Which do you prefer: Equality Research trees offer equipment balanced against equivalent equipment: An engine in chemistry and an engine in electrical, while having their differences, are ultimately equal in balance. Diversity Research trees offer diverse equipment but are balanced as a whole: An engine in chemistry may be more powerful than an engine in electrical, but the armor in chemistry is weaker than the armor in electrical. Risk Research trees are balanced by counters: An engine in chemistry is more powerful than an engine in electrical but is countered by a weapon in physics that is countered by the armor in biology that is countered by the engine in chemistry. (Don't ask how an engine counters an armor.) No Preference They all seem equally bad.
Risk vs. Reward makes games end very quickly if a commander picks the "wrong" tree its like throwing dices at gamestart, if you have lower then 3 you will lose
Eh...research should be balanced primarily by the time it takes and the resources it costs. We should have at least one quick & cheap tree and one slow and expensive tree. Other trees should be in there to provide balanced equipment compared to others, like you suggested in diversity. E.g. Having a better armour in physics but a (traditionally) not as good cannon as chemistry's HE. Some items are also balanced by weight too - e.g. Reactive (traditonally) being heavy, fairly expensive and tough. Edit: Trees should ideally have their own CN, ML and MG as well as Engines and Armour. Aside from mechanical which shouldn't have weapons because you have to go in there for chassis (not the best system though). Or maybe they should have marginally improved standard weapons that suck compared to other trees.
It may be a very poor system of balance that I hate intensely, but it's still a time-honored tradition of RTS games. *spit* (Though Empires tends to decouple strategy and research, whereas RTS have them combined.)
Diversity. It suggests the most interesting variety than equality with a somewhat easier to balance system than risk.
the only way of implementing risk and reward successfully is by implementing it so the "choice" is made late game, effectively making it so people who are far behind can make a come back by analysing the enemies game ender weapons and making the right choices id say early game equality, mid game diversity and late game risk and reward i big branching research tree should be needed for this
Big branching trees are definately needed...however we'd have to think of viable weapons etc to put in them. Drags' myriad types would definately be worth pilfering.
risk can be all clones of one another, only the weaknesses and strengths you use them against are hard coded in the design
empires is too poorly tested and too slowly developed to have a diversified tries that needs to be balanced
Diversity fo shaw- then you get people buying two research trees at the end instead of just making do with one because spending money on another one isn't cost effective.
Diversity sounds awesome because the equality biology is really stupid, what would the point ever be to get bio missiles on NF if BE will never get biology but get chemistry or physics. so if the rest of the tree had that equality crap, it would be worse than the food brand equality(which sux more than no name).
I'd prefer it if research simply existed to escalate the game into a position where it becomes more and more unstable, thus forcing a victory. The end of the research tree should result in walls being useless, buildings dying quickly to massed tanks, and stalemates being impossible as a result because all the impeding elements have been rendered pointless so it comes down to a pure high stakes tank battle if the game goes on long enough. The beginning of the tree should have walls being an effective deterrent and obstacle for tanks as well as turrets being potent against tanks, so the battle lines stay fairly solid until more research occurs. Of course this does rely on the fact that battle lines would be established evenly at the start which is currently very unlikely, but I don't see the point balancing for a shitty game flaw rather than just fixing the flaw and balancing for the improved game. As many things as possible should be unlocked, there is no point trying to get people to research a different tree every round because what little variety it provides could be achieved far more effectively by simply unlocking everything over the course of the game, and it introduces far more unneccesary balancing issues by having it be like that, it also means that there is no customisation, because there's only one set of gear per game, so you have to wait for a game where your favourite gets researched in order to use it, whereas when everything is unlocked it becomes far easier to simply use what you enjoy using, and the game is improved as a result.
You could leave the more lesser weapons and armors unlocked and have the better weapons/armors and chassis and engines locked.(weapons and armors unlocked like bio weps(cept bio missiles) plasma and composite armor)
yes let players decide what to use not the comm. make research alter stats of certain equip, not research equip itself (unless the equip are chassis types - heavies from start on might play out bad - but maybe even that would work) other than that - go equality, its the savest way to balance without regular (like montly) patches ... not even blizzard managed to balance their highly asymetric games to the full extends. but they are doing an awesome job at cycling imbalances with each patch - and they patch fairly often - to keep their games interesting even for long time players ...
thats not what i meant look at games with diffrent tech trees like , say,RA3 they game had ALOT of beta testers, that spend alot of time trying to balance the shit out, and after the release there were frequent patches i'm saying empires cant afford to be both balanced and diversified