Miniaturization

[bbq]

Those who have played Master of Orion 2 might know what I am talking about.

Wouldn't it be cool if today's Capital Ship Missile I which takes 50kt of space ends up only requiring 40kt (or whatever) when you exceed the original tech level by one or two? Wouldn't it be cool if more things act like the Master Computer, which gets smaller (but not necessarily cheaper) when your knowledge of that field is increased?

There are things that obviously shouldn't be miniaturized, like fighter bays or satellite bays, but it seems to make sense that as you get better, less redunant systems are needed, things get more compacted and they get smaller and lighter. What do you think?

[Kamog]

This can be done with a mod. One easy way to do it would be to create a new tech area called "miniturization" and make component and weapon mounts available that decrease the size of items but increase the cost. Have smaller and smaller mounts available with higher levels of miniturization researched.

[Suicide Junkie]

The only problem is that when you get to level 50, those missiles will take up zero space...

[Gandalf Parker]

I think that the engines getting cheaper and cheaper in material costs for each level with no other bonus (for a few steps) would be an example of SEIV doing that. Well, as well as could be done now.

[Fyron]

This would be very easy to implement using SJ's Tech Gridder . Add a tech area such as Miniaturization, or maybe just use Industry. Set it to have, say, 20 levels. Copy whichever components you want to be miniaturizable into a temporary file. Run the tech gridder and add the Miniaturization tech area as a tech grid, making it reduce size and cost by 10% or whatever you would like. Then, paste the generated components over the orginials in Components.txt. Now, whenever you research a level of Miniaturization, the size and/or cost of a whole range of components will decrease by 10%.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Components.txt, not components.bmp.