIGINAL: ParagonExile

Well... unless you're a woman.

I just checked. Everything still in place down there.

[Unforeseen]

Well damn you got my support lol. No point in continuing URM

Since your taking suggestions... maybe others will agree with this idk but i think that the Death Ray shouldn't even be in the game...or at least nerfed down to a more reasonable end game weapon. The kind of damage it does is absurd for game play purposes.

Also something needs to be done about planet destroying weapons. I would hate for them to NOT be in the game at all, and i do think it should be an endgame level technology...but the way that you get it needs work. IMO, because realistically any weapon should be able to destroy a planet. At least in the case of an energy weapon. You just have to have a good enough power source and a weapon that can reliably handle that amount of power. As a suggestion we could add a planet destroyer at the end of every tech tree. With a relatively expensive research cost.

Edit: This will leave me with enough time to start working on my Music Mod

[Sithuk]

Any plans to resolve the pacing of the early game on pre-warp starts where the players sits for a relatively prolonged time just beelining the Warp bubble then Gerax drive? Locarnus did some interesting work in that area. With high research cost games the pre-warp drive game could be made shorter and still be relevant and interesting.

I would ask that you consider first and foremost the impact on the AI before creating a change. Please don't introduce a change if it puts the AI at a disadvantage.

[Unforeseen]

Im personally against shortening the prewarp stage, i just wish there was more to do during the phase.

[ParagonExile]

ORIGINAL: Unforeseen

Im personally against shortening the prewarp stage, i just wish there was more to do during the phase.

It'd be pretty cool if we could send expeditions to other stars without warp drive, and maybe extend the stage a bit. Would be fun.

[lurchi]

ORIGINAL: Unforeseen

Well damn you got my support lol. No point in continuing URM

Since your taking suggestions... maybe others will agree with this idk but i think that the Death Ray shouldn't even be in the game...or at least nerfed down to a more reasonable end game weapon. The kind of damage it does is absurd for game play purposes.

Also something needs to be done about planet destroying weapons. I would hate for them to NOT be in the game at all, and i do think it should be an endgame level technology...but the way that you get it needs work. IMO, because realistically any weapon should be able to destroy a planet. At least in the case of an energy weapon. You just have to have a good enough power source and a weapon that can reliably handle that amount of power. As a suggestion we could add a planet destroyer at the end of every tech tree. With a relatively expensive research cost.

Edit: This will leave me with enough time to start working on my Music Mod

[:)]

About the super weapons, I almost halved the Death Ray's power in my Extended Research mod V0.3. Doing this here will have repercussions on Extended Universe, though. One of the races relies on that thing from the beginning, so the ship templates probably'd have to be adjusted.

Well, we'll see. First the framework, than balancing.

We think very similar about the planet destroyers, actually. I wanted to make a planet buster as endtech for the energy weapons, rockets and torpedoes. At first it seemed like a good idea, but there's a big problem. The game only knows one single planet destroying weapon. There are no templates for planet destroyers at all so we can't take the various races by the hand to show them how to do it. I'm afraid this won't work out without some help from Elliot. [&:]

[&o] We beseech thee, O Elliot. [&o]

[lurchi]

ORIGINAL: Sithuk

Any plans to resolve the pacing of the early game on pre-warp starts where the players sits for a relatively prolonged time just beelining the Warp bubble then Gerax drive? Locarnus did some interesting work in that area. With high research cost games the pre-warp drive game could be made shorter and still be relevant and interesting.

I would ask that you consider first and foremost the impact on the AI before creating a change. Please don't introduce a change if it puts the AI at a disadvantage.

Aside slowing down the hyper drives I didn't think about pre-warp game yet. I actually never played with Locarnus' mod, what did he do exactly?

About the AI, I sure do think about this. I'll bring more diversity into Universe, but the research paths stay quite simple, actually. Also we now can take the AI by the hand using the Research Order system. I hope Icemania will help with that, he's quite involved with that matter.

[lurchi]

ORIGINAL: Unforeseen

Im personally against shortening the prewarp stage, i just wish there was more to do during the phase.

Yeah, but what? Ideas are very welcome.

[ParagonExile]

Hey Lurchi, I just made a post for Icemania's mod, and I wanted to get your opinion as well.

This is a repost of what I just rote;

Problem found. What are you Icemania? A casual?

Find what is wrong with these pictures (Pardon the potato quality):



In my opinion, the "consolidation" techs (Meridian shields, hyperfusion reactors etc) should be violently murdered and buried in a shallow grave. They kill variety and make the game both visually boring and predictable. I would suggest following Locarnus' example and removing these technologies, extending the abilities of its predecessors to fill the niche, or weakening them and placing them alongside their former prerequisite as another "specialization" path.

For example;

For reactors, the root tech would be "space reactors", that would be directly upgraded to "fission reactors", which in turn would have two techs which improve its efficiency. Following that, it would branch off to "Fusion reactors" as the efficiency option, "Hyperfusion reactors" which would be raw power option, and "Quantum reactors" as a middle ground. In this example, you could also set another gas, maybe Tyderios, to be a fuel for Hyperfusion reactors so you could diversify your fuel sources and use different reactors for different ship types. Civilian ships would use fusion, non-combat state ships would use quantum reactors, and combat ships would use hyperfusion. I think this could be very interesting and improve the game in a tangible way.

What do you think about this idea?

[lurchi]

I came to the same conclusion, that's why I removed the titan beam. I'll also remove other similar consolidation tech, the research tree will branch out some more instead.

Right now I'm still working on the weapons, but I just might post a little teaser showing what I'm talking about. Well, if I'm happy with what I have so far before [>:]

Damn, I have to get up in 5 hours...

[lurchi]

K, here's a little teaser of things to come. This is a part of the beam weapon tree:



Edit: It still doesn't show up, so go here: http://oi58.tinypic.com/34xqfy0.jpg

Goodnight!

[Unforeseen]

OMG that is EPIC!!!

About prewarp...not really sure. Events would be nice but options are limited in that area without making a scenario. I just don't really want to shorten the research length for warp bubble because it's already pretty quick as it is. One of the things that makes this mode interesting to me is the variables placed on every empire in the game during the phase regarding pirates. Depending on how long it takes them to get warp bubbles they can be slowed or quickened by the pirates resulting in varying degrees of power for each empire going into the mid game. Shortening it will decrease this effect and decrease the challenge going forward imo... though... on the other hand it helps players who exploit things like tax levels to give themselves a huge boost in population and tax gain... because the AI won't be "as far" behind.

[Icemania]

ORIGINAL: ParagonExile

Hey Lurchi, I just made a post for Icemania's mod, and I wanted to get your opinion as well.

This is a repost of what I just rote;

Now this is the right place ...

[ParagonExile]

ORIGINAL: Icemania

ORIGINAL: ParagonExile

Hey Lurchi, I just made a post for Icemania's mod, and I wanted to get your opinion as well.

This is a repost of what I just rote;

Now this is the right place ...

Yay!

If I might make one more suggestion, try coming up with unique tech names for each tech, it adds a ton of personality and makes the tree much more interesting than if you just use "enhanced" or "advanced" for everything.

Just my 2 cents. Hope it goes well!

[Icemania]

ORIGINAL: Unforeseen
Since your taking suggestions... maybe others will agree with this idk but i think that the Death Ray shouldn't even be in the game...or at least nerfed down to a more reasonable end game weapon. The kind of damage it does is absurd for game play purposes.

Actually I've balance tested the Death Ray. It needs a buff ... not a nerf.

What I'd really like is a Super Weapon for each and every branch of the Weapons tech tree.