Hey Frogboy!!!

 

What am I hearing? Did you or did you not give us full tech tree from start- for 5 Betas you gave us full tree! In Beta 6 you limited it. Now people are angry towards you- its not your opinion to make! Its peoples! Or you dont care whether the means.... Is this officil Stardocks policy too? To disregard poeple?

 

Wasnt Stardock making games for people to have fun? People are saying you made a mistake. You are a smart guy, many people like you. Dont divide your fanbase, make a compromise!

I just research one specialization and then trade for the other one.

It's called a BETA. Things change. 

I don't like it. In GalCiv 2 TA expansion, me wanting to nab other civs unique techs was a good reason for me to hold back on annihilating them. Made me focus on annihilating someone else that had less useful techs or civs that I had already got everything that I wanted (or was likely to get).

It doesn't make realistic sense. Techs are knowledge. If there isn't a good reason why you can't research a tech, then it should be allowed to researched. However, I can understand it if it were an engineering problem. Imagine in the ship editor if you could choose to make a ship part better, cheaper, or smaller. I can understand why you couldn't do all 3. Making it an engineering problems also makes it possible to change your mind, where as now you are stuck forever with your choice.

I agree.

The "choice" concept is interesting, but in my view poorly executed.

Instead of "Pick A, B or C and forget the options you didn't pick" I'd change it to

"Pick A, B or C, those you didn't pick get more expensive or it's effectiveness gets reduced."

So the "choice" instead becomes "I choose to specialize and I get a benifit, but I can get the other choices at a cost (time and/or lost opportunity)"

In a way it exists with the weapon techs. If I specialize in beams, I can still research missiles or mass drivers, but resarching all of them may be non-optimal

If you just want to keep the "exclusive choice", just prompt a choice when researching to make the result "unique" something like

"While researching Beam Miniaturization our scientist found a way to improve our original resarch by making beams even smaller, making them cheaper or more effective. Unfortunately picking one option will make the others impossible to research.

Pick Smaller [25% Mass reduction], Pick Cheaper [10% cost reduction, 10% mass reduction], Pick Effective [+10% Range, 10% mass reduction]"

As a side note: we need to bring back the Miniaturization line of research

 

But one thing you don't want to limit at all: extreme world colonization.

The way it was in GC II, a "basic" colonization (50% effectiveness) and a "non-limited" (100% effectiveness) colonization will work great with the concept of "specialization".

If you specialize in "Barren", you get both techs at once, the other colonization techs in the same tier require more research

 

Fact: In an old SD game called "The Corporate Machine" this "choice implementation" exists (at least in theory)

eg: if you research"Windows", "OS/2 will get more expensive". if you research "OS/2", "Windows will get more expensive" (Computer product)

I also remember CRT/LCD techs (Computer product) and Jet/Prop Engine techs (Aircraft product) with the same "research one mans extra cost to the other choice"

 

It is really annoying for the colonization techs, although I feel that there are other problems with the extreme colonizations to begin with. Usually the Yor just take all the barren/frozen planets anyway, regardless what I do. By the time I get to the radioactive and toxic planets it doesn't really matter. This would obviously change if I set the extreme worlds to occur more frequently, but whats the point since most of them will be stuck at half production anyway right?

There's also the planetary defense specialization that doesn't make sense. In a way, you punish the player that specializes either invasion or defense first, since the second player gets to choose the counter.

So yeah, I've changed my mind and I'm now on board with some specializations not being mutually exclusive. Most, though still should be.

+1 for specialization as it is now.

Yeah I like the current implementation. As I've stated before I want it more limiting and disallow specialization trading

 

I understand what your saying and why but my issue is that implemented very poorly.  The current "specializations" aren't special, they are optimizations/efficiencies and should be in their own lines.  If you are going to use collapsing specializations, make them special and leave the optimizations/efficiencies in as well.  Here are some suggestions for real specializations, for buildings, a small amount of production of the appropriate type, an adjacency bonus for another type of building or 2 options for this and they can be different for each race.  For weapons, penetration, a point of damage gets through the defenses even while the defenses are still up, secondary targeting, removes a point of defense of another type, power disruption, slows firing rate of the ship it hit.  Defenses, a point of a different type of armor, regenerating defense, or a small chance to stop a hit without loosing defense.  

 

Extreme worlds should not be specialization either, learning to adapt to an ocean world should not preclude learning to live on a barren or frozen world.  It again comes down to making something special versus simply forcing a change.

I agree with BuckGodot; if you're going to insist on making some technologies mutually exclusive, then make sure that it makes sense for those technologies to be mutually exclusive. It makes a degree of sense that I can make my engines smaller or more powerful but not both, or that I can make my factories more cheaply or with higher output but not both, as these are tradeoffs in the solution to a single problem. Having to choose between being able to build a habitat on a barren world and doing the same on an frozen world or aquatic world is silly; these are not the same problems. Unless you expect me to believe that your ability to develop domed cities and domed farmland for use on frozen planets somehow precludes you from being able to do the same on barren worlds or being able to create floating cities and develop aquaculture techniques for aquatic worlds, which is simply ridiculous. These are SEPARATE problems; the solution to one may help with development of a solution to another, but developing a solution to one should not preclude the eventual development of a solution to another. What would make sense is a set of technologies that determine HOW you chose to solve the problem, not which problem you chose to solve. Say, a choice between emphasizing aquaculture (more food production and therefore more people), ecological preservation (improved research and tourism), and deep sea resource exploitation (wealth and industrial output) for aquatic worlds, or a choice between emphasizing the ski resorts and ice rinks and hot springs (tourism and morale), scientific projects that benefit from extremely low temperature and isolated environments (research), and self-sufficient dome colonies (small bonus to everything) for frozen worlds.

I agree in general. Except where an invasion tactic has clear ideological alignment issues ("I'm Benevolent. I'm going to prove it by dropping asteroids of sufficient size to cause extinction events on each and every last one of your colonies."), I don't think that any civilization should be unable to access an invasion tactic (and this kind of thing is something tied to ideology, not technology). As with the colonization techs, though, I could see mutually-exclusive specializations of invasion technologies (e.g. targeted orbital bombardment, which is more expensive but does less damage to the planet, versus "aiming is for people who don't have sufficiently large bombs" orbital bombardment, which is cheaper but causes a lot of collateral damage).

If you are insistent upon this being a choice, then I would appreciate it if you'd actually make it a choice, rather than a "research the one you really want and then go shopping for the other two" deal. I see three ways for you to do this:

1. Prevent trading for specializations. It doesn't make a significant amount of sense that I can talk to (some other faction with the same tech tree or with the same technology in their tech tree) and get the full benefit of the other specializations; this is, in fact, even less sensible to me than being unable to develop this in house. Whatever I did to my automated factories to make them easier to build may not be compatible with whatever you did to make the maintenance costs lower (because, hey, I used cheap parts while you used high-quality parts). On top of that, whatever you did to increase your factory output may not even be possible on my factories - you combined the smelting and casting stages? But all my ores are smelted at the mines! That optimization is useless to me! (Just a somewhat silly example.)
2. Change where the choice is. Instead of having mutually exclusive technologies in the tech tree, have those technologies unlock mutually exclusive build options. Maybe I can get High Speed Ion Drives (faster drive), Lightweight Ion Drives (low mass drive), or Ion Engines (low cost drive) from Ion Optimization. It's therefore not particularly beneficial for me to obtain all three specializations, as instead of getting all three bonuses on a single component or structure, I instead get three different components/structures. Furthermore, in this case the choice remains even if I get all three specializations - which component do I use for this design? Do I want a cheap ship that I can pump out quickly, do I want a fast ship, or do I want one which has lots of space for other components?
3. Make it so that the specializations have penalties that impact the other specializations. Maybe low maintenance factories get -10% maintenance, -5% output, and +5% build cost (your output is lower to reduce wear and tear and you're using higher quality parts, reducing the frequency with which you need to replace things), while high output factories get +10% output, +5% maintenance, and +5% build cost (your output is higher, so you need higher quality parts to endure the increased wear and tear, and the higher strain on the parts results in more frequent repairs and inspection), and cheap factories have -10% build cost, +5% maintenance cost, -5% output (you used cheaper parts to build the factory, and those cheaper parts wear out quickly and cannot survive the wear and tear of high output levels). Obtain all the specializations? Great, your total bonus is +0% output, -0% build cost, -0% maintenance (you could, of course, choose numbers that give a net benefit rather than no net benefit).

Furthermore, if you want it to be a choice, please make it a choice that MAKES SENSE. Mutually exclusive choices make sense when they're different solutions to the same problem (I need to build a factory - I can use cheap parts to build it cheaply and quickly, or I can use high quality parts and have relatively low maintenance costs or a higher output level or something along those lines), or when there is a good reason why the solution to one problem prevents the solution of another. For example, perhaps I can create a vaccine which will protect a person for their lifetime with a single shot against a particular ailment, but that ailment is also the only potential cure I have for another ailment - say, a hypothetical situation where I can either cure MS by infecting the afflicted with HIV, or I can vaccinate the populace against HIV. Do I protect everyone from HIV, or do I leave everyone vulnerable to HIV so I can cure MS if they happen to develop that particular ailment?

 

This is the real problem. Someone at Stardock was told to shorten the tech tree so forcing this choice was decided rather then actually evaluating the tech choices and deciding that things like all the starbase/support ship buff techs were actually needed or wanted. These techs are so specialized that there is no point in building a military starbase or support ship when you can just build another combat ship or troop transport to fill the fleet with.

Here is an example why this choice is stupid and ill thought out. Some of the first specializations are in building bonuses and weapon bonuses. We can in the case of buildings make then a small but noticeably better, a small but not really noticeable cheaper to build or a very small amount cheaper to maintain. So looking at these choices they are not the same or even equal in importance.

If you choose the bonus to output you get an effect stacks with the added bonuses of upgrading the building. Choose the cheaper to build option and it will not a large amount of turns if any off the construction time, and only then if you are playing at the slowest game speeds. At the faster speeds I have not seen this even reduce a buildings construction time a single turn. Then if you choose the third option the amount of income gained is rather small. You can get a bigger return by building an income building or two.

So for those specializations there is only one real "choice" and for weapon techs it is the same. We can either make the weapons cheaper, smaller or lighter. The first two are obvious as to how they would help. The third I can assume makes the ship more maneuverable and harder to hit. Again this is a stupid choice to be forced to make. If we make t he weapons cheaper it may take a turn or two of the construction time of a new ship and only if we are building the ships that only use that type of weapon. If we choose the third option we do not get to see any improvement in our ships. The second option lets us put more things onto the ship. Be it more of that type of weapon or more defenses that make the third option worthless.

Even when we go down the tech tree to the point of getting the -25% reduction in either military or civilian construction cost it is a stupid choice. At that late point in the game most in not all planets are settled on even the extreme ones. So there is no point in getting the reduction in civilian production. With the extreme cost of upgrading ships it is better to build a new one and scrap the old. Which makes the -25% military choice the clear winner in that category too.

All of these "choices" are nothing more then to add a fake sense of strategy to the game and shorten the tech tree without actually doing any work.