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Posted by: Vandermeer
« on: January 07, 2022, 09:05:01 AM »

Quote from: TallTroll on January 07, 2022, 08:48:34 AM
>> Still, id love for Aurora to have its tech tree expanded to at least 300% of the current size.

While I don't disagree, I'm not sure how much room there is to expand much on the current tech base with meaningful research lines beyond the few we already have in abeyance. I could see potential to squeeze in a few more in some of the weapon lines by offering upgrades for HPMs and Mesons (short, expensive lines for extra damage, gated by progress in the main line), maybe a follow on weapon for Plasma Carronades, but everything else already feels pretty complete. Without brand new mechanics requiring lots of research to develop and refine, I dunno where you get the scope
Yes, the length is quite alright I think, but there can always be more width. I kind of miss PDCs as RP elements, because they could represent some self-designed infrastructure like radar outposts, fortresses and such. If there was a system that let you create custom facilities like components (e.g. the "World Tree Project" terraforming base), and then research those or their own tech parts, that would be something to go wider with.
...Or something in that line of thinking. Empire tech. But of the optional kind, because focus balance is good now.
All in all I think this is very secondary in concern to other matters right now though.
Posted by: TallTroll
« on: January 07, 2022, 08:48:34 AM »

>> Still, id love for Aurora to have its tech tree expanded to at least 300% of the current size.

While I don't disagree, I'm not sure how much room there is to expand much on the current tech base with meaningful research lines beyond the few we already have in abeyance. I could see potential to squeeze in a few more in some of the weapon lines by offering upgrades for HPMs and Mesons (short, expensive lines for extra damage, gated by progress in the main line), maybe a follow on weapon for Plasma Carronades, but everything else already feels pretty complete. Without brand new mechanics requiring lots of research to develop and refine, I dunno where you get the scope
Posted by: GodEmperor
« on: January 06, 2022, 10:48:57 AM »

Research speed at 10% is a good way to fix that problem. Still, id love for Aurora to have its tech tree expanded to at least 300% of the current size.
Posted by: Vandermeer
« on: January 06, 2022, 09:35:16 AM »

Quote from: Erik L on January 02, 2022, 04:47:07 PM
Only way to play wrong is not to play ;)
Steve successfully turned that 80s movie around. Now we are cheering for the WarGame armageddon simulation machine!
Posted by: Jorgen_CAB
« on: January 05, 2022, 11:56:28 PM »

Quote from: TallTroll on January 04, 2022, 08:53:19 PM
I would comment that one of the reasons the player research can feel fast is that the NPR AI isn't great at managing its' own research, so even if you are behind them at first contact, it isn't generally that hard to fairly quickly catch and surpass it, especially if you concentrate on a few key techs that counter their advantages. One day, that AI is going to get improved though, and it probably isn't going to be that hard to get it to improve its' research performance. The days of being able to leave an NPR alone for a couple of decades, and expect its' tech base to be pretty much the same when you decide to go clean their clocks will not be infinite

That is not my issue at all... for me it is all about how quickly you move along in technology and reach way too high levels way too fast. I mainly judge it on it's own merits.

When you give yourself restraint such as not min/max research and restricting the amount of labs to researchers then you actually don't research that much faster than NPRs do... NPRs probably could be more efficient and better at it... but for me that has nothing to do with it at all.

I guess that for most people it has mostly to do with how fast the progress through the techs is in general. Aside from a few very important technologies to make the game fun we don't need to progress to such efficient levels so fast. The game in my opinion is more fun when you struggle with logistics and your commercial ships don't zip around and many thousands km/s etc... we want the struggle and have space feel big for as long as possible... at least I do.
Posted by: TallTroll
« on: January 04, 2022, 08:53:19 PM »

I would comment that one of the reasons the player research can feel fast is that the NPR AI isn't great at managing its' own research, so even if you are behind them at first contact, it isn't generally that hard to fairly quickly catch and surpass it, especially if you concentrate on a few key techs that counter their advantages. One day, that AI is going to get improved though, and it probably isn't going to be that hard to get it to improve its' research performance. The days of being able to leave an NPR alone for a couple of decades, and expect its' tech base to be pretty much the same when you decide to go clean their clocks will not be infinite
Posted by: Erik L
« on: January 02, 2022, 04:47:07 PM »

Quote from: Migi on January 02, 2022, 03:40:15 PM
I never have this problem, maybe I'm playing wrong.

Only way to play wrong is not to play ;)
Posted by: Migi
« on: January 02, 2022, 03:40:15 PM »

I never have this problem, maybe I'm playing wrong.
Posted by: Jorgen_CAB
« on: January 02, 2022, 05:43:17 AM »

I have suggested before that labs should have a direct diminishing return for every lab you add to a scientist to encourage spreading science out among many scientist naturally. This also would be quite realistic.

The Administrative skill would simply make the curve flatter and the diminishing return less severe, so you generally would give more labs to scientists with good administrative skills.

I also think that if you do this you also don't need the skill level of scientists either, that would just be the same thing as administrative skill, you just need what area the scientist is expert in and give them four times the research in that area.

Let's say a scientist with admin skill of 1 would get the benefit of 10 labs as it was 3.16 labs, while an admin 2 scientist would count the same amount of labs as 3.98 labs, an admin 5 scientist would treat ten labs as 7.94 labs.

This would naturally force you to divide the labs and scientist skill would not dramatically change the amount of research you get... you just have to spread out the labs more and concentrate them on skilled scientists.

The wealth cost of the labs should still be per lab assigned, not amount of RP generated.

If you want to give a 20 labs to an admin 1 scientist then go right ahead... but that would be a waste instead of giving 4 labs to five different scientist as you get 4.47 from one scientist and 10 from five scientists.

This would actually give you choices instead of just concentrate on one tech at a time. Now the choice is if you want a wider more efficient research or if there is some important research you need to concentrate on, hopefully you have a high skilled scientist to lead that research.

You could then make the admin skill between 1-9 rather than 1-5 to scale it better... or some such.... but even the highest level need to receive some degree of diminishing return but much less than a skill one scientist.
Posted by: TMaekler
« on: December 31, 2021, 02:30:31 PM »

Maybe the effectiveness of how many labs one researcher can "support" should not be a hard limit but rather the tipping point where his experience is diminished. If a researcher has 20% bonus and can "support" 10 research labs, he should get 20% bonus for the first 10 labs. But if we could allocate more than 10 to him, they should only receive 1/4th of his bonus, i.e. 5%. So he can use more labs, but not as effective as someone who can support 15 labs.
Posted by: Scandinavian
« on: December 30, 2021, 11:31:30 PM »

Yes, the issue that seems to be identified here is that the lab limit per research lead is too high for the early techs and too low for the later techs. With a 30-50 lab cap (which researchers fairly quickly reach if you give them a single lab and a back-burner project to play with), that's "all the labs you can build" until you are already past the ion tech. While once you cap out the admin cap on 2-3 scientists, you really start to feel the research cost translate into research time much more directly.

What this seems to indicate is that there should be a "max lab multiplier" tech line to complement the "research speed" tech line. The fluff for that tech line isn't even that hard to justify - the amount of physical infrastructure going into a modern research lab is vastly greater than it was fifty or a hundred years ago.
Posted by: nuclearslurpee
« on: December 30, 2021, 10:05:36 PM »

Quote from: TMaekler on December 30, 2021, 04:22:37 PM
Maybe the RP should be smoothed? Bigger increments in the lower tech area and smaller increments in the hightech area.

I think it is fine as it is. Higher techs are more expensive by a factor of usually 2x per tech tier, so it gets costly quickly, but at the same time the player race expands their research capabilities in many ways - building/"liberating" new labs, developing the +research tech line, developing a strong stable of scientists, dissembling components, recovering Ancient Constructs, and so on. Further, the player empire and fleet grows therefore it takes longer at each tech tier to actually implement/fully benefit from new tech advancements. I think overall it works okay, and it is a simple rule for tech costs where something more complicated (but "better balanced" ostensibly) would require a lot more working out to get right.
Posted by: TMaekler
« on: December 30, 2021, 04:22:37 PM »

Maybe the RP should be smoothed? Bigger increments in the lower tech area and smaller increments in the hightech area.
Posted by: TheTalkingMeowth
« on: December 30, 2021, 10:45:14 AM »

Quote from: smoelf on December 30, 2021, 09:25:54 AM
Quote from: nuclearslurpee on December 29, 2021, 09:11:05 AM
I use a house rule that scientists only use 1/5 of their research admin bonus - so a scientist with 25 admin skill can only use 5 labs instead of 25. This makes sense because the admin skill usually increments by 5, so it is basically just changing the increment to 1. For me it works well, because I like the pace of research at default settings but with this restriction you cannot really rush techs very effectively, plus you use way more of your scientists instead of just your top 1-2 in every field.

I might have to try this.
I have generally been satisfied with research speed for most of my time playing Aurora, but because of several discussions over the past year or so, I decided to try a run with reduced research speed (20 % I think). Honestly, it didn't feel that different, and was slightly disappointing. Don't get me wrong. It was nice to be able to use research components for longer, and be able to put a ship class through multiple weapon and sensor updates before getting that big upgrade with a new engine tech, but right now I have played for about 100 years and I still haven't even gotten to magneto-plasma tech yet. By now the game has also slowed down so much, that even if I get to magneto-plasma, I can probably expect my navy stabilize around the current tech level simply because I can't put in the time needed to pass another 100 years to get significant breakthroughs.

For some techs, this is fine, but it does feel kinda disappointing to be stuck on ion drive for so long. Increased tech levels give more options for ship design, which IMO makes for a more fun game, but it can be hard to find that balance, where you reach interesting tech levels fast enough to enjoy them before slow down, but also research slow enough that new components aren't obsolote by the time you have spent the time designing the component, retooling the shipyard, and building/refitting the ship.

This was my exact experience too. Reducing research speed just makes the game feel slow and bogged down; you still beeline the same techs in the same order, just slower.

The reduced labs per scientist rule had much greater gameplay impact and was much more fun.
Posted by: smoelf
« on: December 30, 2021, 09:25:54 AM »

Quote from: nuclearslurpee on December 29, 2021, 09:11:05 AM
I use a house rule that scientists only use 1/5 of their research admin bonus - so a scientist with 25 admin skill can only use 5 labs instead of 25. This makes sense because the admin skill usually increments by 5, so it is basically just changing the increment to 1. For me it works well, because I like the pace of research at default settings but with this restriction you cannot really rush techs very effectively, plus you use way more of your scientists instead of just your top 1-2 in every field.

I might have to try this.
I have generally been satisfied with research speed for most of my time playing Aurora, but because of several discussions over the past year or so, I decided to try a run with reduced research speed (20 % I think). Honestly, it didn't feel that different, and was slightly disappointing. Don't get me wrong. It was nice to be able to use research components for longer, and be able to put a ship class through multiple weapon and sensor updates before getting that big upgrade with a new engine tech, but right now I have played for about 100 years and I still haven't even gotten to magneto-plasma tech yet. By now the game has also slowed down so much, that even if I get to magneto-plasma, I can probably expect my navy stabilize around the current tech level simply because I can't put in the time needed to pass another 100 years to get significant breakthroughs.

For some techs, this is fine, but it does feel kinda disappointing to be stuck on ion drive for so long. Increased tech levels give more options for ship design, which IMO makes for a more fun game, but it can be hard to find that balance, where you reach interesting tech levels fast enough to enjoy them before slow down, but also research slow enough that new components aren't obsolote by the time you have spent the time designing the component, retooling the shipyard, and building/refitting the ship.