Author Topic: Research changes planned?  (Read 7453 times)

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Offline JacenHan

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Re: Research changes planned?
« Reply #30 on: January 19, 2018, 01:00:34 PM »
Currently, a minor annoyance is that keeping up with unimportant tech lines is annoying... researching 20 1000-RP tech isn't much of an investment by the midgame but still interrupts your game 20 times and requires a few clicks each time.
Do you queue projects? That usually cuts down on the clicking, though it will still interrupt auto turns.
 

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Re: Research changes planned?
« Reply #31 on: January 19, 2018, 01:31:34 PM »
Yes, when practical. Thanks for the tip; I just have a rather low tolerance for busywork in games.
 

Offline JacenHan

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Re: Research changes planned?
« Reply #32 on: January 19, 2018, 01:40:49 PM »
There's also a bug in the game where you can queue unavailable projects (in the "All Research" section) with the "Queue Top" button, which is probably supposed to gray out. You could potentially use this to cheat by, for example, researching 25cm lasers when you haven't researched 20cm, but I don't have any personal qualms with using it to queue long, low-RP lines of research in the intended order.
 
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Offline Jorgen_CAB

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Re: Research changes planned?
« Reply #33 on: January 19, 2018, 02:16:25 PM »
It would be quite interesting to have diminishing returns for throwing resources at a particular research line... but to some extent that is already taken care of by exponentially increasing research cost, in a mechanically simple and elegant way.

It does not work well for reducing the gap much between small and low industry empires though because you still need the same amount of research and labs increase in effect linear not according to a logarithmic scale.

With direct diminishing return you can stave of the worst kind of pure specialization and speed ahead of the opposition with raw industrial power. The current system have a huge snowball effect which is not quite a realistic model.

I thin kit would be more interesting if you had diminishing returns and the administration level could sort of change the curve a bit instead of limiting the amount of labs on each scientist. This way you both encourage spreading the science and focusing it on those with the best administrative skill. Simply allow specialization to double the science output and leave it at that, no extra fuss needed for that.

I also like the scientists on ships exploring being able to provide research bonuses somehow.

And of course, no instant upgrade of stuff, that is only perpetuating the snowball effect. The more complex and bigger a society is the more costly it will become to spread innovation to all corners of said society.

I also would no mind less huge leap in research in general, quite often one level feels very superior to the level before.
 

Offline QuakeIV

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Re: Research changes planned?
« Reply #34 on: January 19, 2018, 02:22:57 PM »
I don't mind the leap size personally.  With engines, you are moving between fundamentally different technologies, so it makes sense that the improvements wouldn't appear iterative.  With the other techs the jumps are more reasonable afaik.
 

Offline ChildServices

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Re: Research changes planned?
« Reply #35 on: January 20, 2018, 12:47:12 AM »
This may be slightly off-topic (although it's still semi-related), but I've been doing some thinking on this topic lately and... Is there really even that much of a historical justification for a tall empire being capable of truly succeeding as a long-term thing? Why are people so obsessed with this idea across strategy games in general? It seems like a "tall" empire wouldn't even be an empire at all. I think of "Tall" as being more of a transitional state between fully exploiting Sol and conquering the galaxy more than I do as something I'd want to continue indefinitely.

Even if you fix science so that research rates are independent of empire size, the bigger empire should still be at an advantage even with the implementation of tech spread.
Aside from some geopolitical factors (e.g a coalition attacking the large empire on several fronts) and geographical factors (e.g tall empire has nothing but bottleneck systems bordering you), I don't see a scenario in which the sprawl empire doesn't roll over the tall one every single time or at least win the long game. People seem to have this fantasy where that's not the case, or that it shouldn't be "in the name of realism".
« Last Edit: January 20, 2018, 12:51:21 AM by ChildServices »
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Offline Person012345

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Re: Research changes planned?
« Reply #36 on: January 20, 2018, 01:42:08 AM »
This may be slightly off-topic (although it's still semi-related), but I've been doing some thinking on this topic lately and... Is there really even that much of a historical justification for a tall empire being capable of truly succeeding as a long-term thing? Why are people so obsessed with this idea across strategy games in general? It seems like a "tall" empire wouldn't even be an empire at all. I think of "Tall" as being more of a transitional state between fully exploiting Sol and conquering the galaxy more than I do as something I'd want to continue indefinitely.

Even if you fix science so that research rates are independent of empire size, the bigger empire should still be at an advantage even with the implementation of tech spread.
Aside from some geopolitical factors (e.g a coalition attacking the large empire on several fronts) and geographical factors (e.g tall empire has nothing but bottleneck systems bordering you), I don't see a scenario in which the sprawl empire doesn't roll over the tall one every single time or at least win the long game. People seem to have this fantasy where that's not the case, or that it shouldn't be "in the name of realism".

Large doesn't necessarily equal powerful, at least not in a linear way. In real life there are lots of bureaucratic inefficiencies in trying to administrate a large sprawling empire, let alone unrest problems. Japan slapped China around pretty good at times in history and there are plenty of other historical instances of smaller more developed nations punching above their weight. All other things being equal then yes, obviously a large empire will be able to take down a small nation, but all other things are rarely equal.

I don't necessarily want technology to "spread" and I don't really think there's much of a problem with Aurora in this regard, but history does not show that the bigger nation always wins and I think games should make an effort to simulate this. It also provides good gameplay with numerous playstyles and decisions and doesn't screw someone over just because they didn't get lots of nice planets so it's good as game design.
 

Offline Jorgen_CAB

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Re: Research changes planned?
« Reply #37 on: January 20, 2018, 06:07:09 AM »
This may be slightly off-topic (although it's still semi-related), but I've been doing some thinking on this topic lately and... Is there really even that much of a historical justification for a tall empire being capable of truly succeeding as a long-term thing? Why are people so obsessed with this idea across strategy games in general? It seems like a "tall" empire wouldn't even be an empire at all. I think of "Tall" as being more of a transitional state between fully exploiting Sol and conquering the galaxy more than I do as something I'd want to continue indefinitely.

Even if you fix science so that research rates are independent of empire size, the bigger empire should still be at an advantage even with the implementation of tech spread.
Aside from some geopolitical factors (e.g a coalition attacking the large empire on several fronts) and geographical factors (e.g tall empire has nothing but bottleneck systems bordering you), I don't see a scenario in which the sprawl empire doesn't roll over the tall one every single time or at least win the long game. People seem to have this fantasy where that's not the case, or that it shouldn't be "in the name of realism".

This is not how things actually work in reality, if it did then Earth would be governed by one super power by now. No... nothing is really binary and games such as Aurora do not model most of the things that impact any nations ability to influence another. Those you have to do with RP in this game.

The condition you ascribe to any power only exist in games. In real life no one would aspire to be either tall or wide, that would be a state one would be in for some reason or another in comparison with something else.

You sometimes need abstract mechanics to sort of simulate the more dynamic and complex part of life that is difficult to represent in details in a game. Things like politics, philosophies, social factors and the like. There always is a balance between what is fun and what is realistic. In most cases this is due to games allowing the player to simply control too many things and allowing the player to be too many functions at the same time that would otherwise not be able to cooperate as efficiently in reality, thus producing rather binary results that are not even remotely realistic.

Aurora is no exemption from this but the difference between Aurora and most other games is that it is a framework for RP which is why it allow you that freedom to decide when you want to restrict certain part of the game or introduce real life politics, unrest or even revolutions into your games.

This does not mean we can improve om some of the basic ideas such as a changing research or economy to make them less binary by nature but still retain allot of freedom.