I don't know whether or not that fits your space strategy game, but what I would like to see for a change would be different tech trees for different races, as I don't see how two or more different races which are lightyears apart from each other would all come up with the same technology.

Take it one step further - create technologies for a race that would really boost the research results of your own race by combined technology, so you got a really good reason to trade tech and be friends with others. There are various other options as well - in K240 (and its sequel Fragile Allegiance) you could buy blueprints from a huge trade council/company (SciTec), so if you go out and concentrate on industry and profit, you could still compete with other races that invest more resources in research, giving the player more options on how to run his empire.

Another idea is that a race that only knows about laser and fusion based weapons is unlikely to develop a shield that works against an exotic technology of a yet to be discovered race. If you first meet them and they start attacking you, you will realize that your shield technology is useless against this new kind of weapon. This leads to your research department trying to analyze this new technology and to come up with something that protects you from it. This way, your tech tree would develop by reacting on the events inside the game, the races you encounter and whether you are good friends with everyone or are the arch-villain of the universe, so your style of playing would have much more impact on your tech development than just some sliders adjusting the amount of money you throw at your science department.

Maybe there are certain races that know of and fight against each other, so their technology is based upon their enemy's. If you declare war on one of them without meeting their tech level (or, more likely in that case, they declare war on you), you should better try to ally with their other enemies so you stand a chance against this otherwise superior aggressor.

Adapting to an enemy's technology doesn't have to mean to be able to only recreate his weapons and equipment. Well, try to capture it! If you engage them in a space fight, let one of their ships survive and then invade it. Usually, a player would just blow up the enemy vessel, since most of the time there is no point in sending expensive invading troops just to add that one more ship to your fleet. With a reward like this, a player would think twice about destroying such a great source of new technology.


In my opinion, a dynamic tech tree like this would give the player great feedback based upon his style of playing, and would add a much higher replay factor since every game is different, based on your individual behaviour, your allies and enemies, and what the universe looks like (thereby influencing the point of when you encounter other races). I would LOVE to work on such a game. :-)

To make different races feel more different in the game, you could even customize their interface and background music. For example, if you would play a more close-to-nature race, the music would sound quite organic and ethereal, while you wouldn't expect this soundtrack for a technocrat race of cyborg creatures.

With dynamic music at hand, you could even mix in some flavours of other races' music into your own, according on how much you adapted your own technology to theirs. If the organic race described above abandons its origins and switches to the robotic side of technology they aquired from race #2, their overall feel could change as well.

Of course that might be a bit over the top... ;-)

Quote:Original post by c-Row
Adapting to an enemy's technology doesn't have to mean to be able to only recreate his weapons and equipment. Well, try to capture it! If you engage them in a space fight, let one of their ships survive and then invade it. Usually, a player would just blow up the enemy vessel, since most of the time there is no point in sending expensive invading troops just to add that one more ship to your fleet. With a reward like this, a player would think twice about destroying such a great source of new technology.

Nice idea. I'm also working on a 4X type game , so am quite merrily scouring this forum looking for good ideas to rip off ( err , allow myself to be influenced by ). I remember playing a strategy game where you could only research certain things once you'd seen one of your opponents using it , and then you could slash the research time quite dramatically if you could get your hands on a working model.

How about at least one of your ships has to survive the battle , in order to send to you their sensor readings ( or whatever ) of your opponents new toy?

Each race would choose a certain research path at the beginning , and the only way you could build things from a different path would be by capturing or trading for them ( want a level 2 energy shield? Capture a ship with one , and send it to your labs for examination - or trade , or send spies to steal). But that will only let you build what ever it is you've captured ( or gone up against in battle ). Of course , the more technology from a certain path you've managed to assimilate , the greater chance of your scientists being able to research stuff from it by themselves , without needing to be 'inpsired' by their opponents stuff first.

If you see what I mean

Sorry , for some reason , my post went through about 6 times

[Edited by - SadisticToaster on September 16, 2005 1:53:17 PM]

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[Edited by - SadisticToaster on September 16, 2005 1:53:40 PM]

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[Edited by - SadisticToaster on September 16, 2005 1:54:17 PM]

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[Edited by - SadisticToaster on September 16, 2005 1:54:01 PM]

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[Edited by - SadisticToaster on September 16, 2005 1:54:34 PM]

Quote:Original post by SadisticToaster
Nice idea. I'm also working on a 4X type game , so am quite merrily scouring this forum looking for good ideas to rip off ( err , allow myself to be influenced by ).

:D

Quote:I remember playing a strategy game where you could only research certain things once you'd seen one of your opponents using it , and then you could slash the research time quite dramatically if you could get your hands on a working model.

Sounds like X-Com to me. Indeed, UFO Defense had a quite similar approach on the tech tree side. Humans had a number of own technology to research and manufacture, but once you had captured your first alien equipment, a whole new bunch of research possibilities unfolded. Things were still a bit static, though, since you always encountered the same aliens and their weapons/technology.

Quote:How about at least one of your ships has to survive the battle , in order to send to you their sensor readings ( or whatever ) of your opponents new toy?

Makes sense, and would still reward the player for cowarding... eh, I eman, tactical retreat.

Quote:Of course , the more technology from a certain path you've managed to assimilate , the greater chance of your scientists being able to research stuff from it by themselves , without needing to be 'inpsired' by their opponents stuff first.

Hm, didn't think of that, yes. Like as soon as you fully understood an unknown technology, you could use it yourself without just copying an enemy's tech.

Of course, from a game design side of things you would need to come up with hundreds of different techs and equipment... (although some technology might just not be compatible with another)


So many ideas, so little time (and programming experience)

I think that SadisticToaster's suggestion would be even easier to code like this: (you know, describing this stuff is really cool and easy, but sometimes the technical side is much much harder to pin down)

You simply have another bar for each technology you can research: "knowledge".
This is a measurement of what your scientists have to work on that technology, and it represents directly the speed at which they can research that technology. At first it is zero, so you actually cannot research it at all.

When you successfully research a technology, it will boost the knowledge of others that are related. This will create a technology tree or web that will provide a lot of interesting choices and objectives to pursuit (you can't get your hands on your enemy's Positron Scrambler Beam, so you research other positron-based technologies in order to raise your chances of researching it).

The coolest thing would be that, as you had more encounters with a technology, your chances to research it would slowly improve, and have a big boost if you had a working piece of it, or just some scraps or stolen information.
Gameplay would be improved in that, if you really want a technology, you can actively make its research take less time by doing these side-missions! :P