The idea is to have an item require different research items, not just the one parent node it is currently limited to. So for instance compo needing regen, reflective, and abs before you could research it. I know some of you are already thinking no one would bother with such a roundabout research item, but there's a bunch of ways to make it fine. You could make it cost no time at all, you already spent a bunch of time getting the other stuff, so essentially a bonus item. Such items could also be really really good, like how compo was in 2.42. So it can be used to help balance overpowered items if you wanted to add them in, neat. It can also be used to make certain items just better. Take bio ml, once you research it the path opens up to reveal guided bio ml, which you can guess requires the tracking research before you can get that. You just increased the usefulness of said item. Another one is after researching improved warhead compounds you can get more damaging missiles or missiles with a larger explosion radius version of homing or guided. There's quite a bit that can be done honestly. Admittedly the last part works better in conjunction with a passive buff type system, but that's a separate suggestion really.
I think everybody and their sister would fucking love a civ-style* research tree that: 1) lets you see the entire damn thing and 2) lets you elegantly do the exact multi-requirement research nodes that you're asking for. So don't get me wrong, if we were to ever move away from the current "tree" style of research to a flatter layout, then I would get weak at the knees over such functionality as that. However, we currently run into issues with properly communicating that stuff in the current [shit] research interface. Putting little text messages everywhere is simply a fucking horrible way to communicate really anything, especially not something as important as this. And unfortunately, there really isn't any plan to improve it. :/ *
I don't know, the tree isn't that complicated. I mean you can use icons to show when something needs another research item. The icon can have a little tree symbol, like bio or chem, that shows where to look for the prerequisite. The description box can just give a flat answer to what you need. If you can boil it down to 1-2 sentences, including the actual description of said research, I don't think it will be that bad. Naming schemes that follow some sort of logical path helps with it too. Like you will assume any guided variant requires guided research. Really wishing I wasn't such a lazybum.
If only there was an easy way to represent an acyclic directed rooted graph (or would that be a rooted polytree?) using the formatting inherit to text files.
Isn't something like this already possible? I remember, back when I was still new, the front news post was for a long time showing the viability of making chemistry researchable only after bio, or something like that. (That's where I got the idea, when I was first comm, that researching all of the root researches first was a good idea)
I don't know what it was like in the past. Currently you would basically nest chemistry inside of bio to get it to work like that, but with no way of making it so bio can be seen at the root while still requiring another research item. If someone wanted to they could basically revamp the tree to have a bunch of different paths that give you the same tech but at different points. OR something more interesting is giving certain tech depending on far you go down a path, like bio has armor and engine to start, but the other tress are there too. So you pick chem after bio, it can have he cannons but with a bio effect, or uml that constantly damages anything in an area after it hits for a certain time. If you choose say physics to start and then choose chemistry, you'd get he cannon with a higher range and faster projectile, and uml would launch faster with a speed increase too. There'd be some duplicates with such a system, I would think the system would be changed to have a missile and cannon in each category and what you selected at the start would effect what weapon you get from the second category. but the general idea is that what you get at the start highly affects what you can get next. Armors and engine being right next to the base simplifies stuff a bit too. Someone could go all out and make different types of heavies and meds with such a system if you kept mechanical in all the secondary trees, so like it would be if electrical could accelerate faster or turned in place faster or physics had more hull hp or chemistry let you carry 2 1 slot cannon or mls, or even just change the number of hardpoints. This is a pretty decent way of adding a ton of variety without dealing with problems like extra models and things. No one could get everything either, not when you consider the time investment. Unless the wanted to spend all that time making the best medium tanks ever. I'm not sure I'd advocate such a system though, people amazingly enough complain about how complicated the current system is, and it would of course require balance, one that might be a tad trickier to do. Still, this is something that would probably be rather fun to mess around with, with the bonus of being completely doable right now.
I can definitely relate to those feelings and there's obviously nothing stopping a rehaul of that nature, but you hit the nail on the head with why that hasn't happened yet. There simply aren't enough "pros" to justify the pretty tremendous "cons". If we have a research tree that coms can see in its entirety, then there's no problem. Like it's just not a big dealio to do some pretty derpy shit. Until then, I think the best way to move forward to to rely on player knowledge as a crutch to the poor research tree communication.
Actually this makes me wonder, just how far is gui update from finishing? I think someone said parts of it already work, you can make html templates and test them in empires, but I have no idea where that post went. Oh, I wanted to say that the idea wouldn't actually be confusing really. If you kept the idea that every secondary tree has the same set up, so for instance every version of physics has nukes, people wouldn't be guessing any more then they do now. It'd just be nukes with benefits. Actually if you think about armors and engines only being at the starting trees then you could also get rid of any further nesting, so all weapons would be right there after you open the tree. So it'd look simpler too.
I think herbie is still plugging away, but I'm not sure how much that'll affect the com gui though. I think that's another can of worms.
Most of Beerdude's placeholder html files have been in the game for a while. I don't know of Herbie's work.
Blargh, I was browsing the scripting thread and all these threads point to prerequisite working. http://forums.empiresmod.com/showthread.php?t=14112 forums.empiresmod.com/showthread.php?t=12846 http://forums.empiresmod.com/showthread.php?t=11684 Trickster's post is how I assume it's suppose to be set up. But when I try it out I can still research compo in this example. Code: "Composite Armor" { "Name" "Composite Armor" //name given to research item "Parent" "Accelerated Productions" //name of parent that this branches from "Prerequisite" "Regenerative Armor" //secondary research that this depends on "Description" "(Technology: Vehicle Armor) Access manufacturing process for armor developed of multiple layers of differing materials designed to break up a projectile and absorb its kinetic energy before penetrating all the way through the armor." //description given when hovering over research item "Icon" "comm/hex_armor" //icon drawn on research tree "Unresearched Icon" "comm/hex_armor_empty" //icon drawn in the GUI "Type" "0" //nothing "Cost" "300" //cost of this research item "Time" "72" //time to research this item in seconds "Team" "" //which team can research this "XPos" "297" "YPos" "72" } Was this something that was lost during the port? Or simply canceled because no one could agree to a decent enough research tree? Or is the syntax in my example wrong and I'm an idiot?
