Researching Multiple Techs At Once?

My thought is why. Why would someone study engines and shields at the same time when they could just study engines then shields or shields then engines. It's a neat thing to be able to spread out your recherche, but you also need a reason why you would want to.

I guess you could do something where studying two techs at the same time gives you some kind of cross pollination bonus. Like if you study shields and engines then at the same time you unlock slightly different shields. You could also have something where what your studying affects your civ in a particular way. Like studying shields gives all your ships a small shield buff. That way you have an incentive to be studying as much as you can and then you balance that by having techs recherche faster, or that having multiple techs require extra effort. You could also just do something where you can study more then one tech at a time and there is no benefit to studying just one tech. Then it's a little more flexible as you have a free slot to piggy back something unimportant, or you could evolve plans about what two trees you want to tackle rather then just one.

Or when you simply want to got for parallel study in completely different areas, even at cost of reduced rate. Of course, all will depend on research model we'll have.

The question is why though. Studying two techs at half speed is actually less effective then studying one then the other one at full speed. A little worse is that most of your new players will want to study as much as they can so they will effectively gimp themselves for no gain.

The question is "why not?" . Usability, maybe, you don't to jump through different branches, and you need two particular projects. So instead of researching one, then jumping for second, you pick up both in parallel and forgetting about researching for some time. If there will be no difference in research time, I see no problems here.

It worked in, say, Fantasy general, where you could research several types of units in parallel.

On the other hand, having option to create queues probably will remove any necessity to study something in parallel. Unless branches will have hidden developments, or chances for breakthroughs, allowing you either to complete study instantly, or jump to next phase.

Queues would be a better way for people to zone out tech. I don't dislike the idea of studying multiple techs, but I would want the choice to be deep and meaningful. I tossed in a few ideas in my first post.

Being able to study more then on tech at once might actually be a better way to handle high tech civs. A lot of 4x games have a thing where civs with high science just blow past techs way too fast. You study shields 1 and before you can even finish your first shielded ship your already onto shields 3 because your study speed is so fast. With multiple tech bars, you could have a maximum speed you can learn any one tech with any excess spilling over into your second, third, or possibly 4 tech.

I don't know if I explained that too well, but the brief of it is that rather then studying techs faster, your tech bonuses would gain give the ability to study more techs at the same time.

The point is, putting the full weight of an empire's research capabilities towards one technology isn't how a galactic empire would work. You'd have planetology scientists, weapons scientists, political scientists, etc. It would be ridiculous to think that the political scientists would be able to help out researching Doom Ray, for instance. In MOO I, you could set sliders to allocate how much of your total research effort went to each particular tree, and you were rewarded a bonus with continued research investment. Thus if you completely neglect an area, it is harder to ramp back up in that area once it is time to start researching in it again. This makes sense-as a galactic overlord you could direct in broad strokes where you wanted research efforts to go, but if you completely cut out planetology, for instance, it would take a while to get a planetology research program up and running when you finally decide to invest in it.

I would prefer having a "Research Que" that let me set techs to research in advance, which would clear up some micro.

That being said, researching things side-by-side would be foolish, since it would be by its very nature less efficient and effective than researching things consecutively (Would you rather be paid $1000 in two weeks, or $500 in one?) 

It's also much simpler to represent both in the UI and conceptually in terms of "pick X, and you will get Y as a result". That's the reason so many games use a one at a time tech research system.

It's obviously an abstraction, but it's an abstraction that makes the game easier to understand for the user.

I think as an empire investing in several areas of research make more sense. I would not however want to micromanage this but would like to see a synergy bonus to the other research in the area. Research a military tech and get some automatic research done to all available techs of that kind. Research Lasers at 10 research points a turn and get 1 research point for missles and phasers, if they are also selectable choices in the military tech, but no research bonuses in other areas, like Trade.

The natural order of research should naturally bleed into these other military techs anyway, but at small amounts. So you can focus down a line and still unlock other things that you are not directly researching. It would produce a more organic approach to researching.

I like the idea of researching techs down multiple paths, but I don't want to research each path at the same time. This is acceptable, but not better. This would remove the purpose of letting players choose their own techs. I would like to research multiple techs while it would still not cover all the paths. I like the idea of research points. For the most part I don't want a que, or I would use the quo sometimes and not others. The reason why is situations change.

Quinntheeskimo777 already said that studying just one project at a time look odd. There is a lot of areas to explore and putting all eggs in one basket is just strange, unless you researching something utterly important.

Creating our own "tech trees" where we define certain "final" (even if they don't) projects and then moving further to next project. Basically you create "road map" for your research prior even starting it.

Basically what I don't like in current "1 research only" model is microcontrol you had to exercise, as ParagonRenegade said. Especially, as you said, when your research base is rather large and certain projects just disappear in one turn. Or project is so small, so you could divert your research base to do several of those, but current week-long length does not allow you allocate your resources to study something "simple' simultanously.

As for Synergy suggested by parrotmath, I think synergy should apply regardless of model of study you use - single thread or parallel, you still got results.

Studying something in parallel may pay off when you don't know what your enemy is planning yet, so you have to go for different counters.

I think the thing I can't work out is the idea of picking how many techs to do. There isn't a much of meaningful choice between recherche shields and engines at the same time Vs reaching shields then engines. The difference is small, but at the same time one is clearly better. You need to add some depth to that choice or possibility not include it at all (Like make it mandatory to do more then one tech ay a time).

what if there were different sources of Research points

what i mean is that in GC II we have different levels of science labs and a few special buildings

now what if say having a stock exchange gave you a bonus to economic research points while having a factory gave you a bonus to production research points

farms - terraforming research points

morale / political buildings gave social research points  etc etc

so these could be spent at the same time to research multiple paths with benefits for each tech chosen you could choose one tech of each

military/social/economy/political/etc

if you choose to ignore a path you could put the points towards a different path however there would be penelties based on what path your crossing from.

so if i choose to put my social points to military i lose 50% because they are too different however the drengin might only recieve a 10% penelty since military is very important to them.

For me main problem with "one project at a time" research model is that this model is kinda flat - project needs say, 480 spherical points of research in vacuum. That could be "man-hours", or given the game's mechanic, planet-weeks. So if your planets provide 60 points, research will take 8 weeks, if you have 240 points then just two weeks. There is no minimal breaking point, should you have 960 points of research, so you could research two such projects simultaneosly, nor there is any minimal threshold, blocking minimum researching period, so no matter how many researching stations you have, you won't be able to research project faster, even if you allocate all possible resources there. Not necessary there should be fixed value, but some floating point (within reason) would be welcomed. I could be wrong, but I think M.A.X. and Hearts of Iron models following this pattern. And if memory serves (I'm afraid I could be confusing HoI for some other series), that HoI model is most optimal one, where theory supports practice and vice versa. Basically field tests, if you want. The higher the practical experience of certain unit is, the better it could be researched and upgraded.

I hope I'm not confusing anything and other members could correct me if I'm wrong. In such model, concentrating all your efforts on just one direction is just meaningless.

Well, for one it relalistic to research multiple topics. I liked the randomness of Master of Orion that you gave funding into a certain field and got results thereafter. Its actually more slow irl to just focus on one field. We could have super warp engines but still communicate via smoke rings... I know GalCiv will be more straightforward than that and will have a set tech tree with x ammount of techs that you can research. But it would be neat  To be able to research multiple things at once. 

Space Empires, Master of Orion did it good!

I like to be able to choose my techs instead n/t of randomly picking techs, but this could be an option to shut it on and off. I don't mind researching multiple techs as long as it wasn't like how the post siggested where every tech tree was being simultaneously being researched at the same time. This is why this eliminates by ability to choose techs because all the available would be researched at the same. Besides different factions have different number of tech trees. Also wouldn't technological eras solve the problem of not enough techs in a certain area. Instead of all the tech trees being researched at the same time we could put a number on the tech trees that could be advanced at the same time. Giving you the ability to switch different trees after you research a tech. This would also keep factions with a lot of different tech trees from becoming to powerful.

I think soecialized tech trees are a good idea that at least provides a variety. I would like to see a better balance in the next game. I prefer to use civics instead of government techs, but if I can't do things this way. I have an idea on governments inspired by the Yor tech tree. Instead of the standard tech tree; I think the ending techs for evil races be communism. I think the Korx should have Obliarchy. I think the Thalans should either have Monarchy or a confederate government. The Krynn should have a Theocracy. The Yor would probably have a dictatorship. Federation I don't know about or whaat exactly its makeup is.

These are the ideas I like. I like tech point idea. I think you should be able to change this in the game to be more effective at this. If the Ai can't handle this; then my idea on how to handle this is to have a fixed option that is automatically set where you have to manually shut this off.

In the beginning you could randomly select starting techs. Their may be a set of default techs, but the game would only randomly pick half. Each of the randome techs would lead to a different tech tree. Most of the techs would have different paths to research to each tech. If u pick a tech it would close you off from other future techs.

All while giving everyone their own individual tech trees.

I guess we could choose some of the tech trees not all of them at once to research at the same time that way we can still choose how we research.

My question is could these ideas be implemented with multiple techs being researched as long as we didn't eliminate our ability to choose what techs to research because I think these are great ideas that should be implemented in the next game.

What I envision is that one of each color of techs should be researched at the same time, with sliders that allow the relative level of research in each color. but you the emperor get to choose which tech in each color is being researched.

I wouldn't mind a random research tech button on game setup so its optional and the people who love it can play with it. Never know what you will get or how you will run your empire.   

I definatly would want to be able to shut that random tech option off. Otherwise it would destroy the purpose of being able to pick my techs.

Not sure if picking just one aspect of the Moo2 research approach would be good for GalCiv3.

The MOO2 worked well because, while you were constantly research in all areas, you were forced to make a choice. Only Creative races (a very expensive perk) enabled you to get all techs at each level. The rest you had to capture, steal or trade for. This worked really well because you were forced to pick a direction for your race, either in your tech choices, or by putting sufficient investment (and research) into conquest, espionage & diplomacy to get the other techs you needed.

This approach also greatly improved replays because just picking a different tech at once stage could have a massive impact on how the race played, without creating a bottleneck or choke point because the next tech requires you to have researched sufficiently in a different branch, as is the case in many other games.

It's slightly unrealistic though. If you research kinetic weapons at level 1, why should you be able to pick Uber-Plasma-Weapon at level 8? I prefer making choices and having to deal with the consequences. 

Missiles or Lasers? Damage or Range, Reload-speed or Accuracy? Balanced or specialised? A tech-tree should be a decision tree and sometimes one choice should exclude others.

I should be able to build a ship with thousands of totally inaccurate missiles that I can fire all at once. Or a ship with a hundred very accurate missiles I can fire slowly but are almost guaranteed to hit. Or a ship with maybe 500 missiles that fire with medium speed and have medium accuracy.

Now if you want all the techs, then fine, you can spend all the time researching it. But I think I'd really love to see some techs that exclude others, maybe because they make you see the universe in a certain way... which makes it inconceivable to see it the other way.

Off the top of my head, something like: you can invent hyperspace jumps, or you can have warp-drive. Not both. 

E.g. Jumps are faster, but each jump has a miss-jump chance, and each jump has a maximum range, but you get a "Surprise" round because you just appear in the enemy system. Warp is slower, but no chance of going to random location. Hyper jumps have small penalty for ship size, but arrival placement is random in a target area, so there's a fleet size limit. No fleet size limit for warp, but a much larger fuel/energy penalty on hull size.

Now I'm not saying GalCiv3 should have this particular example. But I'd love it to have the concept.

AS Long as there is a reason to finish the tech tree besides a technology victory i don't care what tech tree type is implemented. Like oh wow, im a race of warriors that have killed everything, might as well finish Diplomacy branch so its done... One grief of games.

I kind of like how this is done in horizons - it's kind of like everything is researched at once but you can focus on a particular area, and further focus on a particular tech if you want to.  This kind of system gives some flexibility.  It's an interesting approach.

Moreso I'd like to see something less rigidly predictable.  I guess it works well for games but the idea of knowing the future in advance (knowing the tech tree) and knowing exactly how many turns it will take to research a tech is kind of...silly?

It's hard to get away from the tech tree since it IS a game and you need a logical progression thru tech.

It might be interesting, since tech trees usually branch, to have some randomness in which branches appear, with extra research required to unlock additional child branches under a parent - something like this could dramatically affect how you develop but it might also be unfun and annoying too.

I like in Warlock how the spells you can research are random - but it's not something that could work so well in a more progression-oriented game like sci fi 4X.  It's kind of a bummer that they're taking that out for Warlock 2.  I guess some people don't care for it. 

We could easily get away from the firm "X turns to research" bit by throwing in a bit of randomization.

I'd like to see a system where instead of a tech requiring exactly X research points to unlock, that you instead start getting a chance to get a breakthrough and unlock it earlier.  (Probably have to up the costs of techs to compensate/balance/whatever)

For ex, instead of tech A cost 1000 research points, make it cost 1500, and at 500 you start getting a % chance to complete the tech, which goes up every turn til you're at 100% at 1200 points.  You WILL eventually get the tech but there'd be some variance in how fast you get techs, with some potential for streaks of luck.

Creative trait (reworked with appropriate bonus and cost) would be sexy.  You could have structures, resources, and/or events that alter breakthrough chance.  Lots room to make research a lot more variable and interesting than just "chug along til you fill that bucket"

I think that in a real galactic empire, you'd be researching pretty much everything and anything possible, as new/better technology = power.

From a gameplay perspective, though, it would make sense to allow a player to research multiple new technologies, but with obvious drawbacks and benefits. You could spend all your resources working on improving your shield technology, or you could split your research resources into both shield and weapon technology. The more resources you put into one technology the quicker you'll get it done, but at the same time the more you split your research resources into multiple categories, the quicker you'll finish all of them.

You'd have to choose, would you like to have those improved shields in two years, and improved weapons in four years, or improved shields AND weapons in three years?

And if you'd want the research decision to be completely open, for balance purposes, there should also be a a point of diminishing returns on the other scale, if you spread your research out too thinly, you'll end up in slower research. All to make it so that "optimally", you'd want to keep 3 different technologies in the oven at any point in the game

From what I see we are just talking about building on what they are already doing. They are specializing by racial tech trees. We are talking about individualizing those faction tech trees.

I would recommend checking needs better tech tree next time. Again I like the idea of picking one tech causes you to lose other techs. This idea has caused me to suggest having multiple tech trees in the beginning when you first play a faction. Maybe something like having two tech trees. Like having the specialized tech tree for a certain faction. Like a more specialized version they are talking about in the next game alongside the Darj avatar tech trees. The number of trees you could have would be more limited than all the trees. once you pick a tech from that tree it would count as picking the tree. Once the number of trees were picked the other ones would disappear, and that would be your tech setup for the game. There are versions of this set up that I suggested some on the other post.

Tell that to Sudam Husain and some of his friends. They could build tanks, missiles, and guns, but not ships, subs. or planes. Now you are about to give some examples of this that I don't need to repeat they are already on your post.

If this is in reference to what the post is about I like the idea of multiple techs as long as I can't research every tech tree at once.

I agree. I also think that there are other ideas that would help improve tech research on the game. I think improving tech research would really improve the game. I give my ideas on a couple of other posts.

I think Galactic civilizations does a descent job at their tech research, but I am convinced that they could do better. I like your idea and others, and think they should be implemented on the next game.

I agree techs should be meaningful, but what is the purpose of playing if you won the game by killing everyone.