The funnest tech system I ever ran into was an old server game that's not around anymore. Its technology system was based on adding more and more points to main tech categories. It had added something interesting to the game I had never seen before. If I was able to capture a planet or ship from an enemy, the system allowed me to take the existing colony structures, parts and ships and 'strip it like a car thief' then reverse engineer to add more points to each applicable tech category (colony structures, weapons, engines, jump drives, etc.). You would lose the structure, part or ship, but you would gain tech.

Of course the system was a bit more abstract as each tech you had to add more points and it restricted what you could do by how many (open ended) points you put in. The more tech you got in a category the bigger and better the part you could design and build.

Only one research base per planet forced exploration and combat a bit. But with three to ten planets per system it worked nicely.

Perhaps you could take a route that would allow tech to that would help in one type of capture or destroy forcing players to decide if they want to take a chance to get some extra tech by trying to liberate it from neighbors or enemies. That would add a bit more depth without making it a forced mini-game that no one would really want.

Real research funding is a lot more like gambling than 4x-type games tend to portray. Random intermittent reward schedules give you some possibility for additional fun; make it more like "loot" than "EXP". Make projects cheap, quick, plentiful, and let you pursue several, and then have only a quarter of them fully succeed, and an eighth of them succeed so wildly that you get additional techs.

Related: On one of Acharis's old 4x research threads I suggested a "bounty" system that I don't think anyone has used, but which might be interesting. Basically, at each point in a tree (which might be invisible to the player), you have a decent idea of the child techs, and let the player see them. But there aren't "research points" or "progress bars", there's just a chance (slowly growing from zero to a fixed low chance like 5%) for each tech that researchers will happen to discover it at the beginning of the next turn. You don't fund the research yourself -- you let universities, private industry, etc. do their thing -- but you can set "bounties" on particular future techs that increase the likelihood that it will be discovered on the next turn. You can set them and withdraw bounties at any time, but if the result is discovered while you have a bounty on it, you have to pay the bounty.

So that might fulfill your desiderata: it's not mandatory -- discoveries will happen anyway, just not quite as often -- but if players engage with it they'll have some more control over their research priorities and research overall will go a little faster (although, of course, with a cost tradeoff).

One other option might be I have prototypes so that research itself happens as per normal, but once the tech becomes available you get say three prototypes of the same weapon, building etc. and you have to field test them to see which ones actually work which might mean you have to destroy 2 enemy ships with each prototype. I think this could be expanded upon to make for some interesting game play. You could for example:

• Have multiple prototypes be effective but produce different results. eg. out of four new laser prototypes one turns out to be a decent close combat weapon and one other a long range laser.
• Stealing of prototypes from destroyed craft to further research

Ok, this is coming together nicely. Very good ideas from Thoumaturge

And am I correct in gathering that the three are done entirely separately from each other--that is, that one doesn't research while in combat, or negotiate while researching, etc.?

valrus

So that might fulfill your desiderata: it's not mandatory -- discoveries will happen anyway, just not quite as often -- but if players engage with it they'll have some more control over their research priorities and research overall will go a little faster (although, of course, with a cost tradeoff).

and Dragoncar

One other option might be I have prototypes so that research itself happens as per normal, but once the tech becomes available you get say three prototypes

This is beginning to come together in my head.

Now, what I'm thinking is this. You play as a senator in the near future, where faster than light travail is nearly upon humanity. You are the head of a roman style house and you vie for control of the senate.

You have 3 routes to power.

1: Use your robotic armies, human assassins, and champions to crush other robotic armies, proving you are technologically superior, assassinate other senators who are in your way, and use your champions to gain favor with the populace. All this to become emperor, which will be decided on in the next election. And the emperor who presides over the first interstellar colony will be nearly impossible to dispose.

2: Negotiate with the other senators, using blackmail, bribes, trading what you want for what they want, voting a certain way, and getting them to vote in ways that increase your power in order to be elected with as little bloodshed as possible.

and 3: Have your science team discover faster than light travail before the election and appoint yourself head of the colony because you have the tech to do so.

These systems will intermingle. Assassinations will open new negotiation tactics. Fighting with your armies will provide useful data for your tech people, and research will give you new and more powerful technologies to build into your robot armies and have your champions wow the people with.

Right now the mechanics will be ultra simple. Your turn, which will be called a Year will be laid out like this. Negotiate in the spring, research in the summer, either negotiate or research in the fall, not both, and fight in the winter. You will just point a click options, and the options will give you an approximate reading on how they will effect your power, how other senators feel about you, and how likely things are to actually succeed.

What do you think of this rudimentary formula?

Let's go with the most basic of interfaces that still is something like what I want to implement. Negotiation will happen in a building filled with senators. by clicking on a senator you will get a box with all the information you know about that senator on it. Highlighted parts will be the senators disposition to you, they apparent mood, and their likelihood of voting for you for emperor. You will set your disposition toward him, your current mood, and pick from a handful of one word to short sentence topics. No dialogue trees. You just flip your mood as you decide how best to react to the information, and you can pick topics to steer the conversation towards. I'll map these functions to keyboard keys so you can quickly flip through to how you want to react even as the conversation progresses.

Your army will be similar. You will click on other senators in the battle screen and see their armies disposition, any apparent intel, and how likely it is that your army will beat theirs in a raw fight, one on one. The actual battle will play out like a conversation, you switching your armies disposition and attack pattern based on theirs while you try to steer the battle in your favor by picking topics like shoring up the defenses at your center, rotating troops, and whatnot.

Research will be the same but with slightly different names. Instead of disposition you will have Overarching goals which will then inform the secondary goals. Then, you will try to steer your scientists to the best path for completing these goals by picking a topic to put money into and flipping your secondary, and even your overarching goals to better steer the scientists to better achieve the end.

So it's a game about picking the right sets of states to be in to take advantage of a situation. You choices will not be random but informed based on the information you currently have, and you will be able to use spies and scouts to get more information at a possible cost.