Starting Techs

[Markavian]

I think that 'low' 'medium' and 'high' starting techs in SE4 are RUBBISH.

I want a game where I barely have some of the more advanced techs, and can research them without having to go and 'waste' years or turns.

I liked the SE3 way of doing things, you could pick 75, ro 100, or 200 starting techs. That was cool! It was fun 'designing' your race.

However it was floored. 5 Techs WP manip, was worth 100 Techs in lower weap techs.

This time, you should have x amount of Research point before you start that you can 'buy' tech with.

e.g. Before you begin playing, you have erm, 500,000 Research points to buy any tech levels you like (as long as they are in the order of the tech tree).

Does any one else think this would be a good idea?

Of course, you could 'disable' this option as well - in all fairity.
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Markis Brachel - Markavians
aka John Beech - http://universalshipyards.tripod.com

[raynor]

Well, I wouldn't disagree that I want more options for medium. But I don't agree with you complaining about the low and high settings. I'm sure you're just trying to heat up the discussion a bit. Of course, the game needs a setting for no tech and max tech.

I think the ability to choose what techs you start out with is a great idea. I used to play a game called M.A.X. which gave you points at the start of the game. You could either spend these points on more starting units or you could spent the points on technology which upgraded the effectiveness of those units. This turned out to be pretty cool. (This was a terrestrial only game of ground, air and see combat.) One player might start the game with a ton of tanks while another one upgraded the starting tech of his tanks but started out with very few. Once he started mass producing his upgraded tanks, watch out! But he was vulnerable if the players who bought more units launched a blitzkrieg attack.

[pathfinder]

good ideas. both Markavians & Raynor: give the gamer a series of choices to design your race: low tech but lots of units or maybe spend points on upgraded tech...or mix n match. don't know if that in do-able but should be if you were able to do it in SEIII.

[This message has been edited by pathfinder (edited 17 February 2001).]

[Alpha Kodiak]

While it doesn't completely address what you are looking for, you can get some of this effect by changing the "Starting resources for player" setting on the player settings page of the game set up. It changes both resources and starting research points. I'm not sure, but I would guess that there is a setting in a file somewhere that determines what each level of starting resources gives you.

[raynor]

quote:

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Originally posted by Alpha Kodiak:
It changes both resources and starting research points.

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It lets you set the starting resources but *not* the starting research points. If it did, then this would be almost as good as letting you pick what techs with which you wanted to start the game. It still wouldn't be perfect. If you wanted 13 techs which cost less than your starting points, you would still be out of luck since the starting points have to be used that first turn.

EDIT-> *blush* Ahh... you are right. Setting the resources to 100,000 also gives you 100,000 research points. I had never tried that. Sorry. Thanks for the tip!

[This message has been edited by raynor (edited 18 February 2001).]

[Suicide Junkie]

The only problem would be in getting say, 5 engine techs, 2 missile techs, and 6 ship size techs.

How would you get multiple levels of a certain tech in one turn?