quote:
Originally posted by Jeb:
On the other hand, the "delayed effect of efforts" is one of the things that causes "just one more turn" syndrome. First you play another turn so you can research that dandy new tech. Then you play a few more turns waiting for a ship incorporating the new gizmo to be built. Then you play some more so you can see it in action. By that time, you're on the verge of a new breakthrough, and you're hooked for another couple of hours. If everything improved gradually and incrementally with no need for upgrades or new ship designs or anything, new tech would be a lot less fun.
You've got a very strange idea of fun. It's precisely this "fits and starts" phenomena where you have long waits for new techs and then a sudden flood of new weapons and other techs into the field that so often makes playing 4X games so screwy. I HATE "just one more turn" syndrome - don't you? It would be much better to research a general type of tech, like a beam weapon or a new type of shields, and then have it improve incrementally without having to refit. Only changes in the TYPE of technology should require a refit. Then you could build ships with a new tech and not have to refit them two turns after they are completed.
quote:
Originally posted by Jeb:
All that said, I do like the idea of not everyone having the same tech. The MOO2 system of not allowing everyone to research every tech (except for those weenie Psilons) was fun, although could also lead to tedium if you tried to keep a "pet" enemy empire around in hopes of stealing all the techs you can't research yourself. So to really get this to work, some techs should just be mutually incompatible. I have no idea about how that should work, though.
That's one of the features that makes the current generation of 4X games better than MOO. It's not a matter of just choosing among a few techs that anyone else might also have chosen anymore, now there are real differences in what is possible for each race/empire. The "path" through the tech tree is much less predictable and if technologies were a bit less transparent there would be much less predictability to battle tactics, as well. Do we need to know that shields II absorbs exactly X number of points of damage? Do we need to know that ECM I reduces the enemy's chance to hit by exactly X percent? Not really. We just need to know that it's better than the previous Version, or better than not having it at all.
[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 17 August 2000).]