"Racial" Technology

Lucanos · #1 March 27th, 2001, 10:46 PM

What is research?

My (subjective) point of view:

Increased research is, in terms of the game: "Increased understanding of reality".

All races should be able to understand reality at 100% ...even "racial" techs should be accessible to all races.

I mean, if there's an option (at game setup) for ONLY colonizing your own planet types there could also be an option to steal/research racial techs (that you don't have) later in the game. Mabbe with an increased cost/difficulty?

Baron Munchausen · #2 March 27th, 2001, 11:51 PM

You can mod this if you want. The 'racial' techs are not hardcoded but controled by the text config files. Just remove the racial abilities and change the techarea.txt and the corresponding components and facilities to be normal technologies.

Lucanos · #3 March 28th, 2001, 12:02 AM

Every day you learn something new.

Thanks Baron!

Suicide Junkie · #4 March 28th, 2001, 04:27 AM

If you're doing that, you probably also want to be able to research the ancient techs.

I would suggest that they be about 5 tech levels higher than the current max in any related fields.
Eg. Massive Planetary shields: Shields Lvl 15

Throw in some "half-way" components & facilities such as "Giant-Shield Gen" for starbases & such.

Just make sure you're going to have to spend many years to research racial and ancient Techs.

---------------

The other thing to consider is that 100 turns is only 10 years. How far would you expect a race to advance in ten years? The current tech settings in SE4 are quite ... optimistic.

Sirkit · #5 March 28th, 2001, 09:15 AM

While I don't debate the possibility of making all tecs available to all races, in the case of ai's they wouldn't stand a chance due to this. My opinion would be by doing this it makes the game easier (not that anyone asked for it) but I ask you these questions for the sake of realism:

1) Can you see the future? If you were faced with temporal tec would you understand how it worked?

2) We currently see cheap tricks of mind reading if you were faced with a real life construct witch focses that ability and you don't have it what good would it do you?

3) Your faced with a room full of crystals 3 of them are pulsing red, one blue, and 2 yellow. One of them makes you move, the others activate self destruct systems, witch do you choose?

4) You have seen a EEE (for example) pray to his god to help him in this time of need. It happens, you exclaim "WOW a walking god that grants miricals to his followers!" you spend your life in the service of an EEE god, would he grant your mirical?

I humbly offer these for your consideration

happy gaming

Lemmy · #6 March 28th, 2001, 11:06 AM

i agree that you should be able to research all racial techs.

i find it hard to beleive that a space faring alien race just can't understand temporal techs, maybe it is possible to make temporal techs cheaper for races with this racial trait, don't think so because i don't believe you can make research cheaper or more expensive for one particular race.

or maybe you can't research it if you don't have the racial tech, but you can still capture it and analyze, after all it's much easier to understand something if it's already made, right?

[This message has been edited by LemmyM (edited 28 March 2001).]

Q · #7 March 28th, 2001, 11:25 AM

Honestly I do not care about realism in this game. I just find it much more interesting if there are races that have a completely different technology. So I really want it to keep it as it is now.

Lemmy · #8 March 28th, 2001, 12:50 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Q:
Honestly I do not care about realism in this game. I just find it much more interesting if there are races that have a completely different technology. So I really want it to keep it as it is now.

if you really want different race to have different technology you could make all of the weapon tech a racial trait which cost maybe 500 racial points or so...but then i don't know if the ai will use them, i have no idea how the ai chooses racial techs...

Nitram Draw · #9 March 28th, 2001, 01:57 PM

I like the idea of totally different techs. It give the game flavor. I wish there were more differences not less. Why should every races discover the same basic items. Why do the EEE need minerals for example, aren't they like an energy based race? Why do are all the races ship hulls made out of the same material?
If I had two wishes about this game it would be an AI as good as a human, very hard to do, and much more varied races, a possibility.

Suicide Junkie · #10 March 28th, 2001, 04:07 PM

quote:
If I had two wishes about this game it would be an AI as good as a human, very hard to do, and much more varied races, a possibility.

As for the Eee, if they're made of energy, give them a racial tech choice (just like the "Not A Pirate" thing) that gives them access to ship hulls & components that require almost no minerals, but lots of radioactives.
For any organic race, give them new hulls & components that are primarily composed of organics.
Crystalline races should be getting more expensive mineral-based components, with say, 3x the hitpoints (for non-armor components)

Just make 4 copies of most of the components - SE4 shouldn't mind until you get up to 32k or 64k components (since it's past 256 already, its likely integer based or better)
- one copy is normal, the others are resouce specific (more Minerals/ all organic / all radioactives)

Any other general changes you think of could be added in the same way.

Note that those changes above might encourage trade, since each race will be specializing in one resource, they can trade for the other two, at a net gain for both sides.