proposition: Realistic Racial Tech trades

[taltamir]

ORIGINAL: Astorax

You are counting pitiful as a total tech boost. Fine. It only jumps me several components of ONE tech field. Fine. I'll take that and I don't think it pitiful. It might not be as much as one would think it should give but its a huge boost all at once. Especially in the early game.

I have never jumped a single tech level from disassembly, ever.
I do disassemble all ships, religiously... I just keep them until the last minute before disassembly. And it never levels up anything when doing so.
Maybe if you had level 1 everything and then disassembled a really awesome capital ship...but that is a huge humongous waste.

[taltamir]

ORIGINAL: Astorax

You are counting pitiful as a total tech boost. Fine. It only jumps me several components of ONE tech field. Fine. I'll take that and I don't think it pitiful. It might not be as much as one would think it should give but its a huge boost all at once. Especially in the early game.

I have never jumped a single tech level from disassembly, ever.
I do disassemble all ships, religiously... I just keep them until the last minute before disassembly. And it never levels up anything when doing so.
Maybe if you had level 1 everything and then disassembled a really awesome capital ship...but that is a huge humongous waste.

As I said, it probably depends on the research rate. But still, if your research rate is set higher then you don't actually need it anyways.

In regards to "Never trade" thing... In a recent game I had 50 planets, there were two empires with about 30, and then a bunch of small dogs.. I sold my my (non racial but still very advanced) tech for cash to every other empire for every last credit they had... end result? 700K credits... which I used to build 100 colony ships (7000 each) via the colonization window. (I prioritized... mostly)... less than 3 minutes later I had 150 planets...
The game ran for about 10 minutes (my state went a little bankrupt for a while because of auto hiring of troops... but it recovered as the new planets became productive)

Then I went on a new round of selling... this time I sold tech to anyone who would buy it for nearly a million... and used it to build 150 more ships...
I now have 300 planets when the second largest empire managed to go from 30 to 35...
Guess who just won the game... by selling tech!

[lostsm]

you just have been unlucky i'm afraid. I don't know how many times I've retired a ship at shipyard and in return completely maxed out a tech line. most recent one was standard armor to ultra dense armor, pretty early in the game too

and it's not just a special cap ship. I do pirate ships too and often i jump component levels, from energy collectors to beams. in fact you can also gain research from all the ships you inherit from defeated AIs, especially it seems from their exploration ships and very much so from their resupply ... although in all these cases I have the feeling the game does check if the ship being retired has higher tech components, even so I find the rewards to be ranked just under the exploration tech freebies (devastor ray etc)


edit: as for the on topic: i removed all racial techs. they make no sense. while nice flavor wise, in practice they present problems in AI-AI relationship. instead of giving the AI a super tech I set them up as advanced/enhanced, amazing home system and expanded/mature level. it's not like i've seen them use their techs to effiency anyway and plus, not all AI races get one. clearly unbalanced imo and needs furthers tweaking

[Astorax]

^-----what Lostm said.

[taltamir]

ORIGINAL: lostsm

you just have been unlucky i'm afraid. I don't know how many times I've retired a ship at shipyard and in return completely maxed out a tech line. most recent one was standard armor to ultra dense armor, pretty early in the game too

and it's not just a special cap ship. I do pirate ships too and often i jump component levels, from energy collectors to beams. in fact you can also gain research from all the ships you inherit from defeated AIs, especially it seems from their exploration ships and very much so from their resupply ... although in all these cases I have the feeling the game does check if the ship being retired has higher tech components, even so I find the rewards to be ranked just under the exploration tech freebies (devastor ray etc)

being that unlucky about it is inconceivable. I have literally retired hundreds of ships.
I think it has to do with me setting the technology rate to slowest.

And yes, I also retire all pirate ships. As I said, I retire every ship I can for research.. I just wait with the good ones until the last moment before doing so.

[lostsm]

i have research speed set to very slow as well. if being unlucky isn't it, then maybe it has to do with waiting until the last minute before retiring. as i wrote, I believe the retired ship's components play a very important role in what tech bonus you receive

for example, you have hyperdrive level 1 and retired ship has hyperdrive level 4 equipped (as seen in the ships details). if you retire it immediately the game's random number generator (for random results) may be skewed with large tech differences to award you with a lot of tech, as opposed to waiting until you are just about to hit hyperdrive level 4

[Fishman]

Getting an actual research jump isn't what really happens when you retire a ship that grants research. What happens is that you get research points towards a field. If this is enough to push you over to the next research component, then you get an itam. Otherwise, you get points, but no itam. If you have tech set to "painfully slow", then it will take a lot more eaten ships to get a bump.

[taltamir]

ORIGINAL: Fishman

Getting an actual research jump isn't what really happens when you retire a ship that grants research. What happens is that you get research points towards a field. If this is enough to push you over to the next research component, then you get an itam. Otherwise, you get points, but no itam. If you have tech set to "painfully slow", then it will take a lot more eaten ships to get a bump.

Correct. And if you get enough points, you can jump several levels of a field at once. I have not gotten enough points.

ORIGINAL: lostsm

i have research speed set to very slow as well. if being unlucky isn't it, then maybe it has to do with waiting until the last minute before retiring. as i wrote, I believe the retired ship's components play a very important role in what tech bonus you receive

But that is mixing up cause and effect. I only wait until the last minute because the amount of points acquired is too small. And it doesn't seem like it matters when you scrap it.

[Astorax]

Well, in the games I've played, it isn't usually small. Sometimes I get nothing but a small bump but it seems I usually jump up a component and sometimes several. I, however, don't play on super-slow research mode.

[Fishman]

You are better off scrapping early than late. If you scrap late, the technolergy you can gain from it is much less because the ship is primitive now, and additionally, the cost of technolergy has increased. This double-whammy makes it very dubious to bother scrapping for tech gain, whereas scrapping early can boost you a level or two because you have scrapped a highly advanced item in a time when techs are cheap.

Of course, you also just destroyed something that can singlehandedly beat the crap out of every ship you have probably built so far, so...

[lostsm]

most of those freebie ships run out of energy pretty quick anyway. they are powerful for a little while but i still find them much more valuable when retired for tech

[taltamir]

i use them to single handedly destroy any pirate base in the area... this maxes out my reputation which in turn increases my popularity, and thus taxes paid to me
more money = more planets are colonized = I win.

oh, and if someone declares war on me I use it to single handedly destroy some large space ports in their terf... this scares them enough to become subjected to me... which is ideal... you spend the minimum amount of time at war and the maximum amount of time colonizing... war should only be fought when you have already won... aka, when there are no more planets in the galaxy to colonize.

[Munchies]

That is not entirely true.
It would depend on your race and government.

A warlike race that gets a bonus to troop recruitment and maintenance, weapons, warships, etc. should be doing there expanding by invading others colonies instead of giving hugs and kisses to everyone and building only colony ships. (Not saying they should never build colony ships) They have that bonus for a reason.

Extremely aggressive races should be just that... extremely aggressive. And should jump on your undefended colony with glee. (With equal sized empires. Not talking about a 20 col empire jumping on a 600 col empire)

[taltamir]

well... such a race could go on its marry way expanding the economy and colonizing during a war without the need to make peace for the sake of its economy.
But its still more practical to capture new worlds.