my 2 cents is when rethinking something, start from scratch including names, and make a barebone product, then you can start inplementing stuff that "used" to work sporadicly and see if it "still works" bio for example, the story in mind that doesnt make any sense, it should be nf only then... you could however make a tree that groups all "corrosive" "toxic" and "radioactive" weapons in 1 tree etc etc etc for example, the following trees have 3 subcategories, each of them should hold at least 1 of every type of weapon (missile, cannon mg etc) but biological themed weapons could show up in every tree somewhere degeneratives (has the advantage of DOT on hit, doing the most damage of everything and quite versitile but only if the DOT effect is sustained*, disatvantage is that if the enemy has acces to repairs often you wont really do that much damage because the DOT stops on repair) ---corrosives (anti armor DOT) ---toxics (anti infantry DOT) ---radioactives (anti buildings and average anaginst everything, has DOT and some AOE) Penetrative (has the advantage of weaker weapon classes like machine guns doing average damage against vehicles and buildings, exells in highest direct damage, disadvantage is that weapons are not good at anything they arent supposed to be used for) ---armor piercing (du, mechanically loaded etc etc etc, anti tank but 0 AOE) ---autocannons (spam machine guns anti infantry, totally useless unless anti infantry) ---bunker busters (anti building, slow and no aoe only usefull at buildings and anything that does not move due to the slow speed but massive damage, only weapons with acceptable but still small AOF in this tree) Explosives (has the advantage of doing lots of damage as long as you hit multiple targets with AOE, very all purpuse but doesnt really "exel" at anything unless hitting everything with the same shell) ---anti armor explosives (large AOF, average to above average damage to tanks, below average but still usable damage angainst anything else) ---fragmentation (average against infantry but below average against anything else, has a good AOE) ---high explosives (good against buildings due to massive AOE, does average damage to buildings but to half the enemy base at once so it adds up, quite poor against anything that can run away or take cover) i dont know more trees just like that, i think 3 trees could even do the trick at first, that is if they dont just go linear, but branch off in different areas later on new ones could be added once we have a new and good concept for them that isnt " a different blend from the old stuff" and once the existing trees are well balanced *DOT in empiresmod should be slow damage over time, but in total should do more then any other weapon in damage or the DOT is just a handicap to a normal damaging weapon, also i believe the DOT should be stacking in "some" way or the damage that is lost on every hit that loses his DOT will in the end count against DOT, ultimately i see DOT as the most powerfull weapon in the game, but if you stick around to see your enemy die you are not gonna last as long as him
Why are you still using the old tech tree that tells users nothing about what is beneath each tree. I hope this is a stop gap before a decent research UI gets created. It's laughably bad though- not only does it not tell users the paths within the trees and how to get to each tech, but the only time a user gets to browse the tech tree is when they're choosing the next tech. Obviously, time is of the essence here and so players can't look around at their options unless they want to handicap their team. This could be disuaded somewhat if researches could queue, so players could then look through the research tree to select a "destination" research, allowing them to browse the research tree. However, I remember the arguement against this was that a difficult to use interface where a commander can handicap the team because he didn't know the game as well as a player that has memorised it is somehow tactical and fun. A fool would say "they should read the manual", but even having done so, a user isn't going to know where to go unless they have litterally memorised the research tree. litterally memorised the research tree.
The person who posted the picture in the OP, which I guess makes it drag. Though of course he wouldn't be in charge of creating a new ui, that'd be the team in general. It's just a comment, it doesn't really need to address anyone though.
