Is it time to revise repeatable techs?

[DiscoRay]

Off the back of the reversal to FE building tech change that severely crowded the repeatable tech-tree for a spell. Got me thinking if a revision should be considered on repeatable techs in general, regardless of what eventually ends up with the FE building techs.

For instance, I think Engineering has a bit too many techs compared to the other two lines. I’d welcome a streamlining of them all, with perhaps a bit of shifting around too.

As an example, combine two techs with related benefits into one tech, but double the tech cost to off-set getting two benefits applied. Like putting the 5% energy weapon damage and fire rate physics techs into the one option. Likewise with army damage/health, and strike craft damage/fire rate in social, and so on. Would shift mineral output to physics, and possibly armour too.

Though all this is just initial food for thought to start a discussion, would be interested in seeing other’s thoughts/approach to it might be.

 

[Metallichydra]

I don't think shifting mineral output to physics would make much sense.
As it stands, minerals-engineering, food-society and energy-physics have become more and more common.
I don't know the exact words and terms, but here's a table that explains it:

Physics	Energy	Scientists	Volatile Motes	Dark Matter
Society	Food	Officials	Exotic Gasses	Zro
Engineering	Minerals	Commanders	Rare Crystals	Living Metal

 

[Dr Pippy]

Off the back of the reversal to FE building tech change that severely crowded the repeatable tech-tree for a spell. Got me thinking if a revision should be considered on repeatable techs in general, regardless of what eventually ends up with the FE building techs.

For instance, I think Engineering has a bit too many techs compared to the other two lines. I’d welcome a streamlining of them all, with perhaps a bit of shifting around too.

As an example, combine two techs with related benefits into one tech, but double the tech cost to off-set getting two benefits applied. Like putting the 5% energy weapon damage and fire rate physics techs into the one option. Likewise with army damage/health, and strike craft damage/fire rate in social, and so on. Would shift mineral output to physics, and possibly armour too.

Though all this is just initial food for thought to start a discussion, would be interested in seeing other’s thoughts/approach to it might be.

I've thought for some time that it would help to balance the tech trees, and make sense thematically, to move the kinetic weapons techs and repeatables to the physics tree, in the Fields subcategory. The conceptual justification for this is that railguns work by using extremely powerful electromagnetic fields to accelerate metal projectiles to high speeds, which seems pretty physics-y, and doesn't really involve any more engineering than a laser does.

The balance justification is that physics is woefully short of repeatable techs and has many fewer techs than the other two trees even before you get to the repeatables. So you'd be moving something like 6-9 regular techs (depending on what you do with the autocannons) and two repeatables from engineering to physics.

 

[GuardianGI]

I'm amazed that we got a bioship DLC and yet they added zero society/biology repeatables, ergo lategame society research is mostly useless. Strike craft melt to any near-peer rival with PD and only 1 out 8 strike craft benefit from repeatables (though maybe this was fixed?).

 

[r3xm0rt1s]

I'm amazed that we got a bioship DLC and yet they added zero society/biology repeatables, ergo lategame society research is mostly useless. Strike craft melt to any near-peer rival with PD and only 1 out 8 strike craft benefit from repeatables (though maybe this was fixed?).

Society (and engineering) repeatables are already very many. One of the reasons energy weapons are so good is because every repeatable physics technology fits in the options. So we can get to +500% damage and attack speed or something without interruptions.

 

[snowy801]

Just let us choose our repeatables. Solves every problem.

I won't say no to a hull strength repeatable though. Nor a fleet command limit repeatable.

I once had a ship with 5k hull and 150k shields

 

[DreamerGhost]

Physics has 4 repeateables, of which all are useful (credits, shields, energy weapon damage and attack speed).
Society has 10 repeatables, of which 3 are useful (Fleet cap, naval cap, starbase cap) and 3 sometimes useful (officer age, strikecraft damage and speed).
Engineering has 9 repeatables of which 5 are useful (Missile damage and speed, kinetics damage and speed, armor) and 1 sometimes useful (minerals). Not counting buildspeed as it's limited.

Physics has the least techs and greatest fraction of useful techs. Bio has the most techs and smallest fraction of useful techs. Engineering has the greatest spread of techs.

Physics is the most useful science type if you want to get your power up fast. Engineering requires most research if you want to keep everything at about the same level of progress. Society is useless, but that is not new.

Dump army techs, give Society a tech for greater workforce, and it will balance itself with Engineering. Add 4-6 useless techs to physics, like greater resource output from starbases, sensor range and something else I can't think of rn, and it will balance with other two.

 

[snowy801]

Physics has 4 repeateables, of which all are useful (credits, shields, energy weapon damage and attack speed).
Society has 10 repeatables, of which 3 are useful (Fleet cap, naval cap, starbase cap) and 3 sometimes useful (officer age, strikecraft damage and speed).
Engineering has 9 repeatables of which 5 are useful (Missile damage and speed, kinetics damage and speed, armor) and 1 sometimes useful (minerals). Not counting buildspeed as it's limited.

Physics has the least techs and greatest fraction of useful techs. Bio has the most techs and smallest fraction of useful techs. Engineering has the greatest spread of techs.

Physics is the most useful science type if you want to get your power up fast. Engineering requires most research if you want to keep everything at about the same level of progress. Society is useless, but that is not new.

Dump army techs, give Society a tech for greater workforce, and it will balance itself with Engineering. Add 4-6 useless techs to physics, like greater resource output from starbases, sensor range and something else I can't think of rn, and it will balance with other two.

Fleet cap, naval cap, starbase cap aren't "repeatables" in the same way we use the term. It is capped like the physics building cost and goes away after a while.

Monthly unity is definitely a useful modifier as well, as is strikecraft speed/damage.

 

[DreamerGhost]

Fleet cap, naval cap, starbase cap aren't "repeatables" in the same way we use the term. It is capped like the physics building cost and goes away after a while.

Monthly unity is definitely a useful modifier as well, as is strikecraft speed/damage.

It's not marked as such win the wiki, but from what I remember of my own games, you are right. I do not rate strikecraft upgrades on same level as energy/kineticks is because you can't have a ship using only strikecraft. Probably should downrank missiles for the same reason.

Monthly unity I don't rank at all because since 4.0 I've yet to manage to reach repeateables before getting all 7 traditions. After traditions it's only used for edict upkeep, which is similarly just not hard to keep up with if you limit yourself to only activating some of the trancendental ones, and planet ascension, which I find to be rather optional.

 

[snowy801]

It's not marked as such win the wiki, but from what I remember of my own games, you are right. I do not rate strikecraft upgrades on same level as energy/kineticks is because you can't have a ship using only strikecraft. Probably should downrank missiles for the same reason.

Monthly unity I don't rank at all because since 4.0 I've yet to manage to reach repeateables before getting all 7 traditions. After traditions it's only used for edict upkeep, which is similarly just not hard to keep up with if you limit yourself to only activating some of the trancendental ones, and planet ascension, which I find to be rather optional.

Planet ascension is no longer optional in 4.0. Given the excess unity you can now generate it has become an integral part of gameplay.

And ascending 20+ planets costs... dozens of millions of unity.

 

[DreamerGhost]

Planet ascension is no longer optional in 4.0. Given the excess unity you can now generate it has become an integral part of gameplay.

And ascending 20+ planets costs... dozens of millions of unity.

So that makes it a total of 1 society repeatable consistently worth using? Yeah I gotta agree with OP, repeatables could do with a redesign. Your idea of making them selectable is good but not enough to save society research.

 

[Dr Pippy]

Add 4-6 useless techs to physics, like greater resource output from starbases, sensor range and something else I can't think of rn, and it will balance with other two.

Your overall premise that the repeatables need to be rebalanced is solid, but I don't think adding more useless fluff techs, repeatable or regular, to any of the trees is the right approach. Ideally we'd be cutting those out, or at least condensing them.

 

[thestarsseeall]

Not looking to add useless repeatables, but maybe we could have repeatable like encryption/codebreaking for physics, and repeatables like diplomatic weight for society?

That way non-warfare based parts of the game could still have relevance and be dynamic into the late game, instead of stalling into whoever has the relevant civics. Like how the leader lifespan society tech accompanies a leader focused build. Could come as part of future espionage and external politics reworks.

 

[snowy801]

So that makes it a total of 1 society repeatable consistently worth using? Yeah I gotta agree with OP, repeatables could do with a redesign. Your idea of making them selectable is good but not enough to save society research.

It does, and it is.

While I am a proponent of adding more repeatable techs under the condition that we have selectable repeatables, there is no reason to reduce them.

Unity research is extremely valuable to the point where I research them before even finishing the society tree (though there is an upper limit to its usefulness, admittedly).

Again, there is only one "necessary" change to repeatables, and that is to make them selectable. Anything else is just cherries on top.

It will, and I repeat, solve EVERY EXISTING ISSUE with repeatables.

 

[DiscoRay]

Fleet cap, naval cap, starbase cap aren't "repeatables" in the same way we use the term. It is capped like the physics building cost and goes away after a while.

That's correct, you can only research those ones 5 times then they don't appear again.

 

[Carl_Bar]

I agree we really need a change to how repeatable techs work. IMO what would probably work best is to replace repeatable with something a it different using the situations system. At a high enough tech level you get access to a series of techs that replace each of the current types of repeatable, (limited repeatables would just become normal techs, possibly compressed a bit along the way). The first time you research any one of these it starts a situation which can be funded to varying levels, with each level reducing the amount of research generated for the relevant category to some degree, with the maximum completely stalling your research in exchange for the fastest progress. Progress would also scale somewhat with the amount of research removed.

Each time the situation completes and resets it gives a bonus to various stats whilst increasing the difficulty of completing it again. The amount is fixed per cycle whilst what is given si based on what relevant special techs you have. If you've allready completed one or more cycles before researching a particular effect tech, a few months after getting it an event auto fires that gives you all the bonuses you would have gotten if you'd had it researched from the beginning.

The main though here is it equalises repeatables as it doesn;t matter how many different effect techs you have, the rate of completions, (and thus gains in bonuses), is the same, (assuming equal income rates). It also takes all the micro out of it without the downsides of auto research picking bad choices.

 

[Trigaea]

Fleet cap, naval cap, starbase cap aren't "repeatables" in the same way we use the term. It is capped like the physics building cost and goes away after a while.

Monthly unity is definitely a useful modifier as well, as is strikecraft speed/damage.

This has always been a minor pet peeve of mine.

If they're never going to make significant changes to repeatables, they should at least add a visual indicator or tooltip saying which repeatables are only repeatable to a certain level.

 

[CrazyJ]

Didn't we just have a massive rework that broke the game, and is still under construction to try and fix things?

I'd rather the devs eyes would be fixed at cleaning up their mess, instead of trying to fix things that already work. Especially if their attempted fix comes in the form of another massive rushed rework that breaks even more of the game.

The tech system is suboptimal, few will argue with that, but it works well enough for the moment.

 

[Archael90]

Agree with shuffle repetables. As the matter of fact, I was suggesting soluch things various times, one of them is in my signature, as part of bigger, armament overhaul.
But I think that selectible repetables would be better in case of repetables (whole missile or kinetics tree can be put into physics, not only their repetables), because there are (rare) cases, and there can be more cases where we just can't use auto tech pick function. For example, when I went cosmogenesis, there is repetable physics research that alters reality, which I don't want research. I would rather wish to repeatedly research other four repetables in circle, or choose one of them for develop for a decade or so, and then changing to another one.

 

[Dr Pippy]

Didn't we just have a massive rework that broke the game, and is still under construction to try and fix things?

I'd rather the devs eyes would be fixed at cleaning up their mess, instead of trying to fix things that already work. Especially if their attempted fix comes in the form of another massive rushed rework that breaks even more of the game.

The tech system is suboptimal, few will argue with that, but it works well enough for the moment.

I think this is the right take in the short term, but at some point the tech tree badly needs an overhaul. As of now it's pretty unforgiving to new players, with lots of non-obvious prerequisites, etc. And the pacing itself seems really off, with the early part of the tech tree going by really slowly and then the later techs going very quickly.

So not in 4.0, hopefully, but I also hope it's on the list for 4.1 or 4.2.